Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

This... is the story of how I died.

Eugene.

Of fright! Alright, alright. This is not a story about me, really. Except for some cameos, which are, as we all can agree, the best part of the story. Or at least the most dashing, charming, suave—

You want to die that much, Fitzherbert? I’m pretty sure I can oblige.

Uh, no. No! That won’t be necessary— sunshine, a little help, here?!

~*~

It was easy to be proud of Corona, with all of its people working together again to rebuild, the citizens and the pub thugs working shoulder to shoulder. It was easy to smile when Big Nose and Feldspar passed bricks from a cart to a work gang, when Attila and Xavier set out braziers and trays to keep everyone warm and fed, and when everyone paused in their work to grin and wave at their princess as she walked by.

It was easy to be cheered for.

It was less easy to hear the cheers falter mid-shout, to watch the happiness on everyone’s faces turn into uncertainty and suspicion—to look over where they were looking, and see Cassandra silently working alongside them all, with her shoulders slanted low under the weight of her guilt, her head hung at a hopeless, penitent angle, her entire bearing guarded and measured as she took deliberate care to make not a single sudden move, speak not a single stronger note, choose not a single scathing word.

“No wonder she wants to leave.”

“I don’t get it. Why is everyone acting like that? It’s not like she’s going to hurt them.” Rapunzel leaned into Eugene as he put an arm around her shoulders. “They all saw what happened. They saw her fighting Zhan Tiri with me!”

“Sunshine, what they saw was you using the Sundrop and Moonstone to heal everyone, and Cassandra picking herself up from the floor,” Eugene said gently. “You crying out for her when Zhan Tiri fell, and me pulling her into a hug pile afterwards, helped things to where we are now: they know you and I trust her again, and they trust us, but that doesn’t make them automatically trust her. They’re just being cautious, and they have every right to.”

“I guess, but...” Rapunzel sighed, looking over to where a work gang was just finishing up wall repairs for the day, its members exchanging handshakes and high fives—except for Cassandra, who had to wander off a little before the others felt safe enough to take their eyes off her and begin the mutual praise and well-wishing. “This feels wrong, Eugene. She’s helping them! She’s trying to fix what she did. If they could just give her a chance, I know they would see she’s a good person.”

“Good people can make mistakes too, and her mistakes cost a lot of people their homes,” Eugene reminded, putting both hands on Rapunzel’s shoulders and turning her away from where Cassandra had just sat down on a crate and began to wipe the dust and sweat of the day’s work from her face with a wet kerchief. “We’ll rebuild. We always have. But I’m starting to lose count of how many times we’ve had to, this past year. People are tired of it. It’s not something that can be fixed with a festival. And Cass is miserable right now—”

Squeak, Pascal said in an urgent tone.

“Do you mind? I’m in the middle of something, here. Rapunzel, I hate to say this, but her leaving is the best thing that can happen right now. She gets to stop being a pariah in her own home, everyone else gets to stop looking at her until things cool off—”

SQUEAK, Pascal said again, this time more insistently and while furiously pointing one hand to the side.

Rapunzel turned to look, and went pale. “Uh, Eugene? Think we could put a pin in that?”

“What? Oh. Oh no.” Eugene laughed nervously when he looked as well, and saw Adira making her way towards Cassandra. “We’re gonna have to break up a fight.”

~*~

That someone would come close enough for their shadow to reach her feet was strange enough, and made stranger still by no princess calling out to her from afar. Cassandra lifted her head to look, surprised, and felt her face pull into a grimace of distaste at the sight of Adira before she had the chance to school her features.

“Not you.”

“I’d think you have something else to say to me,” Adira shot back, then hooked a foot around another crate and pulled it close enough to sit on, directly opposite of Cassandra, leaning forward with knees apart and elbows braced on her thighs. “So let’s hear it.”

“Fine.” Cassandra pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath, swallowing the acidic humiliation of saying what she was about to say. “I’m sorry I used the Mind Trap. It was unnecessary and cruel. I should have recognized that taking your freedom, and that of the rest of the Brotherhood, in such a way was a violating and unforgivable act. If I had the chance again, and a head clear enough to make my own decisions, I don’t think I would do it again. The sword is gone, too, it broke during the battle. If it hadn’t, I’d give it back to you. There. Happy now?”

“Somewhat,” Adira conceded, her tone just as disaffected as ever, making the answer a mockery.

“I still really hate you,” Cassandra said flatly, and rose from her crate to walk away.

“Sit.” Adira’s voice snapped like a cracked whip—just enough to freeze Cassandra mid-step and make her look over her shoulder at the Brotherhood warrior again. When she didn’t move through the second of stalemate, Adira raised her eyebrows, an icy look in her eyes. “You owe me that much.”

Cassandra ground her teeth, and sat back down, glowering.

“You don’t hate me,” Adira said calmly. “You don’t know me well enough to hate me. You hate having everything you ever said being dismissed by people who should love you, and know you, well enough to trust you, from the moment I showed up and said something else.”

“Same difference from where I’m standing,” Cassandra growled back.

A ripple of impatience passed through Adira’s face, a narrowing of her eyes and a tightening of her lips, before she leaned forward. “Shorthair. Mind Trap aside, I should be thanking you. You succeeded in doing what I’ve been failing to do for longer than you’ve been alive. More than that, you did it without anyone suffering, where I wouldn’t have blinked before sacrificing the Sundrop’s bearer.”

“Without anyone suffering?” Cassandra repeated incredulously, unable to stifle a break to her voice, and waved an arm in a sharp gesture encompassing the wrecked streets and partially collapsed buildings all around. “Where have you been?!”

“How many people have you killed?” Adira asked, though not ungently.

“Just because I’ve not taken lives doesn’t mean—”

“You’ve killed no one. That means you haven’t done anything irreversible. And from what I’ve seen of Corona, it can handle a renovation just fine,” Adira cut her off, in the same calm tone. “People here will be alright. They’ve not suffered debilitating losses. They have a true beacon of a princess to rally them, and for them to rally under. I’m not worried about them. You, however...”

Cassandra narrowed her eyes. “Why would you, of all people, be worried about me?”

“It brings me no joy to watch misery and suffering,” Adira said simply, a note of concern finding its way into her steady voice and earnest eyes. It was enough to make Cassandra grit her teeth again and look away, but her focus was pulled back when Adira extended an open hand to her. “Show me your arm, please.”

For a long moment, Cassandra was tempted to slap that hand away and leave. Really, no one could blame her if she did; she had enough reasons to be angry and resentful towards Adira. And the humiliation of having to apologize to someone whose very presence belittled her and took away what feeble weight her words and actions may have still had among her loved ones was yet another reason to stay angry.

But she was tired of staying angry.

Zhan Tiri had played her by exploiting a deep-seated wound and her tendency to handle pain by turning to anger. Zhan Tiri had fed that anger, righteous it may have been, and kept her fire-blinded with its intensity. Zhan Tiri had used her, but was able to only after turning her into an enraged attack hound, and had done so easily by using nothing but her own anger.

And she was so, so tired of being angry.

So instead of biting out a scathing riposte and walking away, Cassandra sighed, unbuckled the strap keeping her right glove in place at the elbow, and tugged on its fingertips to remove it, then rested her withered hand in Adira’s waiting one.

Logically, it was no wonder that the Brotherhood warrior didn’t flinch away from the sight of flesh cracked with fissures and blackened as if scorched by a powerful fire. She was here when it had happened, after all. But in the absence of anger that fended away any emotions that were less overwhelming, Cassandra found herself feeling relieved when Adira leaned closer and brought her other hand to examine and carefully test the range of motion in the withered fingers, instead of avoiding mere proximity—to speak nothing of direct touch—as if dealing with a leper.

“Has this gotten any worse?”

Cassandra shook her head. “It’s been the same since it happened. That also means the fingernails haven’t grown either, though.”

The concerned frown on Adira’s face deepened. “I’ve seen you use this hand; you have some feeling in it, yes?”

“Some. It’s not as functional as the other one anymore.” Cassandra shrugged when Adira looked up, making it clear she was waiting for elaboration. “I can’t move it as much. Grip has been a problem. Precision, like with embroidery, has been gone rather than just a problem.”

“What about pain? Temperature?”

“I noticed I haven’t felt warmth when I put the hand towards a brazier,” Cassandra admitted. “Pain, sure, but not every day and without rhyme or reason. When it’s there, it hurts a lot. Doesn’t hurt as often as when I was relearning to use the hand, though. No pain today. Yet.”

Adira placed one hand around Cassandra’s withered wrist. “Tell me when you feel something.”

“Nothing. Nothing. Still nothing,” Cassandra reported dryly as Adira began to gradually squeeze. Finally, when Adira’s knuckles began to pale, Cassandra cocked her head. “I can feel pressure, but not pain.”

“You can feel pressure, but not pain, when I’m beginning to actively try to break or dislocate your wrist.” Adira relaxed her grip, and moved her hand to try finding the pulse point. After several unsuccessful attempts, she seemed to give up, and settled for holding Cassandra’s withered hand in both her own. “You’re going to have to pay a lot of attention to this arm, Shorthair. Keep it clean. Keep it dry. Always double-check if you aren’t cutting off circulation. What you can’t feel happening can still cause further harm, and I don’t think any damage to it is going to heal very well. If at all.”

Cassandra nodded, looking down at the cracked, charred skin folded between the weathered brown of Adira’s hands. No warmth. No pressure. She couldn’t even register the touch. “Thought that might be the case.”

“I hear you’re planning to leave.” Adira paused, giving her a gauging look. “If I gave you advice where to, maybe, look for help, do you think you would listen?”

Cassandra considered for a moment, then looked Adira straight in the eye. “I think I’d go the exact opposite way.”

For a moment, nothing happened. Then Adira burst out laughing, the sound devoid of mockery and genuinely amused, and Cassandra couldn’t help a grin pulling at her own face.

“Better to wish you luck than tell you what to do, I see.” Adira withdrew her hands, letting Cassandra don her right glove again, and reached out as if she was going to ruffle Cassandra’s hair—but stopped herself mid-movement, and placed a hand on Cassandra’s shoulder instead. “Look after yourself, yeah?”

“I will.” Cassandra went to pat Adira’s wrist in return, but noticed the immediate shift in the Brotherhood warrior’s demeanour at the movement, and stopped as well when she remembered that Adira did not like to be touched. “May I?”

For the first time, there was a hint of regard in Adira’s eyes, a sign that they were now equals, and she inclined her head to Cassandra a little more deeply than would be needed for a simply permissive gesture. “You may, this once.”

Cassandra clapped her healthy hand over Adira’s wrist, completing the exchange of mutual respect, of support through that respect. They nodded at each other, then, and the pressure on Cassandra’s shoulder deepened a little as Adira leaned against her to rise from the crate, and went on her way with hands in her pockets and her usual little smile about her face. Cassandra looked over her shoulder at Adira, briefly, before she too stood up and went towards the castle.

~*~

“We didn’t have to break up a fight,” Eugene said weakly, his voice cracking with incredulous and overwhelming relief.

“I thought they hated each other.” Rapunzel looked between Adira, strolling into town, and Cassandra, walking the opposite way but with her head held a little higher. “Or at least, that Cass hated Adira.”

“She does, though. Doesn’t she?” Eugene turned to look at Rapunzel, and found her no longer at his side—instead, she was trotting down the street to catch up with Adira. “Oh, great.”

“Hi! Adira! So good to see you!”

“Hello, princess,” the warrior greeted with a smile, folding her hands behind her, then nodded at Eugene as he joined the two of them. “Fishskin.”

“Hey, Adira.”

“Wow, you look great today,” Rapunzel proclaimed excitedly, and Eugene recognized the expression on her face as the herald of a new journal entry and painting subject.

“Sea air has always done wonders for me.” Adira’s nonchalant tone was only highlighted by the way she dramatically leaned her face into the breeze blowing past.

“So, um...” Rapunzel stumbled through an unwieldy pause, searching for more things to say that weren’t talking about the weather. “What are you up to?”

“Waiting until your blacksmith finishes me a new blade,” Adira replied airily. “Passing the time until then.”

“Passing the time by talking to Cassandra?” Eugene laughed a little. “You know, I can think of many ways to pass the time that scar you for life less than that does, like bear-wrangling.”

“Eh.” Adira shrugged. “Figured it was time we had a conversation.”

“I know she’d hurt you, but please don’t be too hard on her?” Rapunzel said gently. “She made a lot of mistakes, but she’s doing everything she can to fix them.”

An odd look passed through Adira’s face. Confusion, Eugene recognized after a moment, at which point the warrior looked at him in the still-stretching silence.

“Do you mind if I speak to the princess in private? I won’t take much of your time together, I promise.”

Eugene turned to Rapunzel, who seemed just as surprised as he was. “Your call, sunshine.”

“Could you get us a table at Monty and Attila’s? I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

“Only the finest of tables for my girl.” Eugene gave her a quick peck on the cheek, then walked away, heading towards the Sweet Shoppe.

Squeak, Pascal said in a tentative tone, pointing at himself.

Rapunzel glanced to him, then translated. “Can Pascal stay?”

Adira gave the chameleon a searching look, which Pascal met with one of his own, puffing up his chest and not breaking eye contact. “I don’t mind, as long as you feel you can speak your mind freely in his presence.”

“Of course I do,” Rapunzel replied without thinking, and felt Pascal nuzzle into the side of her neck in thanks. “But I also feel that way around Eugene.”

Adira didn’t respond to that, staying silent instead as she seemed to gather her thoughts for a moment. Rapunzel nervously tucked a lock of hair, short and unwieldy now, behind her ear as the silence stretched on.

“So, um... what did you want to talk about?”

“The way you speak about Shorthair alarms me,” Adira said simply, her tone dropping into the same lower timbre Rapunzel knew from their foray into the Deadly Forest of No Return: solving a problem, tackling a challenge, navigating through hostile and dangerous territory. “You must know by now that she is a very proud young woman, with the honed skill and the sharp mind to back that pride up, who finds joy and fulfilment in overcoming challenges and receiving the recognition she deserves for it. Yet you are making a conscious effort to clear obstacles from her path. I can see this effort comes from a place of love, but you would do well to consider that such displays can be well-intentioned and misplaced at the same time.”

“What do you mean?” Rapunzel asked, a small incredulous break to her voice. On another day, and with anyone else, she may have laughed at the accusation. But now, and faced with Adira’s cautious, gravely serious expression, she found herself suddenly facing the terrifying perspective of having missed something crucial—and of missing it for years.

“Has she never indicated that she would prefer to accomplish something with her own strength, or that she was unhappy or frustrated with your offer of help?” Adira asked carefully.

“No. I mean—”

Squeak, Pascal said apologetically.

“Maybe,” Rapunzel admitted, uncertain now.

Cassandra, the locks of her hair and the irises of her eyes a brilliant turquoise, and a furious snarl twisting her face. No! This has to stop now, this thing where you think that you’ve been my friend and don’t even hear how you condescend, the way you’ve always done—

Cassandra, teeth clenched and eyes squeezed shut and posture screaming pain as she folded herself around the arm she was cradling to her chest, even the sleeve tattered and burnt away. I said I’m fine! You should have let me try.

Cassandra, two full years younger, and irritated beyond finding gentler words. You’re a princess! You’ve got nothing to prove! Can’t you see how much this means to me?!

Cassandra, on countless other occasions, with the same look of hurt rapidly turning to anger and lashing out, not as unprovoked as she had seemed at the time.

“...Yes.” Rapunzel closed her eyes, feeling her shoulders slump. “But we’ve— we’ve made up, every time.”

“And what did that look like?” Adira asked, her tone softening.

“She’d say she was sorry.” Rapunzel paused, and stopped dead in her tracks, as soon as she heard what she’d just said. “Oh.”

Adira came to a halt beside her, but said nothing.

“I didn’t think I was being a bad friend,” Rapunzel said weakly. “I thought she’d be happy to share things. To have help. To do things together. I thought that because it would make me happy. I was too busy thinking about what would make me happy that I never stopped to think about what would make her happy. And all this time, for— for as long as I’ve known Cass, I’ve been treating her like— like—”

Squeak, Pascal said quietly, lifting two fingers to indicate a very small size.

“—like she was this big. Oh. Oh no.” Rapunzel buried her face in her hands. “This is terrible. I have to fix this.”

Adira laid a hand on Rapunzel’s shoulder, as comforting as it was restraining. “It is good to hear you feel this way. But, by focusing on the way you feel, you are perpetuating the mistake that led you to this point.”

Rapunzel looked up at her, eyes full of tears and teeth sunk into her lower lip to keep it from quivering. “What do you think I should do?”

“I think it’s time to stop doing,” Adira said gently. “Rapunzel, now that you have realized that you weren’t treating your friend well, you feel terrible. You want to do something, so you can stop feeling terrible. And you are still focused on what you feel, what you want. Now ask yourself two questions. What does Cassandra feel?”

“She’s miserable here in Corona,” Rapunzel said slowly, eyes downcast. “She feels guilty, and tired, and sad. And I think she might feel like everything that’s happened has been unfair. Because I’m starting to realize that it was. A lot more of it than I thought.”

“And what does Cassandra want?” Adira pressed.

Rapunzel hung her head. “She wants to leave.”

“Then you know what’s the only decision there is,” Adira told her. “The right one.”

“Let her leave,” Rapunzel said quietly. Then shook her head. “But how am I supposed to start making things up to her if she’s gone?”

“Be patient. Let the dust settle before you start raising new walls.” Adira took Rapunzel’s hands in both her own. “Make sure she knows she is loved; that you will let her go if she wishes to leave, and that you will welcome her with open arms if she wishes to return. Make sure she knows she is trusted; that you will let her fight her own battles if she wishes to prove herself in them, even if to no one but herself, and that she will receive any aid she could wish for if she asks for it. Make sure she knows she is respected; that you will no longer impose on her, and that she will be treated as an equal, not a maidservant and personal protector all rolled into one. And above all, make sure to let enough time pass to let you heal, both of you.”

“Thank you, Adira,” Rapunzel said quietly. “I have a lot to think about. I don’t like feeling this way, but I think— I think I needed this, a lot. I’m in your debt.”

The corners of Adira’s lips twitched upwards. “Not really. Think of it as an apology for leading you to your death with a smile on my face, and a thanks for seeing my vows fulfilled by destroying the Moonstone. Now, I believe you have a long-lost prince waiting for you?”

Rapunzel laughed a little, even as she pulled her hands back and began to wipe errant tears from her face. “I think he turned out better for not growing up a prince.”

“No argument there.” Adira stepped away, giving a jaunty wave as she put her other hand in her pocket. “By your leave, princess. I’ll be around.”

“Thank you,” Rapunzel repeated with feeling, and waved back at Adira before parting ways.

Squeak, Pascal said lovingly.

“I love you too, Pascal.” Rapunzel scratched lightly under the chameleon’s chin, smiling. “I think... I think I’ll have to talk about this once I’ve had the time to process. Think you can help me go over the past two years and rethink everything I’ve done?”

Squeak, Pascal said decisively.

“Thank you, my friend. Let’s go back to Eugene.”

~*~

Devastated as her room was—devastated as she had left it—there was still packing to do, choosing from what she could salvage. Cassandra stocked a mending kit as best she could, for whenever wear and tear would make something come loose on the road; her dominant hand’s pitiful condition may have forever freed her from the long days of sewing and embroidery, but she’d still have no one but herself to rely on for repairs. A cloak warm enough to wear for the season, thin enough to layer through the upcoming winter. A trusty sharpening stone. A waterproof map case. A spare bowstring.

A knock came against her doorframe, and Cassandra looked over her shoulder to see Rapunzel there, waiting at the door left half-open for her, hands folded behind her back and face drawn with worry even as she tried to smile through it.

“Hi. May I...?”

Cassandra nodded, beckoning her closer. “Come in.”

Rapunzel stepped inside, eyes travelling over the half-packed satchels on the bed, the clothes Cassandra had changed into for travel rather than for repair work. “Almost ready to go, huh?”

“Almost. Not quite done yet.”

“Well, in every story I read about a knight-errant, they carried a favour from someone they were important to. So I thought...” Rapunzel pulled a gold-trimmed kerchief from behind her back, looking at Cassandra uncertainly. “Maybe? If you want?”

Cassandra stared at her for a moment, equal parts touched and surprised. A sign that she was of a place, a proof of belonging. A mark of honour, one that would immediately distinguish her from a fugitive or a convict. A letter of marque, absolving her of responsibility to represent more than just herself, yet still promising wrathful retribution against those who would wrong her. Offered freely, hers to bear, but only if she wanted to.

In the before times, Rapunzel wouldn’t have asked if she wanted to.

So in the end, Cassandra just presented her left arm, wordlessly.

“You know this also means a promise to come back to you, right?” she managed when she could trust her voice not to crack.

“I won’t make you promise me that,” Rapunzel said softly, wrapping the fabric around Cassandra’s bicep and securely tying the ends off. “But I want you to know that no one here will turn you away at the door, Cass. No one. Not ever.”

Cassandra nodded, swallowing thickly.

Rapunzel fiddled with the knot one last time, then smoothed out Cassandra’s cloak over her shoulders. She was stalling, Cassandra realized, finding reasons to not step away yet. “Write me.”

“I will,” Cassandra promised. “I’ll write you, and send you treasures from my travels.”

A smile finally curled through Rapunzel’s face. She drew a breath as if to ask something, but changed her mind at the last moment, and in the end, only patted an open hand against Cassandra’s collarbone. “I’ll leave you to it. Come see me one last time before you go?”

“Okay.”

And after that, Rapunzel exited the room, looking over her shoulder one more time along the way. Cassandra breathed deeply, wiped at her eyes, and forced a partially destroyed cabinet open in an attempt to find some clean paper.

~*~

When all was said and done, Rapunzel held her arms wrapped tightly around herself, looking out the massive hole in the side of her room, slowly losing sight of a lone rider cantering down the bridge that connected the capital city of Corona to the kingdom’s mainland.

“You haven’t asked her to stay, after all,” Eugene said, more of a statement than a question.

Rapunzel shook her head.

“You okay, sunshine?”

“Yeah,” Rapunzel said, her tone somewhat strained.

Squeak, Pascal said from her shoulder, making a so-so gesture with one hand.

“I keep thinking, ‘we just got her back, and now she’s gone again’ before I even catch myself on how selfish that thought is,” Rapunzel admitted with a sigh. “Cass isn’t a possession I get to keep around for my happily ever after. If she needs to leave, if I’ve treated her in ways that made her crave to leave, then she gets to leave.”

~*~

When all was said and done, Cassandra pulled on the reins as Fidella trotted up to a road sign sitting in the middle of a crossroads. Behind her, Corona sprawled, left to its own devices as she was finally free to tend to hers with the wind in her hair and a song in her heart. Before her, a choice between three new paths awaited—Koto, Equis, or Bayangor.

Cassandra patted the mare’s neck, and held out an arm for Owl to perch on. “What do you think? Where should we go first?”

Chapter Text

To feel this revitalized and liberated and looking forward to the future just from being on the road again was probably not a great sign, but even if, Cassandra couldn’t bring herself to care.

With no one to fuss over and no pit of hellfire burning in her belly, it was the best of both worlds: of the travel along the trail of black rocks, and of the arguable freedom she had claimed right after taking the Moonstone. No added responsibilities, no division of watch shifts and driving shifts to keep track of, no makeshift repair work on the wagon and hoping it would be enough to get them to a wheelwright, no recalculations of how long they had until another resupply every morning based on how much the others’ eating habits varied. No demonic entity dripping poison in her ears, no power to be hunted for, no empty desire to recreate everything she had seen from a servant’s perspective and perch atop it as a monarch, no doubt and fear gnawing at her in every lonelier moment.

Now, Cassandra had no one to put before herself but Owl and Fidella—with Owl mostly taking care of himself, and Fidella having finite and uncomplicated needs. Now, the solitude was a balm on her soul, instead of another razorblade taken to its shredded fabric. Now, if she didn’t want to talk, she didn’t have to, with no invasive concern or manipulative advice to deal with—and if she did want to talk, the conversation was exhausted in the shortest amount of time required, with any discussion limited to Owl’s short, to-the-point hooting and Fidella’s soft nickers.

She had gone off the cobbled roads on her second day out of the capital, after a messenger of the pan-Seven Kingdoms postal services had pulled his sleek horse to a stop beside her instead of galloping past.

“You might want to give it a bit of time, miss,” he’d said as he handed her a wanted poster of herself, now stamped with a red PARDONED across the face. “Not every corner of the kingdom has seen the new version yet, I don’t think.”

She’d thanked the wisp of a boy, and watched his steed thunder off on their way to deliver small parcels and letters, then folded the poster into the breast pocket of her cloak and spent a long while with the map before nudging Fidella off the road and into the countryside.

Snort, the mare said, looking back to side-eye her rider sceptically.

“I know,” Cassandra said in a tone she hoped would sound reassuring. “But it’s easy enough to keep an azimuth, and each major crossroads is marked. Whenever we find another cobbled road, we’ll just follow it until a signpost tells us where exactly on the map we are.”

Fidella flicked an ear, looking entirely unconvinced with the bare truth she was given.

Cassandra took a deep breath, then admitted, “Maybe I need to get lost for a while.”

With a softer sound halfway between a nicker and a sigh, Fidella began to step off the cobbles, first finding a well-walked path to trot down, then abandoning even that as Cassandra dismounted and walked beside her instead.

The iron rations she took from the castle would last her a month. But there was nothing wrong, Cassandra reasoned, with supplementing these with whatever she could hunt or forage. So she let herself disappear into the wilds of Corona, heading directly away from any forest clearing, any shout of shepherds calling out to their flocks, that she came across. She gathered wild sorrel and dug up rampion root, and cut up young yarrow leaves as if they were dill sprigs. She drank birch sap and rainwater, collected in the cooking pot and frying pan she would leave in the open overnight and sometimes find wild critters drinking from in the morning. She set rabbit snares and hunted for pheasants, cleaning pelts and collecting flight feathers while the meat was cooking, Owl delightedly helped dispose of the guts, and Fidella grazed nearby. She slept under canopies and open skies, and on cold nights curled up to Fidella, if the mare was inclined to sleep laying down, with Owl standing watch for them overnight. And in-between, she walked ahead, with no direction more defined than simply leaving Castle Corona behind.

For the first week of her hermitage, Cassandra would spend long hours pretending to do something—walking, tracking, skinning, cooking—but rather than focus on that task, she would find herself pausing and letting it lie in favour of just soaking up the inoppressive silence and mild noises that made up the soundscape of the forests and plains she was travelling through. The rustle of leaves and the creaking of pine trees as the wind wandered with her washed away the clatter of hobnailed boots and wagon wheels against cobbled stone, the noise of a city life layered into her soul since she was four years old. The shouting of merchants and town criers and more, piercing in its intensity, faded like an echo against the bellows of distant stags and the alarm calls of blackbirds chirping as she walked by. The songs of crickets during the day and of nightingales at dusk rang more soothing than any busker or court musician to ever perform within the walls of Corona’s capital. The moss and dead leaves underfoot spilled forth softer than any palace carpet, and although she spent more time on her feet now than she used to even when running errands and serving royals, now the evenings brought her less aching, less strain, concentrated in her knees and hip joints, as if the forest floor itself was reaching its invisible grasp into her legs to loosen the knots pulled so tight by endless treading on flagstones and cobbles. And slowly, gradually, day after day Cassandra could feel the confines and burdens of a citizen’s—a court member’s—lifestyle rust and loosen and unravel around her, their weight tumbling from her shoulders like a flood of autumn leaves falling to the forest floor. She could relax her posture. She could walk without minding the hems of a dress. She could stop thinking for other people who had the luxury of neglecting to do so. She could take a moment to stand in the rain, and comb her hair back with her fingers without worrying what it was going to look like afterwards, or how much more it was going to curl from the water, and just breathe in: deep lungfuls of crisp, moist air.

For the second and third week, she felt the recent events that had taken such a toll on her as if they were thick mud caked all over her, and she had just stepped under a powerful current of water—as if the wanderings she had only just embarked upon were all she needed to make all the hardship, heartbreak, fury, uncertainty, and fear just slough off and leave her lighter, cleaner, than she had felt in months. There were no kingdoms to fight and no betrayals to commit—not of the self, not of those who had spent years relying on her and her obedience. No mistakes to regret and no guilt to suffer. No dismissal to endure and no lies to be trapped in. All she had to do was find the next shelter and secure the next meal. All she had to think of was the few and base matters of immediate relevance. No one to explain herself to. No one’s contempt and suspicion to deal with. No one’s forgiveness to grovel and beg for, after wanting one thing of her own. And when the moon grew full overhead, Cassandra stared up at it, an elbow propped on her knee and her withered hand rubbing slowly over the starburst nest of grey-black scars sheared through her clavicle, and as she looked up, she did not sing.

For the fourth and fifth week, she caught herself chatting aimlessly to Fidella while grooming her and to Owl while skinning rabbits increasingly more often, the continuing solitude well-deserved and much needed but still an abrupt change from the noise of Castle Corona and the constant presence of Zhan Tiri’s ghostly manifestation. So when the next clearing began to open between trees, the woods showing signs of being logged from time to time, Cassandra nudged Fidella towards the opened space rather than away from it, feeling a growing confidence that she could handle dealing with people again now—now that she’s had a rest, now that the previous hardships were left tangled in the brush like a stag pursued by hunting hounds, and she could ride ahead renewed.

“Let’s find us that signpost, shall we?”

Snort, Fidella said affirmatively, lengthening her stride into a trot once the ground underfoot cleared from a forest floor to a well-walked dirt road, and then, eventually, to stone cobbles once again.

It was another day and a half before Cassandra did, in fact, find a signpost as they travelled down the road in the same direction they had been hiking in. When she did come across one, it had taken her a long while of studying the map to realize where they ended up—they’ve made more ground than expected, Cassandra realized when she finally found the only settlement of those the signpost’s arms were pointing to that was large enough to be accounted for by the cartographer. Silberstadt. A town built around a silver mine that was abandoned in the past decade, after the veins of ore had ran out. It had struggled ever since; most of the townsfolk lacked the means to travel far enough to find new places to live, and the remaining opportunities to make an honest living tended towards scarce, backbreaking, and uninspiring.

The town was also located on the border between Equis and Koto—a border that constantly moved several dozen miles this way and that, depending on whose troops ousted whose for now, an endless series of skirmishes and ongoing animosity that constituted a large part of the reason for why Equis was continuously blocked from entering the Seven Kingdoms’ alliance. And with Silberstadt’s location, somewhat central to innumerable smaller villages and hamlets, Cassandra supposed she could see a reasonably significant strategic advantage to holding the mining town, even with the mine itself long gone. Not to mention the power of a plain old grudge between two monarchs contesting the territory. King Trevor of Equis, at least, excelled at holding meaningless grudges, after all.

Cassandra rolled up the map again and tucked it into its scroll case as the first raindrops began to fall. A no-man’s-land like that, conquered and retaken and re-conquered every few months, would hardly support a unified national identity. Constant military presence in the area would undoubtedly echo in the number of malicious accidents and disappearances among those living in lone-standing hamlets and farmhouses, as well as make for a thriving mercenary business, whether for hired help and odd jobs, or outright wetwork and carrying out vendettas. Whatever aristocratic presence may have once kept watch over the region, be it Equisian or Kotoan retainers, was either long gone or thoroughly absent, not willing to test their delicate constitution against life in the gutters and hovels that their subjects had to call home.

It sounded like something straight out of Eugene’s beloved Flynn Rider novels, Cassandra thought with a grin, and permitted herself a silent admission that maybe there was something exciting in that.

Hoot, Owl said, swooping down onto the signpost’s arm that pointed towards the ex-mining town.

“I think so, too,” Cassandra told him. “I mean, it can’t be any worse than Vardaros, and Vardaros was almost homey by the time we left it.”

Hoot, Owl said again, and opened his left wing to fix a few feathers with his beak.

Cassandra trailed the gloved fingertips of her withered hand over the favour tied around her left arm. “Hopefully it’ll cancel out the wanted posters, if either version made its way all the way to here. And since it’s the only thing I’m wearing that’s more expensive than my sword, I don’t expect it to cause a lot of problems.”

Hoot, Owl said pointedly.

Cassandra rolled her eyes. “I’ll write her when there’s something to write home about, alright? What would I even say now? 'Took a month-long walk, it was nice'?”

Snort, Fidella said, equal parts amused and exasperated by her companions.

“You know what? You’re right. It’s raining and it’s time to get a move on.” Cassandra nudged the mare down the Silberstadt road. “We’re gonna sleep under a roof tomorrow night.”

The rain kept up for the remainder of the day and overnight. There was no point in trying to start a fire—short of going off the road to ride up to any farmhouse in sight, she had no chance to find dry fuel or adequate shelter. So it was another night spent on a patch of ground too stony to soak up the rain, with a waterproof blanket thrown over Fidella, Cassandra snuggled up to the mare as best she could, and Owl keeping his eyes open for them. When morning came, the rain was still falling, and Cassandra wasn’t sure which had woken her up: the meagre sunlight from behind the thick cloud cover, or the piercing pain in her withered arm.

“Left today,” she told Owl as he shook himself and batted his wings to shake the rainwater off.

Hoot, Owl said sleepily, then perched on her left shoulder.

“Yeah, you get your rest.” Cassandra smoothed the feathers overtop his head with one finger, then climbed into the saddle on Fidella’s back and patted her neck companionably. Immediately after she took the reins, the pain flared badly enough to make her hiss with wince, and the reins slipped from her hand as it opened again.

The mare looked back at her with a worried little noise.

“I’m fine. It’s just a little ache.” Cassandra pulled a few of her tunic’s clasps open and tucked her withered arm under her clothes, hoping that her body heat would help combat the pain a little. “We’re heading in the same direction as last night, anyway. Think you can take us there?”

Snort, Fidella said, still eyeing her rider with concern. She didn’t make a fuss of it, though, getting on with the day instead, and Cassandra silently thanked the divine providence of whatever had been watching on the day when the palace guard took in a barrel-chested buckskin mare built like a draft horse rather than a racer.

At some point during the morning hours, a lone rider passed her by, bundled up too tightly against the perpetual rain for Cassandra to see who they were. She made no effort to converse, but inclined her head in response to the stranger raising a hand to the brim of their hat at her, and made a point to remember their steed: a work-worn chestnut gelding with rather pronounced dappling denoting age, three white socks, and a star on his forehead. Soon enough afterwards, Cassandra thought she could spy a darker shape of buildings rising through the drizzle and fog, so she fixed her clothes up and rested her withered hand atop the front of the saddle for now. It had yet to stop aching, through the pain did subside somewhat against warmth—even though she couldn’t feel any through the hours of keeping the hand tucked under her left arm, thumb rested on her collarbone near the greyish Moonstone scars and the other fingers loosely flattened against her side.

By the time the town walls of Silberstadt came into focus, Cassandra began to make out other shapes moving in the fog: people, livestock, chickens, dogs. The streets, such as they were, flowed with mud in the absence of cobbles after a day and a half of rain. The dwellings around, as well as the town fortifications themselves, seemed raised from the excess rock pulled from the long-abandoned mine and stacked into structures of vaguely equal thickness and height, with layers of simple mortar in-between. The locals, most of them with massive postures and stooped backs of miners, were interestingly enough carrying some sort of a weapon each, to the one—mostly spears used like walking sticks, Cassandra noticed, followed by axes with heads just as fit for lumberjack work as for splitting flesh and bone, and by chipped swords hooked through belt loops like the axes were instead of properly sheathed. Iron helmets and suits of chainmail were far less common, and nearly all sported rusty spots or signs of makeshift repairs with cheap materials. Here and there, individuals carrying weapons of more expert make and clad in well-kept armour—however piecemeal it could sometimes be—poked through the crowd. And finally, looking as out of place among these people as they were miserable under the heavy glares and ghastly weather, an occasional pair of guards in Equisian colours patrolled the muddy streets, followed by barely hushed mutters and an absolute lack of respect among the populace.

Seeing as Cassandra had yet to dismount, she had no trouble getting through the crowd, with people clearing out of Fidella’s way. Seeing as Cassandra was a rain-soaked rat of a woman right now, with a quiver and bow case strapped to the saddle and a sword slung over her back, she had no trouble with drawing undue attention, either, since she looked almost exactly like everyone around her; if anyone did a double-take after her, it was to stare at Owl, who was still dozing on her shoulder. That, she supposed, and the still relatively impeccable condition of Fidella’s tack and harness was what made another pair of guards walk out from under an awning and head directly for her.

“Hail! I’ve not seen your face here, what business have you in Silberstadt?”

Saved her the trouble of bothering someone for directions, at least. “I’ve pelts and fletching to sell, and rain to get out of. Maybe an odd job or two afterwards. Got any pointers?”

One of the guards eyed her suspiciously, while the one who’d called out to her directed her down a perpendicular street. “There’s a furrier a few minutes’ walk from here. Fletcher, we have several, ask around the smithy. If you’re looking for a place to stay, the only one with a stable is the Brazen Brigand. And don’t do any unsanctioned mercenary work here—you want a job, you check with the job board at the town square, is that clear?”

“Crystal,” Cassandra confirmed easily. “Any other rules I should know about?”

“Emil’s clinic is neutral ground: you start shit around it, and it’s every passerby’s responsibility to put you down,” the guard started tapping his fingers as he answered. “Curfew starts at sundown and lasts till sunrise, don’t leave your place of residence in-between. You hire yourself out for anything or anyone that’s not on the job board, you get blacklisted from the job board. And keep your ass out of trouble—no one cares who started it, if your foot touches the turd, you’re in the shit house with everyone else.”

“I like it,” Cassandra lied in a deadpan tone. “Simple, easy to remember.”

“You’re far from home, Coronian,” the other guard spoke up, glaring up at Cassandra through squinted eyes. “You’d do well to watch your step here.”

“Oh, you don’t have to tell me twice.” Cassandra clicked her tongue at Fidella, and headed towards the furrier’s workshop she was pointed to. A wooden sign hanging over the door, carved into a likeness of a squirrel overtop and a badger underneath, heralded a necessity to finally dismount and sink ankle-deep into the muck, and she sighed as she unhitched the bundle of rabbit pelts from Fidella’s saddlebags. “I’ll be right back.”

Snort, the mare said affirmatively.

Cassandra tapped a finger to Owl’s beak. “Hey, eyes open.”

Hoot, Owl said reproachfully as he blinked awake.

“Make sure no one bothers Fidella for a few minutes, alright?”

Hoot, Owl said, and flew from Cassandra’s shoulder to perch atop the saddle.

“Thanks.”

The inside of the shop smelled like tanned leather and wet fur, and the doorbell’s ring made her teeth ache with how shrill and dissonantly cheerful it sounded. There was only one other person inside, besides Cassandra and the Kotoan-looking proprietor—and they immediately gave Cassandra a wide berth at the sight of her equipment, leaving within seconds. The furrier himself seemed unbothered, and commented favourably on the condition of the rabbit pelts she’d collected and partially tanned over the five weeks of her wanderings, eventually buying all of them off her hands.

“Interesting gloves you’re wearing,” he remarked as Cassandra divided the money between her coin purse, a pocket of her tunic, and a satchel on the inside of her belt. “They seem mismatched at a glance, but are a custom pair instead, no?”

“That they are,” Cassandra allowed, tugging at the right glove to set it into place more firmly.

“Hm. Come see me if you find yourself in need of a winter pair. I believe I could replicate the reinforcements inside the right, as well.” The furrier glanced over Cassandra’s shoulder and leaned back, the look on his face abruptly shifting from interested to baffled. “Miss, is that your, uh, bird?”

Cassandra whirled around, and through the storefront window, saw a gangly teenager frantically flailing his arms in an attempt to shoo Owl away while Fidella was watching on with a look that said, Really? You tried that? Really?

“Oh for ffff...” She glanced back at the furrier. “Thank you for your time, have a nice day—” Another aggressively cheerful ring, and she was back out in the mud and rain. “Hey! You got a problem with my owl?!”

“Call that monster off!” the teenager screamed.

Hoot, Owl called out angrily as he whirled around for another swoop.

“Give back what you stole first,” Cassandra demanded, and was pelted with several horse brushes, the same ones she’s been grooming Fidella with for months. “Are you serious?!”

“How was I supposed to know what was in that saddlebag?! Call your murder bird off already!”

Despite herself, and despite the pain that plagued her all day long, Cassandra snorted with laughter. Then she gathered the brushes against her chest, put two fingers in her mouth to whistle at Owl, and held out her left arm for him to perch on. “Get lost, alright?”

Silberstadt’s most unlucky thief was gone before she finished speaking.

“Just when I think no one could botch a heist worse than Fitzherbert...” Cassandra put the brushes back where they belonged. “Did that idiot touch anything else?”

Hoot, Owl said negatively.

“Well done. Settle back in.” Cassandra extended her arm in a straight line, letting Owl inch his way from her forearm back onto her shoulder, then took Fidella’s reins in her left hand and carefully tucked the right into a pocket. “That guard said to ask after fletchers around the smithy. Heard any hammering?”

Snort, Fidella said, and began walking towards a road intersection.

Five minutes later, Cassandra arrived to a fair bit of open space cobbled with unworked river stones—the town square, she realized. One corner was occupied by an open-air smithy, where a powerfully built man was hammering at some small elements of metal while a woman of much more willowy posture loitered around. Another side of the square was taken by a large tavern, far from quiet even at such an early hour, with a patina-stained brass sign proudly naming it the Brazen Brigand. And in the centre, raised from honest brickwork, stood a small booth with a single person and a wooden board full of tacked-on pieces of paper or parchment visible inside: the much-rumoured job board, no doubt.

The smith, of Neserdnian descent if his skin the colour of lacquered clay and his curly black hair tied in a topknot to keep it out of the way were any indication, looked up from the anvil as Cassandra approached with Fidella in tow. “I don’t shoe horses.”

“I’ll remember that,” Cassandra said calmly. “I’m looking for a fletcher, I was told to ask here?”

The woman perched atop one of the workbenches, piercing gray eyes and a braid of platinum blonde hair that spilled down the back of her neck while the sides of her head were shorn close to the skin betraying Ingvarrdian heritage, flicked two fingers at Cassandra in a lazy salute. “You found one.”

Cassandra pulled out her case of carefully kept feathers. “I have some fletch for sale.”

“Ooo. Pheasant, huh?” The fletcher leaned close, her legs dangling off the edge of the workbench now, and indicated Owl with a careless gesture. “Good, but not as good as his would be.”

Hoot, Owl said indignantly.

“His aren’t for sale,” Cassandra said flatly.

“Not even when he moults? Alright, alright.” The fletcher pulled her gloves off and wiped her palms on her trousers before examining one of the pheasant feathers. “Tell you what. I don’t have coin to spare for buying these off you right now, but I’ll trade you for a handful of completed arrows.”

“Deal.”

The fletcher gave her a grin as wolfish as it was dazzling. “You’ve just made this day beautiful, Coronian.”

The smith rolled his eyes with a thunderous sigh and went back to hammering away, after having paused to let them have an uninterrupted conversation. Cassandra waited as the fletcher slowly, delicately sorted through the feathers, laying the ones she wanted on a pile that she shielded from the wind with one hand, and the few and far between she rejected aside. She spent over half an hour doing nothing but that, during which the smith had completed three arrowheads and the rain had finally let up. Cassandra started looking around to stave off boredom. The forge’s setup was only somewhat similar to the one Xavier was using in Corona. The smith’s dark skin was tattooed in intricate, if geometric and simple, patterns of ocean waves and lateen-sailed ships and schools of fish. The fletcher’s shirt was opened quite a ways down at the throat, showing the tail end of a blade scar that cut diagonally across her chest; and when the smith placed a pair of tongs into the belly pocket of his apron, tugging its neckline down a little, Cassandra caught a glimpse of a similar scar across his own chest. No, not similar. Identical. Like a woodcut and its charcoal rubbing.

Before she had the chance to stare too long, however, the fletcher looked up at Cassandra again. Somehow, her eyes now held an entirely new respect and very keen interest.

“You really know what you’re doing, huh?”

Cassandra shrugged.

The fletcher chuckled at that, then leapt off the workbench and pulled one of its drawers open, revealing a thick row of arrows laid next to each other. “Pick twelve, any twelve that you want, or four that I don’t actually trade in if anyone asks, if you catch my meaning.”

Cassandra leaned over the open drawer. Fletchings threaded and glued, arrowheads profiled for hunting and for war, some designed to cause lacerating wounds, some to pierce mail and plate. She glanced back at the fletcher, without straightening her back for now.

“What’s that you said about things you don’t actually stock?”

The fletcher’s answering smile held volumes as she reached deeper into the drawer and unlatched a hidden compartment in its back, pulling forth several arrows fletched with falcon feathers dyed a brilliant blue and heads hammered into a peculiar, almost bloated shape, yet still carrying multiple barbs at the edges. “Now, make sure you don’t accidentally use these beauties for just anything, because there’s no one to buy them from and certainly not myself. See the heads? If you dip them in a liquid, they hold it like a charm, and on impact they shatter to release it and add some shrapnel cuts into the mix. Magical poisons, alchemical fluids, animal venom, Bayangoran fire, you name it. Miracle and work of art all rolled into one, really, if I do say so myself.”

“Flatterer,” the smith called out from where he was working.

“And you eat it up every time,” the fletcher shot back at him with a grin.

Cassandra considered, trailing a fingertip over one of the liquid-carrier arrowheads. The shape would make them harder to aim right, as would the fact that they were hollow inside and supposed to carry a load, though the falcon fletching would help somewhat with stabilizing the arrow’s flight. A good shot would result in an incredibly nasty wound, even without considering the added potency of a poisonous load. If the good shot was, by chance, a gut shot, she would sooner make bets for the target’s death than recovery. It wasn’t an end she wanted to wish on any living person—much less actively cause it.

But she had spent enough time outside of Corona to know that there were many strange and vicious creatures in the world, monsters and beasts and remnants of ancient sorcery that defied death by normal weapons and simple strength of arms and wits.

So either this was a scam to sell absolute scraps of metal hammered together into something that could be talked up to high heaven, or a weapon of last resort to use against something too terrible to fight fairly and live to tell about it, Cassandra decided, and eyed the fletcher suspiciously.

“You’ve only just met me. Why are you showing me these?”

The fletcher cocked her head, giving Cassandra a curious look. “You reek of old magic and unfulfilled fate, girl. I’ve a good feeling about you.”

Cassandra narrowed her eyes at the Ingvarrdian. The fletcher easily held her stare, and when she blinked, her steel-gray eyes were no longer steel-gray or human-like, but a brilliant silver cut with a vertical pupil of a snake. Another blink, and it was gone, leaving Cassandra creeped out and wondering whether she saw anything at all, while the fletcher continued staring at her, a knowing smirk curling up her lips now.

Deciding that she wanted to get out of here more than she wanted to win a staring contest, Cassandra looked away and pointed at the carrier arrows. “I’ll take four of these.”

“Oh, beautiful. Just remember: you didn’t get these from me. Unless a skald writing of your heroic exploits is asking, of course.”

“Sure.” Cassandra packed the carrier arrows into her quiver, trying not to look at the fletchings—a turquoise as bright as she used to see in the mirror—and hurried away.

“Sigi, what did I tell you about the snake eyes thing?” she heard the smith saying tiredly from behind her.

“'Don’t do the snake eyes thing, it scares away customers',” the fletcher whined, evidently parroting an earlier argument. “Oh come on, she’ll be fine, I’m pretty sure she’s seen worse magic than that already. Or maybe will in the future. It’s never exactly that clear.”

Another thunderous sigh, and Cassandra was finally out of earshot.

Hoot, Owl said uncomfortably.

“I know, me too.” Cassandra looked up at the job board booth’s window. “You two mind if we find something to do to take our minds off... whatever that was... before turning in?”

Hoot, Owl said negatively, and perched on the saddle again.

Snort, Fidella agreed, and nudged Cassandra towards the brick building.

“Okay, then. I won’t be long.”

The board’s minder looked up at her with disinterest. “Hello, fresh meat. Take a gander, pick one, pay the fee, and get out.”

“What’s that fee?” Cassandra asked.

“Ten percent of the bounty, paid on taking the job. Non-negotiable.”

“Great.” Cassandra stepped up to the board.

It took up the entirety of the three walls that weren’t taken with the window and door of the brick booth. One side of it was covered in wanted posters; Cassandra raised her eyebrows upon seeing a reasonably flattering mugshot of Eugene, but none of her own. The other wing of the board was covered in thoroughly mundane offers: work at the harvest, work at a wedding, work at a lumber camp. The central portion seemed a mix of these two extremes, boasting a gallimaufry of bodyguard work, scavenging, fetching, hunting, and more. One offer in particular caught her eye—the only one that came with a picture other than a wanted criminal’s face. A flowering shrub, in fact, surrounded by several detailed illustrations of the compound leaves, bell-shaped flowers, and fleshy fruits. Cassandra stepped up and squinted to read it, as the offer’s text itself was written in an elder’s shaky hand.

URGENT
MATURE STALKS OF STARLIGHT WOUNDWORT (AS PICTURED) NEEDED POSTHASTE
LOOK FOR THIS HERB AMONG CRAGS AND HILLTOPS EAST OF SILBERSTADT
DELIVER TO EMIL AT THE CLINIC
REWARD: FIFTY (50) GOLD COINS

Cassandra tore the notice off the board and presented it to the minder. “This one.”

“Starting small, huh? Five gold.” The minder frowned at the sun-stamped coins Cassandra placed in his hand. “You might want to exchange these for currency of Equis or Koto soon as you get back, Coronian.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Cassandra deadpanned, folded the notice, and left.

No one had bothered Owl and Fidella this time, it seemed, and they both greeted Cassandra with an inquisitive look.

“Up for a trip? We’re going on one.” Cassandra tapped her shoulder for Owl to perch on, and mounted the mare again.

Healing herbs. Cassandra shook her head, nudging Fidella into a trot, then into a canter once they exited the town walls. Hilarious.

Unless you asked Raps, of course, who would’ve loved that to bits.

Chapter Text

“Okay,” Cassandra said flatly as she stared up the sheer wall of a mountainside before her. “I’m torn between 'I wasn’t expecting this' and 'I don’t know why I wasn’t expecting this'.”

Hoot, Owl called out to her from above. Cassandra pinched the bridge of her nose with her withered fingers before looking up at him.

“And you’ve seen absolutely nowhere else that this thing is growing?”

Hoot, Owl said as he perched on a small outcropping, and shook his head no.

Cassandra sighed. She was going to have to go rock-climbing. After having her dominant hand wracked with pain since the small hours of the morning, after a day and a half of rain turning the mountainside slick and slippery, she was going to go rock-climbing.

“At least it’s not the stupidest thing I’ve done...”

Snort, Fidella said, and waited for Cassandra to shift her weight and brace herself. Then, the mare stood up on her hind legs and leaned her front hooves against the wall of stone, letting her rider look for handholds a bit up from the ground already.

“I think I’ve got it,” Cassandra told her once she had both hands wedged into striations in the rock. “Boost me?”

Fidella allowed one of Cassandra’s feet to rest briefly against her head and in a single smooth, strong movement, pushed her further up the mesa’s steep side. Pulling herself up along with that burst of force, Cassandra started climbing, fingers scrabbling for purchase and boots testing the crevasses and outcroppings before resting her weight on them, a slow vertical crawl across the treacherous expanse of rock. On the third time when she was pulling herself up with her right arm, a persistent, acidic burn began building up in her withered hand and wrist.

This has been a very bad idea.

Cassandra looked down over her shoulder. She was still low enough to just jump off, and find someplace the godforsaken herb was growing that wasn’t atop a tall and fairly inaccessible mesa, without seriously hurting herself. Then she looked back up. The distance she had left to go couldn’t be farther than twice the distance between her and the ground right now. She could probably do it.

Unless her dominant hand refused her again. Like it had first thing in the morning, when it flared with intense pain. Pain that was building again, now. Pain that was going to have her hand open abruptly again and throw her into a fall.

But no one put out urgent bounty letters after a woundwort herb without a life being at stake.

“I am so going to regret this,” Cassandra said tiredly to the world around her, and kept climbing.

Several right-hand pulls more, and she found herself sweating more from the pain than from the overall effort of the climb. Several more, and the ache begin to spill further up the arm, beyond the withered area. Cassandra paused for a moment to catch her breath, then started pulling herself up on both arms each time instead of on one at a time. Several pulls more, and she could see her right arm shake more than she could feel it becoming unsteady. Several more, and her boots slipped on a moss-covered outcropping, squeezing a pained grunt past Cassandra’s throat as her entire body weight hung from her arms for a moment, and the world narrowed down to the fine points of her feet scrambling for purchase, her right arm burning with all the agony a legion of sinners could ever howl out from a pit of hellfire, and her entire mind concentrated on the single desperate task of keeping that hand closed on the rocks.

When she had finally found steady footholds, Cassandra unclenched her right hand with a whimper and, breathing raggedly, let the arm hang at her side for a moment. When she didn’t move for a longer while, a worried whinny came from below.

“I’m fine,” Cassandra called out to Fidella.

Few had been the times when she was any further from fine.

She was more than halfway up the mesa’s side, and high enough that the only way left to go now was up. Her arm was burning almost as badly as on the first days after it had died to the Moonstone’s magic, when she was struggling to relearn how to use it. Her breath was coming in ragged pants and wheezes, as much from the pain itself as, she finally recognized, from rapidly mounting panic.

She was going to fall. She was going to fall and break her neck and no one would ever find out what had happened to her. She was going to die, far from home, where no one knew her and now, no one ever would, because the next time she slipped, she was going to die, and there was nothing she could do anymore to prevent it. It was too far up to keep going. It was too far down to jump off. And the longer she stayed still, stuck between up and down like the no one that she was, the bigger the possibility that a gust of wind would yank at her cloak too strongly and throw her off, or that it would start raining again and her flimsy hand- and footholds would wash away straight from under her, and once again, she was going to fall, she was going to die, and there was no one left to keep going on the back of her failures, there was no one better than her kept around anymore.

And like a match struck against the sandpaper of her scarred-up soul, that last thought lit a fire in her belly, an abrupt and devastating torrent of anger rising through her like a flash flood, drowning away everything that wasn’t its own deep-seated fury, pouring a startling burst of second-wind strength through her limbs.

She had been bested by everything she faced for at least a year now. She’d been bested by Zhan Tiri, by Hector, by Adira, by Rapunzel who refused to even fight.

She was not going to be bested by a fucking inanimate formation of stone.

Cassandra snapped her right arm up and yanked herself up with a growl. Then the left. Then the right again. She kicked off an outcropping that crumbled beneath her from the force, and grabbed onto an exposed tree root. Yanked herself up again, and wedged the withered hand into a gap too small to be considered a proper handhold. She heard her reinforced right glove creak as she put her weight on it again—or at least, she hoped that the sickening sound had come from the glove. And eventually, when she snapped her healthy arm up again, she felt her hand grasping not at sharp stone, but at thready blades of grass.

Heaving herself onto the flat surface atop the mesa, Cassandra allowed herself a sigh of relief and a moment to just faceplant into the wet soil and breathe. An almost inaudible whoosh of wings, and Owl landed on the ground next to her, as awkward and stilted in a walk as he was graceful in flight.

“See? Told you I had it,” Cassandra panted, voice still breathless and unsteady. “Piece of cake.”

Hoot, Owl said proudly.

“Thanks. Let’s never speak of this again.”

Owl blinked at her in silent accord, and turned his head sideways. Cassandra braced her right elbow and left hand against the ground, shaky as the adrenaline crash had left her, and pushed herself up onto her knees.

The entire mesa was covered in a field of wildflowers, with only an occasional fir or birch tree framing the edges of it. No sign of animal life, save for an occasional butterfly re-emerging after the rain, and the low buzz of bumblebees and lone carpenter bees working their way across the mosaic of colour spread out in bloom before her. No sign of human presence, save for an occasional and long-healed notch on this or that shrub, where stalks had been trimmed in the past. And a bare patch of ground in the centre, thick rich soil strewn with tiny little bones in various stages of bleaching and slow decomposition, full skeletons laid out with cat-like skulls and curving spines and three pairs of limbs spider-webbing from them: front legs, hind legs, and an expanse of wings spread in-between. A graveyard, Cassandra realized. This was where these critters—whatever they may have been in life—had come to die.

She pulled out the bounty notice and unfolded it, looking between the pictures and the flowers in front of her. A good two-thirds of the field was covered in the sleek silhouettes, compound leaves, and bell-shaped flowers of the woundwort she had come here for. Better to cut a little from many than to shear a few to the ground, she recalled from what little she knew of the castle’s herb garden upkeep as she drew her boot knife and rose to her feet.

The moment she reached for one of the woundwort plants, a soft gleam began to emanate from its faintly translucent lilac flowers, the thin pale rim framing each leaf, and the inside of its stems, as if liquid light had been poured through its entire body.

Cassandra yanked her hand away and stayed very still for a moment. Nothing happened. Very slowly, she reached towards the plant again and tapped a leaf with one finger. Nothing happened then, either. Experimentally, she reached towards another one. It lit up as well, before she could even touch it. She extended her other hand to yet another one, causing it to start glowing too.

Owl landed on her shoulder again, visibly intrigued.

“I guess that’s why it’s called a starlight woundwort,” Cassandra told him. Careful not to imbalance his footing, she leaned forward and waved one arm in a big arc, causing at least a dozen more to light up against the proximity.

It really was kind of pretty.

She opened an empty saddlebag she had strapped to her belt for this and began to move along the edge of the meadow, cutting a few stalks from each woundwort plant—some with flowers, some without—as each and every last one that she reached towards continued to light up before she could touch it. The severed stalks she layered into the bag continued to glow, Cassandra noticed, as did the sap beading where she cut them off.

The bounty notice failed to mention how much was needed. But, given that she was supplying a clinic, she felt like nothing of what she could bring them would go to waste. Especially since the mesa she was atop appeared to be the only nearby place where the woundwort was growing, and a more sizeable delivery meant that the next trip to climb up here would get postponed.

Owl seemed to lose interest in the herb harvest fairly soon, and took off from her shoulder to fly a few laps around the mesa, keeping an eye on Fidella and on the neighbouring terrain instead. Cassandra glanced up to him a few times, checking the sky for how late in the day it’s gotten as well; she had a fair bit of distance to go before she broke the line of town walls again, and if the Equisian guard was to be believed, there was a curfew to stay mindful of.

When the bag was reasonably full without being too stacked, Cassandra buckled its lid and stood up, holding her arm out to Owl.

“Seen anything of interest from up here?” she asked when he swooped down to her.

Hoot, Owl said, and extended a wing to the side.

When she looked where he was pointing, she saw another mesa in the distance—a switchback path carved into one of its sides and its flat top crowned with the ruins of fortifications. A modest structure, to be sure, even moreso when precious little of it remained. This must have been what Equis called Fort Rimwarden and Koto called Château de Bayard: the seat of nobility holding dominion over this border territory, with Koto claiming ownership of for having raised it, and Equis counter-claiming that since it was property built on Equisian land, it automatically belonged to its crown, not to the builders. With residents changing as often as the area was conquered and reclaimed, and hosting bands of highwaymen and thieves in-between, the stronghold had been destroyed by Equisian engineers setting off explosive charges in a retreat several decades ago, reasoning that if they could not hold it, then Koto should not benefit from its existence either.

Cassandra shielded her eyes from the sun’s glare with a hand, squinted slowly at the distant plateau and its broken crown. “Are those... tents, up there?”

Hoot, Owl confirmed.

“Interesting. Good job spotting that.” Cassandra lowered her hand. “Now please tell me you’ve found a way down from here that’s not as murderous as the way up.”

Owl stared at her. Cassandra stared back. After a moment of impasse, she sighed.

“At least it’s easier going down than up.”

And it was, if only marginally, even though she had forgone the use of her right arm entirely in this endeavour, trying to have it shield the woundwort-packed bag instead. Shortly after the halfway point down, her feet slipped, her one-handed grip on the rocks broke, and with a yelp she found herself in a freefall, tumbling ass over tea kettle, before she hit the ground with a crack and rolled again from the impact. Another worried whinny, rapidly approaching hoofbeats, and Fidella’s nose nudged against the side of her face.

“Right,” Cassandra wheezed, coughed, and pushed herself off the ground. A careful deep breath told her that while she was going to bruise a fair bit, nothing seemed broken. The saddlebag full of herbs seemed intact, its contents not crushed. Cassandra’s withered arm was still in quite a bit of pain, but mercifully not any more than it was atop the mesa. “I think that’s enough adventure for one day.”

Snort, Fidella said, equal parts reprimanding and relieved.

“Aw. Don’t worry, I’m fine.” Cassandra put the side of her face to Fidella’s for a moment. “Think you can take us back to town?”

The mare gave her a nicker, and Cassandra climbed into the saddle, relieved to sit down again. With Owl flying overhead, and Fidella knowing the way, she focused instead on her withered arm, carefully pulling the glove off for a moment to see if the reckless part of her upwards climb had done any considerable damage. She found the middle and ring finger’s nails each split in half, all the way from root to tip, with tiny bits of thick, long-coagulated blood oozing through the cracks.

Cassandra sighed. Reached into the saddlebag she had stocked like a first aid kit for a clean rag and a flask of disinfectant, and started dabbing away at the broken fingernails. There was no sting, no bite to be felt, despite the fact that she was essentially rubbing alcohol into an open cut. Once that which used to be blood stopped staining forth, she pulled out her boot knife again, disinfected the blade as well, and made a very gentle attempt to pull one of the broken fingernails off. When there was no give, no progress in even dislodging it, she gave up, deciding that in this case it would probably be better to let them slough off in their own time. Given that she did have to put the glove back on, however, and the cracks would keep catching on the inside of it, something needed to be done about that. So Cassandra trimmed two short, thin strips of fabric from the rag, wrapped one around her right ring finger’s tip without tying a knot, and dabbed a drop of a quick-binding glue that she used for fletching into the fabric over the fingernail, then repeated the same treatment for the middle finger as well.

While this was another incredibly stupid endeavour she had undertaken today, if it was stupid and it worked, then it wasn’t stupid. And the nails were likely going to come off in a while, anyway.

Hoot, Owl said as he watched her handiwork from his perch on her left shoulder, somehow managing to sound queasy.

“Don’t even start.” Cassandra blew on her fingernails to dry the glue out faster. “I didn’t have any better ideas. Do you?”

Hoot, Owl said pointedly.

“I know we just made a trip for a healing herb, but dead things don’t heal.” Cassandra stowed the now-frayed rag, the glue, and the knife in their places. “I’m gonna have to start wrapping this up in some linen before putting the glove on, I think. Hopefully that won’t mean I need a new glove.”

Owl slowly narrowed his eyes at her, staring hard.

“No, I am not going to glue an entire roll of bandage to my arm,” Cassandra said flatly. “Tempting as that may sound.”

Snort, Fidella said, causing her companions to both look up. The town walls of Silberstadt were in sight again, and quite close as well.

“Good call.” Cassandra tapped the haphazard glue-dressings with a healthy finger to see if they were dry enough, and on the finger coming away easily, she gingerly pulled her reinforced glove back on.

This late in the afternoon, there was significantly less people out in the streets, with most having apparently squared their business away in preparation for the curfew, and some flocking to the small handful of inns that managed to thrive. The Neserdnian smith and the Ingvarrdian fletcher were still at work in the corner of the town square, with the fletcher seated atop a workbench again and looking up from painstakingly threading flights onto an arrow shaft at the clack of Fidella’s hooves against the riverstone cobbles.

“Which way to the clinic?” Cassandra called out to her.

The fletcher pointed towards a street intersection just off the square. “Three-story building on the corner, can’t miss it!”

Cassandra inclined her head in thanks, then nudged Fidella in that direction. The building was indeed unmissable, seeing as it was the only three-story structure in sight; Cassandra left Owl with Fidella and made sure she had the herb bag on her, then stepped up to knock on the clinic’s door.

“Yes, coming!” she heard, muffled from behind the door, before it creaked open. An elderly man with stooped back and a stark white beard, liver spots marring his face and hands, yet his hair trimmed neatly and eyes sharp with intelligence, gave her a friendly look. “Good afternoon, miss. How may I help you?”

“Good afternoon. I’m here about the bounty,” Cassandra opened the herb bag, showing him the contents.

“Well, goodness me,” the elderly man said gently, one hand at his chest, then ushered her inside. “Come in, come in, please! We must put these to work posthaste.”

Cassandra allowed him to lead her inside, taking a moment to use the doormat. The bottom floor of the clinic seemed to be simply living quarters for the people who ran the clinic. A woman was walking past, holding a clay bowl half-full of water and blood-stained bandages, but stopped immediately upon seeing Cassandra to eye her warily.

“Hello,” Cassandra said.

“Hello? You don’t seem injured or dying,” the woman said carefully.

“Darling, if I could trouble you to fetch the bounty money,” the elderly man said proudly, gesturing to Cassandra. “The miss brought us a full satchel.”

“Wait, are you serious? I didn’t think anyone would take it, not for fifty gold!”

“I’m starting small,” Cassandra deadpanned.

The woman gave an incredulous little huff, taking the herb bag from Cassandra’s hands. “And you even had the sense to make it react before you cut it—” she turned towards another room. “Bruno! We’ve got the woundwort!”

“We’ve got what now?” another voice answered, with the same amount of shock.

“Put the water on again! Excuse me for just a moment—” the woman rushed off, and Cassandra heard the clay bowl clatter against a countertop somewhere out of sight.

“My daughter, Eliza,” the elderly man introduced belatedly. “I am Emil, and you, miss, are heaven-sent. May I ask your name?”

“Uh, Cassandra.”

“I was just taking my tea for the afternoon. I would be most happy if you agreed to join me.”

Cassandra went very still against a stark remembrance of the last time a harmless, endlessly polite stranger had offered her tea. “I should probably get going.”

“It would speak poorly of me if I neglected to offer you even such a basic courtesy. Besides, we must still pay you and return your satchel, no?”

That was unfortunately true. “If you insist.”

“I do indeed! Come, please, right this way.”

She was led through the clinic’s ground floor to a reasonably cozy nook on the building’s far side, where a small table with its top rested on a single central leg stood. Between a well-used porcelain teapot, a chipped cup, and a tin of hard biscuits, several stacked books took up most of the space, the topmost one left open; a ream of yellowed paper, a quill, and a box holding several dip nibs completed the picture. Cassandra took that in, as well as the condition of the place. Rags stuffed in the window. Rainwater stains on the walls. Bookcases of partially rotten wood. A shaggy-eared cat perched atop the topmost intact shelf, one of its hind legs hanging off lazily.

Emil was setting out a second cup and carefully pouring the tea. “Please, make yourself at home.”

“Thank you.” Cassandra took the cup, and didn’t drink. “Is it really so rare that someone would take one of your bounty letters?”

“Truth be told, this is the first time I’ve resorted to posting one,” Emil confessed easily as he settled back into his chair, tossing a crocheted shawl over his shoulders. “I would not normally, but the situation is quite dire.”

“How so?”

“Well you see, a few days ago, a young lady was brought to us, beaten within an inch of her life and left at the mercy of the elements,” Emil said, his face drawing into a look of cold anger. “Quite a heinous crime of hatred, I would say, given that it was committed against a Kotoan sympathizer while we are under Equisian control.”

“I see,” Cassandra said with a frown. “And the herb I brought you was the key to aiding in her recovery?”

Emil gave a small mirthless laugh. “The herb you brought us means she has a ghost of a chance to make it, now. Without it, I would soon have little choice but to simply make her passing easier.”

“Is it really that powerful? To change her fate like that?”

“It is in its reactive form, which is what you have brought us.” Emil sipped his tea.

“Your daughter said that as well—what does that even mean?”

“You’ve seen the woundwort plants begin to glow when reached for, have you not?” Emil waited for Cassandra to nod. “They react like so to the presence of magic, which heightens their restorative properties. Like recognizes like, you see. Usually, when my son-in-law makes the trip, he takes Gadwall with him for that reason.” He indicated the cat perched atop a bookshelf.

“You named your cat Gadwall?” Cassandra heard herself say before she could bite her tongue.

Emil smiled at her. “Griffincat, to be precise. You must have seen the final resting place of many of his kind, atop the mesa.”

Cassandra gave the cat a longer look. Gadwall yawned at her, and stretched his limbs where he was laying—front paws, hind paws, and a pair of feathered wings that had been folded on his back until now.

“Oh.”

“His meows sound a duck is quacking, hence the name.” Emil took a biscuit out of the tin. “Help yourself, please. What a happy accident, that you were already carrying enough to trigger the woundwort’s reaction without even knowing you needed a presence of magic beforehand. The trinket on your arm, perhaps?”

“That must be it,” Cassandra said slowly as she folded her withered arm under the table.

“Mm. I always hoped there was some truth to the legends of rightful kings and queens having the power to heal with their touch. That there truly was a benevolent sort of magic at work, and not simply persuasive enough propaganda.” Emil reached for another biscuit. “You are doing Corona proud, I daresay. Few would brave the trip for such a meagre compensation. Especially the climb.”

“It was quite a climb,” Cassandra agreed easily.

Emil eyed her with amusement. “So it was, if the grass and dirt stains on your garb are any indication.”

“Maybe I took a tumble,” Cassandra admitted.

Emil chuckled. “None shall learn of it from me.”

Cassandra felt an answering smile pull at her lips, and took a sip from her cup. Maybe sometimes her extreme caution, though warranted more than one time too many, was a little unfair to others. Sometimes, polite strangers were just polite strangers, and tea was just tea.

The woman—Eliza—returned, carrying Cassandra’s empty saddlebag and a small coin purse. “These are yours, miss. You may well have saved a life today.”

“We do what we can, don’t we?” Cassandra set her cup down and rose. “Thank you for your hospitality. I should really find a place to stay before curfew.”

“The Brazen Brigand sounds rough, but it’s actually a very nice place,” Eliza advised.

Cassandra nodded at her. “I’ve heard it has a stable, as well.”

“If you would not mind doing me one last favour?” Emil spoke up again, and when Cassandra looked to him, he handed her a slip of paper. “Do please deliver this to Sebastian, the Brigand’s owner, if you are already on your way there.”

Cassandra glanced at the note. Almost a grocery list. The Brigand must have been supplying meals for the clinic. “Not a problem.”

“Thank you. Most kind of you.” The elderly herbalist stood as well, smiling. “You’ve made friends here. Come back whenever you find yourself in need.”

Cassandra inclined her head and left, escorted to the door by Eliza. Outside, Owl and Fidella were waiting patiently.

“Sorry that took so long. Did anyone bother you?”

Snort, Fidella said negatively, and Owl shook his head no before flying to her shoulder.

“Good. Let’s go turn in.”

The sun was low in the sky, about to meet the horizon. There was even less people out, but the Equisian guards were far from the only ones still on the streets, Cassandra noticed—some would still be going about their business, some were playing checkers or dice games on barreltops, and the smith and the fletcher on the town square’s other side were still hard at work. The inn, however, was echoing with music and voices and laughter.

A boy hailed her at the entrance. “Stable for your horse, miss?”

“Yes, please.”

He extended one scabby hand. “Three silver.”

Cassandra paid, handed him Fidella’s reins, and took advantage of the distraction to grab him by the shirt with her withered hand. “Touch nothing. I will know.”

The boy looked between Cassandra’s murderous poker face, Fidella’s calm demeanour, and Owl’s unblinking menace. Whatever threats he may have dealt with daily, this one was nothing like, and Cassandra was confident that he wouldn’t try anything funny as he went pale and nodded rapidly.

The Brazen Brigand’s inside was quite like the Snuggly Duckling—if far more spacious, frequented by rough-and-tumble types as well as by more ordinary-looking citizens, and treaded by several young men and women in aprons, dispensing meals and tankards. Cassandra made her way up to the bar, and raised her hand at the person manning it; he held up a finger at her to wait, refilling a mug for another customer and exchanging a few words, then made his way up to her.

“Welcome to the Brazen Brigand. Haven’t seen you before, what can I get you?”

“I’m looking for a Sebastian,” Cassandra said.

“You’ve found the one and only.” The barkeep squinted at the herbalist’s slip of paper as Cassandra handed it to him. “Oh, Emil sent you, then?”

“Yeah, I took his bounty letter.”

“Huh. Didn’t think anyone would take that. Be back with you in just a moment.” Sebastian ducked out into the kitchen, bellowing something inaudible over the common room’s din. A few seconds later, he leaned on the countertop again. “Thanks for running these errands for him. Half the town would be dead and buried if it weren’t for the clinic fam. I’m told you stabled a horse—we’re out of rooms for the night, but I can get you a hammock in your horse’s stall.”

Cassandra cocked her head. “What’s a hammock?”

“Neserdnian invention. It’s like a latticework of rope or leather that you hang both ends of on trees or poles, or rafters in this case, and sleep inside. Sounds unsafe, I know, but it’s really hard to fall out of it. Keeps you safe from venomous vermin, like scorpions and snakes, in warmer climates. Here, it means you don’t risk sleeping on an infested hay mattress. Pretty handy, if you ask me.”

“Sounds good,” Cassandra admitted. “What food do you have tonight?”

Sebastian started tapping his fingers. “Cucumber stew. Mutton and carrot goulash. Baked potatoes. Usual sides of hard-boiled eggs, lettuce leaves, or bread with lard and sugar. Ale, stoat, or kvass to drink.”

“Mutton with potatoes and an ale,” Cassandra decided, “and a handful of raw meat for my bird.”

The barkeep stared at Owl. Owl stared back, unblinking.

“Right.” Sebastian cleared his throat. “Four gold. Find a seat, one of my runners will bring you your food.”

“Is Coronian gold fine?”

“Yeah, of course it is, who told you it wouldn’t be?”

“The job board’s minder.”

Sebastian made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. “Teagan? Don’t listen to that idiot, nobody cares where your gold comes from as long as it’s genuine.”

“I’ll remember that.” Cassandra walked away from the countertop to find someplace to sit.

A couple of farmers had just cleared out from right in front of the fireplace; out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone making a move as if they wanted to take their chairs, but stopping short when Owl turned his head a hundred and twenty degrees to stare at them. With competition kept at bay like so, she was free to turn a chair so that her right side would be against the heat emanating from the fireplace, her withered arm remaining a void in the comforting sensation almost up to the elbow. Shortly after, one of the barmaids arrived with a large bowl of food, a small bowl of diced raw meat, and a tankard of ale. Cassandra slipped her a silver for her trouble. With the meal hearty and filling—and any unwanted company kept well away by the sight of Owl tearing into the unidentifiable scraps of meat in an inexplicably dignified way—the day’s exhaustion and chilly weather were slowly pushed out by the warmth layering into Cassandra’s bones, even the pain in her withered arm subsiding slightly at long last.

When she took the empty dishes back to the countertop, complimented the cooking, and went to the stable, she found Fidella in a stall, well-fed but still saddled and ungroomed.

“Oh wow. He really did touch nothing, huh?” Cassandra started unbuckling the tack and harness, hanging it on a handy rafter for the night. “Let’s get these off of you. Think we should scare people less next time?”

Snort, Fidella said, rather non-committal.

“You’re right, it does have its advantages.”

After giving Fidella her due attention, Cassandra spread a blanket over the hammock and sat in it, feeling it for how it rocked against her weight before pulling her legs up. It was strange, but not in a bad way. After a moment, she managed to settle in, and folded the blanket over herself.

“Goodnight, Owl.”

Hoot, Owl said lovingly.

“Goodnight, Fidella.”

A soft nicker came from the mare.

The night went by uneventfully. The morning came with a bit of sunlight piercing through the sky still cloudy, but no longer as overcast as it used to be. After a solid meal at the Brigand’s countertop, Cassandra headed straight for the job board, its minder—Teagan, she knew now—already in his place and greeting her with a nod. She returned it, silently, then started scanning the board.

There had to be something that tied to the tents beside the ruins of Château de Bayard she had seen the day before—if not about structural or architectural work, then about simple food delivery or camp construction.

After a good quarter hour of searching, she finally found what she was looking for.

TREASURE HUNTER NEEDED
LOST TREASURES AWAIT RECOVERING
CONTACT SIR THEOPHILLE de BAYARD AT THE BAYARD CASTLE CAMP
REWARD: 10% OF THE PROFIT

Below that, an addition had been scratched in a different hand:

T A K E R ’ S   F E E :   8 0   G O L D   C O I N S

Cassandra pulled the notice off, making the minder look up at the sound of torn paper.

“This one?” Teagan frowned at her. “You did Emil a solid, so I’ll do this for you—once. This looks like a scam. The guy who put this up calls himself a Bayard, but the Bayards were cut down to the one before you were born, by the looks of you, and he speaks with a Pittsfordian accent. He’s already got a hireling with him, too, some devil-may-care halberdier from Koto. And if he’s banking on a percentage payment, it means he doesn’t have the money to pay you in the first place. I’d take a steadier contract if I were you.”

“Yeah, but now I really want to give him what’s good,” Cassandra said, already counting out money for the fee.

To her surprise, Teagan snickered at that. “You know what? Good for you, I can respect that. If I’m right and you fuck him up, I’ll tell Bastian to give you a drink on me.”

“Deal.”

It would almost be a full day of travel to Château de Bayard, Cassandra estimated. But given how early she had started the day, she might actually get there by the afternoon without straining Fidella too much.

Chapter Text

Standing up in the stirrups, Cassandra strained to see over a small rockslide blocking the switchback path up to the Kotoan ruins. It seemed recent enough—probably triggered during the rains over the past few days—but had accumulated in such an unfortunate place that it would almost be easier to shift the rocks uphill than roll them downwards and off a turn in the path, and that pushing them aside would only mean shifting the problem onto an earlier length of the switchback. There were no signs of a work crew attempting to clear it from the other side, either.

“See if there’s anyone coming, please.” After giving Owl a boost as he took off from her arm, Cassandra dismounted and walked closer to the rockslide. No higher than up to her shoulder, and looking reasonably stable—at least for someone her size. Someone who was capable of crawling overtop it. She turned back to Fidella. “I am not going to make you walk over that.”

Snort, Fidella said with relief.

Cassandra looked over the view from the path’s height. They were exposed where they stood, and there was no shelter or cover to be found here. While she was still mulling the situation over, Owl returned, and she held out her arm for him.

“Anything?”

Hoot, Owl said, and shook his head no.

“Okay. You two stay together, I’ll go up top and see what this pretend Bayard is about. Be back for you soon as I can, before nightfall at the latest.”

Snort, Fidella said, and laid down next to the rockslide in an attempt to blend in with her surroundings a little more.

Owl, in the meantime, was narrowing his eyes at Cassandra in an unblinking, suspicious stare.

“You know I’ll call for you if something happens.”

Hoot, Owl said, making it very clear what he’d think of her if she didn’t, and only then moved to perch atop Fidella’s saddle.

Cassandra rolled her eyes and started ascending the rockslide. With the gentle slope of the pile, and the boulders too large to be moved by her weight alone, it was incomparably easier than last night’s climb. She leapt from its summit down onto the path on the other side and continued on foot, making another turn of the switchback path before she frowned at a hole right in the middle of it, no doubt where the rockslide had crumbled and dislodged from. On even ground, she’d jump the distance easily—on an incline like this, she found herself landing a little too unsteadily for her liking. Were she carrying anything heavy, the gap would have been a problem.

Two more turns of the switchback path, and it started evening out, leading Cassandra up to the top of the mesa. A few ramshackle tents were huddled together beside a somewhat taller section of the devastated walls, most likely in an attempt to use it as a windshield. No more than five people in the modest wear of farmers, construction workers, and ex-miners loitered around, some repairing damaged garments or tools, some tending a campfire and a deer haunch slowly roasting overtop it. Seated on a large rock in front of the only tent that looked slightly better was a man-at-arms distinctly not hailing from the region: a bronze-skinned Kotoan about Cassandra’s age, with slightly mussed black hair and a round goatee. He was busy taking a whetstone to the blade of a halberd in his lap, but as soon as he spotted Cassandra entering the camp, he donned the helmet laying next to him on the rock and rose to his feet. Cassandra came to a halt a reasonable distance away, giving him the same gauging look as he was giving her. Mixture of plate and chain-reinforced cloth that would provide considerable protection without sacrificing mobility or a fair quietness of movement. Open-faced helmet with the noseguard profiled like a diving bird of prey and an attached chainmail hood spilling down onto the shoulders. Extensive familiarity with handling the halberd, a sheathed bastard sword at his left hip, and a modestly-sized crossbow hanging from a belt hook at his right. He’d probably put up a pretty tough fight, if it came to it, and if she was fighting fairly.

“State your business,” the halberdier called out.

“I’m looking for lord Bayard,” Cassandra replied, barely squeezing the false title past her throat, but still managing to sound somewhat neutral. “It’s about the treasure-hunting bounty notice.”

The halberdier gave her a pitying look, but turned away to pull the slightly better tent open and exchange a few words with someone inside. After a moment, an older man emerged from within—greying, in his late forties maybe. His garb was fine enough, Cassandra supposed, but she also noticed immediately that it wasn’t a perfect fit. It seemed to have been made for a man slightly taller and broader in the shoulders; it also sported several less-than-expertly mended tears that failed to hide entirely behind the decorative sash across his chest. Quite as if the outfit had been pulled off a dead person killed for it. And although his face was free of scars and his hands were hidden in a pair of doeskin gloves, making it impossible to gauge how much work they’ve seen, his eyes held an appraising, ever-calculating sort of avarice, as if the only thought on his mind at all times was how to use those around him and how much he could get away with.

Rather than a noble, this was a conman pretending to be a noble—and doing a pretty convincing job of it, really, unless someone had spent just about her entire life in the background of a royal court.

Though he was a little shorter than her, he managed to make it seem like he was looking down at her. “You don’t look like much of a treasure hunter.”

“I’m the one you’re getting,” Cassandra said flatly.

“Hm.” The conman gave her an uncomfortably thorough up-and-down. “You’ll have to do. Welcome to the humble abode of my ancestors, devastated as it had been by Equis barbarians in the years past. My men are excavating the ruins in pursuit of an heirloom, one of three, that will pay for restoring the castle to its former—and rightful—glory, while my servant Roberto is charged with the security of this endeavour.”

Cassandra glanced at the halberdier. Judging from the irritated look on his face, whatever his name was, it wasn’t Roberto. Or maybe he just took issue with being called a servant, which Cassandra could understand and agree with on a very deep level.

“The remaining two, you are to retrieve and bring to me,” the pretend-baron continued. “Both have long since been looted and stashed away, but fortunately I was able to narrow down their last known locations. One has been hidden in the southernmost depths of the abandoned silver mine; one was accounted for most recently as finding itself in the possession of a farmhand who fled into Wolf’s Head Hollow to protect his claim and was never seen again. Your payment will be doled out after these artifacts are returned to me, and sold by me: ten percent of the monetary gain from such a transaction. Now, if there aren’t any more questions—”

“There are, actually,” Cassandra interrupted. For a conman, he certainly carried himself with the self-important air of a blueblood. “What are these two treasures? I need to know what I’m looking for.”

“An item of jewellery, and a ceremonial weapon.” The pretend-baron folded his hands behind him, looking at her down his nose. “Unfortunately, as the family chronicles have been savaged by fire and rain, that the extent of detail I possess.”

“Okay, which one is where?”

“Are you deaf, sellsword? I only just said that I do not possess any more detail.”

Cassandra ground her teeth. “Great. I need directions.”

The conman sniffed indignantly, and turned on his heel to walk back into the tent, even as he waved a dismissive hand at the halberdier. “My servant can perform that plebeian a task.”

With a barely audible sigh of frustration, the halberdier looked at Cassandra and sharply jerked his head sideways, signalling her to follow him.

“I fucking hate that guy,” he said as soon as they were out of earshot. “Whatever money that comes out of this had better be worth it.”

“You’re on a percent payment too?” Cassandra asked.

“Not exactly, I insisted on five hundred gold up front and a percent afterwards. Bastard haggled me down to five percent, though. You?”

“Ten, but I had to shell out eighty gold to take his notice off a job board.”

The halberdier grimaced at that. “We might end up getting about the same amount, net-change. You came through Silberstadt, then?”

“Yeah.”

“Head further into Equis territory, most of their towns don’t charge a taker’s fee off bounty boards.”

“I’ll remember that. Thanks.” Cassandra gave him a longer look. “What’s your name?”

“Riccardo,” the halberdier said. “Yours?”

“Cassandra.” She shook his extended hand. “You know this guy isn’t actually a Bayard, right?”

“I honestly don’t give a shit, I just want to get paid.” Riccardo came to a halt near the mesa’s edge and pointed into the distance, a little off to the side from where the town walls of Silberstadt were. “See those hills over there? That’s where the mine used to be. Still sees traffic, and a lot of folks are using the less accessible tunnels for hideouts or stashes, so keep your wits about you and head in prepared for trouble.”

“That’s going to complicate things,” Cassandra said slowly. She hadn’t expected the mine to still be in use, even if a different use than originally intended.

“Yeah, good luck finding a needle in that haystack.” Riccardo pointed in another direction, this time indicating a lower area in the plains and hills stretching far and wide—an area that seemed filled with mist, even in the afternoon sun. “Now see that over there? Wolf’s Head Hollow. Every local I talked to seems pretty convinced that it’s haunted, and they avoid it like the plague.”

Cassandra shielded her eyes from the sun as she squinted at the fog, trying to make out any hint of shape or movement, to no avail. “Why is it even called that?”

“It’s where Koto lost a battle against Equis, some fifteen, seventeen years ago. And when I say lost, I mean lost so badly that Equis actually managed to kill a witch-knight there,” Riccardo said. “And you know how it is when one side kills an officer or a noble from the other. Apparently they chopped his head off and mounted it on his own lance stuck into the ground like a flagpole.”

“Wolf’s Head Hollow,” Cassandra repeated with disgust, remembering how the helmets of Kotoan witch-knights were wrought in the likeness of a wolfhound.

“Yeah, I’d haunt the place if something that tacky was done to my corpse, too.”

Cassandra shook her head. “It’s probably the stupidest thing they could have done.”

“I know, right? I mean, witch-knight, it’s in the name.”

She couldn’t help a chuckle. “Thanks. Looks like I have a ways to go, either side.”

“A fair bit, yeah. You staying overnight?”

“No, I should probably start making headway. You have a rockslide and a hole in the path, by the way.”

Riccardo shrugged. “I’m not paid to deal with that. Already done more than I’m contracted for when I built a pulley to get that deer lifted topside, instead of having the hunter carry it all the way up to here.”

“That’s fair.”

“Be careful, and good luck.” Riccardo shook her hand goodbye. “Both our payments depend on that.”

Cassandra thanked him with a nod, then made her way through the campsite again and began descending the path. A careful leap over the hole, measured not to carry her off the path and into a lethal fall, then an easy climb over the rockslide again, and she found Owl and Fidella still waiting for her where she had left them.

She indicated her left shoulder for Owl to sit on, and took Fidella’s reins. “Where do you want to go first: an exhausted mineshaft, or a haunted battlefield?”

Snort, Fidella said, resigned.

“I know. I don’t like either, as well.”

Hoot, Owl said, unimpressed.

“Mineshaft it is.”

After they made their way down the switchback path, Cassandra climbed into the saddle again and headed for the mines, going off the road this time. While she was keeping an eye out for trouble, rather than admiring the view, she did have to admit that the view was easy on the eyes: the plains and gently rolling hills covered in thistles and clovers and grasses that reached to Fidella’s knees or even further up, all turned a golden hue by the slowly setting sun, interspersed often with small thickets and sunlit groves and clear-watered ponds, and far more rarely dotted with mesas, colossal in comparison. And as beautiful as the landscape was, Cassandra couldn’t help but linger on the details that betrayed it for what it was, and for what it used to be.

The high, golden grasses were immediately recognizable, barley and oat and rye and wheat, left largely uncut for years on end and choked through with weeds and wildflowers. The sunlit groves were comprised of fruit trees that had been planted in regular grids, untended orchards growing wilder each year. The small lakes and ponds were ripe with fish, many of them twirling through rusted helmets cloven in half and between algae-covered ribs still protruding from the muddy bottoms. The hilltops were crowned in overgrown ruins of houses and barns, long-turned into abattoirs and torched down, or in clustered beehives torn apart by honey bears. Atop the mesas, faint remains of fortifications lingered: paths carved into their mountainsides, watchtowers reduced to crescent-shaped walls and scattered rubble and an errant stone of scathingly contrasting rock large enough to have been launched from a trebuchet, stacked piles of wood for fuelling signal fires decayed into mulch and overtaken with dandelions, flocks of carrier pigeons turned feral and scattering for shelter whenever a raptor’s silhouette hovered in the sky—whether it was Owl, a kestrel, or an unfamiliar falcon-like shape.

It was hardly surprising that Equis and Koto battled for control over land so verdant. But Cassandra did have to wonder just how verdant it would be, had it not been fed a generation from each side of this conflict, and more from those who used to call it home.

Nightfall saw her taking shelter just past the treeline of one of the thickets left in the middle of what used to be a field. She burnt no fire, concerned with how visible it would be even from afar, and woke up stiff from the cold air and the hard ground. Her withered arm, however, ached almost as an afterthought, almost as if only to make up for the overall loss of feeling. Cassandra flexed her fingers, clenched a fist and opened it again. She could swear that the normal range of movement for it was not this wide anymore.

She ate in-between tending to her sword and sharpening her daggers, preparing herself however she could for a day of spelunking in spent mineshafts—some of which she fully expected to be collapsed, unstable, or flooded, not to mention whatever threat their inhabitants could pose.

A piece of jewellery or a ceremonial weapon, one that she had to look for in the southern section of the mines, or at least start in the southernmost and work her way north in case it had been moved. Nothing more to go off of. Cassandra sighed heavily at herself.

“How did this end up being what I’m doing?”

Hoot, Owl said, tilting his head sideways pensively.

“I know it’s not anything I’m particularly beholden to, but I don’t want to give up so early on. I’ve only just started, haven’t I?” Cassandra closed one eye and stared critically down her sword’s blade, then wiped the whetstone dust off. “It would leave a bad taste in my mouth to stop the moment I’m having trouble. This is life, not a Flynn Rider book, there’s always going to be trouble.”

Hoot, Owl said, inquisitive without pushing.

“I don’t know. It’s like– this isn’t too much for me. It can’t be. I’m not expecting this to be easy, or anything other than really time-consuming, but this is far from convoluted. Go in here, find a thing, bring it back. It’s—” Cassandra shook her head. “If I give up on doing even this, what am I good for? Everything is so much simpler now, too. Nothing is at stake. There’s almost no opportunity for failure. I’ve tried for hard and difficult things every chance I got, and I was denied or did terribly every time. Maybe it’s okay to start small, like this, this time. Maybe it’s better to not try to be a hero.”

Owl stayed silent, simply looking at her compassionately.

“I just want something to go well for me,” Cassandra said slowly, her throat suddenly tight and her eyes burning, and hid her face in her withered hand. “How did I get from a servant at the royal court to a con artist’s errand girl?”

Hoot, Owl said gently.

“No, it really isn’t all that different, is it?” Cassandra dragged her hand upwards and through her hair. “Ugh. Enough with the feelings. Let’s just go do something and figure all this out later.”

It wasn’t long until she made it to the mines, and withdrew into the thin cover of a nearby forest when she spotted how much traffic the area was seeing. There was a rather sizeable communal area in the slight depression where three mineshafts poured out, with big cauldrons and roasting spits placed over well-tended hearths. There was an earthen mound that Cassandra recognized as used for turning wood into charcoal, and a few soot-covered loggers pulling a felled rowan tree towards it along the ground. There was a bare-bones yet functional kiln, seemingly built out of parts scavenged from several different smelters, and a clay-stained couple beside it: one blowing against sparks to start a fire, one shaping a simple jug on a pottery wheel. There was a ramshackle thatch-roofed hut built of poorly stacked wood and stone, off to the side, the shared workshop of a tanner and a dyer if the stench was any indication. There were chickens everywhere, there were at least twenty sheep and a herding dog being led out into the countryside by a youth in threadbare clothes, there were a few oxen pulling two-wheeled carts or used as beasts of burden, there were half-feral cats grooming each other and chasing after rodents as ever-present as the chickens were. And above all, there were people, of all genders and ages, descended from locals and from foreigners, wearing stained leathers and threadbare linens and poor-quality furs, going about their business: talking, trading, resting, working, making, breaking. Many had skin discoloured gray, a sign of silver poisoning. Many were running errands, between the charcoal mound and the hearths, between the hut and the tunnels. Only some were carrying any weapons larger than an all-purpose knife, and even fewer were clad in anything resembling armour—and those who were usually walked in pairs or groups and carried another identifying mark, a red-dyed scarf, a headband with a rat skull mounted at the forehead, a raccoon tail pinned to the side of a belt, a crudely tattooed dagger on the inner side of each forearm.

Rather than just a bandit hideout or a difficult-to-access location riddled with thief stashes, this was a veritable village of refugees, deserters, survivors, and outlaws. And here, far more than in Silberstadt, Cassandra was going to stick out like a sore thumb, if only by virtue of her clothes being too well-made. And by leading a horse. And by bearing a gold-trimmed kerchief on her arm. And by carrying multiple weapons in pristine condition. And more.

Skirting around the settlement, Cassandra headed further south, not caring much that she was making little progress in comparison to what she could have accomplished by heading straight there. It was probably better to waste a little time, which she had an abundance of, than parade across someplace that had at least four separate and distinct gangs, none of which would be very likely to bat an eyelash before attempting to kill her for her gear, by the looks of them.

She passed by several more mineshaft entrances, each manned by a few sentries bearing the marks of one local outlaw band or another, and did her best to stay hidden. Once or twice, she was pretty sure she had been spotted, but none of the bandits on watch did anything more to pursue her than maybe stand up from where they were sitting, and sit back down once Cassandra moved far enough away. Finally, when she made it to the southernmost point of the rocky hills area that the spent silver mines were concentrated in, she realized immediately why this would be the tunnel to hide valuables in safely, and why there was no one on watch at its doorless entrance.

The mineshaft was caved in so profoundly that the hillside over what would have been its ceiling was concave.

Cassandra dismounted. “Stay here, stay safe, and stay patient. This might take a while.”

Snort, Fidella said uneasily as she looked between Cassandra and the mineshaft’s entrance.

“I went crawling up a cliffside already. Why not go crawling between a floor and a ceiling now?”

Hoot, Owl said firmly, digging his talons into her shoulder.

“No, you are staying with Fidella.” Cassandra took a box of matches, a few dry torches, and a small flask of oil out of a saddlebag. “If I start having trouble breathing down there, I’ll just come out empty-handed. If she has to go somewhere else to avoid people, though, she’ll need you to watch her back while I’m gone, and I’ll need you to lead me back to her.”

Owl glared, silently.

“I’m counting on you,” Cassandra said pointedly. When he didn’t move from her shoulder, she set her jaw and matched him glare for glare. “Owl.”

Fidella sighed deeply and began to walk away from their staring contest, headed farther into the thin woods.

Cassandra lowered her voice. “When you left, I know it was to get help for my dad, and when you came back, I know it was to set me straight. So I didn’t try to leave Corona without you. Because I know you and I will always take care of each other. Because I know you won’t belittle me with pity or with candy-coating things. I need you. I depend on you. It’s hard for me, but you’ve made it easier, you never came short or made me regret it. Can you trust me in return, this once?”

Hoot, Owl said, pointing a wing at the collapsed mineshaft.

“I know I won’t be able to call for you from in there if someone follows me in, but it’s so narrow that every fight will be a one-on-one, and I can win those.” When Owl still refused to move, Cassandra pinched the bridge of her nose with her withered fingers. “Please. I need to be capable of doing something—anything—on my own. I need to know that I can. And everything’s been going so badly for me, for years, that I have to prove it to myself before I can believe it. Please believe in me first so I can make myself worth your trust again.”

Owl pressed the flat of his beak to Cassandra’s forehead and hooted at her softly. Then, the pressure of his claws against her shoulder intensified briefly before disappearing altogether, as he took off and flew after Fidella.

Cassandra took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. Then another, exhaled slowly. On the third inhale, she rubbed at her eyes with her withered hand, opened them to look at the mine, and walked towards it. On the threshold between the outside world and the tunnel’s bowels, she doused one of the prepared torches in oil and lit it. Moving now in a circle of flickering light and dancing shadows, she walked into the mineshaft, and inspected the cave-in that began less than two dozen steps in.

There was a very narrow passage between the floor and the giant folds of rock that have collapsed from the ceiling.

She shifted the scabbard of her sword from her back to the front of her chest, and started crawling through, struggling to keep the torch tilted upwards enough to prevent it from going out, her chest grinding against the rock beneath her and her back against the rock above her. Ten feet in, and she could see a wider stripe of darkness before her. A cavern opening back up, it must have been. Fifteen feet in, and she found the grinding of rock against either side of her turning from grinding to a static, consistent pressure. She was stuck.

Cassandra stopped moving, and considered her options. Tried to crawl backwards to get herself unstuck, failed. Awkwardly pulled her sword out of its scabbard, in an attempt to flatten her frame a little more. Took a moment to focus on staying calm, then emptied her lungs, and forced herself forward again.

By the time her shoulders and upper back crested the edge of the rock, leaving her free to gasp for air again, her heart was hammering a too-fast drumbeat and three of her limbs were burning with exertion. If there was ever a time to be grateful for her scrawny build, no matter how hard and time-consuming it had been to build up muscle tone...

She coughed, and looked back at the small gap she had just gone through. Just under twenty feet of a very difficult crawl. Nothing she couldn’t handle going out. Unless the treasure stashed here was the ceremonial weapon, and it was a big one. Like a lance, or a halberd, or any manner of two-handed weapon. But if someone had taken it here to stash it away safely, then she could take it back out—at worst, she’d have to tie one end of a rope around the weapon and the other end around her ankle before crawling out, then pull it out. And with that thought, Cassandra lifted her still-burning torch up, looking around the cavern she’d just managed to enter.

At first glance, it seemed far wider than she would expect of a mineshaft. Under more careful inspection, it turned out to be a five-, six-foot-wide path bordered with a wall on one side and a fissure too deep to see the bottom of on the other. Cassandra briefly considered lighting a second torch and throwing it down to see how deep it was, then remembered everything she read and heard about mining accidents that involved poisonous or explosive gas, and decided against that. There was, however, an abundance of small rocks around—knocked loose by the cave-in, no doubt. She wondered briefly whether it had been caused by the fissure opening up, or if an unfortunate foreman had miscalculated the potency of explosive charges set off in an attempt to fill the fissure up.

She sheathed her sword and shifted the scabbard back into its place, then picked up a couple of stones, and threw one over the edge.

“One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand, four-one thousand, five-one thousand...”

A distant, echoing clack.

“Wow.”

That was not a survivable fall.

Cassandra tossed one of the remaining stones up and caught it again a few times, thinking. If the treasure had been stashed somewhere along the fissure’s side, she wouldn’t have a chance to find it without knowing exactly where it was, and it would be suicide to try. However, if that was what its last possessor had pulled off, it had to be a small object—a dagger, at the largest, and more likely a piece of jewellery. So if she could find nothing in the rest of this area, it would narrow the Wolf’s Head Hollow search somewhat.

It took her a moment, busy weighing her options as she was, to notice a reflection of the torchlight in the rock. Examining it more carefully, she realized that the dark gray of it was cut through with brighter, whitish threads.

Cassandra lifted her torch up against the cave-in. Broken up as the stone of it was, the lines were irregular, but clear and much thicker than in the rock she was holding.

The silver mine wasn’t spent. It had been collapsed, likely on purpose, and to prevent further profit.

Funny how things could shake out when it was about a strip of land argued and fought over by two kingdoms for decades on end.

She pocketed the rocks and walked deeper in, along the fissure’s edge, until she found it ending. When it did, the tunnel narrowed again into a single mineshaft, no forks in the road of it, more veins of silver in its walls. There were timbers propping up its low ceiling, still, and seemingly free of rot in the dry air. About fifty feet in, the tunnel came to a dead end, a few mining spikes and sledgehammers abandoned on the dust-strewn floor, and a lone skeletal corpse tucked into the corner.

Cassandra lowered herself down to one knee beside the remains. Dead for anywhere between six months and several years, at a glance. Thankfully, it meant that it no longer stank; curiously, it meant that it hadn’t been here anywhere near as long as the mine had spent closed. Not only did it have no pouches or satchels on it, it had no belt to hang them off either, no boots, no shirt, and the pockets of its soiled and tattered cut-off trousers had been turned out. Teeth in poor condition, some partially rotted, some missing. Skull bashed in on one side, like with a blunt strike, but nothing as heavy as one of the mining hammers covered in dust nearby—a small club, or maybe a rock, seemed far more likely.

So it probably used to be someone who had crawled in here looking for a treasure, and got murdered for their trouble by whoever was laying claim to that treasure still.

Cassandra lifted her head at the sound of something grinding against stone, echoing from where the mineshaft’s entrance was. And from where she was, she caught a glimpse of a different colour in the torchlight—a red tassel hanging off the top side of the timbers propping the ceiling up. She stood, and strained to reach for it, then jumped up to grab onto it and pull at it with her whole body weight, successfully yanking out a red scarf, the same style as she had seen some of the bandits outside wearing, bundled carefully several times around a smaller object. A quick attempt to unwrap a little, a cursory glance—jade. Finely carved, green jade.

The piece of jewellery. She would be going to Wolf’s Head Hollow for a weapon.

Cassandra smiled, and headed towards the exit, to catch whoever had followed her between the wall and the fissure.

Two someones, as it turned out, and both wearing those red scarves. One was armed with a rusted sword, one with a butcher’s club, the kind used to knock livestock out before slaughtering them.

“Hand that over,” the swordsman demanded as he pointed at the bundle in Cassandra’s hand, “and no one has to get hurt.”

“Nice blade,” Cassandra said calmly. “You pull it off a dead soldier ten years ago?”

“I’ve killed with it before. Hand that over, I’m not gonna warn you again!”

“Good.” Cassandra tucked the bundle into her tunic, between her skin and the fabric, and drew her own weapon.

The swordsman hesitated, eyeing the path along the fissure’s edge. Cassandra lifted her arms, open, torch in one hand and sword in the other.

“Hey, hero! Are you gonna come kill me, or what?”

That finally made him angry enough to charge at her. Even one-handed, Cassandra parried his untrained attempts to strike at her easily, then uncoiled in a backhand of her left fist to his jaw driven from the hips, staggering him easily, and kicked him over the fissure’s edge. He screamed as he went into the dark, the sound of it piercing and abruptly cutting short about five seconds later.

“You bastard!” the club-wielder roared at her, charging down the narrow path in turn. “You killed Desmond, you fuck, I’ll kill you!”

Cassandra stood her ground only to move out of his way at the last moment, allowing his momentum to carry him past her, and slashed at his back as he went. The regularly sharpened castle steel met little resistance as he yowled in pain, and with little trouble, she kicked his knees out from under him, and finished him with a swipe to the throat.

She wiped her sword clean with a severed length of one of those red scarves, then sheathed it. Considered the butcher’s club hanging off a loop around the dead bandit’s wrist. Rolled her shoulders, then put the torch in her teeth and started dragging the still-bleeding body deeper into the tunnel, ultimately dumping it at the feet of the skeletal corpse. Doused a second dry torch in oil, then spent a while setting it upright between two of the abandoned sledgehammers, and lit it.

It wasn’t a candle, but it would have to do.

“May you rest peacefully now,” Cassandra quietly told the skeletal corpse, and bowed her head to it before leaving.

The crawl back out was just as gruelling, but still not impossible. Cassandra brushed some of the rock dust off of herself, coughing, before she extinguished the torch, tucked it into the back of her belt to properly dispose of later, and exited the mineshaft.

And came to an immediate halt, yanking her sword back out, at the sight of three more bandits with rat skull headbands waiting outside.

“Look at that,” one of them called out in a gleeful tone. “Not only found the Reds’ stash for us, but killed the pair to come in after her, too. Hey, you sure you’re not looking for an outfit to join up with?”

“I thought we weren’t recruiting,” another piped in, turning his head towards the first one, but without taking his eyes—or the point of his crossbow—off of Cassandra.

“We’re always recruiting if you can kill a useless idiot to take their place,” the first one answered, nimbly pulling a small axe out of a belt loop.

“For the love of all that is holy, kill him if you do that,” the third one spoke up, one hand at her face in an exasperated gesture, the other holding a sword.

“Are you quite finished?!” Cassandra yelled.

Three against one—two bruisers, one crossbowman—in an open space. This was bad. This was very, very bad.

Cassandra threw herself to the side to evade a crossbow bolt, and barely had the time to regain her footing before the axeman fell on her, the swordswoman hot on his heels. She could barely do anything but parry and back up to avoid getting flanked, trying to keep both of the bruisers in front of her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the crossbowman reloading—and just as he finished winching up, Cassandra managed to get into the swordswoman’s reach, grab her by the wrist to keep her blade away, score a slash across her midriff, and yank her to the side just as the crossbowman levelled his weapon up again. An impact and a shout of pain told Cassandra that the bolt had hit the swordswoman, and she threw her into the axeman to buy time for leaping a few steps away, putting two fingers into her mouth, and letting out a piercing two-toned whistle.

The swordswoman was on the ground, alive but out of the fight; the axeman and the crossbowman looked around quickly, unsure whether the whistle was a bluff or a call for aid, giving Cassandra a moment to catch her breath. When nothing happened, if one did not count a tawny shape barrelling across the sky towards them all, both bandits turned their attention back to her.

“Oh, nice try,” the axeman growled, and fell on Cassandra again.

He was taking care to stay out of the crossbowman’s line of fire, this time, and Cassandra struggled to keep both of them in her field of vision. Seconds later, a startled yelp came from the crossbowman’s direction, quickly morphing into a howl of pain; Cassandra focused on the axeman fully, then, regaining ground, and grabbed her cloak with her free arm to throw it at his weapon, entangling it for just enough time to slash his throat open. She wasted no time charging across to where Owl was harrying the crossbowman, who was now bleeding from multiple talon slashes all over his face, and put the momentum into a shoulder check that left her the perfect opening for a thrust to the heart, sending him toppling down.

The swordswoman, still on the ground, lifted both empty hands up as soon as Cassandra looked at her. “Yield, yield!”

Cassandra lowered her weapon, and held her left arm out for Owl. “Don’t try to follow us.”

“Sure,” the bandit said quickly.

Waving the sword in a sharp motion to flick the blood off the blade, instead of clean and sheathe it for now, Cassandra turned and walked away. “That was top work. You came just in time.”

Hoot, Owl said proudly.

“Thanks. I found what we came for.” The truth of saying it out loud pulled a grin across Cassandra’s face. “I got it. I got what we came for. Now let’s get out of here.”

Chapter Text

Keeping in mind what Riccardo the halberdier had said about Wolf’s Head Hollow and banking on the fact that she saw oxen used as beasts of burden around the mine settlement, but not horses or even ponies, Cassandra headed straight for the haunted ground, cutting across the countryside and putting Fidella through her paces for once. If she gained enough ground before sunset, any pursuit that the bandits might launch wouldn’t be able to catch up to her, not even by marching overnight—assuming they would even try, given where she was going.

As the evening chill swept in, Cassandra realized that she would have to burn a fire overnight this time. Which meant that making camp in a thicket again was not going to be an option. A quick scan of the horizon in the afternoon light left her with having to choose between the remains of a long-scorched home, an orchard of plum trees, and the distant mass of another mesa wreathed with the jagged diadem of a destroyed watchtower. Deciding that if she couldn’t avoid setting up a more serious camp than just a rain cover and a blanket, she could as well seek an adequate shelter from the wind, at least, Cassandra headed for the mesa.

The path to the top was treacherous enough for her to climb on foot, leading Fidella behind her, and she still heard the mare trip once or twice on the eroded stone. The watchtower’s pitiful remains seemed stable enough to spend the night in, however—any loose stones that could have crumbled from atop its broken walls have long since crumbled already, leaving piles of rubble and a layer of mortar dust mingled with bright yellow pollen of pine trees that seemed to have been laying undisturbed since at least the year’s early summer. About three hundred degrees of the tower’s circle remained intact, at least on the bottom floor, with the second floor reduced to a narrow platform of rotted-through wooden planks and a collapsed spiral staircase; with the wind blowing against the remaining part of the walls tonight, Cassandra hoped it would be enough of a shelter to keep her from catching a cold, if it didn’t rain and if she could keep warm.

Snort, Fidella said, digging a hoof against the stone floor.

Cassandra looked at her. “Which part are you unsure about?”

The mare leaned her head down, indicating the base of a rubble pile. Cassandra followed her gaze, and found herself staring at a skeletal corpse buried under the collapsed walls up to halfway across the ribcage, evidently crushed when the tower had been attacked. The rusted helmet and ever-grinning face were turned to the side; the one arm visible from under the rubble was still clutching onto a shield so damaged by age and the elements that Cassandra could only surmise it used to bear the crest of Koto by seeing two tall blurs on each side of it, rather than a single wide blur in the centre.

She turned to Fidella again. “I don’t know, it doesn’t look like he’s moved in a while now.”

Fidella tossed her head, making an irritated sound close to a whinny.

“I’m not trying to make fun of you,” Cassandra lifted both hands in a placating gesture. “I’m saying that it’s late, and we can camp here or in the middle of an open field. I brought us here because I thought here would be safer, and I still think it’s safer than out there.”

Snort, Fidella said, staring at her critically.

“Well, then we’ll just have to be on our best behaviour as guests in someone else’s home. I’ll go find some firewood before it’s completely dark outside.”

The mare gave a disgruntled little nicker.

“You can sleep as far away from him as you want,” Cassandra promised over her shoulder, exiting the ruined watchtower.

There was a small grove surrounding the watchtower’s remains, mostly birches and pines with an occasional rowan and oak sapling tossed through. Owl took off from her left shoulder when she began gathering dry branches and twigs, flying first through the trees, then overtop in a perimeter loop; by the time Cassandra carried the first armful of firewood into the watchtower and began gathering the second, he called out into the evening air to alert her, then pointed a wing towards the watchtower again—if a little off to the side from it. Cassandra shifted the bundle under her healthy arm and followed him, soon finding a rectangular stone tablet cloven with several deep fractures, weathered by wind and rain so heavily that the writing upon it was close to illegible, and two large sections having crumbled out of the structure to rest face-down on the ground, overtop of what seemed to be a communal catacomb vault for urns of those whose bodies had been burnt to ashes.

“Oh, brother.”

Hoot, Owl said, perching over the lichen-covered pennant in Kotoan colours still flying on a small flagpole at tablet’s side.

“No, I know,” Cassandra said, resigned. Then sighed heavily, set the firewood down, and knelt down to start cleaning weeds, dead leaves, and moss from the communal vault.

This must have been where the watchmen used to be buried, when the tower still stood. And as one beholden to a kingdom allied with Koto, it wouldn’t do for her to walk past a neglected burial ground without tending it, particularly since she knew perfectly well that its designated caretakers were also long dead and likely unburied. Much like the unfortunate skeleton inside the watchtower.

Diplomacy and honour were both such a hassle sometimes, Cassandra thought to herself as she pried a strip of moss from between the catacomb’s flagstones with her boot knife.

By the time vault was presentable and Cassandra had dragged the tablet’s broken-off pieces to rest against the wall face-up, leaving at least some of the names of the dead watchmen legible, night has fallen. Relying on feeling her way around as much as on the wan starlight of the nearly-cloudless sky, the moon but a sliver overhead, Cassandra stumbled her way towards the half-pile of firewood, gathered it up, and walked into the tower’s remains once more. A glance up the relatively intact fireplace yielded a view of the sky, if somewhat limited, so she stacked some of the wood there instead of attempting to start a campfire like she would have to in an open field. Owl stayed within the shadows, while Fidella seemed to welcome both the light and the warmth. Cassandra rubbed her gloved hands and extended them towards the fire until her left was uncomfortably close to it, while the right remained numb to the sensation, any sensation.

She glanced to the half-buried skeletal remains in the tower’s corner. Now it seemed almost unfair to do nothing with that, after cleaning the catacomb vault up. Sighing, she looked at Fidella.

“Watch the fire for me for a moment?”

Snort, Fidella said, unimpressed.

“I didn’t say I expect you to do anything if it starts going out— You know what, never mind. I’ll be right back.”

Cassandra closed her eyes for a moment before stepping out of the fire-lit area to adjust to the darkness outside faster. The grove loomed thick and lightless now, while the rest of the mesa’s open space was a mosaic of shadows dotted with the tiny glimmers of fireflies and underscored with the music of cicadas. She smiled at the thought of Pascal, and how he’d consider several of these cicadas skewered and toasted against the campfire a gourmet meal; of Rapunzel, and how the fireflies would reflect in her eyes wide with excitement. Grass crunched under her feet, and Cassandra lowered herself onto her knees to feel her way through the plants, eventually using her withered arm to brace against the ground and stabilize herself as she leaned forward, since she couldn’t feel anything with it anyway.

A pale glow began to build around lilac bell-shaped flowers and compound leaves rimmed with a lighter tone and sleek silhouettes of stems as her hand passed next to a lone starlight woundwort, causing some of the surrounding plants to come into focus.

“Oh, thank goodness.”

Plucking one of the glimmering leaves and using it as a lantern, Cassandra managed to gather a handful of wildflowers—a few dandelions that haven’t turned into fuzzy orbs yet, a few red poppies, a few clovers, some yellow-blooming thing that she couldn’t name but looked vaguely like yarrow—and after deciding that it would have to do, she walked back into the crumbled watchtower and laid the flowers beside the Kotoan watchman’s remains. Then she tended to Fidella, nodded at Owl as he hooted at her to signal that he was going hunting for the night, and finally settled by the still-crackling fire to warm up a meal, such as it was, being made from trail rations.

When she was halfway through drinking the fruit-laced tea she had taken from the kitchens of Castle Corona, Cassandra pulled out the red bandit scarf and the treasure wrapped in it to examine it more closely. It turned out to be a medallion—a large one, just slightly larger than her palm—hanging off a string of spherical beads, all carved of the same green jade, and separated by decorative knots on the silken cord they were wound onto. Cassandra frowned and set her mug aside, taking the treasure into both hands and turning it towards the fire. This wasn’t something one would find in the possession of petty nobles, like what the Bayards used to be. Even more, this wasn’t of Kotoan make. This was the finest Bayangoran craftsmanship money and status could buy.

She took the bandit scarf’s corner and started gently cleaning the medallion’s surface of the mud, grime, and long-dried blood caked across it. There was engraving on it, she was pretty sure, and hopefully the motif would offer some clue as to what this medallion was or how it got here. Here, to the rear end of Koto, endlessly fought over against Equis.

Cassandra dipped one gloved fingertip into her tea and stained the scarf with the liquid, the wet cloth finally succeeding in dislodging the dirt covering the medallion. A tree, or the side of one. Carefully wedging a fingernail underneath the dirt to pry more of the grimy shell off, she managed to crumble off another piece, and then the rest of it.

A tree indeed, but not the Ingvarrdian leafless and uprooted one. This was a far more delicate silhouette, with elegantly curving branches coming against the medallion’s top, and comprised of almost oval leaves all over. Dotted between the leaves, in small stylized clusters, were six-petalled flowers. At the foot of the tree, its roots blending seamlessly into the ground, two hounds were seated, one on either side of the slender trunk and each facing the medallion’s edge, the branches extended slightly further out than the hounds’ heads. Overall, both the material and the art style was definitely Bayangoran, with the sole exception of the hounds—which were almost a carbon copy of what comprised the Kotoan crest, just like a seven-rayed sun was the crest of Corona.

Except that the wolfhounds present in coat-of-arms of Koto, Cassandra knew, were seated facing each other.

Wait a minute.

“Holy—”

Fidella looked over at that outburst, letting out an inquisitive nicker.

“I don’t think that idiot realizes what he sent me for,” Cassandra said incredulously. “If this is the kind of thing I’m looking for in Wolf’s Head Hollow, too, that will narrow it down quite a bit.”

Snort, Fidella said with relief.

“Don’t relax too much yet.” Cassandra carefully wrapped the medallion back into the bandit scarf, paying attention to place clean sections of the fabric between the dirty ones and the jade. “If there’s really two more of these out there, you could pawn them for enough to hire an army’s worth of mercenaries. Or try causing a major diplomatic incident between Koto and its allies, maybe.”

She placed the bundle in the inside pocket of her cloak, then added more wood to the fire and tucked herself into the best wind-shielded nook beside the hearth that she could find to sleep, hands on the still warm, half-full steel mug of tea, head rested against cold stone.

When she came to, it was because of a hand shaking her shoulder gently, and she looked up at Lammert with his eyes as bloodshot with exhaustion and lack of sleep as hers must have been, it felt like.

I told you not to pull that double shift for Joris last night, Lammert said, concern in his tone mellowing out the irritation.

You know he’s sweet on that girl from down the hill, she found herself saying with the confidence of a dreamer—of knowing, right now in this moment, that Joris was an idiot kid who didn’t deserve this posting, and that he was stupidly in love with a farmer’s daughter, no matter how hopeless that kind of romance would be. What was I supposed to tell him, 'forget about her and just die here with us tomorrow'?

Lammert shook his head, but the drawn look of persistent stress on his face didn’t abate. Cheerful as always. Pour some coffee in yourself and come on up with me.

Right, right. She emptied the steel mug in her hands, the still-scalding acorn coffee unbearably bitter but doing its job well enough, then rose from her chair and followed Lammert up the spiral staircase, five floors up to the ladder that exited onto the tower’s roof. She found him already huffing into his hands to warm them, and staring at the battlefield in the distance. Shit, they’re still going, aren’t they?

Looks like it, Lammert said, and paused when a cone of screaming winds laced with purplish cracks of lightning was sucked down from the sky towards a single point. And they’ll probably stay at it for as long as the witch-knight’s alive.

The miniature typhoon tore through a small detachment of Equisian bannermen, thunder and screams echoing out, but there weren’t enough Kotoan soldiers left anymore to follow into that breach in enemy ranks. The Equis forces shored up, then split up, trying to pincer the remaining Kotoans, but the manoeuvre was cut short as one half of the Equisians was fended off by a curtain of white-blue fire bursting forth from the ground and the other engaged in a desperately brutal melee with the Kotoans. With both sides of the battle in their death throes, Cassandra realized that the stakes were no longer victory and defeat, but how many enemies each side could drag down to an early grave with itself.

I don’t think ours can win this, she heard a stranger’s voice come out of her mouth.

No, Lammert admitted calmly. Me neither.

You sent Joris out already?

Yeah. I hope he has better luck than Andrea.

Well, at least the bar for that ain’t high. She found herself brushing dust off the face of her shield, two golden wolfhounds seated facing each other against a field of bright red, to fend away the memory of how Equisian scouts had found and murdered Andrea before he could make it out of earshot of the watchtower. And Fabrice?

Sleeping, I think. Or at least I hope he can sleep at all. Lammert turned to watch the battlefield again as a new pitch of screams began to echo through the night. The white-blue flames had flared up to the height of a house, completely engulfing half of the remaining Equisians. Holy fuck, he’s really going all out, isn’t he?

Cassandra felt her hand snapping up to grip Lammert’s arm. Few, if any, Equisians had escaped the curtain of cursed fire; and against the backdrop of that curtain of light, the silhouette of a single mounted lancer was clearly visible as he galloped across the battlefield contained in a wide patch of slightly depressed ground, followed by scattered remains of Kotoan infantry racing after him, racing towards the hollow’s edge, towards a taller and deeper shadow of regular lines and steel-reinforced timbers and the distant, yet not distant enough, creaking of siege engines being winched up.

Get Fabrice out of bed, and get out of the tower.

What? Why? Lammert looked, and didn’t see. Where is he going? Oh, fuck. Tycho? What is that?

That, Tycho said calmly through Cassandra’s mouth, is a trebuchet. Now get your ass down the ladder before I throw you down.

The witch-knight was still charging across the hollow when the first trebuchet stone was loosed and sent crashing into the watchtower’s side, taking out almost two thirds of the fourth floor and half of the third, sending a hail of rubble spraying out across the mesa. Cassandra looked down the still-open hatch with Tycho, gauging the sudden length of the drop, and that they’d probably break their legs trying to make it. Part of the remaining walls was sprayed red with what little was left of Lammert, and somewhere below, Fabrice was screaming—startled awake with the bombardment, so far, rather than dying already.

They risked a glance towards the hollow again. What little Kotoan infantry had followed the witch-knight’s desperate charge was being pursued by the Equisian remains, and getting slaughtered by them. The trebuchet, meanwhile, was being reloaded.

Fuck, Tycho said, almost serene, and Cassandra felt an eerie sort of calm-before-the-storm stillness overtake his soul as he realized that he was about to die. And then they leapt down what was left of the watchtower, their already bad landing made even worse by the second trebuchet stone crashing squarely across the second floor, throwing them tumbling down the spiral staircase as the tower came down on itself, chunks of its walls raining out again, burying Fabrice somewhere too deep to keep hopeful, and blasting air out of Tycho’s lungs as a timber came down on his spine and rubble on his lower back, right shoulder, and both legs.

A ray of sunlight came against Cassandra’s eyes, and she blinked awake.

The mug was still in her hands, though tilted precariously, close to spilling. The fire was still crackling, far more alive than she would have expected it on an armful-and-a-half of firewood, particularly since not all of that firewood had been spent. And she, herself, was still bundled up in her blanket and tucked into the corner of the remaining walls, no chair to be sitting on, no table to take tankards of acorn coffee from.

She sneezed, staring at the inexplicably still-going fire. Were it not for that, the unexpectedly cold night would have probably ended up making her seriously sick.

Cassandra turned to the skeletal remains of a Kotoan watchman still half-buried under his tower’s rubble, still with the flowers she had brought him. “Thanks, Tycho.”

Fidella nickered at her from outside the tower, where she was getting breakfast across the mesa.

“Hi, morning, I’m awake.” Cassandra poured the remains of her tea over the fire to douse it. “One last thing to do and we can be off, alright?”

Snort, Fidella said affirmatively.

Cassandra untangled herself from the blanket and took a moment to find a sharper piece of rock among the rubble. Then she went to the stone tablet still remaining at the ruined watchtower’s back, a little off to the side from the cone of shrapnel that had sprayed out of the structure on impact with trebuchet stones, where the communal crypt of fallen watchmen was. Testing her withered hand for a moment—no significant pain so far—Cassandra walked up to the cracked tablet, brushed a bit of dust off it, and found a free space to painstakingly scratch four new names into: TYCHO, LAMMERT, FABRICE, ANDREA.

She had no idea who Joris was, but she hoped he had made it.

While Cassandra was breaking up camp and packing her belongings, Owl came back to hoot a concise scouting report at her.

“So you saw movement across the hollow, but no mist was displaced by it? Sounds about right.” She finished saddling Fidella, took her reins, and began to lead the three of them to the mesa’s edge, where the switchback path down began. “Say, you didn’t see me getting up overnight, did you?”

Both Owl and Fidella shook their heads no.

“Yeah, I thought so.” Cassandra shielded her eyes from the early morning sun, looking out from the mesa’s height. There was a fair bit of mist across the fields, but none as thick as over Wolf’s Head Hollow, where it churned and roiled like a mythical creature’s poisonous breath, like plumes of smoke rising from burnt grass and wet leaves. “Let’s go bother some ghosts for a fancy weapon, then.”

By the time she had made it across the country to where the dead watchman had shown her the battle raging almost two decades ago last night, most of the mist over the fields had burnt off in the late morning sun, and visibility across the Hollow’s perpetual fog increased slightly—to about twenty feet ahead. Maybe twenty-five.

Cassandra dismounted, and looked down beneath her boots as their soles crunched against ground frost. The surface layer of grass and flowers was thin here, and further thinning the deeper into the fog she could see. Moreover, there was a line of stones, slightly curving, that cut right across where the ground dipped into a gentle slope down the hollow—all flat river stones, polished with ages of water and sand, laying so closely that they had to have been placed there intentionally.

No, not a line. A circle.

Kneeling down to examine the stones, Cassandra realized two things. First of all, the stones were painted, a bright red of cheap fabric dye made somehow more enduring, more lustrous. Upon each of the stones was a pair of stripes, and a letter of the Ingvarrdian alphabet between them, spelling out something Cassandra could not read; she tilted her head, trying to read the inscription upside down, and followed the circle of painted riverstones for a few minutes until she came across a larger one that held no letters, but transformed the pair of stripes into the mouth and tail-tip of a snake—by having the snake devour its tail. Cassandra frowned, and experimentally reached her withered arm towards the picture. As expected, the paint’s colour intensified against the proximity, almost as if it were stained glass backlit by a rising dawn.

Someone had placed a magical ward here, one that was likely stretched around the entirety of Wolf’s Head Hollow.

Secondly, the ground outside of the ward—and within an arm’s reach past it—was picked clean of any remains of weapons, armour, barding, and tools. Past that distance, the long-decayed corpses were still wearing full suits of chain and plate, with broken swords and spears sticking from ribcages, from shields, from the ground. Desperate as the locals seemed to be for a source of good steel to rework into items of everyday use, they were clearly not desperate enough to brave the Hollow’s permanent residents.

Cassandra walked back to Owl and Fidella. “It doesn’t look great. I’d rather you two stayed here.”

Hoot, Owl reminded pointedly.

“See, normally I’d agree with you, but this time I think it’s a better idea to do it the other way around,” Cassandra told him. “Look at how thick that fog is. If you hear me calling for you, I’ll need you two to make as much noise as you can, so that I can go in your direction.”

Snort, Fidella said uneasily.

“I fully expect to get lost in there, yes. Well, let’s check if this works in the first place...” Cassandra walked backwards into the mist, looking under her feet to know when she crossed the riverstone ward. The painted snake flared with red light as she crossed it, but nothing more happened. “Can you still hear me?”

Hoot, Owl called out affirmatively.

“Okay, I can hear you too. Be back when I can.” Cassandra sighed, and turned around. “Expensive weapon. Dead farmhand. Haunted battleground that a ghost showed me last night. What could be simpler?”

She walked slowly, taking as much care as she could to avoid stepping on bones—a task far from easy, given how strewn with remains the bare ground was. There were still scorch marks where the witch-knight had conjured cursed fire to burn down his enemies, and the Equisian breastplates and shields there were indeed charred and partially molten around the area. There were complete skeletons of horses and people, looking as if they had simply decayed where they fell, no carrion eaters crossing into this forsaken ground. There were tattered banners still hanging from their flagpoles, broken off or lopsided as they had been placed in the soil by their bearers, most of the crests too fragmented or too faded to be recognizable anymore. Cassandra came to a halt before one of them, narrowing her eyes as she tried to make out the blazon still embroidered on the reasonably intact fabric.

Ugly sight, innit? she heard, and turned to see the translucent figure of a youth, wearing a squire’s gambeson and keeping her hands tucked in her pockets, a forlorn smile across her face and another ripped across her throat where it wept bright silver of ghostly arterial blood onto her garb. All cocked up by the Equis sons of mothers.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Cassandra offered, and looked back at the banner. “Unfortunately, I can’t quite make out the colours.”

Per pale gules a wolfhound sejant or and azure a fir tree argent. The ghostly squire raised her eyebrows. I showed you mine, you show me yours.

“Purpure a sun of seven rays or,” Cassandra said calmly.

Straight under the throne of Corona, eh? Swish. Maybe if I had one of them royal favours on me, I’d be worth more alive rather than dead. The ghost sighed, and kicked one of the nearby Equisian helmets, only for her foot to go right through the rusted metal. Would’ve earned my spurs here, too, had I made it through.

“Died a Bayard banner-bearer, didn’t you?”

Sure did! Made 'em pay for logging the old doggy tree down before I fell, so I did.

Cassandra stayed silent for a long moment. “How old were you?”

Been sixteen for a while now, best I can tell. How long has it been, again?

“I think you may have spent more time dead than alive,” Cassandra admitted, as gently as she could.

Aw, bugger, ain’t that just my luck. The ghostly squire attempted to kick the Equisian helmet again, with the same exact outcome. Not even old enough to find me a lady love, you so-and-so...

“I’m looking for something,” Cassandra said. “Something that doesn’t belong here.”

Checked the mirror lately?

“A weapon,” Cassandra pressed. “A masterwork one. Possibly ceremonial rather than functional.”

The Bayard squire sighed thoughtfully, an uncertain look on her translucent face. I mean, if you’re looking for fancy, there is a lance that milord from the capital used to carry. Wouldn’t recommend touching it, though.

“No—something that was carried in here years after the battle was over, by someone who never came back out,” Cassandra tried again. “Something that a thief masquerading as a lost heir of your house is trying to claim as his inheritance.”

Well, that’s just a piece of work, innit? The squire shrugged her translucent shoulders. Don’t rightly know how what you’re after, of if it’s here at all, but if someone came in after this shindig was over and died here? Then it’s a good wager he kicked the bucket over yonder.

Cassandra looked into the mist in the direction the ghost indicated with a nod. “What happens over there?”

The hounds come out to play, the squire said with a sympathetic wince. And let me tell you, they’ve long grown bored of chew toys that don’t scream anymore. Hope you’re a good runner, so I do.

“Thanks.” Cassandra turned to leave, but hesitated, and looked over her shoulder again. “What was your name?”

The ghostly squire gave her a pained smile from above her torn throat. Bugger me if I know.

“Do you want me to try and find out?”

The dead Bayard banner-bearer seemed to consider the offer for a moment, before she tilted her head in an almost pleading manner. Would you be a dear and do that?

“Okay, where’s your body?”

Around, I think. That son of a mother was the one who gave me a second smile. Think I remember breaking his own before I fell over. The ghost pointed her chin at the Equisian helmet she’s been trying to kick. Pow! Right in the kisser! Ah, good times.

Cassandra couldn’t help a chuckle, noticing that the skull still laying inside the Equisian helmet was indeed missing multiple teeth in the front, and carefully stepped over a few tangled up sets of armour suits and bones that had piled up near the Bayard banner. “Looks like you really made them work for it.”

Oh, you know, the dead squire said nonchalantly. Then gave Cassandra a more careful look. Actually, you seem like you might know, really. That sword, that’s castle steel, innit?

“Sure is. Grew up on weapons practice for playtime.”

Huh. The ghost’s smile turned softer. I think I may have, as well.

“That’ll narrow it down.” Cassandra stopped over a slumped corpse wearing a long-rotted gambeson stained a deep brown of dried blood all the way down the front. “Is that you?”

The Bayard squire shrugged. Maybe?

Cassandra gave the ghost a longer look. “Why do you keep your hands in your pockets?”

Uh. The dead squire looked down at her translucent self, genuinely puzzled now. Do you know, I’ve never wondered?

“Can you take them out?”

The ghost pulled her hands out of her pockets. Her face immediately contorted with discomfort, and she tucked her hands back in. Well, that was unpleasant.

“Are you holding on to something there?”

I think so. I might be? The squire shook her head. I don’t know, can you turn out my pockets? Such as they are, after a decade and a half, I guess.

“I can try.” Cassandra fixed her gloves more firmly in place, then knelt down and started prying the gambeson’s swollen, tattered stitches open. She found the remains of an abandoned rodent nest between the pelvis and the thighbone, strewn with scraps of cloth, and managed to pluck out one scrap of a slightly different colour even under all the dirt and age. “...I think this used to be a ribbon?”

Oh, the ghost said slowly, a glimmer of comprehension dawning across her face. Me mum gave that to me. Good luck charm, she said. Don’t think I had the time to braid it in before the fight kicked off, so I’d just tucked it in me pocket and went.

“What did your mother call you? Your friends?” Cassandra pressed.

The dead squire looked off to the side, brows furrowed, her expression increasingly lost. I don’t 'member. I don’t– would I have made it, I wonder, if I had put that on?

“You’d die to someone else,” Cassandra said simply as she walked around the squire’s corpse to dig at the other pocket. “Koto lost pretty badly here, even if you made Equis pay just as badly for it.”

Think I’m fine that we lost, long as they didn’t win, the ghost admitted.

Cassandra bit her tongue before she could say 'that’s the spirit', exasperated with herself for having even thought it, and found a small leather satchel that a colony of ants had formed small tunnels and egg chambers underneath. “This is for holding letters, isn’t it?”

Well, bugger me, the dead squire said calmly. That’ll be waterlogged to shite.

“Can’t hurt to try.” Cassandra unwrapped the rotten cord from the leather, and pulled out several folded pages of paper that looked like it had been soaked through and dried a dozen times over. “Do I have your permission to... attempt to... read your correspondence?”

The Bayard banner-bearer sighed deeply. But by all means, knock yourself out.

Cassandra stood up and unfolded the papers, careful not to tear them, and leaned away to cough as the dust puffed off. “Yeah, that’s pretty waterlogged. I can’t make anything out on the first one.” She folded that page behind the rest. “This one looks like a draft. Lots of things crossed out, nothing legible either.” Folded it back again. “Okay, that’s almost...”

You can read it?

“Bits and pieces of it.” Cassandra squinted at the page, lifted it up to try and read it against what little sunlight pierced the fog of Wolf’s Head Hollow. “It is with the utmost... I can’t read that... lacking in... as well as impolite... furthermore impatient...”

Aw shite, the dead squire sighed, it’s a scolding from my tutor.

“Esteemed... far from adequate... lady’s station of... Orsinia?”

No, that’s me Nan’s name. Picture of grace, so she was, or so I’m told at least that she was.

Cassandra looked at the ghost. “Isn’t there something you wrote in here? Why would you be holding onto a tutor’s scolding like onto a good luck charm from your mother?”

The banner-bearer gave another shrug. Doesn’t seem to make sense, does it? I can’t recall if I had anyone to write to, though.

“Reports? Chronicle? Journal?”

Reports, the dead squire said slowly. Maybe those.

Cassandra leafed through the remaining papers. Three of them had an identical blur of a signature at the bottom. “Were there two T’s in your name?”

The ghost’s eyes widened, her entire bearing suddenly stiff. There were. There were! You found it?

“I think so. It’s not clear on any of these, but...” Cassandra tossed the other papers to the side, then layered the three reports overtop one another, trying to line up the signature, and lifted them against the dim sunlight against. “...Colette?”

Colette! the dead squire shouted, echoing across the hollow.

In a surge of movement, her translucent form was upon Cassandra again, reaching desperately for the papers. Cassandra stood her ground, and extended the faded reports to her instead of flinch. The ghost’s hands passed through the crumbly, waterlogged papers—and the moment they did, her entire form shifted. Gone were the soft contours of youth, gone was the lacerated throat and blood-stained gambeson of a squire, and Cassandra found herself facing a pedigreed knight with braided hair tied off with a ribbon, clad in burnished plate she may have dreamed of wearing, a Bayard-crested shield in one hand and the banner’s flagpole in the other, a proud young woman she was never allowed to grow up into.

I am Colette Bayard, the ghost said shakily, with a wide grin as euphoric as it was disbelieving. She stared at the Coronian standing before her with gratitude, silver tears slowly trailing down her face. In the heavens, I will be Colette Bayard.

There was a flash of light, intense enough that Cassandra had to squeeze her eyes shut and shield them with a hand. When she could look again, she was alone, and the fog permeating Wolf’s Head Hollow seemed a little thinner in the immediate vicinity.

Cassandra carefully pocketed the faded reports, drew her sword, and saluted the torn-up Bayard banner, then sheathed it again and headed to where Colette had pointed her towards earlier. True to her warning, the bones strewn around were no longer laying in complete skeletons—they seemed to have been dragged around, instead. And the farther she went, the more of them started to look damaged. Chewed on, specifically.

Trying to move more silently, Cassandra slowed her pace. She needed to find a corpse that hadn’t been here for as long as the others, and one that was not of a soldier. Or at least, the belongings of such a corpse, she corrected herself as she came across a torn-off arm that came to rest beside a mangled torso that had evidently come from a different set.

She turned over the remains of a small keg, finding nothing. Moved to a tattered canvas bag, finding nothing. Looked around in search of more, and stumbled over what she had mistaken for another section of skeletal remains—a knapsack of rotting leather. Except that it wasn’t as thoroughly rotted as everything else that she had found.

Cassandra tore the knapsack open, paying little mind to the buckles and straps when she had a knife at her disposal. Threw out half a loaf of mouldy bread, the shrivelled remains of unrecognizable fruit, a change of clothes that a centipede angrily slithered out of once it hit the ground, and finally squinted against a reflection of the wan sunlight against metal. She grabbed at it, and pulled it out: a scabbard of engraved silver, and a sword-hilt with a golden jewel embedded in the pommel.

“Oh,” Cassandra breathed in awe, suddenly uncertain whether she’d give this beauty away after all.

That was when she heard a howl. Then an answering one. Then, furious baying in the mist, approaching, fast.

The hounds.

“FIDELLA!” Cassandra roared, loud as she could, a parade ground bellow that would’ve made her father proud.

A distant whinny came from somewhere to the right, and Cassandra went from still to sprinting in that direction in the blink of an eye. Bones crunched under her feet, now that she had no time and no presence of mind to spare on walking gingerly, and she tripped on a helmet or a broken spear haft a few times, but never quite badly enough to take a tumble. She heard Fidella whinnying again, same direction, far more worried, and kept running as fast she could. The edge of the mist came into focus, held at bay with the riverstone ward, as did the sound of paws hitting the ground; a snap of jaws right behind her, and she barrelled across the ward’s edge, accompanied with the same flare of red light, and immediately after with two heavy impact sounds, before she let momentum carry her half a dozen steps further and came to a slow halt, breathing heavily, and finally dared to look behind her.

On the inside of the ward circling the hollow, two monstrous wolfhounds the size of a fallow deer each paced along the circle of stones as if it were a set of bars, eye sockets empty save for a blaze of white-blue cursed fire, fangs long enough to stick out of their mouths, pelts darker than a moonless night and each mangled—one hound’s side was turned into a pin cushion of arrows and crossbow bolts, the other’s back studded with broken sword-blades and spears, with a handful poking out on the other side through its belly.

“We’re leaving,” Cassandra wheezed, frantically climbing into the saddle and yanking Fidella away. “Leaving, just go, anywhere that’s not here.”

It took her about ten minutes to calm down, in which time Fidella had made quite a bit of headway through galloping directly away from the hounds of nightmare and shadow.

“Okay,” Cassandra said, her voice more steady, pulling gently on the reins. “Okay. We made it. Let’s sit for a moment.”

Hoot, Owl called out from overhead, signalling that they hadn’t been followed.

“Thanks.” Cassandra slid from the saddle, and decided there was no better time to hug Fidella by the neck than after having nearly been eaten by something that’s been dead for a decade and a half. “That was a lot. I don’t ever want to go there again.”

Snort, Fidella agreed wholeheartedly.

“Okay.” Cassandra pulled away, and focused on the sword that had just about cost her her life. “Alright. Let’s see who you are, beautiful.”

The blade was watered steel, she realized the second she drew it. It still held a fine edge, she found after doffing her left glove and testing it on a thumb. The jewel in the pommel seemed to be a very large yellow topaz, polished into seven facets, the same number as that of the allied kingdoms. This was an Ingvarrdian weapon, judging from the make, but profiled like a Kotoan one.

It was a shame how much attention it would draw on a belt, instead of in a display case, Cassandra admitted to herself reluctantly.

The scabbard, once cleaned of the detritus of everything else that had been in the dead farmhand’s knapsack, turned out at least as interesting, however. Engraved with flat reliefs of infantry and mounted warriors, it did not depict battles as per the classic Ingvarrdian fashion—instead, the imagery seemed to be a parade. Kotoan knights and halberdiers on one side, Cassandra noticed, but Bayangoran samurai and a phalanx on the other.

She pulled out the jade medallion again, looking at the two treasures side by side.

Hoot, Owl said, landing on her shoulder.

“I know. They match.” Cassandra looked between the Kotoan hounds under the Bayangoran cherry tree on the medallion, and the united Koto-Bayangor forces on the scabbard. And not only did the imagery match—both of these items were one-of-a-kind, both by virtue of their make and their monetary value. “Time to check in with a fake Bayard, for a change.”

Chapter Text

Night had long fallen by the time Cassandra made it to the foot of the mesa that still housed the ruins of Château de Bayard. With Fidella starting to show signs of fatigue—and no wonder, after almost a full day of really being put through her paces—Cassandra took a little extra care grooming her before bedtime, unbraiding her mane to comb through it as well, and slept without a fire to keep the camp topside unaware of her presence. When she woke up in the morning, it was not to the dim sunlight of a sky drawn with clouds that threatened rain further in the day, or to the pain slowly mounting in her withered arm once again, but to the sound of Fidella nickering inquisitively and being answered by another horse.

Cassandra lifted her head, trying to extract herself from the blankets and the small nook in the mesa’s cliffside that she had tucked herself into for the night, withered hand on the hilt of her sword already. Then slowly relaxed her posture when she realized that the other horse didn’t have a rider.

It was a gelding, though significantly smaller than Fidella, his coat such a mosaic of colour as if creation itself had ran out of paint and used the last splotches of white, red, and several shades of brown to create him. Mane left loose in a shaggy, untended wave. Tack and harness all in place for entirely long enough to start chafing. Lengths of rope at his hooves, pointing to poorly-tied knots that had long since come undone, letting him wander around.

“Well hello,” Cassandra said, keeping her tone soft as she slowly reached for the gelding’s bridle with her healthy hand. “Don’t you just look like a getaway waiting to happen?”

The gelding’s nostrils flared at her hand, and he snorted, leaning back slightly. Cassandra fell still, and smiled when Fidella’s nose came against her cheek, the mare trying to assist in calming the stranger down.

“Come on now, it’s okay. Come on...”

When the gelding didn’t seem to be convinced with that, Cassandra withdrew her hand slowly, dug through her pack of rations to pull out an only slightly withered apple, and extended it to him. That finally succeeded in drawing him close enough, and Cassandra took the bit out of his mouth before handing the apple to him.

She shot Fidella a long-suffering look over her shoulder. “Boys, am I right?”

Snort, Fidella agreed with amusement.

“Let’s get these off of you, yeah?” Cassandra started taking the gelding’s harness off. At first, he attempted to pull away again, but stopped once he realized what she was doing. “That’s right. You don’t really need these, do you.”

While she knew it was entirely possible to ride a horse without a saddle, stirrups, or reins, she also knew that a lot of people would find it difficult or simply never try due to how dangerous it could be. She scattered the tack and harness among a few coniferous shrubs, growing here and there at the foot of the mesa, hoping it would be enough to slow down or downright ground whoever it was that had prepared the gelding as a means to escape.

Hoot, Owl said inquisitively.

“Well, I can think of two people in the camp up top who’d have a use for a horse, not to mention the money for the upkeep of one. And halberdiers are infantry, not cavalry.” Cassandra started gently pushing the gelding away. “Go on, boy. Go on.”

Snort, Fidella said calmly. The gelding eyed her, then walked off in search of fresher grass than what was still left in the vicinity. Fidella then gave Cassandra a questioning look, as if waiting for further instructions.

“The plan is to be prepared,” Cassandra told her companions, turning to them both. “Fidella, I need you to stay hidden, and stay ready for if we have to chase down whoever left that horse here. Owl, if you see me and the guy I’ll be handing the sword off to splitting up, I need you to follow him—if he runs, fly high enough to point Fidella and me at where he’s going, so we can give chase. Got it?”

Two affirmative noises.

“Alright, let’s do this.”

Cassandra started climbing the switchback snaking up the mesa. The hole in the path was still there, thankfully no larger than it had been last time, and she jumped over it without any more trouble than previously. Glancing up into the morning sky, she saw Owl’s silhouette against the clouds as he hovered high enough to keep an eye on the entire surrounding area, circling for a second pass; she smiled, and cleared the last leg of the path to crest into the camp atop.

The workers were gathered around a small campfire, chatting over a modest meal. Only three of them remained, Cassandra noticed, and there was one less shabby tent comprising the camp. Two must have given up on the endeavour or realized that the pretend-Bayard was running a con. The halberdier was still there, his signature polearm laid across his lap again, looking immensely bored as he played cards with one of the workers. His expression swiftly changed into one of surprise as he noticed Cassandra entering the camp, however.

“That was fast. How’d it go?”

“Eh,” Cassandra said, pitching her voice so that the answer would answer nothing. “Let’s get this done, yeah?”

“Heavens, please.” Riccardo threw his cards down, ignoring the worker’s disappointed sigh, and led Cassandra to the slightly fancier tent. “Lord Bayard, the treasure hunter is back.”

“She is?” The conman sounded surprised, but schooled himself by the time he emerged from the tent, and gave Cassandra an impatient look. “Well? Don’t tell me you’ve returned empty-handed.”

Cassandra reached to the back of her belt and pulled the Ingvarrdian masterwork sword from under her cloak, handing it over and keeping her eyes off the sky. “There was a fissure in the mine, and the jewel fell into it. There’s no way I could have retrieved it alone.”

The pretend-Bayard sighed through his nose, even as he took the sword. “Unfortunate. I’d hoped a dedicated treasure hunter would not be as clumsy as to let one-third of their objective slip through their fingers. Though I don’t know how disappointed I can truly claim to be, what with you not being very much of a treasure hunter in the first place.” He paused, glancing between Cassandra’s murderous glare and Riccardo’s stiff-jawed anger. “But I suppose you have done the bare minimum of your task. And you will be pleased to know that while you were off gallivanting, my men have unearthed the third treasure in the ruins of my ancestral abode. Go, feast your eyes, as a prelude to your payment, my servant Roberto will take you there.”

The halberdier nodded her aside again, and Cassandra kept her eyes on the conman in another ominous glare over her shoulder for as long as she could before turning to follow.

“This is what you’ve been dealing with this whole time?” she asked as soon as she and the halberdier were out of earshot. “Why do you even put up with this guy? He treats you terribly. And looks like he treats everyone terribly, to be honest.”

“Doesn’t he just?” Riccardo sighed as they walked into the ruins, and rubbed the back of his neck in an uncomfortable gesture. “Right, so, there’s nothing here. This is supposed to be the part where I kill you somewhere the workers won’t see, but you have a good look in your eyes and I don’t feel like listening to that fucker anymore. He’s not been paying the others their daily due. Don’t think that bodes well for my payment, even if I did kill you for him, so I think I’d rather cut my losses with what I got upfront. What do you say we team up and go after that jewel again?”

Cassandra gave him a long look. Then pulled the jade medallion from the inside pocket of her cloak and showed it to him, taking care to not let it be visible from the camp.

“Huh,” Riccardo said calmly.

“Look at this. Really look at it,” Cassandra told him quietly. “Do you know what the coat-of-arms of Bayangor is?”

“Cherry blossom, right?”

“Right. And of Koto?”

“Two dogs sitting face-to-face.”

“Wolfhounds, but close enough.” Cassandra tapped a fingertip against the medallion’s edge. “This is a cherry tree. The hounds are guarding the tree; the tree is sheltering the hounds. You remember how your King’s grandfather married a Bayangoran princess? This is entirely enough to be a wedding gift for that occasion. Same deal with that sword. If there even is a third one of these here, probably same deal as well.”

“Fuck me,” Riccardo said, coming to a halt just behind the château’s ruined walls. “Nothing good comes out of something this expensive. You can’t just pawn these off like nobody’s business, this is the kind of thing that gets you a grand theft bounty so ridiculously high that nowhere is safe anymore.”

“There was a saddled horse left at the foot of the mesa.” Cassandra watched the halberdier stiffen. “So I unsaddled him before coming up here. I have a horse, too. We can catch him.”

Riccardo stared at her for a moment. Then extended a hand. “You wanna kill that guy, get rid of these things, and split the profit fifty-fifty?”

Cassandra grinned, and shook his hand. “I can work with that.”

They both turned on their heel and ran towards the mesa’s edge, scanning the vista for the sight of a rider. And sure enough, there was one—struggling to mount a bare-back horse and turn it to head further into Equis territory.

“I see him!” Cassandra called out. “Get to the path!”

“Don’t waste time with the path!” Riccardo yelled back, running straight for the pulley at the mesa’s corner, and throwing himself down its ropes.

Cassandra leaned over the edge, waiting to see if he’d make the descent; not only did he make it, but appeared to land unharmed, and beckoned to her impatiently from the ground. She rubbed the palms of her gloved hands together and followed suit, hoping that if the halberdier had proposed the truce, he wouldn’t find it prudent to break it by letting her fall to her death. Mercifully, she was right, and she landed with a jolt but without breaking her legs thanks to the way Riccardo made sure to control the momentum.

“Where’s that horse of yours?”

With two fingers in her mouth, Cassandra let out a single-toned whistle. A familiar whinny, and Fidella trotted up from where she was hiding behind a small pile of rocks overgrown with juniper bushes. While she was climbing in the saddle, Riccardo had snapped both ends of a belt of sorts over the haft of his halberd, making it possible to sling it over his shoulder the same way Cassandra was carrying her sword. She grabbed the halberdier’s arm and pulled him onto Fidella’s back behind herself; the mare snorted under the added weight, but more from surprise than from exertion.

“Run like you’re racing Max!” Cassandra barked at Fidella as soon as Riccardo’s arms snapped around her waist.

Fidella whinnied, a competitive sound that made Cassandra grin, and went straight into a gallop after the conman’s gelding. Leaning forward slightly to work with her steed, Cassandra glanced up into the sky, correcting course to follow Owl as he made sure to lead them on the easiest path across the country.

“Are you following that bird?!” Riccardo yelled incredulously, struggling to make himself heard over the wind and the thunder of hoofbeats.

“That’s my bird, he knows what he’s doing!” Cassandra yelled back over her shoulder.

“I really hope I’m not about to regret teaming up with you!”

“Don’t worry! We’re catching up!”

And they were, if not quite fast enough, if at the cost of Fidella’s breathing slowly growing ragged under the added weight of a second rider clad in far heavier armour. Cassandra ground her teeth, trying to gauge how much longer they had, but then noticed that Riccardo only had one arm around her waist now—he’d managed to unhook the crossbow from his hip, and with a one-handed hold, he was aiming at the escaping conman.

“Pull her left!”

Cassandra did, veering Fidella just slightly off course, trying to line up Riccardo’s shot without losing too much ground. She felt the halberdier hold his breath before releasing the trigger, and watched the bolt whiz past the conman’s ear, causing him to duck his head and look over his shoulder with fear in his eyes.

“Fuck!” Riccardo braced the crossbow against Cassandra’s ribcage, and she pressed her elbow to its other side to hold it steady without being asked to as he tried to reload from over her shoulder. Glancing between Owl, the conman, and the crossbow, she was mildly impressed to see that Riccardo succeeded in the attempt, and leaned her head away as he snapped the crossbow up again. “Left!”

This time, the bolt hit its mark, causing the conman to scream and wobble on the back of his horse—and after a moment, lose balance and fall off over the side. Cassandra pulled on Fidella’s reins, letting momentum carry them to where the pretend Bayard hit the ground and was currently keening in pain; Riccardo slipped to the ground the moment they caught up, tossed the spent crossbow into his left hand, and drew a long dagger with the right to open the conman’s throat before he had the time to beg for mercy.

“Clean,” Cassandra commented as she pulled Fidella around. “Good shot, too.”

Riccardo nodded at her. “You set me up for it, and set him back on the escape before that.”

“I couldn’t have done it alone, could I?” Cassandra patted Fidella’s neck, then dismounted. “See if you can bring the skittish guy back, please.”

Snort, Fidella said, and trotted off after the conman’s steed at a leisurely pace.

Owl had meanwhile swooped down onto Cassandra’s shoulder, and was giving the halberdier a very scrutinizing glare. Riccardo cleared his throat, visibly uncomfortable, and nudged the conman’s body with his boot as he hooked the crossbow back onto his belt and cleaned the knife before sheathing it.

“Right, so. You have the medallion, and gave him the sword, and he’s been saying there was supposed to be a third one?”

“I can’t tell if that was for real, or just part of the scam,” Cassandra said honestly. “Did he have any papers when you were working for him?”

“Oh, loads.” Riccardo knelt down beside the corpse and started going through his pockets. It only took a moment for him to toss a flat satchel of waterproofed leather to Cassandra. “Kept them in here, too.”

Cassandra opened the satchel. It was full of loose pages, some looking like scrawled notes, some like slightly crumpled letters, all stacked next to a small notebook bound in stained leather. “That’s a fair bit. I’ll leaf through all these, you look for the sword?”

“Gotcha.”

She sat down in the grass and started with the notebook, starting with the most recent pages. It wasn’t much of a journal, at least in comparison to what she was familiar with, filled with mental shortcuts rather than full sentences, the handwriting a chicken scratch that almost doubled as a cipher. The pages were each only slightly larger than her hand, and she managed to get through one—describing the acquisition of an object, the hiring of a bodyguard, the setup of the excavation ruse, and the original encounter with herself—before Riccardo let out an impressed whistle.

“Holy shit, I see what you meant, this would make for a kingly gift.”

“This seems to say that there was in fact a third one,” Cassandra indicated the notebook. “And that he found it before you and I even showed up?”

“I’ll keep looking... in a minute.” Riccardo lifted the Ingvarrdian sword against the sun, marvelling at how the light played against the faceted topaz in the pommel. “Fuck, but it’s beautiful. You sure it wouldn’t be okay to carry after ditching the scabbard and prying the gem out?”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought about it.” Cassandra turned a page.

She heard the halberdier sigh deeply, and sheathe the sword. “Yeah... It’s too small for my tastes anyway.”

“Hand-and-a-half more your speed, huh?”

“Ah, I like my bastard. What’s a mercenary without a bit of a bastard? Besides, if I were to fight with something this expensive, I’d probably start pulling hits trying not to nick the weapon and get myself killed like an idiot.” Riccardo tossed the masterwork sword to her, and Cassandra caught it without looking. “You’re right about the art on the scabbard, by the way, that’s definitely Koto on one side and Bayangor on the other.”

“Yup.” Cassandra gave up on the notebook when it seemed to detail earlier scams, and started going through the loose papers. An imprecise map, scrawled in a drunkard’s shaky hand, of what must have been the mines, she realized after a long moment, with the southernmost—collapsed—shaft marked with an X. An old bounty letter with a sloppy portrait of a thoroughly unremarkable young man, wanted dead or alive for theft, and notes scratched on the other side about the man having been last seen fleeing into Wolf’s Head Hollow. Another bounty notice, but newer, and far less specific. “Hey, look at this. Looks like Equis is promising rewards and royal favour to anyone who brings lost treasures to the king... it doesn’t specifically say 'treasures stolen from the Seven Kingdoms', but it sure doesn’t say otherwise, either.”

“Does it say what order of magnitude with monetary rewards?” Riccardo asked.

“Nope.”

“Then it’s bullshit like pardons and titles and everything else that can be taken away once you’re inconvenient again. Figures.” The halberdier shook his head, giving the dead conman a look full of distaste. “You know what, now I kinda want to see these sent to Koto, just to spite this fucker more.”

Cassandra chuckled. “Good, I was going to push you for returning these to Koto anyway.”

“You from there, too?”

“No, Corona.”

Riccardo looked up at her. “Then what’s your stake in this, anyway?”

“I don’t have a stake.” Cassandra folded an uninteresting page behind the rest, examining the next one. “It’s just going to cause the least trouble to have these go back where they came from.”

“No, I mean this is choosing a side between Equis and Koto, who are at war over this region, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed,” Cassandra said darkly. Then stayed quiet for a moment, considering how to answer. “I don’t know. Corona’s allied with Koto, so might as well lean into that. And I don’t like the Equisian king. So there. Koto it is.”

Riccardo raised his eyebrows. “What, like you met the king of Equis?”

“Not formally, no, I’m pretty sure he’s not aware that I exist. But I’ve had to watch one display of the pretentious nonsense he calls a court for long enough to have an opinion.”

“Hm.” The halberdier eyed her for a long while, as if trying to gauge if she was being serious, then went back to searching the scammer’s corpse. A long while passed in silence. “Hey, I found the third one! Or at least, I think so. But it certainly looks royal.”

Cassandra looked up from the papers, frowning. “How does it look 'royal'?”

“Useless and expensive,” Riccardo said dryly.

Cassandra couldn’t help a laugh at that. “You’ve got that right.”

The halberdier walked over, carefully carrying something small in both hands, and sat down in front of Cassandra to show it to her. The third treasure turned out to be a glass sphere, mounted on an ornate flat surface serving as its base. The inside was filled with a thick, transparent, colourless liquid, and strewn with what looked like silver shavings and diamond dust laying in an unreasonably thick layer along the bottom, drifting gently with each movement. And along the bottom, profiled like the surface of the ocean, two small boats bobbed along the painted waves: a Kotoan gondola and a Bayangoran sampan, both carved from what seemed to be whale or walrus ivory.

“What even is this?” Riccardo asked, his tone dripping disapproval for this amount of expensive materials used up on something that didn’t even have a practical purpose. “Fake fortune-telling ball?”

“I think it’s called a snowglobe.” Cassandra overturned the glass orb and shook it, upsetting the glimmering snow, then set it upright again to watch the silver and diamonds drifting down all around the orb’s interior.

“What’s it for?”

“Looking nice? I don’t know, there isn’t a point to them.”

Riccardo sighed. “Who even makes these?”

“I think this one’s Galcrestian,” Cassandra said, looking at the ivory boats and the carving of the waves. “But in general, I don’t understand either, it’s the most useless thing I’ve ever seen. Not to mention one of the most expensive.”

“Well, at least the royal wedding gift theory holds.”

“It does.” Cassandra pulled out the Bayangoran medallion, and laid it out in the grass next to the Ingvarrdian sword and the Galcrestian snowglobe. “So, we’re gonna get these back to Koto, right?”

“Right,” Riccardo nodded. “This level of expensive is way out of my league, I don’t want this kind of trouble. Sellsword work is more my speed.”

“You’re from Koto. I’ve only read about it,” Cassandra said simply. “Is there a surefire way to get something to your king?”

Riccardo scratched his cheek. “I mean, I can only think of one.”

Cassandra sighed. “No.”

“Sending back the gear of a dead witch-knight.”

“Oh, no.”

“You went to Wolf’s Head Hollow, right? Is that guy’s gear still there?”

“Probably.” Cassandra pinched the corners of her eyes with her withered fingers. “I just really don’t want to go back there.”

“What, it’s that haunted?”

“It’s less about the ghosts. Ghosts are fine, for the most part, when they can be reasoned with. It’s that the witch-knight’s war hounds are still...”

Riccardo stared at her incredulously as she trailed off. “What, alive?”

“They didn’t look alive,” Cassandra admitted, “but they almost ate me all the same.”

“Okay, good thing that wasn’t ominous as fuck.”

Cassandra chuckled despite herself. “It could work, though. Packing the treasures into the witch-knight’s armour.”

“Yeah, if we pull that off, we could just heap it all into a crate and trade it to a Kotoan merchant heading home,” Riccardo said. “Taking back something like that is a certain ticket for a one-time royal favour, like a tax break or a monopoly on some goods for a while, so a lot of those merchants would pay good cash for this kind of privilege. Split it halfsies and we’re good.”

“I’d pack this guy’s documents and a letter to explain, as well, but otherwise it sounds solid... as long as we can get the witch-knight’s armour. Which is the part that I really don’t want to do, but I don’t have any better ideas.” Cassandra looked up at the sound of Fidella calling out, and stood up to wave at her. The mare was leading the pinto gelding back, she noticed. “Let’s get this guy’s harness back, so we don’t have to both ride Fidella, and head off.”

The halberdier gave her a flat look. “The fuck do I look like, a cavalryman? What am I gonna do with a horse?”

“Sell it?”

“You make a compelling point.”

Cassandra looked over her shoulder at the conman’s dead body. “Are we doing anything about that?”

“Ah, let him rot.” Riccardo lifted a belt with a small money pouch and an all-purpose knife. “Already got everything worth the trouble from him.”

She considered as she gathered up the treasures. “I guess the foxes won’t mind an easy meal.”

“It’s what he deserves, really.”

By the time they made it back to the mesa and retrieved the gelding’s tack and harness, Cassandra noticed that the workers topside had broken camp and left, no doubt having witnessed the brief chase and their employer’s death at the hands of his hirelings. Given that how skittish the pinto gelding was, and how unused to riding horseback Riccardo was in turn, Cassandra decided that it would be better for herself to ride the gelding and for Riccardo to ride Fidella, for now, and steered the group back towards Wolf’s Head Hollow.

The fog that still suffused the area, and the ward of painted riverstones cinched around it, came into focus by the late afternoon. Cassandra broke the silence then.

“I don’t want to go in there after dark. Let’s make camp and prepare for tomorrow.”

“Man, this place really has you spooked, doesn’t it?” Riccardo said, curious rather than mocking.

“Let’s just say that if you hear dogs—like, really big dogs—run for the edge of that circle of stones and don’t look back.” Cassandra turned to Owl, who was still perched on her shoulder, and had consistently kept the halberdier in his field of vision. “Fly perimeter, please.”

Hoot, Owl said, and took off as she boosted him into the sky.

Riccardo stared. “How do you even do that?”

“What?”

“Talk to your horse and your bird like that?”

“It’s a Coronian custom,” Cassandra lied in a deadpan tone. “You see anywhere suitable for a campsite?”

Riccardo pointed towards a relatively nearby mesa, looming in the distance. “Is that a watchtower up there?”

“Yeah, it’s alright as long as you don’t mind sleeping next to a corpse.”

“I’ll pass, thank you.”

They settled for making camp in the middle of the open field, in the end, letting Fidella and the pinto gelding graze nearby. Mercifully, the morning’s rainclouds seemed to have blown over during the day. Cassandra rubbed at her withered arm, mildly painful still, and felt at her split fingernails through the glove; there seemed to be a little more give than normal, a slightly too-wide range of movement, and she left the hand alone. There would be time enough for dealing with that later, in the privacy of being accompanied only by Owl and Fidella again.

With including Owl in a three-person watch order, Cassandra managed to get enough sleep to be reasonably rested in the morning, if with her withered arm having grown stiffer and the ache in it more persistent. She noted that Riccardo looked similarly refreshed, and after checking together that the three treasures were still in their places, Cassandra turned to brave the roiling mist.

“Alright, you ready?”

“Judging from the look on your face? Probably not.” Riccardo slung the halberd across his shoulders like a water-bearer’s stick. “Let’s go.”

They walked into the fog, the red paint on the riverstone ward flaring twice as they crossed into Wolf’s Head Hollow. With the old battle’s detritus thick under their feet, Cassandra was walking slowly again, taking care not to step on bones if she could avoid it at all; eventually, she noticed that Riccardo had followed suit, although treading respectfully evidently hadn’t been his first concern. Difficult as it was to navigate in the mist, she was reasonably sure she was keeping a direction well enough, and that she hadn’t walked past any particular landmark twice. She did make her way to a familiar spot, however: a faded banner with one of the royal Kotoan wolfhounds and a fir tree, half-surrounded with a pile of Equisian corpses and pushed askew by the falling of a body in a squire’s gambeson stained rusty brown with the blood spilling from a severed throat. Cassandra came to a halt, taking a moment at the Bayard banner again, then looking around, straining to see through the fog.

“You lost?” Riccardo asked, visibly set on edge by their surroundings.

“No, just thinking,” Cassandra said calmly. “What do you know about witch-knights?”

He shrugged. “Only hearsay and common knowledge. I’ve never really met one, only saw them in passing once or twice.”

“Tell me.”

“Hell of a place you’ve picked for ghost stories.” Riccardo sighed. “I’ve heard they can conjure up fire and lightning to destroy their enemies. I’ve heard they can talk to the dead and always know if they’re lied to. Each trains two war dogs and rides something that may have been a horse, once. Each carries a lance they use both as a weapon and as a focus for their sorcery. They’re nearly impossible to defeat in combat, even without taking the magic into account, and they’re fanatically loyal to the crown.”

Cassandra pointed towards a slim shape rising from the ground for at least eight feet, too slim to be a tree, from where she stood under the Bayard banner she had paid her respects to a day ago, as the mist seemed to part slightly for her. “Lances like that?”

Riccardo looked, and confirmed with a nod. “Let’s go grab that, find the armour, and get out of here.”

“I don’t think it’s gonna be that simple.” Cassandra fell silent as they approached the lance, the thicker shape of a helmeted severed head looming atop it through the fog.

Fog that seemed to thicken around them now.

Fog that seemed to emanate from the lance, and the head, outwards all throughout the hollow.

Fog that was now, in the silence between the two trespassers, echoing with a laboured two-toned sound: a rasp, a huff, a pause. A rasp, a huff, a pause. Repeating, endlessly, and in an unsettlingly familiar pattern.

“Oh, heavens.” Riccardo sounded like he was about to be sick. “Tell me you don’t hear that.”

“It’s breathing,” Cassandra said with a calm she did not feel.

With each exhale that the severed head took, more mist billowed out from between its clenched jaws, puffing through tears in the decayed skin pulled taut over the cheekbones, filtering between the teeth. Cassandra looked around, swallowing hard when she realized that the sightlines around the lance dwindled from the twenty, twenty-five feet elsewhere across the hollow to ten, maybe twelve feet in every direction. The morning sun was barely a hint of a glimmer overhead, turning the fog opaque, serving only to blind them further. The sound of any life that continued on beyond the hollow’s edge did not make it this far in, as if the fog was blocking even that, cushioning the old battlefield against any reminder of the passage of time, of the world that kept turning, regardless of any fates and lives that met their end here.

“Now I really wish you had a better idea than this,” Riccardo said weakly.

“Let’s get this over with, already.” Cassandra stepped up to the lance and laid her withered hand against it.

The fog immediately turned freezing cold. The severed head’s rasping breath was drowned out by a monstrously deep growl, coming from two different directions somewhere out of sight. Riccardo took a step backwards, keeping back-to-back with Cassandra, clutching his halberd in front of himself protectively. Cassandra suppressed the instinct to draw her sword and ready herself for a fight—this was not a fight that could be fought, only lost, along with both their lives—and instead strained to see through the icy mist, any hint of movement, any shape or sound.

Vultures. Hyenas. Grave robbers, a voice echoed out from the fog, as sourceless as it was hateful. Another faithless brood come to steal from the dead? Speak your last words before I add your bones to the pyre of my troops!

Oh, this was bad.

Cassandra drew a deep breath, and yelled out, “I carry the mark of the heiress to the throne of Corona! State your needs, servant of Koto, so that I may fulfil them in the name of alliances that bind our kingdoms together!”

CORONA HAS NO HEIRESS! a roar came right against her ear, and when she flinched away, she found herself staring right into the furious face of a translucent man in his forties, a thin line of silver circling his neck where his head had been cut off, his helmet profiled like the jowls of a snarling wolfhound and its lifted visor deformed enough to entirely obscure one eye after a heavy crushing blow. Your king’s only child was stolen from her crib in infancy, and shame on him for doing nothing to secure a clear line of succession!

“She was found less than three years ago,” Cassandra shot back steadily. “Taken by a witch and sequestered in a tower throughout her youth and adolescence, she has escaped her captor and returned to take her rightful place within her kingdom, and soon enough, upon its throne.”

The witch-knight’s remaining eye narrowed. Cassandra shivered with a hiss through her teeth when he pulled his right hand—or what remained of it, a shapeless mass of mangled steel and splintered bone—through her healthy arm and the favour tied around it.

You speak the truth, knight-errant. The ghost seemed surprised to even admit that. Then, however, his baleful one-eyed glare shifted from Cassandra’s face to over her shoulder, to where Riccardo still stood frozen in place behind her. And you? I see your heart, oath-breaker. I know the names of your misdeeds. I may stand still among those who walk past me into the beyond, but do not think they go silently. I hear your name carried on the wind of their cries, and the names they give you—traitor, murderer, thief—today you’ve come to rob one time too many.

Unable to think of anything else, Cassandra extended her arm to the side, blocking the ghost’s approach to the halberdier. “I will vouch for him.”

For him? the ghost spat the words like an insult. You would stake your honour on the conduct of a man who has none? By what will you guarantee him?!

“I will guarantee him by the fact that he had erred once,” Cassandra recited, the memory of studying a Bayangoran treatise years and years ago rising clearly to the forefront of her mind, otherwise emptied with fear. “And so he will take care not to err in the same way again. If we were to find a use only for men who are blameless, then useful men could not be come by, for who among us can claim to have made no mistakes?”

Hm. The dead witch-knight cocked his head at her, one side of the gaping wound that circled his neck widening slightly against the motion. Well-principled and well-read, to cite a common ally’s wisdom at me. Heed my words, servant of Corona: choose your companions more carefully, and leave those unworthy of the favour that shines upon you to face the consequences of their own misdeeds.

Cassandra forced herself to unclench her teeth, already ground at the sound of being called a servant again. “I’ve known thieves who gave away their treasure troves once they were given to freely. I’ve known a traitor whose allegiance was true under the lies she had been fed, and whose betrayal had saved her sovereign’s life. I will stake my honour upon that of my companion—and trust that I won’t come to regret it.”

The ghost sniffed, giving her a thoroughly unimpressed look, and leaned away. Very well.

Cassandra slowly let out the breath she was holding, and folded her hands at the small of her back, settling into a neutrally official posture. Riccardo’s hand came against her left elbow, and she turned to look at him.

“Thank you,” the halberdier mouthed at her, careful not to make a sound, his eyes still wide and forehead still dripping with sweat under his helmet.

Cassandra nodded at him, letting herself look as scared as she felt for a moment, before looking away again and snapping her game face back on.

In any event, the dead witch-knight spoke up again, motioning the living two to follow him in an inviting gesture of offering a tour around the hecatomb ground of a battlefield under their feet as if it were a nobleman’s estate. To what do I owe the pleasure of your presence in the place of my unrest, knight-errant?

“My companion and I have come to inquire after your armour and the privilege of returning it into the hands of Koto, my lord, if it pleases you to permit such an endeavour,” Cassandra said formally. “In exchange for a labour performed in your stead, of course.”

It shames me to have an ally from across the border witnessing my armour in such a state, the witch-knight sighed as gestured to himself—the caved-in helmet, the cloven breastplate, the partially crushed left greave, a dozen or more crossbow bolts scattered all through his chest and legs. Even as a ghost, he walked with a heavy limp, leaning hard on a massive two-handed sword with a flamed blade as if it were a cane, and concealed his mangled right arm in the folds of a rich cloak billowing behind him as if against a hot wind. However, there is a task I would charge you with, and permit you to have my armour returned to rest among those of my fallen brethren upon its completion.

“What is it?”

The ghost came to a halt and stabbed the flame-bladed sword into the ground more firmly, then leaned against it with his right elbow and put two fingers of his only hand with fingers remaining into his mouth to let out a modulated, trilling whistle. Rastaban! Kuma!

Cassandra fell very still as the growling reverberated through the freezing-cold mist again. This time, however, when the monstrous wolfhounds came, they came in a walk, and with no malice burning in their eyes. This time, one sat down at the ghost’s feet and lolled out its tongue, and the other laid on its side, unable to sit with the broken-off swords and spears protruding from its coat.

Look at what they’ve done to my boys, the witch-knight said, his voice cracking with tears. I can’t bear to watch them like this, yet I can’t ease their suffering, either.

“What would you have us do, my lord?” Cassandra asked slowly, a cold sense of foreboding settling in her gut.

Take out what causes them pain, and burn it down. The witch-knight gave her a resolute stare. Then, and only then, will I lead you to where my armour lies.

Cassandra looked at Riccardo, who gave her a nod and a shrug, still clearly rattled quite deeply with just about everything that was going on. Then she turned back to the ghost. “With respect, my lord, it is very difficult to find our way across your domain, and to burn anything down we will have to start a fire. May I ask that you scatter the mist a little, so that we can gather up firewood without getting lost?”

The witch-knight narrowed his eye at her suspiciously, but after a long moment, he did raise his left arm and beckon at nothing with two fingers. The thick fog whooshed away as if scattered by a powerful wind, clearing out from all around them in about an eighty-foot radius, locking Cassandra, Riccardo, the ghost, and the hounds in an arena of clear visibility. I am watching, knight-errant.

Cassandra bowed her head and stepped away, then turned to the halberdier. “Come on. Anything that looks like it’ll burn.”

“Yeah, no, that’s– yeah. I swear to high heavens and low hell, next time someone as serious as you says they don’t want to go somewhere, I’m gonna stop pitching the idea of going, immediately.”

“I didn’t have a better idea, did I?” Cassandra picked up a few pieces of a long-broken barrel.

Riccardo stared. “How are you staying this calm, with all the ghost shit happening?”

“Ghosts are the easy part. They’re—” Cassandra sighed. “They can’t do anything. They’ve failed one time too many, and there’s nothing they can do about it anymore, all they have left is just... waiting, until someone else shows up, and hoping for help they may not even remember how to ask for. You and me, we’re alive. We can always try to do another thing right. They can’t. And it’s keeping them here, driving them crazy.”

When her withered hand flared with pain again and another piece of reasonably dry wood slipped from Cassandra’s grasp, Riccardo motioned her to give him the pitiful scraps of firewood they could find. “You know we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation if you hadn’t argued him like you had.”

“I know.”

“That was, um...” the halberdier cleared his throat awkwardly. “That was a lot.”

“It’s fine.” Cassandra tossed the remains of a kite shield at him. “I already killed four people since this started, and watched you kill the fifth. I think it’s enough already.”

“Yeah, when you put it that way.” Riccardo pointed her at what seemed to have been a small cart or wagon once, and started helping her pry out the moss-covered boards. “So... knight-errant to the Coronian princess, huh?”

“She’s a friend,” Cassandra said without thinking. Then shrugged. “Mostly. Or was. I don’t know.”

“That good, huh?”

She sighed again. “When it was good, it was great, when it was bad...”

“Oh,” Riccardo said when she didn’t finish. “That kind of a friend.”

“Yeah,” Cassandra admitted reluctantly. “What about you? Oath-breaker, huh?”

Riccardo made a disgusted noise. “So I deserted from the army, so what? I didn’t ask to get conscripted in the first place. Not into the infantry, anyway.”

“No? Where would you have rather gone?”

“Siege engineer corps. Spent half my life studying for that.”

“So that’s how we didn’t kill ourselves on that pulley.”

Riccardo chuckled despite himself. Then glanced briefly at Cassandra’s right arm, and motioned her back to where the ghost and the monstrous hounds were waiting. “You take the hedgehog, I’ll take Mr. Skewers?”

“Deal.”

Under the witch-knight’s unsettling scrutiny, they managed to get a small fire going, then knelt by a monstrous wolfhound each. Cassandra placed one hand over the messy, blood-clumped coat, and took the shaft of an arrow sticking from its flank into the other, immediately eliciting a thunderous growl.

Calm, Rastaban, the ghost said firmly.

The growling subsided momentarily. Cassandra held her breath and pulled the arrow out, causing the wolfhound to yelp in pain, then tossed the arrow into the fire. The stench of burning flight feathers filled the air. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Riccardo watching, then carefully bracing a foot against the other monstrous hound’s flank and pulling out a spear, only to break it over his knee for good measure and toss the halves into the fire as well. The weapons seemed to burn more easily than the firewood itself—arrows, crossbow bolts, swords, spears, javelins, axes, the fletching curling up in the matter of seconds, the hafts and hilts cracking in half like a log put into a fireplace, even the metal shrivelling away like a dry leaf placed against hot coals as the witch-knight glared silently into the flames. And with each weapon removed, the giant monstrous wolfhounds seemed to lose their monstrosity. Their teeth started resembling those of a mundane dog. Their size dwindled to normal. Their coats faded from the tangle of darkness and shadow into something smoother, if just as insubstantial, until Cassandra was gathering up arrows by the handful with no flesh to be torn up by pulling them out anymore, and Riccardo was picking out shards of broken sword-blades and spearheads from the soil between the other hound’s ribs. With nothing left to cause them pain anymore, the wolfhounds turned out to be nothing more than any other corpse along the battlefield: dead, and long-decayed into a full set of skeletal remains.

My boys deserved a kinder end, the witch-knight said quietly.

“They’re free now,” Cassandra told him. “Will you follow them?”

The ghost gave her a patient look. I shall not rest till war is done, knight-errant. If one who is a sibling-in-arms to me lays rightful claim to this land and brings it back into the fold of Koto, then and only then will I find rest, knowing that my oaths are unbroken and carried forth in another’s hands. He stepped aside, then, causing the mist to reveal a headless and partially crushed corpse on the ground behind him, clad in destroyed plate and pierced with multiple arrows, not unlike one of his hounds had been. Take my armour and my lance. See them returned into the hands of my King, that my brethren may know I await them.

“What of your mortal remains, my lord?”

I am Étienne of Koto, the dead witch-knight said calmly. Whatever man may have lived in those bones had given his life away on the day I was sworn into service to the crown. They matter none, and have not since, not beyond being a tool to move my soul and advance the will of my King.

Cassandra bowed her head in a sharp motion, trying to ignore the dismayed look on Riccardo’s face and the deep sense of understanding that statement had invoked from inside her own heart. “As you say, Sir Étienne.”

She waved the halberdier forward, and together they managed to disassemble the pitiful remains of the suit of plate from the desiccated corpse. When they stood up to pull the lance from the ground and take it along with the deformed wolf’s head helmet, the ghost was gone, and the severed head had stopped breathing.

“I hate this place so much,” Riccardo said serenely.

“You can say that again.”

The halberdier pointed at a familiar massive two-handed sword with a flamed blade, laying on the barren soil nearby. “Do we take that, as well?”

Cassandra paused, unsure. Then shrugged around the armful of plate. “Sure, why not?”

With a sigh, Riccardo managed to sling the weapon over his back next to his halberd, then took the lance in one hand and tucked the cloven breastplate under his other arm. “Where to next, o servant of Corona?”

“Don’t call me that.” Cassandra heaved the rest of the plate suit in both arms. “Silberstadt, maybe? We need a merchant to take these to the court of Koto for us. And a box, I guess.”

Riccardo indicated the eight-foot-long lance. “More like a coffin. After I break this thing in half.”

“You know what, packing all of this into a coffin is gonna be the least morbid thing I’ve done this week.”

Chapter Text

With the fog-choked battlefield left as far behind as they could travel before the sun began to set, Cassandra and Riccardo chose one of the countryside’s abandoned orchards to stay the night in this time. The small campfire’s woodsmoke, pleasantly fragrant, was dispersed enough through the branches that Cassandra worried less about being spotted from afar as she laid both their cloaks out in the grass, spread the witch-knight’s partially destroyed suit of plate over them, and began to clean it in the earnest. Riccardo, in the meantime, had climbed one of the trees and was tossing apples to Fidella and the pinto gelding they were still keeping around.

“You sure you don’t want any help?”

“No, I’ve got this.” Cassandra huffed onto a reasonably intact pauldron and worked the soft cloth against the mist of her breath. “How hard, do you think, will it be to find a Kotoan merchant here?”

“Oh, I rode in with one, I just ditched him when that scammer showed up with five hundred gold upfront and a promise of more after.” Riccardo shifted onto another branch. “That’ll be about two weeks ago, now. Depending on how deep into Equis he planned on going, we’ll probably have to wait a few days, up to a week, until he turns up again.”

“I can work with that.”

“Yeah, me too. Worse comes to worst, we take another posting together, what do you think?”

Cassandra considered. She’s not seen the halberdier in a fight yet, but his equipment and the way he carried himself suggested a practiced and opportunistic fighter. He also seemed reasonably forthright, what with having told her of the conman’s plan to pit them against each other in the first place and their easy cooperation on keeping things clear and simple with the treasures ever since, as well as sincerely grateful to her for the way she spoke up for him before the witch-knight’s ghost. In moments of downtime, he wasn’t forcing conversation or pushing her to share more than she wanted to. If she decided to form a team with someone, he would be a fine choice to start with, really. There was nothing stopping her if she wanted to.

But then again, she kind of didn’t want to.

Cassandra realized that she was letting the silence linger. “I don’t have anything against you. It would be smart to team up with you. I just think I’m not– I’m not ready to do that again, join other people for the long haul, not yet. We do this together and go our separate ways, alright?”

“That’s fair, yeah.” Riccardo gave her a sympathetic look. “Got burned on shitty teamwork before, huh?”

“You could say that,” Cassandra allowed, trying not to think about the years of receiving dismissal only as constant as the effort she’d put forth.

“You and every other sellsword on the continent. It happens, and solo work is a fine counterweight every now and then,” Riccardo said simply, then took a bite out an apple. “But hey—you find yourself further in Equis land and looking for a partner or a small team to join up with, you ask around for me, okay? It’s better when you have someone in your corner from the start, strength in numbers and all.”

“I’ll remember that. Thanks.”

They both let the matter drop after that, Cassandra focusing on making the mangled suit of plate somewhat presentable, Riccardo gathering more firewood and concocting some variety of stew with fresh water brought from a nearby stream, some of the rations they had each, and the orchard’s fresh apples. He’d winced when Cassandra started cleaning out the armour on the inside as well, stained and crusted as it was with a decade and a half of its wearer’s body decomposing under its breached shell, but said nothing. The horses weren’t thrilled with the smell of it seeping into her gloves, either, when she laid the armour aside and went to groom them—first Fidella, then the skittish gelding, who seemed to have begun leaning towards accepting her already, particularly after she managed to pick a stone out of one of his hooves. When Cassandra looked down at herself after all of that, she realized that to partake in the stew right now would not only be unpleasant, but borderline unsanitary.

“I think I’m gonna go take a bath.”

“You do that,” Riccardo agreed with feeling. “I’ll stay here. Food’s still gonna be warm once you get back.”

Cassandra left the medallion, the sword, and the snowglobe in the grass, earning a nod of acknowledgement from Riccardo, and discreetly signalled Owl to stay. Then she went through her saddlebags to find the one with a change of clothes, and on second thought grabbed her bow case and quiver as well before heading towards the nearby stream. With the sun yet to fully set, the water would be as warm as it could get—and as private as it could get.

When she reached the stream, Cassandra pulled out the red bandit scarf she used to carry the jade medallion in, and gathered up dry sand from the stream’s bank to wrap inside the fabric. With the resulting bundle hanging from a tree branch nearby, she strung her hunting bow, and pulled out one of the falcon-fletched carrier arrows.

“Time to see what you’re good for,” she said quietly to the bulbous arrowhead and the flights dyed bright blue.

Kneeling down by the stream, Cassandra gathered some of the water into her left palm and dipped the arrowhead in it. There was a faint gurgling sound, as if slits in the metal had indeed taken the water inside. She shook the arrowhead, and thought she could hear a faint sloshing sound, as well. She stood up straight, nocked the arrow, aimed at the sand-filled scarf, and loosed it—hitting the mark dead on, easy as it was to target, although the arrow had indeed felt a little off due to the arrowhead’s shape and added weight. Setting the bow aside, Cassandra walked over to the bundled scarf, took the arrow by the shaft, and carefully pulled it out.

The once-bulbous arrowhead was now but a sliver of metal, all of its edges sharp enough to cut herself on, and tearing at the scarf’s threads with a pair of barbs still remaining on the sliver. It had fragmented indeed—quite thoroughly so.

Cassandra took the scarf off the branch, untied it, and began to carefully sift through the sand. Wet sand, she noticed with a smidge of surprise. She hadn’t expected the liquid carrier part to actually hold true. Certainly not to this degree, at least.

Then again, she hadn’t expected to count no less than seventeen shards of metal, in addition to the one remaining on the shaft, no matter how peculiarly-shape the arrowhead used to be. Had the sand been the guts of a living being, she would have turned them into a goulash of razorblades and gore, before even considering a load more deadly than simple freshwater.

And there were three more of these monsters inside her quiver.

She broke the eighteenth shard off the arrow’s shaft, discarded them all into the streambed along with the sand, and kept the headless blue-fletched arrow. Then she walked far enough away up the stream to be certain she wouldn’t cut herself on the broken pieces of her own arrow, started taking her clothes off, and paused when it came to her right glove.

Keep it warm, keep it dry, Adira had advised her on her last day in Corona. Warmth had indeed helped with the pain in her withered arm—but cold, Cassandra had noticed, was helping as well. The entire affected area was in less pain on cold days. The hand itself had a wider range of movement, and maybe even a slightly stronger grip, on cold days. And she hadn’t noticed anything about dry conditions helping or otherwise, not to date.

But every time the pain had flared or her grip had failed, it had been on a rainy day, hadn’t it?

Cassandra shook her head. Keep it dry or get it wet, she still had to wash the mosaic of dirt from the glove, and those she didn’t have a spare pair of. So she stripped down to bare skin, did her best to clean the glove using her left hand only, hung it to dry, and decided to attempt to bathe without getting her withered arm into the water.

It turned out to be an unexpectedly complicated endeavour.

By the time she was done, she had firmly resolved to next time wash her clothes first and herself after, even as she towelled her hair off and shrugged clean clothes on. With the right glove still damp, Cassandra folded her thumb as close to the palm as she could and awkwardly pulled the left glove onto her withered arm, careful with the split fingernails and the lack of reinforcements, and set to washing the outfit caked with the road’s dust, the uncobbled streets’ mud, the old battlefield’s grime, the horses’ hair, and more.

The water was warm near the surface, but the current of it carried a hint of cold. The stones patchworked through the streambed were smooth; the reeds growing along the bank were firm; the sand flowing between threaded through her fingers. Cassandra let her healthy hand linger against each. She hadn’t even realized that she missed touching things without leather or fabric in the way, just with bare skin, until she was doing it again.

The sun had set and the moon had come out in the earnest when Cassandra finally walked back to the campfire and hung her wet clothes out to dry. Riccardo lifted his head to look askance at her, from where he sat by the sizeable stack of firewood.

“That took a while. You good?”

“Yeah.” Cassandra poured herself a ladleful of stew, making sure to sit with her left side to the halberdier. “You want first watch?”

Riccardo gestured to the food. “Eat like a normal person and stay up the rest of the hour. If your bird can take second and wake me up for third, though, that’d be great.”

Hoot, Owl aquiesced easily.

“We can work with that.” Cassandra focused on her food, and ignored the way Riccardo looked between her and Owl before shaking his head and settling down to sleep with his face to the night. Once he stopped fidgeting, she peeled the glove off her withered hand and put it to the fire, hoping for some of those lauded warmth and dryness.

It still hadn’t gotten any worse—except for the two broken and haphazardly glued back together fingernails. Cassandra gingerly prodded at each with a healthy fingertip. Both halves of the middle one have gotten looser, its root slowly becoming yet another tiny fissure in the expanse of cracked, scorched skin. One half of the ring one, however, held in place more firmly. That would have to come off by force, or run the risk on catching on something and getting torn out in a less planned, more violent fashion. She flexed the hand open and closed, studying how she could no longer clench a fist, how none of the joints in her fingers fully straightened anymore.

At least it wasn’t the only reminder of home that she would carry everywhere she went, Cassandra thought as she put the withered hand against the favour tied around her left arm.

She leaned back where she was sitting, staring up through the latticework of branches and leaves, the thin wisp of smoke filtering up and the moonlight shining down. Cassandra tilted her head to get a better look. It was a full moon.

Her second full moon out of Castle Corona.

With a slowly growing sense of dismay, Cassandra realized that she had promised to write, then neglected to do so for a month and a half now.

She folded her hands, healthy if pale against scorched and numb. What was there to even write of? Each reminder, each thought of Rapunzel ran hot and cold through her veins, poured love through her chest and chased it down with howling resentment and washed it off with a raw and naked hurt and drowned it all under a tidal wave of unspeakable exhaustion rising so high as to block out the sun. What was she supposed to say, washed ashore amid the wreckage of their shared past as she had been, just one broken piece among so many? What was she supposed to look through the driftwood for?

Six weeks, and all Cassandra had to show for herself was a mess of contradictory feelings that all rang true at the same time. Six full weeks, and she still couldn’t think about this yet.

Six weeks of silence. Raps had to be climbing the walls by now.

Cassandra sighed, and looked back at the dead witch-knight’s suit of plate. One task at a time: send the treasure-laden armour to the Kotoan court first, worry about feelings later.

That was going to be a whole another letter that she’d have to write, as well. Easier. Formal. A warm-up, she realized with the smallest glimmer of hope. Court etiquette was something she’d spent most of her life ingrained in, a set of expectations and rules she knew the cadence of and knew the part of each instrument in—and knew that, as knight-errant, she had a different tone to sound than she used to as lady-in-waiting. No longer a background murmur that could only rise through the symphony if it was echoed by a blooded, titled, and blazoned noble deigning to take it from her and claim it as their own. Now, hers was a bold motif that stood alone against that orchestral weave, ringing clear in the silence of more powerful voices pausing. And while it didn’t guarantee that she would be heeded, it did ensure she would be heard. While it didn’t command, it did inspire, making sure that she would be impossible to ignore any longer—and even if it would not be taken up and repeated, it would be unforgettable, perhaps even to become the most memorable part of the symphony within her generation’s lifetime. While it didn’t grant her song the immediate recognition of one sung by someone more important, it did give her the space to carve out that recognition for herself, and to do so with her own strengths and virtues now forced to be acknowledged by the powers-that-be with the mark she carried on her arm, beside her scarred-up heart.

It had been an apology, a gesture of repentance—the first meaningful one.

She could write a formal letter. Feel herself against the walls she knew, familiar spaces, familiar limits. Find how her place within them changed from handmaiden through traitor to knight-errant. And then she could find where breaking those limits and demolishing those walls and opening those spaces left her, because that was what Raps had always done, intentionally or not—with the power of heiress apparent in her hands, there was little she could be denied and few who could deny her, and she left everyone who had spent their lives within the cadence of rules she had been stolen away from fumbling for what to say, what to do, what to think. She could write a formal letter, and do something she knew how to do, before trying to do something she had been avoiding.

Cassandra paused, and had to stifle a hollow laugh at herself. An official missive addressed to the ruler of an allied kingdom—and she was finding solace in thinking about that as practice before the letter to a friend.

She spent the rest of her watch considering what to write in that missive, composing within the cadence she knew so well. Then she signalled Owl to take second watch and laid down to sleep, the withered arm wrapped in her blanket at the cost of exposing a shoulder to the cold night air instead. Two hours later, Riccardo shook her awake, and she stood watch while he slept again, and then she waited until Owl returned with the remains of some unfortunate rodent in his talons to stay up for them both.

There was a sort of cadence to this, as well, a rhythm that Cassandra knew and could easily slip back into, but the thought of surrendering to it again so quickly was repulsive. She knew she would eventually have to find a partner or a group—she knew it was unfair to entrust the burden her safety, in the times she would spend resting or injured, solely to Owl and Fidella—but not yet, not while she was still nursing the cuts sheared through her heart with her last group raising obliviousness and dismissal to the rank of cheerful cruelty, her last partner fine-tuning greed and malice until they were almost a form of art, almost beautiful, evoking a gut-wrenching fascination that made it hard to look away. Each was a wound, and like any other, it threatened reopening if she worked the injured limb too much, too quickly. She’d rest among people again, Cassandra promised herself, but on her own terms, and not just yet.

When morning came, it came with a hefty layer of dew, and with the sound of a sawblade grinding against wood and metal. Cassandra pawed for her reinforced glove and put it on, then pushed herself up from her bedroll to find that Riccardo had pulled a small saw from his belongings and was methodically shearing through the shaft of the witch-knight’s lance. Practical, she thought. Certainly less dramatic than breaking it. And two four-foot lengths of wood would be immeasurably easier to conceal and transport than a single eight-foot-long lance.

Riccardo turned his head as he noticed her moving, and gave her a nod. “It’s slow, but I’m getting there.”

“Good. Keep going.” Cassandra gave the campsite a once-over. Treasures in their place, armour in its place, Owl snoozing on a low branch, the horses nearby. Nothing seemed amiss. She sorted through the conman’s papers again and picked each that laid out the scam’s setup and progress, then sat cross-legged, put the witch-knight’s reasonably intact backplate in her lap as a makeshift scribing pulpit, and pulled out a dip quill, a carefully packed flask of ink, and a few blank sheets of paper. “I’ve been thinking about what to write. Keep it simple: we came across a thief stealing your stuff from other thieves, recognized the treasures, decided to send them back, here’s your knight’s gear for good measure, we packed it with the treasures and didn’t let the delivery guy know to make sure nothing gets stolen all over again. Attached are the thief’s papers. We killed him, by the way. Signed, me and you.”

“I mean, it’s pretty much what happened, if glossing over how we were ready to steal these things ourselves,” Riccardo said over the partway sawed-through lance.

“It’s a report, not a confession. Besides, we could have, but we didn’t—we went out of our way to be fair to that witch-knight instead. I’ll draft this thing, then you can look it over.”

“Sounds fair.”

Cassandra unstoppered the ink, thinking fiercely. Given that they were sending the treasures back, she needed to address the king of Koto. Given that they were sending the witch-knight’s gear along with the treasures, she should address the head of his order—she didn’t have to, strictly speaking, as the court would just pass the armour over to the order anyway, but it would strike a dissonant tone to do Koto the courtesy of retrieving the dead man’s armour yet not the courtesy of speaking directly to those who would lay it to rest. Given that the treasures were originally gifted as wedding presents to the current King’s grandparents, the Kotoan crown prince of decades past and a princess of the royal house of Bayangor, it would be appropriate to use the titles passed down both sides of his ancestry. Given that they were writing the court of Koto from the land, and concerning a matter, that was contested between Equis and Koto, it would also be appropriate to subtly indicate that she thought Koto was in the right in this feud, whether by more titles or by word choice later on.

And given that she wasn’t going to be able to do calligraphy, not today and not ever again, the rest of the letter had to be immaculate to compensate for it.

She tapped her fingertips against the backplate, muttering a mnemonic she’d been taught to remember the style of address of Kotoan royalty, then dipped the quill in, and started writing.

Unto His Majesty, Lysander, King of Koto on This Side of the Seas and Beyond Them, Prince of Noriyuki, Grandson of Heaven, Lord of Conquest, Navigation, and Commerce, etc., and Her Most Reverend Eminence, Mercedes de Carrasquilo y Iglesias, Grand Mistress of the Tribunal Order of Knights of the Royal Office of the Inquisition, does

Cassandra of Corona, knight-errant to Her Royal Highness, Rapunzel, Crown Princess of Corona, send salutations.

May it please Your Majesty and Your Eminence,

I include this missive to detail the sequence of events that saw the chief contents of this parcel passing through the hands of myself and my companion.

Five days ago as of the morning I write this message, I have come across an impostor claiming the name and the château of House Bayard as part of a scheme to seize three items that belong in the hands of the Kotoan Crown: a medallion, a sword, and an artwork. Upon recovering all three within these past five days and dispensing justice to the impostor himself, my companion and I resolved to have the items returned to Your Majesty’s court in a discreet manner, as to avoid any further theft. Following my companion’s excellent suggestion, we then retrieved the equipment of the late Sir Étienne of Your Eminence’s order from an old battlefield (known locally as Wolf’s Head Hollow) and concealed the items within it.

The merchant we have sold the privilege of returning Sir Étienne’s armour to was not made aware of these items, this missive, or the attached documents taken from the impostor. It is my utmost belief that their reward should reflect their show of faith to the crown, if Your Majesty and Your Eminence find it wise, and if the parcel and this letter itself arrive unopened.

I include a courtesy copy, meant for Your Eminence’s archives.

Lastly, as at present neither myself nor my companion claim a permanent place of residence, I humbly request any response is directed to the Royal Court of Corona.

Remaining in faithful service to the Seven Kingdoms,

Cassandra sanded the letter, shook her hand out, and read the entire thing over. “Hey, I think it holds up. Come and see.”

Riccardo set the lance and the saw aside, and walked up to Cassandra to read over her shoulder. “...Holy shit, woman.”

“What?”

“Fucking—” the halberdier gestured wildly to the letter. “—knight-errant up in this bitch, I would have written 'Dear King'!”

“Oh, no.” Cassandra winced, even as she couldn’t help a laugh, thinking about what the tutors who schooled her and the other Coronian handmaidens on court etiquette would’ve had to say about that.

“And going into the hollow was an 'excellent suggestion', now?”

Cassandra shrugged. “Credit where it’s due. I didn’t do this alone.”

Riccardo gave her a confused look. “Are you sure you don’t want to team up? I’m getting some mixed signals, here.”

“No. Not yet. I’ll try to find you when I’m good and ready.” She wrote Cassandra of Corona at the bottom of the letter and handed the quill to Riccardo. “Sign under my name. And please use your best handwriting so that I only have to rewrite the entire thing once.”

The halberdier knelt down and carefully signed, Riccardo Leonori, precisely under Cassandra’s signature. “Good enough?”

“Yeah, it’ll do.” Cassandra gently took the letter by the corners and shook the sand off in one firm gesture, avoiding smudging the ink, then set the letter aside, placed a dagger across it as a paperweight, and sanded their signatures in turn.

“Hey,” Riccardo said after a moment, still standing next to her instead of going back to the partially sawed-through lance. “Can you look at something for me?”

“What’ve you got?” Cassandra asked without turning to him as she cleaned the quill’s nib, preparing to copy the letter.

“I mean, you obviously know your shit around all the... courtly shit. And you’ll be sealing that, right?”

“I don’t have a seal. Just wax and cord will have to do.”

Riccardo cleared his throat awkwardly, and handed her a signet ring that hung from a length of braided leather to be worn around the neck. Cassandra stared.

“And you didn’t bring this up any sooner why?”

“Because I don’t know what it says,” Riccardo said uncomfortably. “Leonore is my mother’s name, and she nicked this off my father one night to have something of his to give me. They weren’t exactly, uh...”

“Married?”

“Yeah no, they definitely weren’t married.”

Cassandra took the signet, holding it to the light and squinting at it. The thick band was brass covered with gold, nicked or rubbed off in places; the gem itself, likely some variety of agate, judging by the pattern across it and by how much cheaper than carnelian or sardonyx it would have been. She studied the engraving for a long while.

“I mean, it is a coat-of-arms for sure, but I don’t recognize it. No coronet or diadem overtop, no division per pale to put the royal wolfhound in the dexter, there’s a lot of petty nobles in Koto and I can’t imagine trying to memorize all of their crests. I don’t even know if we’d find a record of that anywhere outside of the royal archives.” She handed the signet back, and only then noticed the discouraged look on Riccardo’s face. “...But if we seal the letter with it, the court might actually look through their records for who carried or is carrying the crest—and with you signing a name derived from that of your mother, they’ll assume you don’t know. All the more reason to check themselves, since they can’t ask you.”

The halberdier mulled that over. “You think so?”

“I mean, they won’t think it’s mine.” Cassandra gestured at the letter. “If I had my own crest, I would be using that, instead of calling myself a knight-errant and talking about the princess for days. It might be worth a shot.”

“Yeah,” Riccardo conceded, paused, then nodded more firmly. “Yeah, it might, let’s do that.”

“Then let me write that copy and we’ll get on it.”

In the end, she had to write two copies—her withered hand twitched and seized up when she was almost done the first time over, dragging a smear of ink over already scribed words. Just as well, Cassandra admitted to herself even as she let out a groan and started over, paying far more attention to her hand and taking a small break after every sentence now. Better to have a copy for herself, just as a reminder of what she had written to two of the most powerful people in an allied kingdom.

By the time she was done, Riccardo had finished sawing through the lance and started gathering up the suit of plate, packing its elements into saddlebags or loose sacks. Cassandra waved him over to sign the copy as well, and when she was certain the ink was dry, she folded the letter and its copy, wrapped a length of fine cord from her scribing kit around that and the conman’s documents, gathered its edges together against those of the letter, then dripped sealing wax over them and pressed the ring against it, making certain that any tampering with the papers would be immediately obvious. After splitting the plate suit, the halved lance, and the sheathless two-handed sword between Fidella and the pinto gelding, they broke up camp and rode towards Silberstadt at an easy pace, crossing the town walls by midday.

They were drawing a bit of attention with their purchases in town, Cassandra noticed—a small rectangular coffin and a multitude of cloth and fur scraps from several shopkeepers were screaming 'chest and padding for buried treasure', she supposed—but more than that, those stares both of them were drawing in equal measure, and from the locals. Riccardo, however, was getting stared at differently as well—by the guards. Who wore Equisian uniforms.

“It’s not just me, right?” Riccardo asked quietly. “The guards are looking at me like I’m their date to the harvest festival.”

“It’s not just you. Something’s wrong here,” Cassandra said, keeping her voice down as well. “Did the merchant you rode in with have horses?”

“Yeah, he had a cart.”

Cassandra pulled on the reins to turn the gelding around. “The Brazen Brigand is the only place to stay with a stable, isn’t it? Go ask when was the last time they’ve seen that merchant. I’ll stay with the horses.”

Riccardo gave her a cautious look, but didn’t say anything, and walked into the inn while Cassandra remained outside, still mounted. She scanned the streets, suspicion churning in her gut.

There was a pair of guards standing at a less-than-busy crossroads. Innocuous enough, but they were keeping an eye on the Kotoan furrier’s shop, not on the streets. Another pair was following a family of four, the mother carrying a small child and the father leading a toddler by the hand, all of rather obvious Kotoan heritage. The market square had half again as many patrols as she would’ve said were necessary, and the stationary ones were always keeping the stands with Kotoan vendors or Kotoan wares within their sight. Things were tense—far more tense than when she had passed through, less than a full week ago—and the guards were fuelling that instead of de-escalating it.

Barely a minute later, Riccardo walked out of the tavern, his face changed and his steps oddly hurried.

“Are you some kind of sorceress?”

Cassandra stiffened. “Excuse me?”

“He came through last night and rode home this morning.” Riccardo climbed back into Fidella’s saddle, if somewhat clumsily. “Equis closed the borders to Kotoan trade three days ago. How the fuck are you doing this?”

“Woman’s intuition,” Cassandra deadpanned without thinking. Half a day of a head start. The merchant had a cart—they had a palace guard horse. “Let’s get out of here and pack that coffin, then one of us takes Fidella to catch the merchant, the other takes the package and keeps walking to catch up.”

“Whoever stays will get attacked. We’re being tailed, have been since we came into town.”

“Then I guess it should be me, because I can have Owl keep an eye out from the sky.”

The halberdier sighed heavily. “You’re going to get yourself killed, and just when I was starting to like you.”

“You got a better idea?”

“Pack the coffin, hang it between the horses, work them to catch up.”

Cassandra thought for a moment. The gelding and Fidella haven’t worked together before, nor had she worked them on anything together before. But if there was a definite strength to Fidella’s character, it was that she was a born-and-bred team player—while Maximus was perfect for the guard because he had a forceful personality and a tendency for taking the lead, Fidella was perfect for the guard because she was capable of moulding herself against any partner, be it another horse or a rider, adjusting herself to match their pace and putting forth anything that was needed of her. Whether a chase, a scouting assignment, or pulling a wagon across hundreds of miles of unknown territory, a pair that Fidella was a part of just did not fail.

So Cassandra turned to the mare. “Do you think you two can make this work?”

Snort, Fidella said confidently.

“Okay, then.” Cassandra nudged the gelding into a trot, and as Fidella fell in step, she caught the resigned look on Riccardo’s face. “What? Don’t tell me you still think talking to animals is creepy.”

“Oh no, it was creepy with the bird,” Riccardo said calmly. “I was just thinking about how it’s not me riding your horse, it’s your horse carting me around.”

Cassandra chuckled. “You did say you’re not a cavalryman.”

“I sure as fuck aren’t. I can’t wait to walk on my own legs again.”

Once the town walls were far enough behind them, Cassandra pulled the gelding off the road and sent Owl ahead to scout, hoping he could find the merchant and gauge whether they’d be able to catch up within the day. Then she set to wrapping the three treasures in rags while Riccardo was bolting the two-handed sword and the sawed-through lance to the bottom of the coffin, and together, they carefully layered the witch-knight’s mangled plate inside, using more scraps of cloth and fur as padding around the armour and stuffing around the treasures: the sword inside the intact greave, the medallion inside the intact gauntlet, and the snowglobe at the tassets’ waistband. Cassandra then tucked the sealed packet of documents under the breastplate and helped Riccardo close the coffin without nailing it shut for now, hastily constructing a cradle of sorts from two coils of rope and suspending it from Fidella’s and the gelding’s backs. She looked up at the sound of hooting; Owl was back, circling around in the air instead of landing on her shoulder to indicate that they needed to hurry. They mounted the horses again, and Cassandra made sure to steer the gelding and call out to Fidella at the same time, directing the horses first into a trot, then once they caught a rhythm, into a canter. It still took several hours before even spotting the merchant’s cart—or its three armoured guards, for that matter.

Riccardo raised an arm to hail them as soon as the guards saw them in turn and the cart slowed to a halt. “Trade! Trade!”

“You must think you’re very funny,” the man who was driving the cart said dryly. He was the only one wearing clothes instead of armour, if clothes a little more fine than the garb of ex-miners and craftsmen from Silberstadt, and in a definite Kotoan fashion. The merchant, Cassandra assumed. “I am ruined, sellsword, ruined! There isn’t a trade in the world that could make up for this entire wasted trip.”

“I beg to differ,” Cassandra called out, while Riccardo dismounted to slide the coffin’s lid backwards a little.

The merchant looked at her in turn, clearly unsure what to make of her when she held her left arm out for Owl to swoop down onto. “What’s a Coronian looking for in the bottom end of nowhere?”

“Fame and fortune,” Cassandra deadpanned.

Riccardo then managed to wrestle the coffin into submission and pulled out the witch-knight’s mangled helmet, holding it up by one upright lupine ear. The merchant stared at it for a moment before recognition flashed on his face, and his eyes widened.

“Where on earth did you get that?!”

“Haunted ground,” Riccardo said easily. “There’s a full set inside this. Trade?”

“But by all means!”

Cassandra helped Riccardo haul the open coffin into the cart, and stayed quiet while the two Kotoans engaged in a spirited dispute over the price, choosing instead to keep the three guards in her sight and make sure the armour wasn’t disturbed enough to discover the documents or the treasures. When the merchant finally shook Riccardo’s hand, agreeing to the price of three and a half thousand gold coins for the witch-knight’s equipment and the pinto gelding, the sun had begun to set; with money exchanged, Riccardo and Cassandra nailed the coffin shut in the merchant’s presence, and made a bit of headway back towards the town before nightfall. Come morning, Cassandra found the halberdier waiting for her to wake up off his last watch shift.

“I guess it’s time to split the money and split up, huh?”

“I guess so.” Cassandra tested her withered arm. Painful, a little moreso than usual, but not too much to handle. “Fifty-fifty, you said?”

“Nah. Taking a hundred and seventy-five,” the halberdier gathered up a small stack of gold, laid out next to the significantly fatter purse. “Five percent after, like I was hired for. The rest’s yours. You saved my life, now we’re even.”

Cassandra stared at him for a moment. “What am I gonna do with all this money?”

Riccardo laughed. “You’ll find something to do with it, trust me.” He stood up, halberd slung across his shoulders like a water-bearer’s stick. “I’ll see you around, I hope.”

“Still heading deeper into Equis land?”

“Yeah. Closed borders with Koto means that Koto-trained sellswords like me will be in higher demand. I’m going to give Silberstadt a berth, though, so this is goodbye.”

Cassandra nodded, and shook his extended hand. “Thank you.”

“You as well, and good luck.”

And with that he left, trudging off the road and across the countryside. Cassandra dug a hand through the pouch of money, dredging up gold and only ever more gold.

Hoot, Owl commented.

“No, I hadn’t expected that, either.”

Snort, Fidella said.

“I think he was okay, too.”

They settled into an easy pace towards the walls of Silberstadt again, and before they got too far, it started raining again. And quite like when they first entered the former mining town, nary a week ago, Cassandra was a rain-soaked rat of a woman before she could even see the settlement rising through the rainfall and mist.

Except that this time—and she couldn’t keep a grin off her face at the admission of the truth of it—she had more to her name than a gold-trimmed kerchief and a castle-forged sword. She had thwarted a scheme to fence the stolen treasures of an allied kingdom to Equis, held her own against enemies fully intent on killing her, made allies if not outright friends, and helped people: some living and some dead.

She paused for a moment on that thought. Then evened the purse out to three thousand gold, switching the remaining three hundred and twenty five coins to her own pouches and pockets. Maybe she did know what to do with all that money, after all.

When she did cross the town walls of Silberstadt, instead of heading to the Brazen Brigand or the job board, she nudged Fidella towards the clinic. A knock on the door, and a fairly burly man she hadn’t seen before opened it for her.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m here to see Emil. Tell him Cassandra is asking, please.”

The man’s eyes widened, and he gestured her inside immediately. “Oh, you’re the one who brought us the woundwort! I’m Bruno, I’m Eliza’s husband, Emil is with a patient right now but if you don’t mind waiting a few minutes, I’ll let him know right away.”

Cassandra inclined her head to him, even as she took a moment on the doormat to get at least the worst of the mud off of her boots. The herbalist’s daughter soon came through, with armfuls of small flasks and clean bandages.

“Oh, hello.” She gave Cassandra a thorough look. “...You don’t seem injured or dying this time, either.”

“I’m quite alright,” Cassandra assured. “I’d like to speak with you and your father soon as he’s free.”

“Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. We only have the one patient right now.”

“How is she doing?”

“Better, thanks to you. Don’t think she’ll be walking again anytime soon, but she’s well away from being on death’s door, and we still have woundwort to spare.”

“Enough of it, do you think?”

“We’re stocked for months,” Eliza said candidly. Then gave a little sideways nod. “Unless Koto starts rolling soldiers through the area again, of course. Then we’re stocked for weeks.”

“I’ve heard of the closed borders, has there been no unrest?” Cassandra asked carefully.

Eliza winced. “Some, but nothing nearly as brutal as what Tara’s been through. A few broken noses, a few black eyes. And the furrier’s shop was vandalized overnight. Funny how much trouble the guards are having with trying to find who did that, though.”

“So funny,” Cassandra said slowly. “No other shops?”

“No, but that was the only storefront shop with a Kotoan seller, not just a stand or a tent set up in the marketplace every other day. Which, I’m sure there’s no relation at all.”

“None whatsoever.” Cassandra turned at the sound of footsteps, and greeted Emil with a nod as he descended the stairs, Bruno in tow.

“Hello again,” the elderly herbalist smiled at her warmly. “What brings you here?”

Cassandra put the three-thousand-gold pouch in his hands. “I find myself better off than expected. And, with respect, I’ve seen the condition of this place—you’ll put this to better use than I could.”

“Well, goodness me,” Emil said softly in a sudden silence.

“Are—” Eliza stared for a moment before looking at Cassandra again. “Are you serious?”

Cassandra folded her hands behind her back. “Do I look like I’m joking?”

The herbalist’s daughter and her husband turned to each other.

“We could fix the roof,” Bruno said.

“And the windows.”

“We could set the attic up for more beds.”

“And replace the rotten bookcases.”

“Holy shit, this might be enough to fix the entire building.”

“We’ll have to budget, but after we do, it genuinely might.”

Cassandra cleared her throat. “I was planning on staying more or less put for two or three weeks, and I’ve been part of renovation works before. I’d lend my aid, if you’ll have me, of course.”

“There is no one else we would rather have,” Emil said firmly as he placed one hand on Cassandra’s arm. “Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, from all our hearts.”

“This is going to take a while to set up. We’ll need to run a few errands, ask a few people around town.” Eliza set the pouch of gold down on a table. “But if you want to help more than you just did, I’m not about to turn that down, just check in around midday.”

Cassandra nodded. “I’ll stable my horse, and tend to another matter.”

“But really though, thank you.”

“Quite alright. I’ll be back in a few hours.” Cassandra exited the clinic, leaving the three to their excited planning, and led Fidella to the Brazen Brigand. The same stable boy took Fidella, and Cassandra requested a hammock in the stall straight away. Without entering the dining area, she followed the boy to the stable, and he cleared out immediately upon noticing her insistence to tend to her steed herself.

Snort, Fidella said, and put her nose to Cassandra’s neck for a moment.

“I know. We did good. You did great,” Cassandra stroked the mare’s face for a moment. “Things are like they should be.”

Hoot, Owl said pointedly from the rafters.

Cassandra looked up at him. “I was going to ask about that, actually. See, I haven’t planned, really, to end up in Equis territory. I thought I’d be sending letters through the Seven Kingdoms' joint postal service, but Equis doesn’t have that.”

Hoot, Owl confirmed.

“So would you be willing to play messenger pigeon for me and Raps?”

Hoot, Owl said, sounding almost offended that she thought he’d refuse her.

Cassandra laughed, relief trickling through her chest, finding a place for itself next to the quiet triumph she’d felt ever since last evening and dislodging a bit of the heavy knot of worry, tiredness, resignation, and worse tangled through her chest for months now. Then she put another piece of paper against the stable’s wall, scribed a note, and picked a few small trinkets.

She’d promised to write, and to send back treasures from her travels. And maybe it had taken her over six weeks to find something worth writing home about, but she had, she thought as she exited the stable and boosted Owl into the sky, watching him disappear through the rain as he flew towards Castle Corona.

Chapter Text

Over the next days, Cassandra settled into a comfortable routine, however temporary it was going to be. Wake up in the Brazen Brigand’s stable, make sure all of her belongings were accounted for, break fast at the tavern’s countertop, head to the clinic and spend the day helping in renovation work there, take Fidella out for a run in the afternoon, check back in before sundown. Whether it was carrying stacks of wooden planks or baskets of roof shingles, shifting the family’s belongings from one room to another, chiselling off crumbled plaster or placing fresh layers after scrubbing the mould, bringing some new—if simple—furniture from across town or chopping the rot-free sections of the old into firewood, there was always more to do, and at the end of each day she found herself exhausted yet accomplished. On the third morning, she realized that Sebastian, the Brigand’s owner, was charging her less for the stable and the food; she didn’t say anything, and he didn’t either, but a sense of understanding and respect fell into place between them. On the fifth evening, Teagan, the job board’s minder, took a seat next to her and asked after the scammer who’d pretended to be a Bayard—and upon hearing that she and the 'devil-may-care halberdier from Koto' had teamed up to murder him and split the profit, he burst into delighted laughter and hailed Sebastian to buy Cassandra a drink, as promised. The Ingvarrdian fletcher and the Neserdnian smith came to the tavern every few evenings, greeting Cassandra with a lazy two-fingered salute and a simple nod respectively if they caught her eye, and she would nod back at each of them without engaging any further.

She managed to fend off the clinic family’s concern, each time she’d grimaced in pain or had to rest her withered arm, with a claim that it was an old injury long since as healed as it would ever be, simply painful from time to time—all of which was true—and politely refused to have any of the three look at it. The Moonstone’s magic was a power older than kingdoms and nations, and more than that, a power now gone; with the herbalist family’s field of expertise being firmly the mundane kind of ailments and injuries, as she was able to glean over the time spent in their company, it would bring no solutions and only needless worry to ask their help in a matter they could not help her with. She did, however, ask for advice and assistance with restocking her first-aid kit for whenever she would return to the road, and among some other items she had little or none of, she was gifted two rolls of silken bandage—for burns, she was instructed, to keep them clean and protected from the elements without sticking to the burned tissue like linen wrappings would. She’d given her thanks, knowing how much of an expense the gift must have been in a region well away from any source of silk trade, and spent the same evening with one end of the bandage in her teeth, trying for hours upon hours to wrap her withered hand and forearm in the thin, smooth, cool-to-the-touch fabric, each finger separately, a few extra passes around the wrist, the ends eventually tied together in a flat knot at the outer side of her forearm, everything double-checked and triple-checked to make sure it was loose enough to not cut off circulation to those parts of her arm that still had circulation. When she donned her reinforced glove again, it fit the wrapped hand a little too snugly, constricting the already diminished range of movement and feeling too tight when she checked with two fingers of her left hand, so she visited the furrier’s store—or what remained of it, the beautiful shop sign askew on the single intact chain and scarred as if with blows of an axe, the display window boarded up in the absence of replacement glass, significantly less wares and materials remaining inside. The furrier himself, no less devastated than his livelihood, seemed to slowly regain a semblance of hope when Cassandra handed her reinforced glove over and asked after having a second one made, but measured for her hand with the wrappings included, and when his tentative request for most of the price upfront on the account of his workspace’s sorry state was met without a word. A few days later, he found her at the Brazen Brigand when she was having her evening meal, and informed her happily that he was having the smith replicate the reinforcements. A few days later still, the furrier proudly presented her with the completed glove, and with a bit of surprise Cassandra had to admit that it was better than the original one—not only slightly larger to accommodate for fabric wrapped around the withered area, but lined with soft fur that would help cushion any impact a little more, and with the reinforcements at the fingertips, back of the hand, and circling the forearm replicated perfectly but with having accounted for the overall difference in size.

More often than not, now, she was getting recognized, whether in the tavern, in the streets, or in the town’s vicinity when taking Fidella out for the afternoon—by the merchants she had given business to, by the Brigand’s regulars, by the craftsmen she had ran errands to with Eliza or Bruno. And by the guards, who kept a careful eye on her, and made sure that she wasn’t gallivanting across Silberstadt unsupervised when none of the family of herbalists was with her. Oh, it wasn’t that she was being followed, not exactly. But it sure was curious how everywhere she went, there was at least one guard, and how they never seemed to make eye contact.

She was building a reputation, Cassandra realized, and could only shake her head at herself for not realizing sooner. Coupled with how she purposefully kept speaking with a Coronian accent, and how she never took off the favour tied around her left arm, it was no wonder that Equisian guards would grow wary of a knight-errant of the Seven Kingdoms growing popular in an area they had been shakily contesting against one of those kingdoms for decades or more.

“That’d do it,” Eliza commented one afternoon, when the four of them settled down for the clinic family’s habitual teatime. “I don’t know how anyone in their right mind could expect this town to launch an uprising, but aside from that, you do look like someone who might lead one.”

“I suppose having the ruler change every few months might be a circumstance that culls the number of valiant patriots,” Cassandra said dryly.

Eliza laughed and shook her head. Emil stroked the back of the griffincat curled happily in his lap.

“Why, there is quite a number of patriots here. Most of them, especially the valiant ones, in the ground.” He stilled his hand when Gadwall yawned broadly, then started scratching under the griffincat’s chin. “I’ve lived here all my life. I have yet to see patriotism that can feed a family or save a life. All it has ever done was put more people in a sickbed or a shallow grave.”

“I realize it might be hard for you to see,” Bruno indicated the gold-trimmed kerchief on Cassandra’s arm. “But it doesn’t matter which colours the tax collector is wearing, he still takes our money. It doesn’t matter which banner the soldiers are carrying, they still injure people and trample fields. The more things change, with who is flying their flag off our walls, the more things stay the same—lords and generals take, no matter the side they fight for, and we have to make it through the winter with what we have left afterwards. Maybe it’s different for a knight, but for simple folk like us, there’s just nothing to inspire being loyal to.”

“No,” Cassandra said slowly. “I can think of a few times I did something for someone else, or gave something up for someone else’s benefit, out of a sense of loyalty. And in the long run, it helped neither of us that I had done that, even if there wasn’t really anything else I could have done.”

She took a bit longer on Fidella’s daily exercise run, later that evening, thinking and trying not to think simultaneously. Everything she used to want, she had been holding in her hands by the time Varian was arrested—not only a place on the Royal Guard, but a place leading the Royal Guard, an officer proven capable of stepping up during the castle’s defence and of commanding a counterattack afterwards—and as soon as she had finally gotten it, she was laying it down to follow Rapunzel out of Corona, somewhere her whole life of trying to prove herself worthy of being on the Guard would no longer matter. That one moment of recognition, back home, that one instance of being entrusted with responsibility was only made into a mockery over the months of travel that came afterwards, any meaning it could have held bleached away with never being listened to again, never being trusted with anything again, not even something as simple as a request to keep the group together instead of letting members stray far enough to get separated and lost. And when she did return to Corona, the Moonstone’s power crackling at her fingertips and well-deserved fury enveloping her heart and Zhan Tiri’s machinations shrouding her better judgement, it was to find Eugene in the uniform of the Captain of the Guard—something she scarcely dared to dream of having one day, one beautiful day, and oh how easily it was tossed to someone else, someone who didn’t even want it, someone who wasn’t her and therefore could just as well have it.

Cassandra shook her head at herself. It hurt, and turned her bitter, to even revisit those thoughts again. It served no purpose to dwell on them again. But they were only as persistent as they were because they weren’t untrue. And more than that, it wasn’t untrue either that maybe if she had chafed more, maybe if she had pushed back more, maybe she wouldn’t have been walked over as thoroughly as she had been. Maybe if she had tried harder or more often to set a limit and insist on it being respected, then maybe not even an irrepressible free spirit would have been able to ignore it and breach it as thoroughly as all of her limits had been disregarded, pushed against until they shifted, and even after that simply violated without ever being acknowledged. But then again, as soon as she thought that with resignation, came the memory of the one time she tried to push back more firmly, and was put in her place twice over, hours before her dominant arm burned up in searing cold.

Talking could accomplish nothing without being listened to. Earning respect was impossible if none was there to be given. No friendship could subsist on only one side working and yielding and making allowances. And it had been good for Cassandra, now even more than the first time over, to leave.

She pulled on the reins to turn Fidella around and returned to the tavern, where an evening meal and a night’s rest awaited her. And after wrapping the blankets around herself for the night, she took a moment to wind the sounding cylinder that was all that remained of a music box, letting it lull her to sleep filled with dreams she could not remember, but left her feeling vulnerable and exhausted, by the time she woke up.

When she made it to the clinic in the morning, she was caught off guard by the sight of a horse hitched beside the door. A chestnut, his entire coat heavily dappled with age, with three white socks and a star on his forehead. Cassandra squinted at him slowly. She had seen that horse before, and not too long ago, she was sure of that.

“Is there someone new who needs help?” she asked Eliza as soon as she saw her.

“No, Tara has a visitor,” the herbalist’s daughter replied, taking the question of a greeting in stride. Practical and to the point; she had to be the one Cassandra liked the most, out of the family of three. “Which reminds me, she asked to see you. By name.”

Cassandra frowned slowly. “I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone called Tara.”

“Funny how that works out, because we haven’t told her your name, either.”

“Ah.” Cassandra made sure that her daggers were within easy reach, and shifted her sword from her back to her hip. “Well, if you hear screaming or a scuffle...”

Eliza nodded calmly, without a word, and watched her ascend the staircase to the only room with an occupied sickbed. When Cassandra heard a soft murmur of voices, she did them the courtesy of knocking, and pushed the door open.

“I’m told you asked after me?”

“Yes, I did.” A pale, haggard-looking Kotoan woman slowly sat up in bed, her face contorting into a grimace at the effort. Her legs were encased in a heavy splint each, as was her entire right arm and the left’s lower half. Both of her hands were wrapped up into thick bundles of bandage and herbal cataplasm, heavy bruises were partway through fading all across her face, one of her eyes was still wrapped over and her only visible ear carried the tell-tale signs of frostbite. Despite the evident pain she was in, she managed to crack half a grin. “Excuse me if I don’t get up.”

“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” Cassandra said calmly.

“No, we’ve not met, but I know who you are. Congratulations on your pardon.” Tara’s eye flicked to the kerchief wrapped around Cassandra’s left arm, and a look of surprise passed through her face. “...And more than, I see.”

Cassandra looked between her and the only other person in the room: an unshaven man in travel clothes, standing on the other side of Tara’s bed, light brown skin and bright blue eyes and soot-black hair shorn close to the skin at the sides of his head. Mixed Kotoan and Ingvarrdian heritage, Cassandra guessed.

“Ramon,” he said, voice scratchy with disuse, as he nodded at her in a greeting. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. Forgive the shady circumstances of this meeting, but I wasn’t aware we’d show up at the same time.”

“What do you want?” Cassandra asked, folding her arms across her chest, hands kept away from her weapons for now.

“I want to know whether there’s still any love for the Seven Kingdoms in your heart.” Tara’s voice dropped into a harsh, demanding tone, made no less sinister by the sorry state she was in.

“Yes,” Cassandra said firmly, without having to think about it.

The two Kotoans exchanged a look. Tara nodded at Ramon, who then leaned down to pull a wooden chest from under the bed and started digging through it.

“I’m sure you know by now that Equis and Koto have... conflicting interests in this area.” Tara was speaking a little more quietly now, but in a clipped tone that Cassandra knew well from hearing guards giving reports to her father. “My associate and I are here to advance those of the Kotoan Crown and thwart any other, which at present means a necessity to apprehend four condemned criminals. They escaped justice before they could be executed, and have continued to rampage across the land, most recently finding their way here.”

While she was speaking, Ramon had pulled a set of wanted posters from the chest and extended them to Cassandra, who took them with a frown. A square-jawed Ingvarrdian with a set of claw scars down one side of the face, the eye snow-blind and discoloured underneath. A bald, bulbous Pittsfordian baring jagged teeth at whoever had painted the portrait in a hateful grimace. An unassuming Bayangoran, wearing some sort of elaborate headband that looped around his head multiple times to secure a pair of bovine horns to his temples, an eerily vacant look on his face. When Cassandra looked at the fourth poster, of a man with salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a thin braid and a round goatee, lips curved into a sardonic smile, and a glint of avarice in his eyes, she felt her own expression freezing into one of murderous calm.

“I take it you recognize the shame of your own kingdom,” Tara commented.

“I know of him,” Cassandra allowed, keeping her tone steady.

Where normal people told ghost stories, the men on the Coronian Royal Guard told stories of the worst people they’ve apprehended, the most stomach-churning crime scenes they’ve seen—and of the scariest people they’ve failed to bring to justice. Casimir the Sorcerer featured proudly in all three categories; sentenced to death for serial murder, multiple abductions, and aiding and abetting in numberless other crimes ranging from jailbreak through highway robbery to murder again, he had initially been tried after getting dragged out of a simple basement turned into a blood-soaked nightmare, the fragmented remains of no less than five different people strewn across magical contraptions and circles scribed with symbols of power. The guard who had been on jail duty when the sorcerer escaped from arrest would swear up and down, even years afterwards, that he saw the man slitting his own throat, and when the resulting explosion of smoke and light had dissipated, the sorcerer was nowhere to be seen and another citizen who had been missing for weeks appeared out of nowhere in the cell instead, bleeding out from a slashed throat before the guard could get them help.

“He leads the other three, and appears to command some modicum of loyalty among them, not just fearful obedience,” Tara said in the same clipped, impersonal tone. “Their crimes are no less foul than his own. There is no one in the world who deserves to die more than these four degenerates, and I want you to carry out the sentence and bring back proof of what you’ve done.”

Cassandra gave the brutalized Kotoan agent a long look. “They’re the ones who did this to you, aren’t they?”

“You must understand that this is more than a simple vendetta. If these men aren’t apprehended, they will continue to violate and murder anyone they come across.” She paused, and inclined her head in an acquiescent gesture, lips pressed into a tight line. “And yes, they’re the ones who did this to me, because my attempt to execute them with less-than-forthright means went miserably wrong—I can poison, spy, and assassinate, but I am not a fighter, and I have no control over the guard here while the town is flying Equisian colours. You, however, are one of the finest warriors of Corona and the adopted daughter of the commander of its Royal Guard. You have the strength and the experience necessary for this task. Any supplies I have left that could come in handy are yours—whether to use or to keep, your choice, and some of them rather illegal—any intelligence myself and my associate have about these criminals is yours. Do this deed, return safely, and bring proof of each execution, and I will notify all of the kingdoms involved that each bounty is rightfully yours. Any information that I can give without earning a treason charge of my own, ask and I will share it with you. I also stand to grant you a token that will open the gates of every Kotoan town and city to you for as long as you bear it, one that could also be leveraged for an audience with any local aristocrat, leading military officer, or knight of the Tribunal Order. And you will have done me a personal favour—one I hope to be well enough, in time, to be able to repay.”

Cassandra stayed silent for a long while. She should say no. Going after the sorcerer alone would be a suicide mission even if he didn’t have the other three around him, whoever they were. With four of them and one of herself, and Owl too far away to watch her back, she’d be lucky if she ended up in a neighbouring bed, hovering on death’s door for days on end. And if Koto could afford its spy network to extend to places that were technically beyond its borders, then it could afford sending one of its own great warriors after those four. All of these were perfectly good reasons, and Cassandra knew she could only come up with more if she thought about the situation any longer, for why she really should say no.

“I want you to brief me and show me those supplies of yours before I decide,” she said with a sigh instead.

“Reasonable,” Tara nodded as she settled back against the headboard, both of them aware that the decision has already been made. Sweat was beading along her forehead, above her upper lip—the conversation was tiring her out, and profoundly. “I doubt I could tell you more about the sorcerer’s crimes than you already know. He did something with each of his companions, I believe, something that turns them stronger or more capable. And he carries a walking stick that he never parts with—its head is curved, like with a shepherd’s crosier, with a small crystal hovering inside that spiral. I don’t know what it does, but it might be prudent to not find out.”

“Agreed.” Cassandra showed the Kotoan agent the Ingvarrdian’s poster. “Tell me about this one.”

“Hogni Galdrsbani, known out of Ingvarr as Hogni the Barbarian. It’s a wonder he keeps the sorcerer’s company, since he was originally sentenced for challenging any Ingvarrdian chanter he came across to single combat, fighting them to the death even after a yield, and outright murdering those who refused to fight him—which should tell you just how dangerous he is. Ingvarr treats practitioners of magic as mighty warriors or wise sages, as figures of authority, and blocks those who don’t practice that magic from performing some of the more important social functions. That of the Queen included.” Tara mimed dragging fingers down the side of her face, however she could with a partially bandaged face and with fingers bundled up along with the rest of her hand, imitating the claw marks on the criminal’s face. “Don’t let the scars fool you: he does not have a blind side. The sorcerer’s doing, I imagine. He tends to favour a very nasty two-handed sword whenever he can, but when that isn’t possible, he will use any weapon available or improvise one. I’ve seen reports of him bludgeoning a grown man to death with a chair, a stone, and the other man’s own belt buckle, in particular.”

“Charming.” Cassandra pulled out the Pittsfordian’s poster. “Him?”

“Detlev Dreisternen, better known as Detlev the Ogre—”

“Wait. How did a Pittsfordian get nicknamed 'ogre'?”

“I take it you’re familiar with how some Pittsfordians are... rather short, and rather stout?” Tara waited for Cassandra to nod. “Same proportions, but eight feet tall.”

“Oh.”

“He is a dimwit, and a hedonistic one. It matters little what he’s doing or who he’s killing, as long as there’s a creature smaller than himself that he can squeeze and pull at until it makes yet another delightful little noise. I don’t think he even realizes his own cruelty—he strikes me as too childish for that—I think that in his mind, animals and people are just toys, and the world is an ever-rebuilding diorama that replaces those toys unto infinity. So he breaks them, because it makes him happy, and because he can.”

Cassandra pulled out the last remaining poster, that of the Bayangoran. “What about this guy?”

“Tassos the Minotaur. Champion pankratist for multiple years in the national Bayangoran games. When he lost the title, he challenged the new champion to an official rematch, and was disqualified for life in the process. I don’t know how familiar you are with pankration—it’s a martial art that combines boxing, wrestling, and more. It is usually performed naked in the games, and has very few rules, but it does prohibit gouging out eyes and biting. Tassos had broken the latter limit to result in the disqualification.”

“And it was a disqualification for life because...?” Cassandra asked slowly, even thought she felt like she’d regret it.

“Because he didn’t just bite his rival. He tore out a chunk and swallowed, and then just kept going, essentially eating his opponent alive,” the Kotoan agent said in a tone studiously devoid of emotion. “I’m told he still does that sometimes, and might regard it as a way of absorbing the strength of whoever he beats in such a way. He is an abhorrent creature, half-feral and half-philosopher, finding justifications for acts like that in a grand universal theory that revolves around himself only, entirely at peace with every next atrocity he convinces himself is his heavens-given right to commit.”

“What’s the thing that the sorcerer did with him?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t recommend getting close enough to check while he’s still breathing.”

“So, to sum up,” Cassandra said slowly, and gave a small shake of her head, incredulous at how this conversation was going. “You want me to go up against a sorcerer I’ve grown up hearing horror stories about, a specialized mage killer, an eight-foot-tall cheerful sadist, and a cannibalistic grandmaster of a very brutal martial art. Alone. And kill them.”

“And bring back proof of their deaths,” Tara reminded, and turned to her companion, who stood silently beside her throughout. “Ramon, give her the chest to look through.”

With assistance from him, Cassandra pulled the chest across the floor, and opened it on her side of Tara’s bed. A few layers of clean if rather worn clothes overtop, some personal effects, a dog-eared book—and beneath that, neatly arranged pouches and strongboxes and a lidless cassette stacked with well-padded flasks and vials. Experimentally, Cassandra took out one of the pouches, and found it full of caltrops.

“What do you recommend?”

“Poison your weapons,” Tara said calmly as she gestured to the vials, “score one good hit, and run like hell. Don’t fight them with honour—they have none, and will laugh at the courtesy rather than repay it. Don’t sleep within a day’s walk of their campsite. If you kill one and cannot kill another, run. If you kill two and the others stand against you together, run. If they split up and you don’t know where even one of them is at any given time, run.”

“Your advice on how to fight them involves a whole lot of avoiding the fight,” Cassandra said with a frown.

The brutalized Kotoan agent gave a weak laugh. “I can’t advise you how to fight—I’m asking your help, not anyone else’s, because you know how to fight well enough, yourself. Any advice I can give you is going to be that of a spy: lie, cheat, steal, and survive. The mission isn’t over until you come home. And while you’re my last hope for executing any of them before they cross deeper into Equis, where they will likely turn into hired swords against my kingdom’s soldiers and supply caravans, there’s a saying where I come from that translates to hope kills more people than war. I would rather like to avoid having to explain how I got a Coronian knight-errant killed and strung up like a smoked partridge.”

“Okay, enough with the metaphors. Looking at you is enough.” Cassandra tied the bag of caltrops to the side of her belt. “Which of those vials are poison that works the fastest?”

“Through an injury? Lower-mid row. Second from the left has a paralyzing effect, and a well-coated dagger will deliver enough to cause respiratory arrest within the day if it isn’t neutralized. Third from the right needs a much larger dose than a single hit with a blade could deliver, but if you have a few dipped and ready, and manage to drop about a teaspoon’s worth into an opponent, he’ll be dead in hours.”

Cassandra took both, and raised her eyebrows when she read the labels. “I thought that possession of crested rattlesnake and emerald-eyed cobra venom was a capital offense in the Seven Kingdoms. All of the Seven Kingdoms.”

“And you think anyone who confiscates outlawed substances lets them go to waste?” Tara asked with a tired smile. “The bottom row is anti-venoms. Take those as well.”

Cassandra did so, and picked a vial of fine whitish powder that had to be ingested to take effect from the cassette of poisons for good measure. Then she asked her way through the rest of the Kotoan agents’ kit, taking a few smoke bombs, a few crackers entirely loud enough to spook horses when lit, and a small jar of invisible ink that turned phosphorescent in the presence of magic—and began to glow, the entire supply of it, when Cassandra took the jar and when she was tucking it into one of the satchels threaded along her belt, causing both of the agents to stare in suspicion. By the time they were done going through the chest, a knock came against the door.

Ramon hastily signalled Cassandra to hide the chest. She threw the decoy layer of personal belongings back into it, snapped it shut, and shoved it under the bed before calling out, “Come in!”

The door opened, revealing Eliza. “You two’ve been in here long enough. Tara, you need to rest.”

“Heavens, do I,” the brutalized Kotoan sighed. “But this is important. We’re almost done.”

“You can be done later. Ramon, Cassandra: out.” Eliza lifted a hand when Tara drew a breath to protest. “No. Lay back down before you fall over. You two, out, now.”

“He can tell me where to go,” Cassandra tossed over her shoulder as she exited the room.

Tara gave her a searching one-eyed look. “You’ll go, then?”

“I’ll go.”

“Thank you,” Tara said with feeling, and slowly lowered herself back onto the mattress, pain mixed with relief playing across her face. Eliza gave her bed a quick once-over and came into the room, closing the door behind herself, a muffled murmur of admonishment sounding as soon as she did. Cassandra looked at the other Kotoan agent, who was copying a section of a map onto a separate sheet of paper with speed and accuracy that spoke of extensive practice.

“They’ve been holed up in a farmhouse for about a week now, but it’s running out of livestock to slaughter and people to torment. This evening or the next one, they’ll be moving on, I think—and while they travel on foot, they make a lot of ground each day, so go immediately or not at all.”

“How did you stay alive through keeping tabs on them?”

“Telescope,” Ramon said dryly. “I kept a distance of at least six hundred yards at all times. Also, I have a horse. You’ll need one as well, to catch up and to get away.”

“I have one.”

“Good.” The agent of Kotoan crown handed the copied map to her. “One last thing. If you don’t come back, how long do you want us to wait before we send condolences to your kingdom’s court?”

“You don’t do that until you find me dead,” Cassandra told him sharply. “The last thing I need is to rush because I’m worried I’ll have to explain a too-hasty death notice.”

“That’s fair. Good luck, Coronian. Don’t die.”

“I’ll try not to.”

Ramon nodded at her, and walked down the stairs to leave the clinic. Minutes later, which Cassandra spent studying the map copy he gave her, Eliza exited the patient room, closing the door again as quietly as the newly-oiled hinges allowed.

“I didn’t think we’d take quite that long,” Cassandra indicated the room with a sideways nod. “How is she?”

“Worn out to the bone, but a little calmer, and asleep already.” Eliza slowly leaned away when she saw the look on Cassandra’s face. “...Are you okay?”

Cassandra cleared her throat, tucking the hand-drawn map away. “I need to leave for a couple of days. I hope it won’t be too much of a setback to the work here.”

“I mean, we’ll feel that you’re gone, you’ve been a very big help,” Eliza said cautiously. “But overall I think we’ll manage.”

“Good.” Cassandra nodded goodbye at her. “I’ll return when I can.”

She walked out of the clinic without waiting for an answer or for more questions, heading across the market square past the job board, straight to the Brazen Brigand, to get Fidella and get to the task at hand.

Cassandra cursed at herself silently. The job board.

Take jobs from anywhere other than the job board, get blacklisted from the job board.

She was going to have to move towns eventually, anyway.

But nevertheless, she walked into the small brick building, returning Teagan’s greeting of a raised hand wordlessly and pointing to a screened-off section of the wanted posters that made up one-third of the board. “Why are these behind a glass?”

Teagan looked up. “Oh, those? It’s because while there’s an outstanding bounty for those people, it hasn’t been put out by anyone who’s here to pay it. So there’s no taker’s fee, but if you were to bring one of those marks in, you’d have to bring proof of doing that to me, then I’d give you the poster, then you’d take the proof and the poster to an official a town over and argue about getting paid there. Why, are you thinking about going after blood money?”

Cassandra gestured at the familiar faces of the sorcerer, the barbarian, the ogre, and the minotaur, displayed in a neat row among the multitude of posters. “It’s a four-in-one.”

“Are you suicidal?” Teagan asked incredulously. “The fuck happened to starting small?!”

“Guess I’m not as smart as previously assumed,” Cassandra deadpanned, and walked out of the building.

Okay, so at least she wasn’t going to have to move towns immediately after.

When Cassandra entered the Brazen Brigand’s stable, Fidella greeted her with a surprised little nicker.

“I wasn’t planning on being back so soon, no.” Cassandra started saddling the mare. “Something came up, and we have a very dangerous job to do.”

Snort, Fidella said pointedly.

“We can’t wait for Owl. There’s not enough time.”

Fidella tossed her head at that.

“I don’t like it either. Listen, we’re outnumbered on this one. If I just charge in head-on, I won’t live to tell about it. We’ll have to be sneaky, use hit-and-run tactics, and stay very careful, and there’s still a very big possibility we’ll get really hurt. Are you still with me?”

Snort, Fidella said firmly, and put her nose to Cassandra’s shoulder.

“Good, because I need you for this.” Cassandra leaned her cheek against the mare’s for a moment. “Thanks. I knew I could count on you.”

And soon enough afterwards, the late morning found Cassandra on horseback, heading past the town walls and towards one of the nearby farms, map in hand and a satchel full of poison slung over her shoulder, chasing after certain death on the promise of seeing justice served—one way or another.

~*~

“You realize that for this to work, these defences of yours have to go,” Adira said patiently. “I’m sure they served you well in the past, but the threat you created them against is long gone. The time when you needed them is long over. And they’ve been hampering you, instead of aid or protect you, ever since.”

“I know.” Rapunzel sighed. “It’s just– it’s hard. I’ve built so much on this.”

“It’s a palace built on quicksand. Whatever struggle next comes your way, either it will collapse this palace and leave you with no shelter, or demand you put forth so much effort and time to keep it standing that you will neglect all matters to really need your attention.” Adira paused for a moment, taking in the resigned expression on Rapunzel’s face, and reached over to place a hand on her shoulder. “I know this must be very difficult for you, but it is not a difficulty you can’t handle. Don’t be afraid of it. Every bird must break through the egg’s shell before it can fly.”

Rapunzel felt a small smile curling her lips and finding its way into her eyes at the encouragement. She let it linger long enough to look at it, and past it, at the feeling that brought it forth—a glimmer of hope, a gratefulness for the expressed belief in her and her ability and her strength. And then she breathed, letting the reflex of falling on old habits pass, watching it fade like a raincloud against a bright clear sky, instead of follow it into grasping at that spark and blowing it up into a conflagration to shield her from the world of all she was ever afraid of, a wall of fire blazing too bright for anything bad, hard, or unsightly to still retain its shape, still show through.

It was a spark, and it was good enough as it was. It wasn’t much, and it didn’t have to be anything more. And beneath it, somewhere too deep to see without light, something she hadn’t dared examine for as long as she could remember churned into motion, no longer kept away with the fire.

Rapunzel took another deep breath, bracing herself to face whatever her heart and mind were conjuring up this time. “I think I’m ready.”

Adira inclined her head to her. “Then let’s begin.”

It was a simple ritual they’ve constructed. A bowl of sand, a stick of incense set upright within it, a quiet space that was outdoors if at all possible. The repetition of setting it all out every time, Adira had explained early on, was meant to associate a simple task with a certain mindset and a sense of calm, both of which would only continue to help with further sessions. And it was working, Rapunzel had found a few weeks in, without even really expecting it to.

Once the incense was burning, a thin wisp of smoke swirling through the air from it, they both shifted to sit more comfortably: Adira craned her neck to each side until the vertebrae cracked and rolled her shoulders backwards to loosen their harsh set, arms relaxed and hands laid flat over her thighs, while Rapunzel stretched her legs out in front of herself before crossing them as well, her feet under her knees, hands laced lightly with palms still open to the sky.

“Comfortable?” Adira asked, and waited for Rapunzel to nod. “Then close your eyes, and breathe deeply. Breathe in, and look at everything you’ve been needed for today and everything you’ll be needed for tomorrow. Breathe out, and close the door to it. Let all the colours pale, all the clamour quiet. Breathe in, and hold this growing stillness. Breathe out, and watch how it extends. Let it smooth out all else to nothing. You sit here with me, now, and this is what we’re doing. What can you hear?”

“Silence,” Rapunzel murmured, “and you.”

“What can you feel?”

“Motion. I think something is crawling to the surface, or trying to.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Yes, but I’m calm too. I know it’ll help to face this.”

“Then find the pool, and tell me what it’s like today.”

Rapunzel kept silent for a long while, trying, but each time she thought she could follow the stillness and silence into a place of calm that Adira had helped her build, a sick feeling loomed closer, dragging her focus away like a discordant note, a prick of a beetle’s leg, and she found herself having to relax a frown and unclench her teeth. “I– can you speak to me a little more? Lead me there again?”

“Okay.” Adira’s voice didn’t change, still the same grounding, steady tone it dropped into during every session. There was no surprise, no disappointment to be found in its sound, and Rapunzel leaned against that as if it were a load-bearing pillar in one of the castle’s halls. It was safety. It was soothing. And even that much unravelled some of the uncomfortable tightness in her belly, and made it possible to breathe deeply again. “Inhale, and exhale, and pause for a moment. Find the cadence of it. Focus on your body taking the air in—feel it cold against your nostrils, flowing down your throat, stretching through your chest and filling your lungs—then let it go, and let it take the tension away. Pause for a moment, and listen to the silence. Inhale, and let the air fill you to the brim. Exhale, and direct it to wherever you feel tension linger. Pause, and stay with how it left you. Inhale, and let the motion of it hold onto this peace. Exhale, and let the steam of it paint the pool before your eyes. Pause, and watch the reprieve of it pulling the image into focus. Inhale, and feel yourself standing before it. Are you there?”

“Yes,” Rapunzel murmured.

“Tell me what the banks are like.”

“They’re rough gray stone, the circle and the stairs, all a single piece of rock. Nothing grows around it, this time.”

“Tell me of the water.”

“It’s clear, but dark. I can’t see past the surface. Not warm and not cold either.”

“And where are you?”

“At the top of the stairs, next to you.”

“I am beside you, this entire time. You are not doing this alone,” Adira reaffirmed to her. “Now walk into the water with me, and tell me how deep we are heading.”

Rapunzel took a slow, deep breath, and imagined descending the carved stone stairs into the pool of dark water, with the knowledge of Adira’s presence at her side as real as the sun’s warmth and light even through closed eyes. “I’m underwater.”

“What can you see?”

“I can’t see anything. It’s too dark here.”

“What can you feel?”

“I feel motion again. It’s swimming next to us now.”

“Okay,” Adira said in the same steady, calming tone. “Why is it here?”

“Because I haven’t—” Rapunzel drew in another deep breath, if a little too quickly, if frayed around the edges this time. “I haven’t kept it away. We talked about how I have to stop doing some things that I keep doing without thinking about them, last time, and I haven’t– I haven’t forced myself to feel happy since then. I guess it was behind that.”

“I want you to remember that this is not a monster. It can’t hurt you. It doesn’t need to be fought. It’s an image you’re giving to a problem, so that you can see it and solve it.”

“I remember.”

“Good. How do you force yourself to be happy?”

“I take whatever little thing I can find and I make it be more than it is. A beautiful morning, or a ray of sunlight letting me see the dust dancing, or a tasty meal I didn’t know I wanted to have—anything that’s nice but meaningless on its own—I take these things and I turn them into a reason for why there’s nothing bad about the world. I use them to be excited about everything, and not let anything get me down, not even when it’s a real problem.” Rapunzel sighed against the weight of the day’s unpleasant realization sinking onto her shoulders. “...I use them to fireblind myself so I don’t have to see the real problem, especially when it’s one I can’t fix. So I don’t have to feel sad or angry or hurt instead.”

“Tell me what it does with those more difficult feelings.”

“They– it pulls them out of focus, but they don’t go away. They just fester under the surface. Rot just out of sight. They lose strength eventually, but they still don’t have an outlet, and I think– I think they only ever get resolved if I lose my temper soon afterwards, and it’s an accident if they do. They just lie there forever if I don’t.”

“Tell me what kind of problems you’ve used this against.”

Rapunzel swallowed as her throat tightened at the memories. “When Eugene and Cass were arguing all the time, long before we met you. When Cass didn’t want to talk to me, after the Great Tree, and I was trying to force her to. When Cass left with the Moonstone, especially.”

“Was it a new thing for you to do, the first time it happened in a situation like that?”

“No.”

“Then think of when you were doing it without a problem like the ones you’ve described to me. How did it protect you?”

Rapunzel stayed silent for a moment, surprised with the question, and dismayed with the truth of an answer as it began to unravel before her closed eyes, as ugly as a bandage ripped off an old unhealed wound and just as painful. “It helped make people like me. When I came out of the tower, I was excited and happy, but I was scared, too. If people liked me, then they wouldn’t want to hurt me, and I’d have nothing to be afraid of. And I think I’m going to cry again.”

“That’s okay, let it flow if you need to.” Adira’s voice gentled a little. “Was it a new thing for you to do then?”

“No,” Rapunzel admitted, and heard her voice break.

“How did it protect you before then?”

“It helped make me easier to ignore. If I made myself look stupid and naive, then it was easier to feel stronger and bigger against me, and harder to be angry with me and take it out on me. It helped to keep me safe because it made me look too weak, too small, to be treated seriously or to think I was strong enough to disobey. It kept me from being screamed at as often as I could have been.”

“Do you still do that?”

Rapunzel nodded, hands unlaced now and wiping tears from her face. “I apologize a lot even when something isn’t my fault, so that people aren’t angry with me. And I do it in a way that keeps them from being harsh to me, even when I deserve it or when they have a reason to, because it would make them feel bad about themselves if they were.” She took a deeper breath, trying not to cry anymore. “I don’t think I like that very much about myself.”

“You don’t have to keep doing it if you decide you no longer want to. I understand that it’s a habit, and that they can be difficult to unlearn, but difficult does not mean impossible. Are you still afraid people will hurt you unless they like you?”

“No. Yes and no. I know there will always be people who’d be happy to see me hurt, and that thought is scary, but I know that it’s not my fault, too. I don’t have to make everyone like me. I’m strong enough to protect myself, and I’m not alone. I have friends and loved ones who’d never want to see me hurt.”

“Are you still afraid of people being angry with you?”

“No, not as much. I know it’s not a punishment, not anymore. And I know that sometimes—” Rapunzel’s voice faltered a little again. “Sometimes I hurt them, even if I don’t mean to. And if it gets me to stop doing that, then getting angry at me is a good thing.”

“Then you don’t need this anymore. It served you well enough when you didn’t have healthier ways to cope, but you do now, and it’s time to lay this one to rest. If you could tell your younger self one thing about this, what would you say?”

Rapunzel took a moment, letting the thought crystallize within the place of peace she had built for this with Adira’s assistance. “...It’s okay. You don’t have to be afraid.”

“Take a deep breath again.”

Rapunzel did, and felt relief flow through her along with the air.

“Tell me what the water is like now.”

“It’s a little clearer. It’s not as dark around anymore.”

“Do you still feel motion?”

“Yes, but from far deeper down, and I don’t think I’m ready to go there yet.”

“Okay. Then walk up the stairs again, and tell me when you reach the top.”

With every imagined step upwards, the still and examining honesty drained away, and exhaustion of the effort came into focus. It was a good effort, however, and the satisfying kind of fatigue—that of having seen a job well done. “I’m ashore again.”

“Fold your hands at your heart, and lift it upwards. Thank the world for seeing you to this point; thank yourself for doing this, for your persistence in doing something hard and painful to help yourself.”

Rapunzel bent her back in a bow, and murmured, “Thank you.” Then she let her eyes open and turned her head, waiting. Adira always took a moment longer than herself at the end—sitting perfectly still with hands folded at the centre of her chest, before lowering her head and tapping the edge of her hands to her forehead as she mouthed the words soundlessly. “And... thank you, Adira, for doing this with me.”

Adira acknowledged that with a simple nod. “You are doing very well. You’ve worked hard on your honesty before yourself, and I’m glad to see you’re treating this very seriously.” She thought for a moment. “There is nothing wrong with finding small joys in life—it is strength, I would say, but not when taken to such an extreme as you’ve made of it. Try to let them be as they are, and enjoy them as they are, without making them be more than they should be. Then see how that leaves you, what that feels like, and we’ll come back to it next week.”

“Every time I think I understand just how badly I needed to work on my problems like this, another magnitude or depth comes into focus,” Rapunzel said candidly. “I couldn’t do this without your help.”

“Oh, you could.” A bit of Adira’s usual veneer began to flow back into place, with her airy tone and her little smile. “After all, you are doing this all on your own. I’m just holding your hand throughout.”

Rapunzel laughed a little, while Adira stood up without uncrossing her legs first, and took her extended hand to be pulled to her feet as well. “Same time next week, then?”

“I’ll be there. By your leave, princess.”

“Good night, Adira.”

They went their separate ways then—the old warrior going on a stroll along the battlements, Rapunzel heading back inside. She closed the terrace door behind herself and turned to see Eugene leaning against the wall where he was waiting for her, Pascal on his shoulder, and both their faces dropping into a look of concern as soon as they saw her.

“Did she make you cry again?”

“It’s not like that at all,” Rapunzel defended with a sigh even as she gratefully sank into the offered hug, a welcome reprieve from the hard emotional labour of the evening. She felt Pascal crossing onto her shoulder and pressing himself up to her cheek, and she tilted her head to lean against him. “And, yes, I cried again today, but only a little.”

“Look, sunshine, I know I pressed you to talk about your feelings before, but if this is driving you to tears every time...”

Rapunzel shook her head. “It’s okay. Really. She’s helping, and it’s not like she’s making me sad every time. I’m not crying because I’m miserable or hurt, it’s just... release.”

“Okay, I trust you.” Eugene took her hand as they walked through the castle together. “I just want you to know, if you decide that it’s too much or not what you need anymore, you just call it all off and no one will have the right to think less of you.”

“I know. Thank you.” Rapunzel fell silent for a long while. “...Still no word from Cass?”

Squeak, Pascal said with a gentle sadness. That and the resigned silence from Eugene told her everything she needed to know.

“I’m sure she’s okay,” he said when Rapunzel’s shoulders sank. “She was doing just fine when she was alone with the Moonstone and, apparently, the ghost of Zhan Tiri, for months. I almost feel like the next time you throw a party, she’ll crash it with her hair dyed a different colour and another magic sword.”

Rapunzel’s lips pulled into a smile despite herself. “It’s not her I’m worried about. She has Fidella and Owl with her this time, and I know she can take care of herself.”

“What are you worried about, then?”

“I think she just doesn’t want to talk to me anymore,” Rapunzel said quietly.

Eugene gave her a quizzical look. “You told me that you two said goodbye on good terms.”

“We did.”

“And that she promised to write you.”

“Yeah.”

“Then there’s no need to worry! It’s Cassandra, remember? She wouldn’t talk about her feelings if her life depended on it, and barely knows how to start a conversation at all!”

“Eugene, it’s been two months.”

“Okay, so she’s taking a little time, but when hasn’t she stalled when you wanted to ask how she feels? It’s still on-brand for Cass to be silent for this long, I mean, I’ve yet to stop reeling from when she said she missed me two months ago. And if she said she’ll write you, then she’ll write you when she’s good and ready.”

“I drove her away twice over now. Even if I did make her promise to write, I can’t hold her to it. I can’t act like she owes me anything,” Rapunzel said calmly. “If she doesn’t want me in her life anymore, then I have to let her go, no matter how painful it’s going to be.”

“Sunshine, I think it’s generally considered too early to start mourning while the person’s still alive. If Cass didn’t love you, she wouldn’t have said that she does, and she wouldn’t have waited to tell you and hold you before leaving. You haven’t given up on her when she was actively trying to kill you—I didn’t think I’d see you give up on her while she’s just on a trip.”

Rapunzel paused on that, taken aback. Then shook her head and found it easier to smile. “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“I do,” Eugene said gently. “You miss her, and horrid as it is to admit it, I do too! The castle’s so quiet without her grumbling and so empty without her marching around at a parade pace in that dress, and no one else tears their hood off in frustration quite the same.”

Rapunzel laughed softly at the memory. “Did you know she was always carrying at least one dagger under her dress?”

“She was what?”

~*~

If there was ever a time when she needed more daggers, Cassandra thought with frustration, it just had to be now.

The farmhouse had been empty when she arrived within line-of-sight of it. There was nothing left alive in any of the buildings or in their shared courtyard, she found after a brief sweep, no livestock and no people, only bones of the former and bodies of the latter. There was only an easy to follow trail of four sets of feet, dramatically differing in size and depth—a trail so easy to follow and so even-paced that Cassandra’s suspicious nature had her abandoning it soon enough.

The four did have a magic-user among them, after all.

And so she had found herself here, stabbing daggers into the trees, building a false trail that led to the headless blue-fletched arrow she had left among the dead leaves on the floor of the forest that the four outlaws had made camp in, not too far away.

Cassandra looked up at the sky. The night was still young enough. She could see four shapes huddled around the campfire, the barbarian having just returned from a firewood run, the sorcerer lounging idly with some sort of notebook or a tome, the minotaur tending some sort of evening meal bubbling in a large cast iron pot, the ogre chattering excitedly at his companions and drawing reactions that ranged from indulgent to irritated. They haven’t spotted her yet, she was pretty sure.

Rule one: turn your enemy’s strength into a weakness.

If she came into the minotaur’s reach, she would die. So Cassandra poured the emerald-eyed cobra venom into a leather mug that she was never going to use again, dipped two of the blue-fletched carrier arrows into the poison, and nocked one while putting the other’s shaft into her teeth. She kept patient, waiting for the minotaur to put his hands at the small of his back and stretch, the cooking pot hung far too low for a man of his height, and as soon as he did, she loosed. The poisoned arrow struck him two-thirds up the ribcage, not too far from the armpit, and he let out a sharp cry that was equal parts surprise and pain. By the time both him and his companions snapped to the direction the arrow had come from, Cassandra had the bow drawn again, and loosed the second arrow to hit the minotaur square in the belly.

He was dead, she thought in an endless split second of calmness, before she turned on her heel and started to run with the ogre’s roar and the barbarian’s bounding footsteps behind her.

“Go. Go!” she hissed at Fidella.

The mare burst from her hiding place and went straight into a gallop, heading away and to the right, while Cassandra split to the left and used her momentum to leap upwards and start climbing the tree she had picked out for this exact reason earlier. Lungs burning as she forced herself to control her breath and quiet it, hiding behind the trunk as much as she could and hoping that the outlaws stayed fireblinded from how close they had just been to their campfire, Cassandra watched the barbarian and the ogre chase after Fidella for a few seconds and then give up, realizing that they could not catch up with a galloping horse. She ducked her head as they walked back to the camp, where the minotaur was flat on his back and roaring in pain as the sorcerer was pulling out one of the arrows—and tilting his head in a puzzled expression when he found no head on its end. When he moved his fingers over the headless shaft with a murmur, Cassandra silently breathed a sigh of relief.

Coronian sorcery was either hedge witchery and simple herbal remedies, or the exploits of a bunch of Zhan Tiri wannabes—and she had spent enough time with the real deal to know just how malicious, arrogant, and self-centred their ideal was. If there was a possible magical explanation, no Coronian sorcerer was going to look for a mundane one instead, seeing how they held themselves and their craft in higher regard than the rest of everything in existence.

So she had used the magic-responsive paint to draw the symbols she remembered seeing on the Scroll of Demanitus along the shafts of her carrier arrows—the two she had shot the minotaur with, and the spent one she had tested against a bunch of scarf-wrapped sand a few days prior. Some of them were scribed wrong, she was sure, and they were not going to spell out anything but utter nonsense even if the sorcerer would be able to decipher it. But it would occupy his attention, maybe even serve to convince him that the arrows had been a magical device that released its power on impact, instead of simply a marvel of artisanal blacksmithing and a load of extremely potent venom.

She kept still, and waited, as the sorcerer seemed to argue with the barbarian and the ogre, and eventually sent them away on a perimeter sweep while he and the minotaur remained in camp, the sorcerer studying the arrow shafts and animatedly leafing through his tome. When she saw the two sent away pointing out the trail of daggers to each other, and both heading that way, Cassandra quietly slid down the tree and started sneaking towards the campfire, hoping to surprise the sorcerer from behind.

She didn’t quite manage to, given that the minotaur was still conscious, and called out an alert from where he was laying down.

“And what have we here? Another bounty hunter?” the sorcerer yelled gleefully as he parried Cassandra’s sword with that crystal-bearing crosier Tara had mentioned. He was entirely loud enough for the other two to hear, and come running, Cassandra knew.

She didn’t have much time.

“I thought what Tassos did to that Kotoan pest would’ve scared her off, but all right, then!” the sorcerer roared, humour rapidly draining from his voice and giving way to fury, as he struck out with the staff to punctuate each next threat. “I will divine your entrails—Detlev will eat your liver—Hogni will chop you up into tiny little pieces before you've finished twitching—and don’t even ask what my loyal Tassos likes doing!”

Fortunately, Cassandra didn’t need much time. Not with Coronian sorcerers being so arrogant and so convinced of their craft’s superiority, they depended on it to do everything for them. Including fights. And so, the best way to deal with a Coronian sorcerer was nothing other than to close the distance and hit him hard.

Each hit he launched was easy to see and easier yet to avoid. His weapon’s longer reach helped him none. Four parries was all it took, and on the fourth, she dragged her blade across his arm to drop the staff from his hand, then went straight for the throat, slashing it open so forcefully that she heard her sword creak against his spine.

“My regards to Zhan Tiri,” Cassandra snarled with her left hand at her temple in a gesture of mock respect, “useless and dead as you are.”

She swept up the staff and kicked the sorcerer’s body over just in time to see the ogre re-enter the clearing from the other side. And once again, Cassandra turned on her heel and ran instead of sticking around to find out just how loyal the other three were to the sorcerer, or what they would do to avenge his death. She heard the ogre roar as he started bounding after her, and she let out a piercing whistle, hoping to high heavens that Fidella has had the time to double-back already.

When a moment passed, spent on running like hell, and she didn’t hear hoofbeats sounding against the heavy footfalls behind her, Cassandra whistled again, growing desperate. There hadn’t been enough time. Anywhere she could hide that the ogre couldn’t fit inside, the barbarian was going to come in after her. Anywhere she could run to on foot, both of them were going to catch up to her. She had mistimed the entire thing, and it was going to kill her with their hands.

She should have never agreed to do this without Owl.

Cassandra risked a look over her shoulder. The ogre was about ten paces behind her, and with his own paces quite a bit longer than hers; significantly farther away, the barbarian was giving chase as well. Shifting the sorcerer’s staff under her left arm, she lit one of the Kotoan spy’s smoke bombs and spiked it into the ground before changing direction—the barbarian saw the entire manoeuvre, and gained on her as a result, but the ogre ran headlong into the smoke and smashed into a tree, still coughing and pawing at his face, instead of catch up and grab her. Breath growing ragged, Cassandra desperately considered her options: keep running and get caught later like a stag chased down by bloodhounds, or stand her ground and take her chances while there was still some air left in her lungs.

Then she heard a whinny, and felt her heart skip a beat, and let out a third sharp whistle as she ran towards the sound of hoofbeats.

Fidella barely slowed her pace for long enough to let Cassandra climb to the saddle in a leap, and broke into a gallop again before her rider could wheeze at her to. Two roars of frustrated rage tore up the night behind them, and Cassandra barked a cry of pain as one of her own daggers sank into her right shoulder. She looked behind herself again, and saw the barbarian straightening up from a throw.

“Take us to a road,” she panted at Fidella. “We need to stop leaving tracks.”

Two down, two to go, and her sword-arm out of commission. And anything else to be considered only after much-needed rest, if only a little of it, somewhere far enough away to be safe.

Chapter Text

After crossing onto a road, where Fidella’s hoofprints would drown amid the sea of tracks left by boots, horseshoes, and wheels, they continued to make ground for quite a while yet before the mare slowed down to a trot and veered off into the countryside again, looking for a place to hide. By the time Cassandra climbed down from the saddle, careful of her dominant arm now a source of pain and reduced functionality twice over, dawn had broken across the sky. Starting a fire was out of the question now; the smoke would be too easy to follow. But the cut in her shoulder was deep, and had only been jostled with the hours of horseback riding that had been required to get away. And she did have wound dressings suitable for burns now.

With a sigh, Cassandra started gathering firewood.

She only kept the fire alive until the offending dagger’s blade turned a dull orange against the flames, occupying herself in the meantime with trying quite fruitlessly to get the cut to stop bleeding. Burning the wound shut had been as thoroughly painful as expected, and in hindsight, Cassandra was glad she had shoved a roll of plain linen bandage into her mouth to bite down on beforehand. She heaped loose soil and sand onto the fire to smother it immediately after, and pulled the dirt-stained gloves off before spending a while with her second roll of silk bandages and trying to put a reasonable barrier of it between the now-burned cut in her shoulder and the clothes she was going to have to put back on as soon as possible, with the early morning chill gnawing through her chest with enough force to make her shiver and no source of heat to combat it. When she was done, she was still shaking, and quite certain that despite the very long and rather demanding day she’d had, the sheer pain of the injury would keep her wide awake.

Fidella laid down on the ground beside her, inviting her to nestle close with a little nicker.

“Thanks.” Cassandra winced at the croak of her own voice. “This went well enough, since I’m still alive and two internationally wanted criminals are dead or dying. But not stellar, seeing as I’m going to have a lot of trouble fighting now.”

Snort, Fidella said, as much a reminder as an admonishment.

“I know you told me to wait for Owl. I would have if I could.”

The mare sighed deeply, the sound reverberating through her broad chest.

“I don’t want to just let the other two go without trying. We’ll see if I can draw a bow after we rest a little; if I can, it can probably be done.”

Snort, Fidella said, resigned but not surprised.

“See, if I didn’t have that bag of tricks, I’d agree that it’s too dangerous to keep going after them. But I also wouldn’t have gone after them in the first place if my only option was taking them head-on and hoping I could get each of them to duel me one-on-one. I still have a few ideas. And the ones I’ve had so far did work out, if barely.” Cassandra put her healthy arm around the mare’s back. “Mostly thanks to you, though. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Fidella gave her a soft nicker, breath puffing with warmth against the side of Cassandra’s face and neck.

“I don’t want to find out, either.”

Despite expectations, she did sink into a shallow nap, surfacing again at every gust of wind, every bark of a fox, every cry of a hawk, every change of light as clouds crossed the sun’s path. Restless as she was throughout, the few hours of sleep were still hours spent sleeping, and restored at least a modicum of strength to her by the early afternoon. Cassandra shifted the belt of her scabbard between shoulders, making sure she could draw the sword with her left arm if she had to—she was nowhere near as good a left-handed fencer as she used to be with her right hand, back before they had crossed through the Great Tree, but at least it wouldn’t tear the cut in her right shoulder open all over again. She strung her bow, and drew it, and held for a few heartbeats before slowly easing the tension off the bowstring. It hurt, but it was doable. As long as she wasn’t trying to do it too much.

She headed for higher ground first, hoping to scan the plains from the vantage point of yet another mesa or ruined watchtower, however visible it would make her in turn. It took her a while, but she did notice two shapes trudging across the country—one of them extremely tall and bulky, the ogre’s silhouette recognizable even across a few miles of distance.

Her second destination was the outlaws’ camp from last night, although she dismounted before crossing into the woods, careful to keep watch for any trap the ogre and the barbarian may have left behind on the off chance she’d return there—and narrowly avoided a snare set a few steps from the burnt-out campfire. Cassandra signalled Fidella to stay a little bit behind, and crossed to where the minotaur’s body was still on his bedroll, both of the falcon-fletched arrows removed and each puncture wound now surrounded with a cobweb of blackened veins where the poison had impacted and spread only ever further though the carnage caused by fragmentation of the arrowheads. He was otherwise pale, cold, and unmoving, and must have died overnight.

Cassandra emptied the minotaur’s pockets, drawing a handful of silver and gold and a well-used foldable razor, then grabbed the corpse by the shoulder and hip and rolled it over face-down on the bedroll, before grabbing a coil of rope and wrapping the body up like a package, hefting it to walk back to Fidella, and slinging it across her back like a sack of grain. They wanted her to bring back proof of the executions? She’d bring back irrefutable proof.

In the process, she noticed that the elaborate set of headbands securing the minotaur’s namesake horns to the sides of his head, the one he was wearing in the wanted poster’s portrait, wasn’t there anymore. The horns were part of his skull as firmly as his cheekbones or eye sockets, now.

It did explain what the sorcerer had done with him, alongside the ogre’s size and the barbarian’s no-longer-blind eye.

She took a longer while with the sorcerer’s corpse, left behind and unburied by the surviving two as well. Sorting the tome and any unrecognizable trinkets separately from pocket money and personal effects of everyday use to deal with them later, Cassandra realized that she’d have to find a trustworthy magic practitioner to destroy these eventually, especially if she was going to keep getting into these kind of situations. She thought for a moment, and smiled darkly as she set to wrapping up the corpse of a criminal that her dad and the rest of the Coronian Royal Guard had been failing to catch and bring to justice for almost as long as she’d been alive.

She was probably going to keep getting into these kind of situations. More than that, she was probably going to love it.

Cassandra slung the sorcerer’s corpse over Fidella’s back as well, and paused, leaning against a tree and panting. She was still tired after last night, her injured shoulder was causing her considerable pain, and the blood loss had left her a little shaky on her feet, no matter how well she’d mitigated it. She looked up at the mare.

“Think you can carry all that and me at the same time?”

Snort, Fidella said with easy confidence.

“What am I saying. Of course you can.” Cassandra slowly climbed back into the saddle. “Let’s go find our little friends. Tail them from a distance for a while.”

Taking care to keep well away, she started following the only trail of two pairs of feet that exited the campsite without doubling-back. She didn’t spot the two on the horizon again—and only for the better, given that she was more visible on horseback than they were on foot—but around sunset, a divergence in the tracks caused her to dismount and take a moment.

Footprints leaving deeper indents in the ground, trampled all over a small area. A spray of blood, as if shaken off a sword-blade. A scuffle had taken place here—one that ended with the pair’s tracks separating, the smaller and steadier set continuing on, the deeper and shapeless set heading back towards Silberstadt.

Cassandra looked down the second set of tracks. Dim-witted or no, the ogre had evidently been smart enough to realize that Tara had survived their ministrations to send another executioner after them, and decided to rampage back in pursuit of revenge.

Once again, she did not have much time.

Thankfully, the barbarian seemed content to cut his losses with the deaths of his companions, and stayed on course straight for the nearest Equisian city. Possibly heading towards a port and back home to Ingvarr across the sea, hoping to maintain his reputation of chanter-killer. Possibly to stay within Equis, and broaden his challenges to every Kotoan witch-knight he could come across in this endless border dispute.

Cassandra looked at Fidella. “We can either go after three out of four, and let the barbarian cause harm elsewhere in the future, but more-or-less guarantee our own safety. Or we can go after four out of four, and ride overnight with three corpses and myself on your back, which is going to work me hard and you far harder, and is also far more risky. Which do you think we should do?”

Snort, the mare said patiently.

“You know full well which I’d like to do.”

Fidella dug a hoof against the soil.

“What, you want to hear me say it? Fine. I want to go after all four, but I can’t force you to do it with me. If you think you can do it, which, I won’t think less of you if you don’t, and if you’re down for it—” Cassandra broke off when Fidella whinnied at her. “I’ll make it up to you if we get out of this alive. Anything you want.”

She climbed back into the saddle and nudged the mare into a trot down the barbarian’s trail, moving forward more carefully in the low evening light. Shortly after, she spotted a brighter speck among the darkened landscape: firelight. Cassandra dismounted, and silently signalled Fidella to stay. She didn’t know much about Ingvarrdian practice of magic, but Tara had mentioned their sorcerers enjoyed renown as figures of authority and were held in high regard for both their wisdom and their power. And if the barbarian had made his reputation by killing such people by the dozen, then he would not be sitting next to a fire in the middle of the night when he knew that an executioner was stalking his associates and himself.

Making sure to move as silently as she could, Cassandra slowly scouted out the area in a wide radius from the fire, keeping herself low to the ground and taking care to never move into the light. And finally, when the sliver of a crescent moon was well past the zenith, she spied the figure of a burly man wrapped in some sort of blankets or furs, sitting slumped with his back against a rock outcropping, a massive jagged two-hander partially keeping him upright, partially cradled to his chest.

Cassandra went very still where she was. She knew the barbarian was an extremely formidable warrior. She knew he had a penchant for single combat. She noticed that he seemed to have a tendency to charge, trying to close the distance to an unknown enemy and engage in melee if at all possible, and he knew she had a horse and had used that to get away twice now—if he saw Fidella again, he’d go for her first and then deal with Cassandra once she wouldn’t be able to escape again. And she also knew that he used to be blind in one eye, until the sorcerer did something magical to restore his sight.

She reached into the satchel filled with the Kotoan spy’s tricks, and started scattering caltrops in front of herself, slowly crawling backwards as she went. Then she strung her bow and readied an arrow, quietly stood up, and pulled out the jar of magic-activated phosphorescent ink. Lightly tossed it up, caught it again, and threw it against the rocks above the sleeping barbarian’s head, shattering the glass to pelt him with the pieces and paint his head and face with ink that started glowing immediately on contact.

At that point, the barbarian had jolted awake. Cassandra gave him a jaunty wave, hoping it would be visible against the starlight, then turned on her heel and ran, not putting a lot of heart into it. She heard the man spring to his feet with a growl and heft up the two-hander, then yowl in pain and hit the ground with a heavy thud as he ran straight into the caltrops—which was her signal to whip around again, draw her bow, and shoot immediately, aiming right underneath the streaks of glowing ink. She heard a choking sound, and realized she’d hit the neck.

She also saw the barbarian rising to his feet, and realized she’d missed the spine.

With his now-glowing face pulled into a grimace of fury and focus, the barbarian sucked in a breath and held it, and charged again. Cassandra tossed her bow aside and pulled out her sword, only barely quick enough to parry, and with her feeble left-handed parry immediately broken with the sheer force of the barbarian’s blow, sending her staggering back. She ducked under another, and leaped backwards again to avoid the next, taken aback with the speed of his attacks, knowing that she couldn’t take a hit like that or properly block it, and as she scrambled for another tactic to try, she came up blank.

But he still had an arrow through the throat. All she had to do was outlast him, and not give him the time to pause and try to take care of himself.

The barbarian’s breath exploded from him in a rush, and he drew another, holding it again. Trying to take advantage from the momentary breach in his defences, Cassandra closed the distance and swiped at him. She felt her sword slide through flesh, but the barbarian did not make a sound, only retaliated—and while the giant jagged blade whiffed past her, the backhand with his left fist as he uncoiled from the miss did not. Cassandra staggered back with a grunt, clutching at her face, and had to throw herself to the ground to avoid the next hit, rolling back to her feet across her injured shoulder to leap away again, trying to ignore the blinding flash of pain.

It wasn’t only that the barbarian could see in his blind eye again, she realized finally as she tried to flank in the wan starlight and watched him keeping track of her as easily as if they were fighting under midday sun. The sorcerer had made him able to see in the dark.

Another bursting exhale, another held breath, and this time Cassandra kept her distance. He was starting to get wobbly on his feet, although he was doing an admirable job of putting the accidental bit of momentum of it behind his strikes. When he overextended with a wide horizontal slash of his two-hander, Cassandra threw herself down into another roll underneath, and put it into a leg swipe to the back of his knees. The barbarian went to the ground, the air vacating his lungs in a pained bark, and he seized up where he fell with a horrible, wet, choking sound. It still didn’t stop him from grabbing at Cassandra, finding purchase in her cloak; one yank, and she found herself on the ground as well, clawing frantically at his forearm and bicep holding her in a stranglehold. And with barely a split second to spare for shielding her head with an arm, the barbarian brought the two-hander up with his other hand and started slamming its guard down on her, hammering with all the strength he had left, causing Cassandra to scream when something in her withered arm cracked under the blows. She finally managed to grab the dagger he had thrown at her the night before when he choked again, to slash at his tendons and shove herself out of his grip, and kicked his good hand off when he tried to grab at her again. Cassandra moved another two steps away when the barbarian slowly rolled onto his side and up to his hands and knees, and watched as he immediately went down onto his elbows as he tried to breathe and seized up with a terrible wet cough again. Another wheezing attempt, and he collapsed back onto his side, and Cassandra closed the distance enough to kick him in the solar plexus, forcing the remainder of air out of his diagraph. She stood over him until he heard him stop breathing, making sure she’d be the last thing he ever saw, then waited a moment and put a foot against his shoulder to roll him onto his back. No response; his body went easily. She raised her left hand to put two shaky fingers into her mouth and let out a single-toned whistle, and watched the world lurch as her knees gave out under her and she landed on her ass right where she stood.

When Fidella trotted up, Cassandra was trying to wipe blood from her mouth and chin. Which proved considerably difficult, given that it was still flowing.

“Ugh.” She scowled at the sound of her own voice, and felt the pain radiating across her face spike from the motion. “I think he broke my nose.”

Snort, Fidella said with rather deep concern.

“I’m fine. Mind, I’m not great—” Cassandra grabbed at a stirrup and pulled herself to her feet with a grunt of exertion, leaning against the mare’s side to keep herself upright. “—and be careful, there’s caltrops over that way.” She gestured with her withered arm, and regretted it immediately. “Oh, that hurts.”

Fidella gave a worried little whinny.

“I know—just give me a minute, I need light—” Cassandra pawed through the saddlebags until she pulled out a torch and a box of matches. Any attempt at a solid grip on any of these with her right hand failed with a debilitating flare of pain, and she eventually succeeded by holding the torch in the crook of her elbow, the matchbox in her mouth, and the match itself in her left hand. Sitting down again, the torch now held between her feet, she pulled the reinforced glove off as quickly as she could, and found the silken bandage already soaking through with a liquid too thick and too dark to be properly considered blood. “Oh no. No-no-no-no-no—”

While she was frantically unwrapping the silk, Fidella laid down next to her to put the saddlebags within her reach, and Cassandra uncorked the flask of disinfectant with her teeth to pour its contents into a new and very deep crack in the withered area, running halfway up her forearm and forking at the wrist into two separate breaks over the back of her hand. It hurt, but in a very different way—a dull ache, somewhat like that of muscles seized up in a persistent cramp, clenched as tight as they could go for far too long a time—contrasting vividly against the pain of her broken nose or her injured shoulder, sharp and resounding in time with the pounding of her heart. She leaned closer to the torch, and experimentally wriggled her withered fingers, watching the motion pulling at the open crack’s edges. She couldn’t bend the fingers far enough to grip anything right now, not without widening the crack, and not without having to purposefully concentrate on it, given how much it hurt to even try.

At the very least, there was no fresh blood mixed among the thick, dark liquid oozing from her withered veins. The dead portion of her body and the living one seemed to have remained separate, with the wound not breaching all the way through one and into the other, and she didn’t have to worry about getting decayed tissue into her bloodstream, at least.

Assuming there was still something alive in her dominant arm, from fingertips to just under the elbow, in the first place.

Cassandra closed her eyes for a moment, a little queasy from watching the disinfectant turning the thick dark once-blood marginally runnier and easing it out. It was just disinfectant, easy enough to resupply on, and it was better to be safe than sorry.

Snort, Fidella said, unsettled.

“Trust me,” Cassandra said weakly. “Me, too.”

Once it stopped oozing through, Cassandra carefully patted the open crack dry, and wrapped the arm up again, making sure the already stained sections ended up well away from the gaping wound. Then she motioned Fidella to stay as she was, dragged the barbarian’s still-warm corpse over without using her dominant hand, and tied him atop the minotaur’s and the sorcerer’s bodies, then took his weapon for good measure and secured it next to her saddlebags, opposite of the sorcerer’s crosier.

“Okay,” she panted. “We need to head back to town, immediately, because I can’t tell whether the last one is going to march overnight as well.”

Snort, Fidella said pointedly.

“No. It’s too late. There’s nothing to go back on. He’s on his way, and we need to be too, or we won’t catch up in time.” Cassandra wiped the blood from her upper lip again. “Unless you’re the one too tired?”

Fidella stood up, as easily as if the weight of three adult men heaped on her back was nothing, and put her nose to Cassandra’s cheek with an admonishing nicker.

“I know. I know I’m a mess. But he’s going to be heading for the clinic.” Cassandra put up a hand, her healthy one, when Fidella made a sound like she was going to keep arguing. “Hear me out. He knows his friends are dead because they didn’t finish Tara off and she sent me after them. If she survived, then she’s in the clinic. So he’s headed for the clinic. The clinic is neutral ground. Whoever starts something around the clinic, everyone is supposed to help putting down—everyone, not just the guards, and you saw how many people in this town were carrying weapons.”

Snort, Fidella said, still unconvinced but at least willing to discuss.

“No, of course I don’t expect everyone to pitch in, not against that big a guy. But someone is going to, if not right away then after they notice me challenge him, and he’s going to take that challenge because he saw me last night right when I killed the sorcerer. I’ll probably be a big enough distraction for others to decide they want to exploit it. Especially with the bounty on his head. I just have to get there.” Cassandra took Fidella’s chin in her hands. “Please just get me there.”

Snort, Fidella said with resignation, and put her nose to Cassandra’s forehead for a moment.

“I know already said this, but I swear I’ll make this up to you.” Cassandra climbed into the saddle, and rolled her eyes when Fidella made an admonishing little noise. “And take care of myself afterwards.”

Snort, Fidella said again, making it clear what she’d think of Cassandra otherwise.

They turned back towards Silberstadt, and Fidella began to run—first in a trot, then started interspersing the pace with bursts of a canter to make more ground, more quickly. Cassandra breathed more easily when they settled into a rhythm. Somewhere aside from the pain, this wasn’t much different from what she had once dreamed her life would look like—a lone rider, challenged but not outmatched, a loyal steed under her as she charged ever forward in pursuit of justice. Forget patrolling the jail, policing the capital, and securing the checkpoints. What were they worth next to the Royal Guard’s outriders, ranging between the settlements of Corona to scout against threats and to pursue wanted men into the wilds, while the rank-and-file troops stayed behind and stayed put to hold the fort?

Dawn broke across the sky, pulling the town walls into focus. Cassandra shook off the exhaustion and the daydreams, forcing herself to concentrate, and checked the hilt of her sword with her left hand. Ahead, she could see the unmistakable silhouette of the ogre, walking straight towards the clinic with something that looked like a tree torn out of the ground, reduced to a hand-held battering ram when compared to his bulk. And past him, across the town square, Cassandra noticed that the Ingvarrdian fletcher had looked up idly from her work—then did a double take, grabbed the smith’s arm and gestured wildly at the ogre, at which point both of them abandoned their work and swept up a weapon each, and started running over. With the first slam of the tree-turned-ram against the clinic’s door, the fletcher leapt into the air and hurled a javelin at the ogre, putting the momentum of her sprint behind it, and pulling his attention to herself and to the Neserdnian smith, who was barrelling straight for the ogre with a giant, double-headed axe in both hands.

“We’re almost there!” Cassandra drew her weapon and raised it high, hoping to signal the others that she was about to join the fight. “Can you give me a run-up?”

Fidella responded with a breathless whinny, tired but determined just as Cassandra was, and drew on some deepest unspoken reserve of strength to drop into one last burst of gallop. Cassandra pulled her feet from the stirrups and perched precariously atop the saddle, and in the last moment before being carried past, she leapt, putting the charge into an overhead strike that carved a deep wound in the ogre’s back before she landed on her feet. The ogre roared at her, partway hatred and partway pain, but that was the extent of attention he could give to Cassandra—between the smith who was scoring hits below and around the small tree, which the ogre was striving to use both as a weapon and a shield, and the fletcher who had drawn a sword and closed the distance to join the melee, he had his hands full, and Cassandra circled around to flank for the other two, trying to make it so that at least one of them would always end up at the ogre’s back.

Immediately after, she had to break away, evading a broad swipe with the torn-out tree. The smith grunted with exertion as he brought his axe up to meet it, cleaving deep into the wood and stopping them both in a clinch, even though his feet sank half an inch into the mud. The ogre panted a deep growl, and reached with his other hand to palm the smith’s face, but broke the motion with a yowl of pain to grab at his own; Cassandra risked a glance, and saw Teagan, the job board’s minder, quickly rewinding a massive crossbow from a safe distance.

Breaking the crossbow bolt out of his cheek with another roar, the ogre then heaved the small tree free of the smith’s double-headed axe, with enough force to lift the smith off his feet and throw him back-first into the mud a few steps away. Before he could follow up on it, Cassandra slashed at his right arm in an attempt to get him to drop the tree—and while that didn’t work, she did pull the ogre’s attention as he tried to retaliate at her and left himself wide open for the fletcher, who jammed her sword between the ogre’s ribs on the left side up to the hilt while he wasn’t looking at her. By the time he finished shrieking in pain, the smith had pulled himself to his feet again, charging back in and bringing the axe into an upwards blow that sank deep into the ogre’s right forearm, successfully dropping the tree from his hand. Another crossbow bolt, this time sinking into the ogre’s shoulder, and he flailed his arm in a backhand, missing all three around him—then back around, and Cassandra rolled away, glancing up just in time to see him grab the fletcher like a doll and hurl her into one of the nearby merchant stands, with enough force to crash the pottery and shatter the wooden boards that broke her fall.

“Sigi!” the smith screamed.

“I’m fine!” the fletcher yelled back, voice soaked with pain, as she struggled to push herself up.

The tone seemed to land with the smith more than the words, and his attacks turned far more reckless, leaving Cassandra to distract the ogre from what was rapidly becoming single combat between the two of them. Another crossbow bolt, and the ogre pawed at the side of his neck, Teagan’s shot creating an opening for the smith to score a deep cut and for Cassandra to yank out the fletcher’s sword from where it was stuck between the ogre’s ribs, trying to bleed him out more quickly. She threw herself backwards again, avoiding retaliation and letting the smith land another blow that would have brought a smaller man to his knees, and only then did she notice that the destroyed pottery stand was now empty. Teeth gritted and blood pouring down one side of her face, the fletcher swayed on her feet, but not like she was about to fall—almost like she was dancing across the muddy street back towards the melee, eyes dark and mouth slightly open and a vacant, entranced look of utter concentration on her face as she stared the ogre down, reached both arms towards him in time with her steps, and started to sing in a fearsome, commanding tone.

“For ein er to
Der knutar knytast
I byrd er bunde
Heile verda
Om eg bind deg
Kan eg ferde—”

A hint of silver colour shimmered through the air, causing Cassandra to jerk back from another attempted strike, the wisp of unnatural mist taking the form of a massive translucent snake coiling through the air as if weightless. With every syllable, with every gesture of the fletcher’s hands and every swipe of her arms, it slithered through the air, weaving itself around the ogre’s bulky form. Cassandra struck out when she saw an opening, an instinct built by a lifetime of training, and her blade went through it; the ogre reached out, trying to grab at her or at the smith again, and his arm strained against it. Down the street, the fletcher was still chanting in Ingvarrdian, her reaching hands now clenched into fists, her outstretched arms now flexed as if yanking two heavy loads together, and the focus ringing through her voice narrowing the world down to the fine point of winning this one fight.

“Nar to vert ein
Der lenkjer smiast
I byrd er bunde
Heile verda
Om du bind eg
Kan du ferde—”

The giant silver snake bit down on its own tail and began to swallow, the multiple loops coiled all around the ogre’s body constricting tighter and tighter as the fletcher continued to sing furiously and draw her arms together. Cassandra put both hands on the hilt of her sword and poured everything she had left into a slash to the back of his calf, to hamstring him. Knees bending from the strike and the magical ties pulled too firm to allow for taking another step and catching himself, the ogre fell flat on his face and bellowed to the sky. Before he was done, the smith leapt up and in a brutal, two-handed swing, cleaved his head clean off his shoulders.

With the fletcher’s song trailing off, the giant snake dissipated, fading into a wisp of silvery fog that soon scattered into nothing with a gust of wind. The smith tossed his axe aside and ran to the fletcher’s side as she stumbled onto her back foot, blinking rapidly, a moment passing before she seemed to shake herself awake as if from a deep trance. Cassandra started walking towards them, cleaning and sheathing her sword along the way, and watched the fletcher pat an open hand against the smith’s chest.

“You good?”

“I’m great, I’m not the one who crashed a pottery stand with their face!”

“I always hated gravy boats.” The fletcher wiped still-flowing blood from over one of her eyes, and extended a hand to Cassandra. “Sigrid.”

“Cassandra. Lightly, please, I’m injured.” She shook the fletcher’s hand, if gingerly.

“Hanalei,” the smith said, taking Cassandra’s withered hand in turn, and looked over his shoulder. “Thanks, Teagan!”

“Oh, you three did the heavy lifting there!” the job board’s minder yelled back, setting his massive crossbow back inside the small brick building.

Sigrid, meanwhile, was giving Cassandra a knowing grin. “I told you I had a good feeling about you.”

“I didn’t know you were a chanter,” Cassandra said.

“No, you didn’t, and neither did he.” Sigrid jerked her chin towards the ogre’s remains, and immediately listed on her feet, grabbing onto Hanalei to keep herself upright. “Whoooa. Fuck. I need to sit down.”

The smith effortlessly swept her up in to a bridal carry, if eliciting a small startled noise, and nodded at Cassandra. “You should get yourself checked out, as well, you look almost as beat up as my wife does.”

“Charmer,” Sigrid seethed, but let herself be carried towards the clinic.

“I said you’re beat up,” Hanalei said patiently. “I didn’t say you aren’t beautiful, or that blood doesn’t look wonderful on your face.”

Cassandra heard the fletcher let out a loving 'aww' as the pair walked away. She looked at the clinic’s first-floor windows, and just as she’d hoped, she spotted a bit of contrast within the one above the entrance—dark hair against stark white bandages across half the face.

“Hey, Teagan!”

The job board’s minder turned over his shoulder. Cassandra beckoned him closer while she whistled at Fidella, and once the mare walked up, she untied the barbarian’s corpse from her back and threw him off, onto the unworked riverstones cobbling the town square. Untied the sorcerer’s corpse, and threw him off next to the barbarian. Untied the minotaur’s corpse, and threw him off next to the other two, all four of the wanted men now laying lifeless under the Silberstadt sky.

Teagan gaped at the bodies with an uncomprehending look on his face. Stared at Cassandra. Stared at the bodies again. Let out a chuckle, his grin equal parts disbelief and something rapidly approaching awe, and without a word, he started clapping. Cassandra looked around as she heard the sound being echoed—and only then realized that first the brutal melee, then her display had drawn a crowd of spectators, townsfolk and ex-miners and craftsmen and more, who hadn’t dared to join the fight but hadn’t dared look away either. And as she stood there, a young knight-errant far from home and returned victorious from a mortally dangerous mission, the spontaneous applause only growing in strength for her, Cassandra couldn’t help the grin on her face, the triumphant laughter bubbling up her chest.

~*~

If there was one thing Rapunzel was not, she would admit readily and with an easy laugh if asked, then she was not a light sleeper. The nights of her youth and adolescence had been peaceful, spent stargazing or sleeping soundly—after all, she was safe as long as she remained sequestered in the tower, wasn’t she—and the nights of her travel along the trail of black rocks had been no different, even as they were nothing but different, the sense of safety now brought not by staying hidden from the world but by the sense of her own strength, the company of friends and loved ones, and the awareness that someone was always standing watch while the others slept. And more often than not, all throughout her life, Rapunzel woke up simply when she was rested, or when the sound of those around her beginning to go about their morning routine woke her up.

It was, however, quite unusual for her to wake up to the sound of something hard tapping repeatedly against the glass of her window and to Pascal’s excited chittering, too rapid-fire to be understandable, as he rushed in that direction with no heed paid to the early hour.

“And good morning to you, too.” Rapunzel dragged a hand towards her face to rub at her eyes. “Gosh, what’s got you so excited already?”

Squeak, Pascal called out again in an elated tone, just as he put his entire weight on the window’s handle. It creaked open, and Rapunzel felt a gust of cold wind sweeping its way into her room.

Then she heard a hoot, and bolted upright, leaping out of bed at the sight of a very familiar bird.

“Owl! How are you here?! Is Cass okay?”

Hoot, Owl said primly, and pushed a small bundle of leather towards her with one clawed foot.

With trembling hands, Rapunzel unwound the cord holding it closed, and grabbed at the slip of paper held within as soon as she saw it.

Hey.

Took a month-long walk. Feeling better. Came out near the Equis-Koto border. Helped restock a clinic on healing flowers. Flipped a conman’s scheme against him. Settling down for now to assist in some repair work. Have Owl rest a few days before you send him back.

—Cass.

Rapunzel laughed shakily, the sheer force of relief blasting through her leaving her a little light-headed, and sagged where she was kneeling on the floor. She read the short letter a second time, then a third, and folded it against her chest in both hands. Each arduously-scribed word loosened something she hadn’t realized had been wound up so tightly inside her, the terrible grip of fear clenched around her heart like a giant greedy hand around a jewel, the devastating weight of guilt piled across her shoulders and growing only ever heavier with every brick she pulled from her palace built on quicksand. She hadn’t been a good friend. She hadn’t been kind, or respectful, or attentive enough. But she also hadn’t been refused a chance to do better, this time.

Cass didn’t want to just disappear all over again. She did want to stay in contact. She had just taken her time.

Rapunzel trailed her fingers over the rest of the leather bundle’s contents: a small rock, a long feather, a dried wildflower. She didn’t know what any of it meant. Not yet, she thought with a smile as she looked at the letter again. It was like clues for solving a puzzle. She loved puzzles. And Cass knew her entirely well enough to be aware of that.

Squeak, Pascal said tenderly.

“She is a sweetheart, isn’t she?” Rapunzel picked Pascal up in one hand and pressed up her cheek against him for a moment, then let him climb onto her shoulder and held the letter up so he could read it as well. “How is she, Owl?”

Hoot, Owl said vaguely, an imprecise answer to an imprecise question.

“Is she– well, I don’t know if 'safe' is the right word, but– is she injured, or not taken care of, or suffering in any way?”

Hoot, Owl said negatively, silencing those concerns at least.

“Is she happy?”

Hoot, Owl said with a sideways tilt of his head, indicating that it was a work in progress but one well on its way to bear fruit.

“How are the people there, are they treating her well?”

Hoot, Owl said in a non-committal manner, and Rapunzel wasn’t quite sure of his meaning: whether that people everywhere were the same at the core of their being, or that he wasn’t willing to give a more candid answer to that.

“Is she,” Rapunzel hesitated for a moment, “healing, from everything that happened?”

Hoot, Owl said resolutely, refusing to answer with anything other than a firm implication that he was the wrong person to ask that.

“You’re right.” Rapunzel sat back on her heels, and took her first deeper breath of the day.

Squeak, Pascal said, and uncoiled his tail to point the tip at the words feeling better scribed in Cassandra’s severe, tight handwriting.

Rapunzel smiled. Cass never did wax on about what she felt. Maybe it was just two words, but it was two words that spelled out relief and hope, and two words that weren’t the perpetual lie of I’m fine repeated whenever she so clearly wasn’t. Maybe it had been a little over eight weeks, but it was still too early to expect Cass to truly be fine.

After all, Rapunzel herself wasn’t fine, and only discovered how deep that ran with every session of guided meditation, every longer conversation with Adira, every bout of honest self-examination.

But she was getting better.

A knock came against her door. “Good morning, sunshine! Who’s ready for a whole new day?”

Rapunzel laughed a little, and called out, “Come in!”

The door opened, revealing Eugene, fully dressed for the day and staring at a pocket-sized notepad in his hand as he swaggered into the room. “Okay, we’ve got breakfast with your parents to start with, then a study period I’d not managed to get rid of for you, and in the afternoon there’s two dignitaries who just keep insisting you’re present for their stupid teatime or other negotiation, but with a break in-between. It’s gonna be pretty busy, but not packed, you’re welcome, so after all of that is over, what do you say we h—” He looked up, and broke off mid-word. “—holy owl, is that Owl?”

Hoot, Owl said derisively.

“Definitely Owl, you even sound like Cassandra.”

Rapunzel looked up at him, smiling. “Cass wrote.”

“How is she doing?” Eugene leaned down when Rapunzel showed him the letter. “Yep, she’s great, that’s classic Cass right there.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Healing flowers. She must have thought that’s hilarious.”

“She sent these, too.”

Eugene picked up the feather. “Pheasant? She’s been eating well, that’s for sure.” He set it down, and looked at the rock—and turned it to the light, suddenly incredulous. “Oh mama, that’s a vein of native silver right there.”

Rapunzel sat up a little. Border between Equis and Koto, and someplace with a silver mine. Gently, she took the dried wildflower in her hand: a sleek stem with bell-shaped lilac flowers and compound leaves, each rimmed with a thin strip of paler colour at the edges. “Do you know what this is?”

“No. I could ask Lance, but I don’t think he’d know either, not unless it’s food for some kind of native animal where it grows.” Eugene gave her a longer look, and smiled as he watched an animated look in Rapunzel’s eyes, a hint of excitement. “What are you thinking?”

“I think I’d like to look through a few herbariums in the evening,” Rapunzel asked softly, “and some geographical albums with maps.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Eugene said with confidence, then eyed his notepad critically. “You know, I could probably sneak those into your study period. No one has to know.”

Rapunzel laughed. “I do really need to focus on history more than I have to date.”

“Why would you? It’s boring!”

“It’s not as boring as you think.” She kissed Eugene on the cheek. “And I think I’d rather look through those in the evening, anyway. Keep something to look forward to throughout the day.”

“Your call, sunshine. What do you want to wear today?”

Rapunzel considered, standing in front of her closet. “Who are those two people I have to meet later today?”

“Ah.” Eugene studied his notepad again. “Some kind of duke or other marquis first, and the other an Ingvarrdian dignitary. Jarl. Noble. Person.”

“You didn’t write it down, did you?” Rapunzel asked with an adoring softness.

“I didn’t write it down!” Eugene admitted easily, with an only slightly panicked laugh. “But it’s not like I’m failing before breakfast, it’s going to be fine!”

“Not the ambassador, though?”

“No, someone who’s passing through on other business but decided to pay a formal visit along the way.”

Rapunzel considered quickly, and narrowed her choices down to two dresses that were both noticeably more elaborate than her usual everyday wear, but didn’t quite crest into evening gown territory. “Pink or blue?”

“Blue. Tell me when you need me to lace you up.” Eugene took Pascal and turned around, facing away, without being asked to. “I might need to start writing down the things I have to write down, at this rate.”

“You’re doing better every week. And thank you for doing this for me in the first place, I know it’s a bit far from what you’d usually be focusing on.”

“Hey, if it takes at least a bit of pressure off of you, it’s worth it,” Eugene said gently. Then sighed. “I have no idea how Cass kept a handle on all of this. I almost feel bad for giving her a hard time early on, now. Almost.”

“You were both giving each other a hard time back then. More so than I would’ve liked, sure, but I guess I wasn’t helping you stop, either.” Rapunzel readjusted the dress over her shoulders. “You can look now. Help me with the corset?”

Eugene turned around and went to stand behind her, slowly lacing up the back of her dress. “...Is this too tight? I feel like this is too tight.”

Rapunzel drew an experimental breath. “No, actually, pull it tighter.”

“Are you sure?”

“Trust me, it needs to go tighter. Slightly more. Okay, that’s good.” She looked over her shoulder, watching Eugene’s face pull into an almost comical mixture of uncertainty and focus, then glanced to his vest with a smile. “Did you say blue just so we’d match?”

“No, sunshine, your hair is brown now,” Eugene said patiently as he worked his way through lacing her up. “This shade of blue contrasts nicely against it, without clashing against your skin tone, the silver accents on your skirt aren’t too much since your hair isn’t golden or nearly as long anymore, and the embroidery over your chest is the exact same green as your eyes, which will bring them out. I said blue because, while you are indisputably the most beautiful woman in the world, every masterpiece needs a proper frame to highlight it.”

Rapunzel interrupted his work to give him a quick kiss. “Well, one of the most beautiful, maybe.”

“Oh? Any particular lady on your mind?”

“You don’t think Cass is beautiful?”

“I don’t think the word suits her. I think Cass is very handsome; I think she can be very striking, particularly in that suit of armour she scavenged at the Great Tree, and whatever else the spiky black-and-turquoise makeover had done, it looked amazing on her. But I don’t feel like she was ever shooting for beautiful,” Eugene said thoughtfully. “Whenever she had to wear that lady-in-waiting dress, she held herself differently, she walked and spoke and gestured differently, unless it was just us or unless she was too frustrated or angry to care anymore. When you wear a dress, you’re wearing clothes—when Cass wore a dress, she was wearing a uniform, along with a role to fill and a job to do. And a big part of that job was always going to be blending into the background, being overlooked, so that she’d see everything and stay unseen by hiding in plain sight. Now, if she was ever to dress to the nines and in an outfit that’d bring her out like facets of a diamond, she’d look...”

“Arresting?”

“That word has some unfortunate associations for me,” Eugene teased, eliciting a laugh. “I’d go with stunning, myself.”

Rapunzel smiled as she tugged on the cuffs of her dress, aligning the sleeves along her shoulders. “What could you see her wearing, that she’d look stunning in?”

“Knee-high leather boots and a ridiculous, billowing, satin-lined cloak for sure,” Eugene declared without thinking. “Massive cloak pin, but not jewelled if possible, that’d be too much. Wide-sleeved blouse with cufflinks, a vest over that, just slightly embroidered, a cravat around her neck and tucked into the vest. Thick leather belt with a pressed motif matching the embroidery on the vest, definitely a big buckle matching the cloak pin. Straight-cut pants tucked into the boots, not tight enough to show off too precisely how strong her legs are, but fitted enough to suggest it, and definitely embroidered along the outer seams. What am I missing? A sword! Of course there’s a sword. Rapier with a swept-hilt covered in filigree at her hip. Now, for the colours, that depends on whether she’d set out to understate how light her carnation is, or highlight it. If understate it, then a rich mahogany brown, but a cool shade, she is very pale, with gold accents like the embroidery and the pin and the cufflinks, but the cloak lining and the cravat a muted pale gray. If highlight it, then black with silver and pearl, no question. Ooh, pearl buttons on the vest.”

“That,” Rapunzel said slowly, the image clear as day before her eyes, “does look stunning.”

“To be fair, that would also look arresting, in the sense that no one in their right mind would be able to take their eyes off her.” Eugene finished up with the lacing, and after a moment of careful consideration, pulled a dark stormy gray shawl from its shelf. “Keep this on hand, too, it’s cold outside today.”

“Good idea.” Rapunzel extended a hand to Pascal, letting him walk across her arm and nestle at her shoulder, then looked at Owl, who had long since perched atop the back of a chair and tucked his head under a wing to sleep. Wondering how long he must have been flying for, she decided against disturbing him, and folded the shawl into her bag. “Let’s go. I think we’re running late already.”

“We’re running fashionably late.” Despite the quip, Eugene matched her quick pace without argument. “Speaking of which, if I’m doing the job of a lady-in-waiting, what does that make me? Lord-in-waiting? Sir-in-waiting?”

“I know what the term would be if I were a prince, not a princess,” Rapunzel admitted.

“Yeah?”

She tried to keep amusement from her face. “Gentleman of the bedchamber.”

Eugene laughed. Then stopped. “Wait, you’re serious.”

“Like I said, history class isn’t as boring as it sounds.” Rapunzel came to a quick halt when she spotted a familiar figure down an adjacent corridor. “Oh, Captain!”

“Good morning, princess.” The recently-reinstated Captain of the Guard greeted them both with a nod. “Fitzherbert.”

“Morning, Cap.”

“Cassandra wrote,” Rapunzel said warmly. “She’s doing well, and she’s helping people where she is.”

A bit of tension seemed to drain from the Captain’s posture at that, a rare smile lighting his face. “That is very good to know. Thank you, princess.”

~*~

“That’s a broken nose if I’ve ever seen one.” Eliza took Cassandra’s chin in one hand and the bridge of her nose in the other. “I’m going to set it, on three. Don’t move.”

“Fine.”

“One, two—” Eliza pulled, and Cassandra yelped as she both heard and felt the bone align.

“You said on three!”

“Everyone tenses up by the time I get to three,” Eliza said calmly, entirely unrepentant. “Where else does it hurt?”

“Ugh.” Cassandra pulled a hand away from her face, trying to ignore the sound of Sigrid the fletcher laughing quietly from where she was sitting, still in her husband’s lap, Hanalei making sure she stayed awake due to a risk of concussion. “A knife got thrown into my shoulder, deep enough that I had to burn it shut.”

The herbalist stared at her incredulously. “You know, you could have led with that. Upstairs. Now.”

Knowing better than to argue with a tone like that, Cassandra stood up and headed for the staircase. She had retrieved a set of wanted posters from Teagan, along with a written note stamped with what must have been the town seal that he said would legitimize her claim to the bounty in the nearest Kotoan town, and led Fidella to the Brazen Brigand, leaving the stable boy with a bursting fistful of gold and instructions of give her everything a horse could ever want, before going to get herself checked out at last. And with the adrenaline of one bout of combat to the death after another finally draining, with the tension of chasing after terrible people finally releasing, she found herself swaying a little on her feet. Having trouble concentrating on conversations. The night spent awake in the saddle and the one before it that ran very long, and was followed only with a few scant hours of very shallow sleep, were both catching up to her.

And knowing that she probably looked worse than she felt, Cassandra smiled to herself before pushing open the door to the only room with a taken sickbed.

Tara gave her a one-eyed up-and-down from where she was laying flat on her back. “You look like death warmed over.”

“Yeah, said the kettle.” Cassandra walked past the brutalized agent, who chuckled at the riposte, to one of the three free beds in the room. “They’re dead.”

“I saw. Thank you. You’ve lifted a great burden from my mind.” Tara closed her eye with a sigh. “And after I’m able to walk again, maybe I can finally leave this filthy province and return to the court.”

Cassandra found she didn’t have an answer to that, and focused instead on putting her weapons down on the nightstand before she took off her cloak and folded it overtop, and started undoing the clasps of her tunic to get to the haphazardly tied silk bandage and the burnt-shut cut in her shoulder. She hesitated before undoing the knot on the gold-trimmed kerchief tied around her left bicep, and carefully threaded it between her still-gloved withered fingers, wrapped it around the hand, in order to avoid not wearing the favour for any significant length of time. When she was down to her smallclothes, she finally remembered the Moonstone scars sheared through the left half of her chest—and that if she was to avoid a multitude of needlessly worried questions, she’d have to keep that covered. While stripped from the waist up. She grumbled to herself, before she realized that Tara was looking at her tiredly.

“I hope you’re not in too terrible a state.”

“It’s fine. Mostly I’m just tired. Your advice and supplies were good, my planning and my luck were good.”

“So it would seem, given that four extremely dangerous men are dead and you’re still alive.” The spy gave her a weak smile. “Ramon will come over before nightfall, I’m sure. We’ll handle the matters of rewarding you then, since out of the two of us he’s the one with useable hands at present.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“This is twice now you’ve saved my life, I hear.”

Cassandra looked away. “It’s not like I wasn’t being paid for it. Either time.”

“Yes, and I’m sure you’ve gifted thousands of gold to the family running this clinic with an ulterior motive in mind, as well.”

Cassandra groaned in frustration, but before she could dress the feeling into words, the door creaked open and Eliza came in with a pile of medical supplies carried in her arms.

“I see you’ve not bled out to death yet from another open wound you’ve forgotten to mention?”

“It’s not an open wound, and I’ve taken care of it as best I could, if you’re going to just give me a hard time about it then I can go sleep somewhere else,” Cassandra snapped right back.

“Calm down.” The sense of irritated disbelief dropped from Eliza’s tone immediately. “I’ll see how you managed it until now, and I’ll do what I can, but first I need you to believe that I’m not your enemy. Are you going to accept help or not?”

Cassandra sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of her nose with withered fingers. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“I guess you are.” Eliza set a steaming earthenware mug on the nightstand and started placing the armful of items she brought along the bed, before tapping Cassandra’s good shoulder to indicate the linen shift she still wore. “Take this off, then.”

Cassandra pulled the garment off, keeping it cradled to her chest to hide the Moonstone scars, indifferent about the gesture being mistaken for excessive modesty. Eliza didn’t comment, only set to unwrapping the silk bandage tied over Cassandra’s shoulder and across her collarbones; from the other corner of the room, Tara looked away, the bandaged side of her face now turned towards them both.

“Well, you certainly were thorough,” Eliza said with only a slight bit of tightness to her voice when she uncovered the burned wound and set the weepings-soaked silk aside. “And this area has been hit afterwards?”

“I had to roll across that shoulder a few times,” Cassandra admitted.

“Did you attempt to clean it since you burned it?”

“I didn’t have that kind of time.”

“No, I imagine you didn’t, not with how deep the shadows under your eyes are. When was the last time you slept?”

Cassandra had to think about that for a moment. “...Yesterday noon? But that was after—” she nodded at her injured shoulder. “—and I didn’t get much sleep.”

“And before that?”

“Night before I left.”

She heard Eliza sigh. “How are you still even sitting upright?”

“I don’t know.” Cassandra pinched the bridge of her nose again, feeling the motion pulling at the edges of the crack in her withered arm. It was hard to open her eyes again and to keep them open. “Momentum, maybe.”

“Then I hope you’re ready to stop moving for a bit, because otherwise you’ll just keep hurting yourself until you drop.” Eliza pressed a towel to her back, well below the burn, and uncapped a small flagon with her free hand. “This is going to sting.”

Cassandra hissed through gritted teeth as a liquid was poured over the burn, and clamped her good hand over her mouth to stifle a growl of pain as the wound was then patted dry.

“Keep breathing, you’re okay, you’re doing well, it’s almost over...”

And when it was, Cassandra found herself wiping tears from her eyes, shocked at the murmured litany of encouragement and at a terrible feeling of something deep inside her coming unhinged against it, something that bent her back under its weight and pulled her throat tight and made her eyes water. She was just tired. She was just tired, and after she slept, she could bury it again, and deeper this time, just going deeper until nothing could rattle her like that anymore—

“I’m going to put on an ointment and wrap it back up,” Eliza said from behind her, still in the same steady tone. “You’ll need to keep checking in to get it changed twice a day. Try not to sleep on it and don’t do a lot of hard labour with this arm until this heals up.”

Cassandra nodded, not trusting her voice yet.

The last stage of getting the burned cut in her shoulder taken care of wasn’t nearly as painful, both the rather thick ointment and the clean silken wrap that came after cool against her skin, already soothing a little even against the pressure required to keep the dressing in its place. Eliza worked quickly, with practiced and gentle hands, and wrapped the bandage much more smoothly than Cassandra had been able to manage, then gestured to the linen shift.

“You can put your clothes back on. And keep your voice down, I think Tara’s asleep again. Where else does it hurt?”

“That’s everything.”

“Cassandra.” There was a note of warning in Eliza’s tone.

“I’m fine, alright?”

“You realize that I can see you’re favouring your right arm,” Eliza said calmly. “That old injury of yours reopened, didn’t it?”

Cassandra ground her teeth as she started closing the clasps of her tunic. “No. I’m just in a bit more pain than usual. It’s not getting worse or anything like that.”

Eliza sighed, exasperated now. “You are a terrible liar.”

Cassandra dragged her good hand down her face. “...I know.”

“Old injury. For heavens’ sake.” Eliza shook her head. “How old even are you?”

“I’ll be twenty-five this year,” Cassandra grumbled without looking up.

“Then take it from the woman half again your age: it’s admirable that you don’t want to be a burden, but taking this to a point where you’re too proud to accept help is a greater burden on yourself and those around you than actually letting yourself be taken care of every once in a while. I understand the drive to be the one who gives help, not the one who accepts it—I’ve been a healer my whole life—but you can’t help anyone if you’re falling apart, yourself. Even if you think of yourself as nothing but an automaton constructed to fix the problems of everyone else, you must face the truth that you need maintenance, if only to keep going. Now, what is wrong with your arm?”

“It’s not that I—” Cassandra gave up, and pulled the collar of her tunic far enough down to show the topmost edge of the starburst, gray-black Moonstone scars, but not far enough to show the half-oval indent in her flesh were the Moonstone itself had used to sit. “It’s a magic-caused scar like these, but covers the entire hand and most of the forearm. It’s not getting worse, but not better either, and causes me a lot of pain every other day. It’s just a bad day at the moment. Happy now?”

She was a terrible liar, yes, if she was trying to lie while thinking about the truth of the matter or behaving in accordance with it. But if the months she spent with Zhan Tiri had taught her anything, it was that one small lie wrapped up in truth could make the entire rhetoric sound honest and reasonable while warping it beyond the recognition of anyone who did actually know the whole truth.

“That’s how you got the woundwort to glow without even knowing it would,” Eliza said quietly.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Eliza rounded the bed, and sat down next to her. “Listen. I can’t help you with a cursed wound, nor can my father, but that doesn’t mean no one can. Sigrid told me once that she hadn’t taken the healer’s trial, but there are chanters in Ingvarr who have, and who might be able to unravel whatever spell that did this to you. There are highlander hermits in Pittsford who could try the same, there are medicine men in Galcrest and Neserdnia, there are temples of healing in Bayangor. There is help to be found. There’s just no one, even when you’re right in front of the water, who can force you to drink.”

Cassandra chuckled tiredly. If the Sundrop’s healing song had dragged her errant soul back into her body and lurched her heart into beating again and shoved her breath back into her lungs, but it hadn’t fixed her arm, then no parlour tricks performed with human hands and human means were going to.

“But speaking of, drink this.” Eliza gestured at the mug on the nightstand.

Cassandra took it, and sniffed at the steam rising from it, a light and pleasant herbal scent. The earthenware was warm against her left hand, and vacant against the right. “What is it?”

“Lemon balm. It’ll help you sleep,” Eliza said as she started gathering up the medical supplies she had brought. “It’s also spiked with a painkiller.”

Cassandra froze and lowered the mug, halfway to her mouth already. The herbalist gave her a tired look.

“Oh for heavens’ sake, if I wanted to hurt you or interrogate you, I’d tell you to drink first and asked questions after, not the other way around. Cassandra, you gave us everything. No one here is going to touch you. Just go to sleep before you collapse.”

Cassandra looked down at the brew. There was no way to verify whether that was true. There was nothing to count on, for making it be true, other than her own conduct thus far and a stupid, risky faith placed in the inherent goodness of people she barely knew. There was no one that she trusted, unquestionably, to watch her back for her while she slept.

She missed Owl so much, she realized miserably.

And then she drank, feeling a wave of warmth spread through her chest and stomach. “Can you wake me up in a few hours so that I spend some of the day awake and call it an early night?”

Eliza nodded, and leaned over to help Cassandra unlace and pull off her boots when she saw her struggling. “I’ll come to check on you both before noon.”

Chapter Text

Despite being exhausted to a quite extreme degree, what Cassandra woke up to was the sound of a door being opened, rather than the hand that came against her left forearm soon after to shake her gently. She rubbed her eyes open and nodded at Eliza, standing over her; the herbalist nodded back, squeezing a little before withdrawing the hand, and brushed a few locks of Cassandra’s hair behind her ear in a gesture too quick to lean away from. And as she walked away to Tara’s bedside, calling out to her in a gentle tone until the Kotoan spy stirred awake, Cassandra was left with the ghost of touch lingering against her skin, the memory of warmth searing its absence against her arm like an afterimage branded on the inside of her eyelids, and for a moment, she had no recourse but to face the truth as stark as it was uncomfortable:

She missed being touched.

For all of Rapunzel’s disregard for boundaries and limits, she had gotten Cassandra used to physical affection—hugs, hand-holding, light elbow jabs, sitting close by and leaning against each other and resting heads against shoulders. Now that her tolerance had been heightened, she craved the minimum she would have leaned away from in the past. And presently, she had no one to get that kind of affection from.

Two months since she last held a loved one in her arms. Longer still since any scraps she might have received hadn’t been soured by feeling consolatory or patronizing in nature—far, far longer.

Cassandra sat up and slapped both hands against her cheeks, hard. Nothing would come out of wallowing in self-pity, and she had things to do.

Though sleep had helped, she was still a little light-headed and the world still had a tendency to gently sway from side to side if she moved too suddenly, she discovered as she leaned down to put her boots back on. She took care lacing them back up, minding the new deep crack in her withered arm, but found it easier than expected. Surprisingly more so. So much, in fact, that it took her a long moment to realize that it simply didn’t hurt. Though the range of movement in her withered hand was still even less than usual, she could bend the fingers far enough to tie the laces in her boots and the knot on her favour, and did so without trouble. She could feel the motions pulling at the crack’s edges, but distantly, only as a bit of tightness in her wrist, of stiffness in her hand.

It was a relief, but it was also a problem. What a rare and wonderful feeling, to not be in pain for a little while—but since Cassandra tended to rely on pain to tell her when she had to stop pushing herself, the brief and blissful inability to feel that pain meant she had to watch herself so much more closely or run the risk of going too far once and regretting it for weeks. Or forever, she corrected herself silently, given that the withered portion of her arm wasn’t prone to healing at all.

“You look better,” Tara said weakly, while Eliza was unwrapping the bundles of bandage and herbal cataplasm from around her hands to replace them with fresh ones, squinting at Cassandra with her one eye. “Though, the bruises are going to take a while to fade. Hogni?”

“If that’s what the barbarian’s name was, then yes.” Cassandra felt at her broken nose, and only pulled her hand away when Eliza clicked her tongue at her to stop.

“Yeah, that just about figures,” the brutalized Kotoan agent turned her head slightly, indicating the bandaged half of her face. “Can you help me sit up?”

“I’ll need you on your back in a moment. After that, yes.” Eliza didn’t react when the spy grumbled quietly. “You know these need to be changed. The one over your eye socket is no different.”

“I know, just...”

“I can come back later,” Cassandra offered. “I’ve a few things to take care of.”

Tara sighed, then inclined her head—as much as she could while laying down. “That would be appreciated.”

Cassandra nodded, took a few seconds to gauge how steady her legs were, then grabbed her weapons and cloak off the nightstand and walked out into the corridor. Once she was halfway down the stairs, she noticed that the front door was open—or rather, what was left of it hung open, and Bruno was trying to force the remaining pieces off the hinges.

“Oh, you’re awake! And Tara?”

“Also awake,” Cassandra said.

“Excellent.” Bruno picked up a woodcutting axe and in a few strikes, hewed the remains of the door off. “We didn’t want to wake either of you up, but now that it’s not a worry...”

Cassandra looked at the thoroughly destroyed door. They had just replaced it a week prior. “Wish I could have been faster, now.”

“What, are you kidding? You were exactly fast enough. You got here before anyone got hurt.” Bruno looked around in a manner he probably thought was inconspicuous before leaning closer. “And between you and me, I hated that door, it was so ugly. Don’t tell Eliza I said that.”

Cassandra couldn’t help a little laugh at that. “Hanalei and Sigrid are fine, then?”

“Absolutely. Han’s just a little bruised, nothing he can’t walk off. Sigrid won’t be able to sleep on her back for a week or so and she has a few lacerations, but she was walking okay a few hours ago, and she’s already happy about the eyebrow scar she’ll have from this. Takes more than a few licks to keep either of them down, I assure you.”

“How did they even end up here? They’re both far from home.”

“Oh, they spent some years as swords-for-hire in this endless border war. You wouldn’t guess that they even liked each other back then, but I suppose dragging each other off the battlefield to find help time after time is what counts as romance in that line of work.” Bruno looked across the town square, where the Neserdnian smith was hammering away again and the Ingvarrdian fletcher was at one of the workbenches already—if seated in a rather heavy wooden chair with massive armrests, instead of atop the workbench itself. “They’re good people, and do good work, and they always stand up to fight if something goes as wrong as this morning. We’re really lucky to have them, the whole town.”

Cassandra was quiet for a moment. “Do people here commonly know that Sigrid is a sorceress?”

“She isn’t trying to hide it, she’s just not making a point of displaying it either. And frankly, it’s easy to forget—she’s always using mundane means to the limit before she resorts to magic. I think the most recent time I saw her do something like that was two and a half years ago, when a Kotoan detachment was trying to build a funeral pyre for their dead, and she kept it burning until over two dozen bodies were cremated on the amount of wood that would barely suffice for one.” Bruno paused, and gave her a careful look. “Why? Bad experiences with magic?”

“You could say that,” Cassandra allowed after forcing herself to unclench her teeth.

“That doesn’t surprise me. You’re from Corona, right? There’s not that many nice stories about sorcerers from there.”

“No, there really isn’t.”

“Well, just try to remember that not every kingdom has a track record as bad as yours when it comes to magic.”

“What about Equis and Koto?” Cassandra asked.

“Koto has its witch-knights, and while I’d never want to meet one, it’s more because they’re powerful in the political sense of the word than because of the magic. As for Equis, that’s, uh...” Bruno cleared his throat awkwardly. “Worse.”

Whatever follow-up question Cassandra was going to ask was left forgotten when she heard a clatter of hooves against the town square’s riverstone cobbles, and looked towards the sound to see Ramon pulling his work-worn chestnut to a stop by the currently doorless clinic. Despite the longer look he gave Cassandra, he barely acknowledged her with a nod, and turned to Bruno instead.

“Still need that replacement hauled over?”

“Yes, please. Kirill’s workshop. He said he’d have something whipped up by now.”

Ramon grunted. “Three gold.”

“Done deal.”

The spy nodded, and nudged his horse into a trot again, heading down one of the muddy Silberstadt streets. Cassandra stared after him for a moment.

“What does he even do around here?”

“Who, Ramon? Bit of everything, to be honest. Odd jobs, seasonal work, every now and then a courier run to drop people’s letters into the Seven Kingdoms’ postal service a town over and pick up replies. He’s an honest man, hard-working—has to be, to earn upkeep for a horse.”

“And the guards don’t bother him? Especially recently, they seemed more hostile to anyone visibly Kotoan,” Cassandra asked slowly.

Bruno grimaced. “I wouldn’t say they don’t bother him, but they certainly act as if he’s beneath them, and he does a lot of their dirtiest work in exchange for some scraps of silver. I mean, take the bodies. Not to say that your display earlier on wasn’t impressive, but you can be sure it wasn’t the guards who cleaned that up.”

“I see.” That was the perfect position for a spy, Cassandra supposed. Too insignificant to be noticed, a permanent background fixture quite like the buildings raised from excess mine rock or the ever-muddy streets, with more than enough reasons to make rounds and ask for gossip and keep a handle on any recent events, large or small. “Isn’t it strange that he’d come over to check on Tara?”

“No, they’re a bit of a—” To her surprise, Bruno laughed at that. “Let’s put it this way: if we had a matchmaker here, they’d drive her insane. I mean, Tara hasn’t lived here for very long, maybe three years now, but I hear one of the servers at the Brazen Brigand has a betting pool on when they’re finally going to kiss and get it over with.”

Cassandra smiled, shaking her head. Not only a perpetual smokescreen for the work of an agent of the crown, but an easy excuse for being seen together, and an amusing one at that to keep people formulating their own answers instead of look too closely or ask too much. The Royal Coronian Guard should be taking notes, frankly.

Before long, Ramon returned with another man in tow, carrying a door together—far simpler in design and lacking the small window that the previous two sported—and Cassandra sat on the stairs to the building’s first floor to get out of the way as the two of them and Bruno quickly set the door in its place. Small sums of gold exchanged hands, and the carpenter went back to his workshop, while Ramon hitched his horse by the clinic’s entrance and came inside to ask after Tara.

“My wife is with her right now, I’ll ask if she’s well enough to take visitors soon as they’re done,” Bruno was saying.

“I know this might be too early to ask,” Ramon admitted, “but do you think she’ll walk again?”

“Eventually,” Bruno said slowly, a considering look on his face. “But not unassisted, not for a very long time or possibly ever.”

Ramon nodded at that. “Do you think she’ll be using her hands again?”

“Hard to say. And even if, only harder to say how much grip strength or precision she’ll retain—it’s a little early to know for sure. It won’t do to pressure her about recovery, either. Remember that she was dying three weeks ago.”

“Believe me, I’ve not forgotten,” Ramon said grimly.

At that point, Cassandra heard a door creak open upstairs, and looked over her shoulder to see Eliza exiting Tara’s room.

“Are you still here, or back already?”

“Still. Is Tara up for another long conversation?”

Eliza considered for a moment before she gave a little sideways nod and ducked back into the room to ask. She emerged again shortly. “Come on up. Hello, Ramon.”

The second Kotoan spy nodded at her, and followed Cassandra into the room where Tara was now seated in her bed, pawing gently with one bundled-up hand at the bandages over one of her eyes. There were hints of persistent pain on her face, and she looked as if she’d been crying, but her expression dropped into the familiar clipped, business-as-usual demeanour as soon as the door was shut.

“Good, you’re both here. Cassandra, did Teagan give you a stamped note and a second set of their posters?”

“He did,” Cassandra confirmed, and produced the small stack of papers.

Tara nodded at Ramon, who then took the documents and quickly looked them over before giving her a thumbs up and pulling the chest out from under her bed to dig through it in search of a letter-scribing kit, and she turned back to keep Cassandra in her one-eyed field of vision. “We’ll set things in motion, make sure the kingdoms involved know that it was a Coronian knight-errant who brought their worst criminals to justice. These are going to be some ridiculous sums of money—as in, beyond what one person will be able to carry. Is there an address you want all that to arrive at?”

Cassandra shrugged. “Just the court of Corona. If it’s under my name, it’ll be fine.”

“Can be done. Are you satisfied with the supplies you were given, or do you want to exchange or restock on what we’ve left?”

“The ink that glows near magic,” Cassandra said immediately. If she ever needed to mark a map with that, not only would it contrast profoundly against the map’s own ink, it would also be invisible to a considerable amount of other people until she touched the map.

“Take your fill. Anything more?”

“Well the poison certainly worked out, but I’d rather carry something that isn’t illegal.”

A genuine smile pulled at Tara’s lips as she shook her head. “Ah, honour. What an unaffordable luxury.”

“It’s an obligation, too,” Cassandra said dryly as she deposited the flasks of venom and antidote back in the lidless cassette she had taken them from earlier.

“I’m sure. You are still after poison to dip weapons in, I assume, rather than one that needs to be ingested, inhaled, or made skin contact with in order to take effect?”

Cassandra sighed heavily. “I am going to ignore the fact that I now know more about poisoning that I ever thought I’d need to, and say yes, preferably arrowheads rather than blades.”

“And with the intention to paralyze, weaken, or kill?” Tara inclined her head at the confused look on Cassandra’s face. “One of each, then. I’d recommend sandbank serpent venom to paralyze. They’re small Ingvarrdian snakes that hunt from just below the surface of water, and use the venom to partially immobilize their prey—mostly small birds and rodents—for long enough that the creature drowns. A bite is rarely fatal in humans, but a dipped arrowhead or dagger-blade will quickly render a limb useless for a short time. It’ll be enough to put a combatant’s weapon arm out of commission for the fight, or an escapee’s leg for the chase. To weaken, bronze-backed scorpion venom. It can be fatal in larger doses, but you would need to cause several wounds for such a dose to be delivered, and with one hit you can expect the target to suffer from fever, muscle spasms, and extreme fatigue within a few days. It can be enough to turn the tide of a fight if you use it long enough beforehand. To kill... there’s a few options.” Tara looked to Ramon. “What do you think?”

“Ivory spider,” Ramon said, not looking up from a quill he was tempering.

Tara nodded. “That’s what I was thinking, too. It breaks down the target’s nervous system around the affected area, essentially. I recommend you commission a woodworker for a cassette like this, keep the vials well-padded, and the entire package as safe as you can.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Cassandra picked the venoms and their respective antidotes as she was directed, then looked to Ramon, who was starting to scribe a short missive in multiple copies. “About the one you send to Pittsford—I didn’t kill their outlaw alone. Only one-fourth of the reward is mine.”

“And you’d like the remaining three quarters to go to who?” the Kotoan agent asked, his tone betraying no surprise.

“Hanalei the smith, Sigrid the fletcher, and Teagan the job board’s keeper, one-fourth each.”

The two spies looked between each other and Cassandra.

“I think it can be done,” Ramon said eventually. “Although, it will take time for the bounty money to arrive here all the way from Pittsford.”

“I don’t mind.”

“All right, then. Leave me to it for a moment.”

Tara shifted slightly against the headboard, with a brief grimace of pain. “While he’s doing that, what do you want to know?”

“Give me the basics on the political situation in this area.” Cassandra sat down at the edge of Tara’s bed. “I understand that Equis and Koto have been locked in an endless tug-o’-war here, but little more.”

The injured agent sighed, gathering her thoughts for a moment. “Endless tug-o’-war about sums it up. The silver mine used to be a big point of contention, and that was even before House Bayard was eradicated—on Koto’s part, that is not a deed that can go unavenged. The King will keep pushing until enough ground is taken to establish a proper, self-sustaining province under an aristocratic family and a knight chapter of the Tribunal Order, and until the ruins of Château de Bayard are anointed and enshrined. On Equis’ part... if their monarch was a Kotoan official, I would be deeming him unfit to rule and looking for any half-competent replacement around so I could formally request a writ for his execution. Turning his own seat of power into a maze-riddled deathtrap, naming a pet animal his heir to the throne, whatever that shameful display of attempting to marry the Queen of Corona to himself in international waters had been—this is not a man who considers the repercussions of his actions.”

“Trevor is a tantrum-prone manchild,” Ramon grumbled over the letters, not looking up. “Say it like it is, Tara.”

Tara gave a one-shouldered shrug. “He’s a tantrum-prone manchild. Except that his tantrums can send hundreds of thousands to an early grave. And he’s been fixated on responding to petty insults—or simply to being told no—with increasingly disproportional force for a few years now. He will not back down in this dispute, and he will not negotiate unless pressured to do so by multiple foreign powers.”

“And will King Lysander halt the advance after establishing this new province?” Cassandra asked slowly.

“I believe so. Unless, of course, Equis finds it prudent to attack the province to retake lost territory, which will turn this border dispute into an actual war.” Tara smiled painfully. “Then he’ll keep advancing until Equis is to Koto what Saporia is to Corona, or until the Seven Kingdoms force these monarchs into peace talks. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what that is going to look like.”

Cassandra stayed silent for a long while, thinking. The animosity between King Frederic and King Trevor was a perpetual consideration, growing up in the Coronian court, but came to the forefront only rarely. For the most part, the two kings were capable of civil behaviour towards each other—particularly if Queen Arianna was not in the room.

“When did this start, this... increase in pettiness?”

Tara raised an eyebrow. “Why, when your crown princess was found, of course. Equis and Corona have both been heirless for a very long time; it would have been prudent of your king to remarry and attempt to sire another, but I suppose the heart of a man had overruled the will of a king. With King Trevor’s fixation on Queen Arianna, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had been waiting for that divorce only to resume his own advances towards her, and kept himself... available, as it were, for that reason. With your princess returning to the court, there was no twisted miracle of the sort to wait for anymore.” The spy paused at the look on Cassandra’s face. “Repulsive, I know, but politics often are.”

“I find that more true every day,” Cassandra said dryly.

The injured spy considered her for a moment. “Do you plan on travelling further into Equisian territory?”

“Eventually.”

“Then, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to find other agents of the crown operating there,” Tara said carefully. “Some hire sellswords and lead them as just one among the innumerable small teams of mercenaries, if only carrying out the orders passed through those in positions more like Ramon’s and my own, for the most part.”

Cassandra idly smoothed out the gold-trimmed kerchief tied around her left arm, marking her as a knight-errant, one who hailed from a kingdom that counted Koto among its allies. “Funny how I was thinking about finding myself a team, at some point.”

“There are three currently active who are known among the service for taking good care of their hirelings: Francesco, Delphine, and Bonaventura. I would not recommend asking for them by name, as that would immediately turn them suspicious or outright hostile, but if you find yourself choosing between recruiters you’ve never met before, those three will not think of yourself—or anyone else they lead alongside you—as disposable.”

“I’ll remember that.” Cassandra thought for a moment. “What have been they up to, last time you heard from them?”

“That is not something I can tell you,” Tara said calmly.

“Right. What means do you expect to be used in securing this new province?”

“Aside from any means necessary? I think we might start seeing events like nobles being executed for treason on fabricated charges, just to push their successors into switching sides; bandit outfits growing in strength and boldness enough to raid towns, and garrisons swelling in size ostensibly to protect the people; siege laid to cities and breaking only through an inside source poisoning the wells, opening the gates, or pressuring the leadership into surrender. And make no mistake, I mean we’ll be seeing these acts from both sides. Hopefully they’ll be enough. Because if they aren’t, there will be armies marching through this land as soon as the winter breaks.”

“You’re aware that Equis is offering titles and privilege to people who bring them treasures, right?”

Tara inclined her head. “I am, but I appreciate you mentioning it. Trevor has been emptying the treasury on every caprice and whim for years—it’s been some time since his advisors and topmost retainers had managed to pressure him into even the slightest bit of effort towards refilling it. And really, it’s a little funny how you mention this two-and-a-half weeks after the mine settlement’s Scarlet Brigade went crazy over losing some deepest reserve of their buried treasure. What a mystery.”

“I wonder what could have happened,” Cassandra said in a deadpan tone. Then cocked her head in disbelief. “I’m sorry, are you trying to tell me that those red scarf bandits are the Scarlet Brigade?”

“They are. Why?”

“I thought the Scarlet Brigade was the result of Equis attempting to form a foreign legion! I killed two of them without even trying!”

“How many tassels did they wear on those scarves?” Ramon spoke up from over the letters.

Cassandra thought back to the brief fight in the mineshaft. “I can’t remember seeing any.”

“That’d do it. Tassels are to them what rank insignia are to any actual military. I’m not surprised you killed two recruits without breaking a sweat.” Ramon laid the letters out to dry, without sanding them, and gave Cassandra a gauging look. “Though after today, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had killed two of their veteran fighters without breaking a sweat, either.”

Cassandra felt herself smile. “You didn’t think I could actually kill those four, did you?”

“I thought you’d probably kill one. I hoped you’d kill two before dying yourself,” Ramon said calmly. “And yet here you are, barely worse for the wear, after I had to clean up all four of their bodies.”

“The Scarlet Brigade did start out as an Equisian foreign legion,” Tara spoke up again, and Cassandra turned to her to listen rather than choose between well-advised modesty and well-deserved gloating. “Except that they were ridiculously easy to destabilize, and turned back to banditry decades ago. The group operating out of the mine is just one detachment; there are many, and each claims to be the one true Scarlet Brigade. Some hire themselves out as a regimented mercenary outfit, while some are content to raise a stronghold to settle down in and rule the surrounding area with their top officers as kingpins. Our local detachment has been long contesting against three other major bandit outfits also operating out of the mines—the Rats, the Shankers, and the Coon Tails. The former two are just regular thieves and highwaymen. The Coon Tails, interestingly enough, had started out as a neighbourhood watch and a group that made an effort to convert the spent mineshafts into some semblance of liveable space, attempting to keep it at least somewhat sanitary and cannibalizing the infrastructure into something of more use to an underground shantytown. They used to call themselves the Cleaners, but it didn’t stick after they started pinning raccoon tails to their garb to signify function, after how raccoons always seem to wash their food if at all possible. The Shankers and the Rats moderately hate each other, but both yield to the Coon Tails long as they keep trying to make conditions safer instead of grab at power. The Scarlet Brigade regularly pushes all three around, and there is a lot of bad blood between it and the others. Hard to expect anything else, with how the Scarlet Brigade are ex-military and the other three are each made up of local survivors, refugees, orphans, and deserters.”

Cassandra thought for a moment. “How much trouble do they cause here?”

“A moderate amount. The Coon Tails are barely a gang in their own right, any violence they resort to is truly minimal. The Shankers and the Rats are mostly just desperate people who refuse to be victimized all over again—if given food, land, and security outside of membership in a group that fights back for its own, most of them would likely disband and go back to their previous lives. The Scarlet Brigade is more of a problem, but having to contest against three groups all operating in the same area keeps them from following through on any real ambitions their officers might have. They mostly stick to harassing farmers and merchant caravans.”

“Okay.” Cassandra rubbed her forehead against a slowly building headache. “I’m still very tired. I might come back with more questions, but I need to process first.”

“Reasonable.” Tara looked to Ramon. “Token.”

“Right.” Ramon rummaged through the chest again, and eventually pulled out what seemed to be a steel medallion, shaped like a twelve-spoked cog with a scratched circular surface in the centre, hanging off a long chain. “You’re going to need to blood this.”

“Excuse me?” Cassandra said dryly.

“Prick a finger. It’s inactive, and locks onto the blood of whoever is to be the wearer. Once it does, you’ll be able to use it—and when used, it’s a mark that you’re an ally of the Kotoan crown. Show this to sentries guarding a city’s gate, and they’ll open it for you. Show this to an aristocrat’s servant or a witch-knight’s squire, and they’ll arrange an audience for you.”

Cassandra frowned, but drew a dagger to pierce a fingertip, and took the medallion from Ramon’s hand to put the bead of blood against it. A faint glow came from the steel as it seemed to vibrate in her hand for a moment, then nothing. She side-eyed the spy.

“Now what?”

Ramon motioned her to grab at the medallion’s edge. “Twist.”

Cassandra did, and to her surprise, the cog’s spokes shifted, turning the medallion into a perfect circle. The nicks along the edges turned into a smooth engraved inscription that read FAVOURED • OF • THE • CROWN; the formless scratches in the middle turned into the coat-of-arms of Koto, two seated wolfhounds facing each other.

“Huh,” Cassandra said.

“It’ll stay like that until you untwist it. Now watch this,” Ramon took the medallion from her once she reverted it to its unassuming, scratched-up form, and tried to repeat what she had just done. Nothing happened. “Only you can do that now—that’s what the blood was for. Carry it like a sentimental piece of garbage on an everyday basis, twist into the token when you need it. And since for some reason you already radiate magic, not even that is going to show.”

“Clever. Very clever.” Cassandra put the unassuming medallion around her neck, tucked it under her clothes. “Though if they all look like a cog, that might draw attention.”

“That’s why they don’t all look like a cog.” Ramon grabbed at a handful of identical chains, and pulled out several more—a flower, a Kaiser roll, and a snail were three shapes that Cassandra caught sight of before he put them away again. Then he dug out a fat purse and plopped it into Cassandra’s hands, the motion accompanied with the weight of metal and the sound of clinking coins. “One last thing: pocket money. It’s laughable compared to the bounties you just secured, but it’s here instead of nations away, and it’s from both of us.”

“What?” Cassandra asked dryly.

“Thanks for killing the people who put me in this bed,” Tara said calmly, imitating a salute with a wrapped up hand at the end of a broken arm, raised to the blind and bandaged side of her face. “Get yourself something nice.”

Cassandra turned to Ramon. “Didn’t you just spend the morning running errands and doing work no one else wants to do for a handful of gold? How much is in here, hundreds?”

Ramon chuckled. “Five hundred. And I keep the local persona funds apart from funds for the actual work we’re doing. People would start wondering where the resident no one got the coin to throw left and right, otherwise.”

Cassandra looked between the two spies for a moment. Thought about how she’d feel if one of the guys on the guard of Castle Corona got beaten nearly to death, and only survived thanks to a hired hand retrieving healing herbs. Then she pocketed the money. “...Thanks.”

“Back at you.” Ramon gathered the dried letters and tucked them away, and rose from the neighbouring bed. “Now let’s go before Eliza throws us out again.”

Cassandra nodded, and rose as well, giving Tara one last look on her way out. “Rest well, and... I wish you a smooth recovery.”

The injured agent of Kotoan crown bowed her head slightly. “I hope you find what you’re chasing, knight-errant.”

After exiting the clinic, Cassandra looked up to the sky. Overcast, heralding rain to come. She thought for a moment, wondering whether her withered arm would ache already if she hadn’t drank the painkiller-spiked herbal brew, counting out matters to attend to, gauging how much she had the strength to do before she settled in to sleep for more than a few scant hours. A gust of crisp wind tugged at her cloak, tumbled a few red and yellow leaves past. Cassandra looked after them, caught off-guard with the reminder of the passage of time.

Two months since she left Castle Corona. It felt like yesterday and a lifetime ago, at the same time. It felt like she’d barely had the time to do anything at all, to even begin finding her footing, and like she’d already grown beyond the expectations and wildest dreams of those who used to know her.

Then again, even the wildest dreams of those who used to know her hadn’t exactly featured her accomplishing anything of note, now had they.

She walked along the town square’s edge, studiously ignoring the stares of Equisian guards, the pointed fingers and excited whispers of the locals, and returning the greetings of a few she remembered the faces if not the names of. Instead of enter the Brazen Brigand’s dining floor, she went into the stable first, finding Fidella standing asleep in a stall. Her tack and harness had been removed and laid aside in orderly rows, next to the saddlebags, the sorcerer’s crosier, and the barbarian’s two-hander; her coat had been brushed out into a lustrous sheen; the troughs in front of her were still half-filled with water and oats respectively; a few carrots had been left in a row as treats next to the trough of oats. Cassandra raised her eyebrows, impressed. That did indeed look like an earnest attempt to give a horse everything it could ever want.

She turned to leave, but looked over her shoulder again at the sound of a tired nicker. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

Snort, Fidella said dismissively, and leaned into Cassandra’s hands as she came up to stroke the mare’s nose.

“We did good.” Cassandra leaned her forehead against Fidella’s for a moment. “We did something very hard and very necessary. Now a few terrible people can’t hurt anyone else. You worked so hard with me on this, too, I never could’ve done it without you—”

Snort, Fidella interrupted, a gentle tone and a firm disagreement.

Cassandra chuckled weakly, her throat tight and her eyes burning all of a sudden. “What did I do to deserve you guys? You and Owl both, you just believe I can do anything I put my mind to, don’t you?”

With another soft nicker, Fidella pushed one of Cassandra’s hands away and put her chin at Cassandra’s good shoulder to nudge her closer.

“No, of course I’m not cross with you for returning to Corona back then, I never was.” Cassandra put her arms around the mare’s neck. “Owl stayed with me until he needed to go get help for my dad, I wasn’t alone for very long, and you had the others to take care of and get them home safely. It was the right decision. Though, if you had stayed, I probably would have tried to make moon rock barding for you.”

That last remark slipped out unbidden, and Cassandra found herself taken aback with how freeing it felt to say something like that out loud—just to acknowledge her time as the usurper, wielder, and vessel of the Moonstone as a period of her life, no different than her time spent serving as a handmaiden or trying to prove she was good enough for the Royal Guard. Just as something that had happened, not an act too depraved to even speak of without veiling it in euphemisms and unspoken implications. Just as an event that had taken place and shaped the course of a few months, little different from a rich harvest or a slight flooding. Not a crime. Not a mistake to endlessly repent for. She breathed more easily, closing her eyes for a moment.

Maybe being forgiven in a manner that was nothing short of a fucking spectacle, back in Corona, had felt as humiliating as it did because she hadn’t done that many things that she had to be forgiven for. Maybe being kept around like a trophy, another living proof of how the Princess could tame even the sworn enemies of Corona right next to Varian, had been as demeaning as it was because it magnified her mistakes while stripping her of the agency for having made them in the first place, the endless stream of excuses made for her in front of anyone who would listen as if she were a misbehaving child, it wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t how she really felt, it wasn’t meant to hurt anyone—

It had been her choice, and she’d take the fault along with it, whatever. It had entirely been how she felt, and felt so strongly that the Moonstone had resonated, ice-cold sparks and wisps of lightning flashing around her each time she lost her temper or raised her voice. It had thoroughly been meant to hurt, as much as she had been hurt beforehand and then some. And this insistence to bleach her heart out of anything unsightly, to have even her own mistakes denied to her, had only served to convince her that even the first time around, Cassandra had the right idea—to leave.

Zhan Tiri may have lied. Zhan Tiri may have manipulated. But her scheming had only been sown in fertile ground because her assessments were far from inaccurate.

My whole life I’ve been cast aside, for you, Cassandra’s own words echoed through her head. And though she had originally spoken them in anger, they were not untrue. The Lost Princess had been a focus of the court even in her eighteen-years-long absence, a last hopeless chance to avoid a war of succession after King Frederic would die, a reason to fill the Royal Guard with men who were loyal instead of with men who were competent, to speak nothing of the euphoric bustle and business that had erupted upon her return. Or of the way protocol and tradition, the pillars of the court’s continued existence, suddenly meant nothing as soon as she came home. Or of the way the wishes of no one but the King himself were suddenly worth anything as soon as she asked for something on the contrary.

She felt the favour tied around her left arm, tight against her bicep as her fist clenched against these thoughts. Something had changed, in the very end. It had, at long last. A beginning. A hope fainter than a candle’s light. But it was too little, and too late, and if Cassandra was to nurse that tiny feeble glimmer in her broken hands and in the hollow cage between her ribs, it had to be somewhere far away from the excessive, self-serving, inconsiderate caring of another, far enough that she would not have to watch this light being choked out and smothered all over again.

And now she was free—with the first mark of being loved, truly loved, for all that she was, given openly but with room for refusal should she choose to refuse it, and taken to be carried in an open display for all to see—now she was free, and could do anything she wanted, be anyone she wanted. And all she had ever wanted was to become the best version of herself that she could ever dream up. Good enough to prove everyone wrong, everyone who had looked down on her, everyone who had muttered of stray mongrels and orphan brats behind her back, everyone who had only ever rewarded her for making herself smaller and lesser than she could be. Good enough to breathe with her entire chest. Good enough to be worth telling others about. Good enough to matter.

“Fidella? Thank you for coming with me. For not leaving me to do this entirely alone. I need—” Cassandra sniffed, exhaled slowly, pulled her withered arm back to rub at her eyes with gloved fingers. “I need company. And I know it’s not fair to make you and Owl give me all of it. I’ll find some people to be with soon. Just not yet. Just give me until I get sick of how hard everything is when I can’t trust or rely on another person, okay?”

Snort, Fidella said lovingly, a warm puff of breath coming against Cassandra’s shoulder and neck.

“Okay.” Cassandra wiped the last of unwanted tears from her eyes, and pulled away. “You keep resting. I’ll go deal with people some more now.”

The mare gave her one more encouraging little nicker, and Cassandra stroked a hand down her neck before she walked past to look through the saddlebags, making sure everything was accounted for. Once she was certain that none of her belongings were missing, Cassandra strapped her quiver to her belt, then hefted the barbarian’s two-hander, tucked it under her good arm, and headed towards the smithy. Once again, it was the fletcher who looked up first, as if she had a sixth sense based on proximity. Or maybe it was just that the smith was partially deaf, which would not be uncommon in his profession at all.

“Hey, look what the cat dragged in.”

Cassandra exchanged nods with Hanalei, then gestured to Sigrid’s bandaged forehead. “You’re well, I see?”

“Well enough. What’ve you got there?”

“I pulled this off of Hogni Galdrsbani after killing him.” Cassandra heaved the massive, jagged, two-handed sword onto Sigrid’s workbench. “I was hoping either of you could tell me why it looks like this.”

Hanalei craned his neck to look, and scowled in a grimace of distaste. “Because it’s a trophy rack, that’s why.”

Cassandra looked between him and his wife, and finally noticed that Sigrid’s usual veneer was suddenly gone—the fletcher was staring at the weapon, eyes wide and a mixture of shock and revulsion on her face.

“Oh, this—” an overwhelmed little laugh escaped Sigrid’s lips. “—this is vile.”

“What do you mean?” Cassandra asked, as patiently as she could.

Instead of answer straight away, Sigrid reached under her shirt, and pulled out a knife that must have been sheathed in a scabbard strapped under her left arm until now. An ornate knife, sharpened only on one side of the blade, curved delicately into an S-shape and forged of watered steel, its guard practically non-existent, its pommel masterfully carved into the shape of a bird’s head, a shrike judging by the slightly hooked beak, with small beads of semi-translucent smoky quartz forming its eyes. When she held it in front of the two-hander, Cassandra looked between both of the weapons.

The giant sword’s jagged silhouette had resulted from dozens upon dozens of knives like that being partway molten and hammered into the sword’s own steel.

“This is the mark of a sorcerer where I’m from,” Sigrid said, somewhat weakly, indicating the dagger. “It’s traditionally worn in the front of the belt, I just don’t like to advertise myself as a magic user all the time. So he probably targeted people based on seeing them carry one.”

“I thought a dagger worn in the front of the belt was the mark of a warrior in Ingvarr,” Cassandra said with a frown.

“Not precisely. You have to pass two sorcery trials to be recognized as warrior, instead just random person who’s okay at fighting. The knife, you earn after passing the first trial, and it’s supposed to be buried or burned with your body after you die.” Sigrid sheathed her dagger under her clothes again. “He’s been collecting them off sorcerers he’d killed and using them to kill more.”

“That is vile.” Cassandra gestured to the sword. “Isn’t there a way to put all this to rest? If these are now, essentially, defiled burial goods?”

Sigrid considered, then slowly shook her head. “Not in the way you’re thinking.”

“But you’re thinking of another way.”

The fletcher looked pointedly to the arrows she’d just been making. “I have an idea, and I hate it, but it would work. Was there anything else you wanted?”

Cassandra inclined her head, recognizing that the matter was out of her hands now. “You’re the one who cinched a ward around Wolf’s Head Hollow, aren’t you?”

Sigrid grinned proudly at that, a bit of her usual irreverent air returning. “Ah, my finest piece of work. Hopefully you took the hint and didn’t go inside?”

“I went inside twice,” Cassandra said dryly. “The hounds are gone, but the witch-knight’s ghost is still around. If you can make a barrier like that, can you destroy magical objects, too?”

“No. I’ve never gone that far into the trials. There are people who have, and can, but you don’t find them around every corner.” Sigrid paused, giving Cassandra a careful, searching look. “But, if you’re determined to look until you find one, we could probably make you a box that’d contain and ward off any enchanted junk you’re carrying, if it’s not too large.”

“I’ll take it.” Cassandra thought back to the sorcerer’s tome and crosier—she’d have to break the head off the staff or poke the crystal out of it—and moved her hands to indicate the dimensions she’d need. “About this big.”

“Doable,” Hanalei said confidently. “It’s going to be expensive, though: cold iron, wardwork, a casing to make sure it doesn’t rust through, and, I imagine, a lock.”

Sigrid nodded slowly, then looked at her husband. “Hundred seventy?”

“Hundred fifty, we know she’s okay.”

“Hundred seventy is fine. I was also going to ask after the arrows you don’t sell,” Cassandra said. “Blue fletch?”

“Oh, those beauties.” Sigrid grinned openly. “How do you find them?”

“Impressive, to be honest. I didn’t think I’d ever want to use them, but, well, I only have one left now.”

Sigrid inclined her head at that. “While I agree with the sentiment... they’re too brutal a weapon for use on people... sometimes you find yourself fighting monsters.”

Cassandra cleared her throat. “I did, in fact, use them on a person.”

“The only way for monsters to be real is if they used to be people,” Sigrid said simply. “Every now and then, someone decides to abdicate their humanity and starts acting like a monster. If you act like a monster, you get put down like a monster, and your slayers deserve a hero’s fame.”

“I don’t know if I agree with that, but what’s done is done, and I’m still in the market for more.” Cassandra thought back to the poison vials. Judging from her shots at the minotaur, each would be enough to load three of the liquid-carrier arrowheads. Nine, then, and a few to spare in case a few would break before they could be used. “How many do you have?”

“No more than two dozen at any given time. They’re a bit of a hobby project and a way to use up scraps, to be honest.” Sigrid unlatched the false bottom in one of the drawers, then narrowed her eyes, quickly counting under her breath in her native language. “Fifteen right now.”

“Eleven, then.”

Sigrid raised her eyebrows. “Alright, big spender, you’re cleaning us out here.”

Cassandra shrugged as she exchanged some of the Kotoan spies’ gold for the falcon-fletch dyed bright turquoise, bulbous-headed carrier arrows. “What else am I gonna do, gamble?”

Sigrid laughed at that. “If you’re a shit gambler and someone dirt-poor around you doesn’t want a handout, challenge them to a game and then play to lose. It’s basically charity, just lets them keep their pride.”

“Do you give life advice to everyone who trades with you, or do you just not have friends to philosophise with?”

“Whoa, claws out today, huh?” Sigrid shook her head, if gingerly, still smiling. “Go eat something and maybe you’ll calm down.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes. Then thought for a moment.

She hadn’t eaten today yet, had she?

“Ugh.” She turned on her heel to walk away. “Great. Fine.”

“Take care!” Sigrid called out after her cheerfully, another bout of quiet laughter drowned out with the strikes of metal against metal when she and the smith went back to work.

Cassandra grumbled, heading back towards the Brazen Brigand—the dining floor this time. There was not a lot of traffic at this hour, somewhere around noon; beyond a regular sleeping with their head and chest atop the table but a hand still closed on their tankard, a few rough-and-tumble types idly playing cards, and a woman around Cassandra’s age sitting alone in a nook at the countertop’s edge where she wasn’t immediately visible from the door, the inn was fairly empty.

Sebastian, the owner, looked up from where he was checking bottles and flagons beneath the counter. “If it isn’t the hero of the day. I didn’t think we’d see you again, not after Teagan told me who you went after.”

“I’ve faced worse,” Cassandra said as she climbed into a high chair in front of the countertop. So what if her feet dangled slightly off the floor like that, maybe she needed her legs to rest. “Any chance I can get a late breakfast from you?”

Sebastian chuckled. “Dumplings with minced pork, baked potatoes in spinach sauce, eggs and a ham sandwich, or fried slices?”

“What’s that last one?”

“You whisk an egg with some milk, soak slices of bread too dry to eat normally in it, and fry them in a pan. Pretty good, especially with a fruit preserve on top.”

Cassandra glanced to her withered arm. Something she wouldn’t have to cut into smaller pieces would probably be best. “The dumplings, and whatever vegetables you have handy with that.”

“Solid choice.” Sebastian considered her for a moment. “You look too wiped to be drinking today, want some borsht instead of an ale? It’ll fit the dumplings like cranberry fits roast duck.”

“Borsht?”

“Beetroot soup.”

“Yeah, sounds good.”

“And for your bird?” Sebastian looked around. “Come to think of it, where is your bird? I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“He’s on an errand,” Cassandra said.

Sebastian stared her, visibly uncertain if she was being serious. “Right. Well then. Three gold, and be with you in just a minute.”

Cassandra paid, and leaned an elbow against the table to rub her eyes and squeeze at her temples once Sebastian ducked into the kitchen for a moment. She was still extremely tired. But she could take a day to rest up, before she checked back into the clinic for more renovation work, however little she could accomplish with her dominant hand incapable of closing and the same shoulder restricted to light labour or no labour at all.

She was going to have to do something about her withered arm. And Cassandra knew, as only someone trained for combat could know, that every human being was meat—when cut it bled, when burnt it roasted, when dead it rotted. And if her withered arm was meat, if scorched and cracked with magic older than kingdoms and nations, maybe it would still behave like meat when treated with something that made actual meat pucker and last. Like salt. She grimaced at the very thought, remembering a time when she was little and had accidentally rubbed salt into a scratch. That was not a mistake anyone made twice.

A persistent, dull ache was building in the broken bridge of her nose again. The painkiller she had drunk in the morning must have begun wearing off.

Shortly, a tankard full of beetroot soup so dark red as to be almost black was placed before her, as well as a deep plate full of thick, sticky balls of dough and a hefty serving of shredded cabbage and narrow chunks of carrot and parsley root on the side. Cassandra looked up at the teenage boy of a server who brought it.

“I said whatever you have handy, and you still did all that?”

“Well, you know,” the boy said nervously, clearly unsure whether she was pleased or angry.

“That’s really nice of you.” Cassandra handed him a silver.

The server’s eyes lit up, and he snatched the coin before scurrying away. Sebastian chuckled as he looked after him.

“Word got out that you’re a tipper. This is your life now, I’m afraid.”

“I think I can live with that.” Cassandra took a fork in her left hand and sliced one of the dumplings in half without trouble. The minced meat filling was well-cooked, and still steaming, only more inviting for how hungry she suddenly realized she was. “Did anything interesting happen while I was gone?”

“Not much.” Sebastian drew a breath as if to say more, but then looked at someone who had just entered his inn, and his face froze into a uniquely hostile expression. “Excuse me for a moment—GET OUT OF HERE, CARTER!”

Cassandra turned to the man who was just bellowed at, as did everyone else in the tavern. A tight, uncomfortable look passed through his face, as he desperately looked through the Brigand’s customers for someone familiar, someone who would speak up for him, to no avail.

“I SAID GET OUT, YOU SHIT!” Sebastian roared again, and settled with his elbows against the countertop again when the man reluctantly walked back out. “I’m sorry, there are just some idiots I don’t want to see in my establishment.”

“What’d he do?”

“Ah, he’s been... bothering one of the ladies who’s renting a room here,” Sebastian said with a grimace. “She doesn’t need that kind of shit in her life, and frankly, neither do I. As for recent events, well, the guards still aren’t letting up on harassing Kotoans, which is unsavoury to say the least.” He thought for a moment, then gave a little sideways nod. “I guess we still haven’t gotten any news from three farms nearby, which is a lack of something happening rather than something happening, but yeah.”

Cassandra frowned, and swallowed her food before speaking again. “Is one of those farms about half a day’s travel on horseback westwards from here?”

“Yeah. Why, were you there? What happened?”

“I came through when I was tracking those four I’d killed,” Cassandra admitted with a wince. “All I found was six bodies, and a lot of bones.”

Sebastian sighed heavily. “That would be all of the Richters, then. Damn it. I hope the Isards and the Tysons are okay.”

“Do farmhouses often go dark like this? I’ve heard there can be trouble with bandits from the mines.”

“Only if it’s the fucking Reds stirring trouble all over again. The Shankers and the Rats talk a big talk, but it’s mostly just talk. They’re just people—our people—half of them we know from before yet another army steamrolled through their houses and fields. And the Coon Tails only show up to fairs to trade salvage and ore for things they can actually use. Did you know they built a charcoal mound and even a pottery kiln? From nothing! All they had was a few smelters to take apart and a lot of grit to put everything they know to good use.”

Cassandra gave a hum around another mouthful of food, hoping to encourage the tavern owner to talk more about the local hearsay and common knowledge. The more she learned about matters that the locals considered too obvious to teach an outlander about, the better prepared she would be for dealing with any upcoming trouble—and if life had taught her anything, it was that trouble never ceased coming.

Chapter Text

Rapunzel pulled out the shawl she’d been carrying with herself the whole day and wrapped it around her shoulders the moment she was hit with the breeze. Evenings were growing cold, this time of year; the castle’s elevation and its proximity to the sea did nothing to mitigate wind-chill, either. She looked beyond the walls, over the vast expanse of water and sky, listening out for the echoing cries of that squabble of gulls or another, and licked the salt carried on the wind from her lips.

“You look magnificent, my dear,” her father commented.

“Thanks. Eugene helped me pick.”

“The boy has excellent taste,” King Frederic admitted. His moustache twitched in a discreet smile. “But then again, we’ve known that since he set his eyes on you.”

Rapunzel laughed a little, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear against the wind. It was going to get tousled again so very soon, she knew, but couldn’t bring herself to care. No matter how much easier it would be to keep her hair in order if it was long enough to be tied back or plaited again, the thought of growing it out even to the shoulders was abhorrent, and she would hear none of it.

They walked together towards a table that had been carried into the castle gardens for this meeting, set with a fat teapot and a few platters of snack foods both sweet and savoury. And across the way, Rapunzel could see the herald leading two more people there, one keeping a respectful half-step behind and to the right of the other, their dress tastefully modest but made of expensive fabrics and leathers, high boots and broad belts shiny with some sort of waterproofing agent. Though sleeveless and bare-headed, they were clearly comfortable in the early autumn wind, and accustomed to such weather as well—with their hair bleached and their faces tanned from long hours in the sun, their lips cracked with the sea’s wind and salt, their steps a listing walk of sailors on dry ground.

Squeak, Pascal said as he stuck his head out from under the dark gray shawl around Rapunzel’s shoulders.

“Who’s the second person?” Rapunzel asked, leaning to her dad.

“A personal protector, I believe.”

“Huh.” She glanced to Pascal. “Stay underneath to keep warm, if you like, but I don’t think you should change colour.”

Squeak, Pascal acquiesced easily, and reverted to his usual vibrant green.

“Your Majesty, your highness,” the herald spoke formally as soon as the two groups met. “May I present: Prince Erling of Ingvarr.”

“I trust Corona has been treating you well?” King Frederic said, shaking the prince’s hand.

“Well enough. The embassy’s guest chambers are quite spacious, compared to a shared bunk on a ship,” Erling said with a chuckle, his youthful face crinkling in a grin, his voice a tenor dropping into a baritone in his lower register. “And you must be Princess Rapunzel. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“Pleasure to meet you as well,” Rapunzel replied, delighted with this new person before her.

Erling gestured to the woman who stood silently beside him, an elaborate knife sheathed at the front of her belt and a gray fur half-cloak thrown across her shoulders, buckled at the chest with a massive pin made of an entire fox skull, it looked like. “My huskarl, Dagny.”

“Your Majesty. Your highness.” The warrior nodded to each of the Coronians in turn, rather than bow. Her eyes lingered on Pascal for a moment, a keen examining look, but she made no remark and posed no question of him.

With pleasantries exchanged, all four of them settled into chairs, the corpulent figure of one of the older handmaidens materializing as if from thin air to pour the tea and wait the table. Ethel, Rapunzel remembered, fairly quickly compared to when she had first started living in the castle.

“It is perhaps a trivial matter, or a circumstance too undeveloped as yet to be entirely certain,” the Ingvarrdian prince was saying to King Frederic’s question about why he had requested the meeting, and Rapunzel reminded herself to focus. “But we have been seeing a rise in piracy in the recent months. A small uptick, to be sure, but nevertheless the trend has been constant—and only with ships of continental make.”

“You must be suspecting something sinister to make that distinction,” King Frederic remarked.

“I am suspecting that this rise in piracy is, in fact, not a rise in piracy, but in privateering,” Erling said calmly. “A foreign power seeking to disrupt the prosperity Ingvarr and Corona bring to each other with trade by sea, and to itself profit from such disruption while keeping its hands clean, would be wise to issue letters of marque to a few dozen independent shipowners. And if I recall, Corona employs some of its decommissioned ships-of-the-line as prison barges, does it not? It might be time to consider sailing them into safer waters, or replacing them with prisons built on the mainland.”

King Frederic nodded, a considering frown marring his forehead now. “Your warning and your advice are greatly appreciated, Prince.”

“I hope none of your sailors have gotten hurt,” Rapunzel spoke up.

Erling looked to her with a smile. “We are far from the only ships to have been attacked, and I am pleased to say we have yet to lose a single vessel to those miscreants—boastful as that may sound. Our sailors are mostly recruited from among warriors who seek a simpler life, one of work aboard a mercantile or fishing vessel instead of a short one on the fields of glory, and we provide sorcery training to those who have not received it prior.”

Rapunzel sat up slightly. “Wait, so all of your sailors can do magic?”

“In so many words,” Erling chuckled, then inclined his head to the warrior seated beside him. “Dagny would be the one to ask about that, as she is the one with hands-on experience.”

The huskarl glanced to him over her half-eaten miniature spinach quiche, then to Rapunzel, and seemed taken off-guard somewhat with the curiosity and excitement in her eyes. “It’s a simple incantation that makes sure they do not drown at sea. Those who come from warrior backgrounds may know other spells, but it isn’t universal policy to teach further uses of magic to those who do not know them already. Each of the major ships does, however, employ one rather more accomplished sorcerer like myself.” She paused for a moment, tilting her head slightly in confusion at how Rapunzel still looked thrilled rather than uncomfortable. “...It is mostly for the safety of the crew and the vessel itself. There is little use for titles and birthrights aboard a ship three weeks of travel away from shore, and with my Prince fulfilling the role of navigator, the importance of my role as his huskarl fades in comparison to what I can contribute to the crew at large. I’ve passed six sorcery trials—I can set wounds to heal more easily and more cleanly than they would without my aid, I can go underwater for longer periods of time than the crew and suffer no ill effect, or in times of dire need, I can scatter fields of mist or sing a storm to a standstill.”

“That sounds amazing,” Rapunzel burst out, leaning forward in her chair now. “I’ve had some experiences with magic, but I’ve never seen anything like that! How do you do these things?”

“Ingvarrdian sorcery derives its strength from the practitioner’s own virtue and from deep, intimate understanding of the world and one’s own place in it,” the huskarl said smoothly, then inclined her head to King Frederic. “And knowing Corona’s... recent history, particularly concerning matters of magic, I think it may be best not to explore the subject any further.”

“Thank you, madam. Your kindness is noted and appreciated,” King Frederic said studiously, with a slight tell-tale tightness to his jaw—a subtle giveaway that he was finding the subject a painful reminder of the past.

“Oh. Okay.” Rapunzel sat back, trying not to look disappointed, and thought quickly of another way to keep the conversation alive and stay in the company of these strange, fascinating, new people for that much longer. “I’ve heard the term 'huskarl', but I’ve never had the chance to ask an Ingvarrdian if my understanding of it is correct—a close friend and personal protector?”

“It’s a word for a free man or woman, particularly of the warrior persuasion, who willingly enters the service of another. More specifically, the other is most often of noble birth, and the servant is not only a companion and protector, but very nearly a sibling in all things, a second-in-command and an implicitly trusted advisor,” Dagny explained easily. “It brings my Prince great honour that one such as myself would choose to call themself his servant.”

“And let it never be said otherwise.” Erling raised his teacup to the warrior beside him as if it were a tankard or a drinking horn, and she bowed her head to him, if with a hint of amusement in her eyes at how the porcelain turned the gesture far daintier than they must have been used to.

“And—I hope you don’t mind me bringing it up—Prince, you mentioned these privateer ships are of continental make? You are able to distinguish the origin of a ship at a glance, then?”

“The shipbuilding method’s kingdom of origin, more reliably than the ship’s own,” Erling corrected slowly, considering his words. “It isn’t uncommon for an independent vessel to be built with Kotoan methods, yet sail under Equisian or Pittsfordian colours, or for small, single-family boats that sail far warmer waters to sport Neserdnian rigging, yet fish in Kotoan waters. But, I wouldn’t want to bore you with a seadog’s unreasonable fondness for such details.”

“I love learning new things,” Rapunzel said earnestly.

Erling grinned, a delighted if surprised look on his face. “I’ll be certain to pass that along to my aunt when it comes to presenting you with wedding gifts, then. One of the easier ways to recognize a vessel’s purpose and through that, often its origin, is the rigging—the shape of ropes and sails as they’re arranged upon its masts, to put it simply. Another is the hull’s own shape, and the way it is constructed; the hulls of Ingvarrdian ships, for example, are traditionally built with planks lined to overlap at the edges, or clinker-built. A contrasting method, of carvel-building, is most notably used by Koto, where the planks are fitted smoothly against each other instead...”

From there, the conversation continued on and on about small boats and ships-of-the-line, about shipbuilding methods across the Seven Kingdoms and beyond them, about Kotoan caravels and clippers and Coronian galleons and barques and Ingvarrdian longships and more, about the advent of cannons and how their introduction had changed everything in naval warfare, about ropes and knots and canvas fabric, with the Ingvarrdian sailor-prince dressing even complicated concepts into layman’s terms and Rapunzel listening intently only to ask follow-up questions—and before long, a second pot of tea had been brewed and then emptied, the platters of food held little but crumbs anymore, and the afternoon had grown into a swiftly-darkening late evening.

“You must forgive us for taking so much of your time,” King Frederic said eventually as he was shaking the Prince’s hand goodbye.

“Oh, not at all, it was delightful to enjoy your company for quite this long.” Erling turned to Rapunzel then. “And yours, Princess—I’ve heard so much about you, and yet no story can hold a candle to meeting you in person.”

Rapunzel smiled, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “Hopefully the stories have set up only a few disappointments?”

“I can say with confidence that it must be quite impossible find oneself disappointed with you. My best wishes for your future with the heir of the Dark Kingdom.”

And once the Ingvarrdians were off, led by the herald through the castle’s halls and back to their lodgings in the embassy, Rapunzel finally rubbed her hands together and huffed into them against the evening’s cold.

“Well, that was certainly an uneventful teatime. And a lengthy one,” King Frederic said, somewhat pointedly, but not in a scolding tone, not just yet.

Rapunzel pushed away the urge to duck her shoulders and smile and say sorry. She didn’t have to apologize for enjoying another person’s company. Not anymore. Instead she said, “I liked him a lot.”

“He did seem quite taken with you,” her father admitted as they walked back into the castle. “He’d make for a good potential suitor, were you not already involved.”

“He’s a nephew of the Queen of Ingvarr, right?” Rapunzel asked thoughtfully.

“That is correct. Why?”

“I think I read somewhere during my classes that the Queen’s brother had daughters, but not sons.”

“Ah. The records must not have been revised. I’ll tell Nigel to see to it,” King Frederic said calmly. “The prince had been born a princess.”

“Huh.” Rapunzel looked around, hoping to spy Eugene somewhere, but instead only spotted one of the younger handmaidens hurrying towards them. Doris, Rapunzel thought, but then caught herself as that was a mistake she kept making. Not Doris. Gertrude.

The castle had employed three new handmaidens once it became clear in no uncertain terms that Cassandra wasn’t coming back, Rapunzel recalled, and pushed away all over again, as she still didn’t know how to feel about that. Oh, certainly, part of it was that another had apparently been unable to work for several months while Rapunzel’s group was away following the trail of black rocks to the Moonstone; part of it was that she was expected to choose a replacement lady-in-waiting, still, and Eugene was doing what he could to delay the necessity of that decision for as long as at all possible. When you’re about to be hanged, use your last wish to ask for a glass of water, he had said of it, and Rapunzel smiled at the memory.

But another part of it was that apparently, Cass had been completing the amount of work that everyone else thought would be fair to expect of two other people put together. And that was before her lady-in-waiting duties. Or her ceaseless attempts to earn a place on the Royal Guard. And it felt profoundly wrong to only realize that once she was gone.

“Your Majesty.” The handmaiden curtsied to the king, before turning to Rapunzel. “Your highness, the Queen had requested that you come see her at your earliest convenience.”

One unfortunate event in the past had been enough to teach Rapunzel rather profoundly that 'at her earliest convenience' typically meant 'immediately' and not, in fact, her earliest convenience. She looked to her father, who patted her on the shoulder.

“Go. There are some documents I must attend to before retiring for the night, I believe.”

“Okay. Goodnight, dad.”

“Goodnight, sweetheart.”

She followed the handmaiden down the corridor, recognizing the route soon enough as one leading to the Queen’s private study—adjacent to the rooms her parents shared, but not quite part of them. It didn’t take five minutes for her to clear her throat in the silence.

“Gertrude, right?”

The handmaiden smiled. “Yes, your highness.”

“We’ve accidentally kept Ethel out in the cold with us for hours,” Rapunzel admitted sheepishly. “Could you make sure she’s able to keep indoors and in warmth for the rest of the evening?”

“Of course, your highness.” Gertrude stepped back with a bow, and hurried away.

“Thank you,” Rapunzel called out after her, and continued on towards her mom’s chambers. Sighed as she realized she was walking more and more slowly, and took a deep breath to calm herself down.

Squeak, Pascal said in an encouraging tone.

“I know I’m not about to speak to Gothel,” Rapunzel told him quietly. “I know mom is everything that Gothel never was. I know she’d never belittle me, or mock me, or– or cage me like Gothel had. She’s the one who gave me the journal. She’s the one who encouraged me to find adventure and find out who I am, instead of saddle me with a battalion of guards or lock me in another tower 'for my own safety'. I know she’s not going to be angry with me about a problem if she can focus on solving the problem instead, and on teaching me how to do it, too. I know she’s not going to scold me when she can just talk to me instead.”

She stopped walking, and took another deep breath against how hard and fast her heart was beating, against a pervasive sense of unease slowly growing into a bristle of anxiety scraping through her belly, and lifted her hands to find them shaking slightly.

“I haven’t even thought about Gothel for weeks,” Rapunzel said with a calm she did not feel, testing if she had control over her voice at least. Thankfully, she did. “Why am I so scared again?”

Squeak, Pascal said tenderly, tugging on a strand of Rapunzel’s short hair with one hand.

She brushed it back behind an ear. Then pulled it to beside her cheek again and started twirling it onto a finger. Even now, months since it had been cut again and months during which she’d already had it trimmed once or twice, sometimes she felt unbalanced for the lack of its weight. Almost two years of wearing her hair in a winding braid almost as thick as the entire breadth of her shoulders; almost the whole of her lifetime of wearing it loose and trailing against the tower’s floors, a length only ever increasing as she grew older and her hair grew longer.

So much had been wrapped up in that weight. It was why she had been born at all; it was why Gothel had stolen her and sequestered her in a hidden vault like an object of immeasurable wealth; it was why Gothel had abandoned a four-years-old Cass to the whims and mercies of chance. Why she and Eugene hadn’t drowned, and why she had been able to bring him back from the brink. Why the black rocks had torn through Corona, across the sea, all over the uninhabitable Dark Kingdom lands, and why Varian’s father had spent a year encased in amber. Why she had gone on the greatest adventure of her life, and why Cassandra had taken the Moonstone. Why Zhan Tiri had used Cass like Gothel had been using Rapunzel. Why everything she’d ever known, everyone she’d ever loved, had almost been destroyed. And why she had been able to bring Cass, too, back from the brink.

It was an old weight—one that was now long since lifted away and gone. One carried in its entirety within a short, I have magic hair that glows when I sing.

But the chafing wounds that carrying it for her entire life had left across her shoulders were far from scarred over and gone.

Rapunzel rubbed her hands together. Squeezed them against each other, hard. When her knuckles turned whitish, when it hurt a little to keep tightening the grip, she counted to ten and relaxed it, and brought her hands towards one of the lamps in the castle’s corridor, open to its light.

The flash-burn scars over her palms, from when she had grabbed at the Sundrop and Moonstone in their reunited form, were rarely even visible: splotches and curving waves seared with the fury of a thousand suns transitioning smoothly into jagged lightning patterns and crystalline blooms carved with the pitiless, unforgiving glare of a full moon laying all of her misdeeds bare and leaving no greyness, no shadow, no excuse to hide herself behind any longer. The scars were rarely even visible, but Rapunzel wouldn’t mind if they showed against the unmarred skin more clearly.

She used to think about them as a badge of honour, at first. A proof of how far she would go, for her loved ones, for her kingdom. When it came to the choice of saving Cass or sparing herself, it was not a matter of choosing, but of acting on the only decision there was—the right one—the one her heart had been set upon months and years prior. There had been no single breakthrough event to lead her there, no blinding revelation or great secret unravelled to point to as the source of it. There was only Cass.

Cass, who did not get a say even on whether she lived or died, because Rapunzel wouldn’t let her be heeded even if she spoke.

Oh, it wasn’t that she regretted bringing Cass back. It wasn’t that she thought it had been the wrong decision. Seeing Cassandra draw another breath and open her eyes again was the last thing she would ever regret. It may have been the first thing she had done right for Cass, even in denying her a repentant martyr’s death and the forgiveness of her home that such an act—such an end—would have bought her, as it gifted Cass the chance to choose freely now, the chance to build herself a life she wanted, the chance to live long enough to heal. But from the perspective of these two months, months she had spent just barely beginning to prune her way through the overgrown nightmare of a blackberry patch that her own heart and mind were lairing inside, Rapunzel was slowly coming into an understanding of how sometimes it was possible to make the right decision for the wrong reasons.

Cass was alive because Rapunzel had wanted her back. Cass was a courtier and subject of Corona again because Rapunzel had wanted her back. Cass was suffering from a unique, chronically painful, untreatable injury because Rapunzel had wanted to do something differently than she had been advised. Cass could not have anything for herself, for as long as they’ve known each other, because Rapunzel had wanted those things as well.

And maybe Rapunzel wouldn’t have minded if the Sundrop and Moonstone’s scars slashed across her palms in a looping stripe stood out more, because it would mean that she could never forget again how prone she was to taking without moderation and without thinking.

Squeak, Pascal said worriedly as he watched comprehension and dread dawn across Rapunzel’s face like the morning star fading against the sunrise.

“Is that why I’m thinking about Gothel again,” Rapunzel said faintly, and couldn’t bring herself to care about how hollow her voice sounded even to her own ears. “Because I’ve acted as selfishly as she had?”

SQUEAK, Pascal said aggressively, furious against such a comparison, and Rapunzel lifted a hand to stop him mid-tirade.

“No. That isn’t– I can’t think about it yet. I’ll sit with it when I have the presence of mind to. Now we’re going to see my mom and see what she wanted to talk to me about.”

Mom. It had always been 'mom', a distinction from 'mother', one that had never been distorted. And even then, Rapunzel had slowly trained herself out of thinking 'mother' and into thinking 'Gothel', to deny the ghost of her jailer even that much, even the familiarity she had usurped for herself right alongside the Sundrop’s power fettered in Rapunzel’s long-gone golden locks.

Her hair was short, now, and didn’t glow, and she didn’t sing. Her hands were scarred, and not scarred enough. She was the Crown Princess of Corona, heiress to the throne—not the Sundrop, not anymore, and good riddance.

And right now, she was also unexpectedly angry, but at least her hands weren’t shaking anymore.

She knocked on the door leading to the Queen’s study to announce herself, and came inside. “Hi, mom.”

“There you are.” Queen Arianna capped a fountain pen and set it aside before looking up from over one of a small stack of letters she was scribing. As soon as she did, the tired look on her face immediately gave way to worry. “Honey, are you all right?”

“I’m okay.” Rapunzel sighed as she caught herself on the reflex to lie. “...I’m working on it. You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, I did. Sit with me, please.” Queen Arianna gave a nod to the handmaiden at her side. “That will be all for today, Friedborg, thank you.”

The handmaiden stepped away with a bow, and withdrew from the room. Rapunzel looked after her, before pulling herself a chair and sitting next to her mom’s scribing desk, close enough to rest an elbow on the pulpit.

“I know you’re tired of hearing this, but you need to choose a new lady-in-waiting already,” Queen Arianna said as she cleaned ink stains from her fingers with a soaked handkerchief. “It’s been long enough. I understand that you aren’t entirely comfortable with this, but it is a function that needs to be fulfilled, and has been left neglected for entirely too long by now.”

“Eugene is getting better at it,” Rapunzel defended weakly, not even trying to really argue.

“Eugene,” her mom said slowly, “learns remarkably quickly, especially considering his upbringing and his lack of familiarity with court etiquette. But the amount of his regard for decorum is equally remarkable in how miniscule it is, and there are only so many ruffled feathers I can smooth out. You need someone who knows what they are doing, and cares for what they are doing, fulfilling this function. Eugene does neither, sweet as it is of him to find ways to support you with no regard for his own personal pride.”

Rapunzel looked away, and said nothing. There wasn’t anything she could say, really. She knew that Eugene didn’t care for a lot of rules that the Coronian courtiers were following. She knew he didn’t have to care, because he was her boyfriend, and that meant there was a lot he could get away with. She knew that she had been missing classes, or meetings, or other duties for months now, because Eugene had decided they were less important than a good amount of downtime or a regular date night. And she had known the entire time that the longer he was doing the job of a lady-in-waiting, the higher this backlog would pile up, and the more of it would be pushed onto other people’s hands.

With a sigh, Queen Arianna removed her crown and set it aside before rubbing at her eyes in an uncharacteristically tired gesture, then looked at her daughter with open concern. “Honey, what is it that you find so painful about this?”

“It feels like replacing Cassandra,” Rapunzel said quietly. “And it’s... I did everything wrong with Cass. I know that much. But I haven’t figured out yet what was the wrong part in some of those things, and I’m scared I’ll repeat the mistakes with another person, without even knowing that I did.”

“Problems are for being solved, not to fret about endlessly,” Queen Arianna said warmly as she reached to place a hand over Rapunzel’s and squeeze gently. “Do you mind talking about it a little?”

“No. No, I don’t mind.” Rapunzel looked down at their hands, and folded both of her own around her mom’s. “I’ve been doing that a lot lately.”

And she hadn’t expected to speak for quite that long, but by the time she was done pouring her heart out, a crescent moon was peeking into the room through the window framed with delicate curtains, a ray of white light mingling with that of the lamp on her mom’s desk. And as she spoke, on and on and on, she watched a realization form rather quickly on her mom’s face—and progress into an unexpected sadness, as if her daughter’s failing had been her own.

“Honey,” Queen Arianna said softly once Rapunzel was done recounting past events. “I’m sorry we’ve never addressed this before. For all the hardship each of us had endured after you were taken, it has been all too easy to forget you had not grown up in court, and matters that seem so obvious to myself and your father may need to be pointed out and explained to you.”

“So... you know what I did wrong?”

“I’m afraid there is no kind way to say this, but...” her mom hesitated for a moment, then gave her another sad, deeply understanding look. “Did you want her love, or her obedience?”

Rapunzel blinked at the question. Shook her head slightly, almost sure she heard wrong, or maybe just wishing that she did. “What?”

“People of our standing tend to lead very lonely lives,” the Queen of Corona said gently to her only daughter. “When entering relationships—professional or personal—with those of lower standing, there are... boundaries, to be observed. Doubly so when the matter concerns your servants.”

“Cassandra is my friend,” Rapunzel heard a note of warning slip into her voice, unbidden.

“Cassandra is a servant girl, and she had always known that perfectly well. As well as that being the Captain’s daughter meant little to those her equal or lesser than her, and nothing to those above her—only moreso for being adopted by him rather than sired,” Queen Arianna said calmly. “If you told her to do something, even asked it of her, she did not have the freedom to say no. If you chose a course of action that would imperil you, she did not have the power to stop you, only to suggest and advise a different one—and if you chose not to follow these suggestions and advice, all she had left to do was to follow and attempt to minimize damage, mitigate or destroy danger, and bodily throw herself in harm’s way rather than allow it to threaten you. I am not saying that Cassandra did not come to care for you more deeply than a handmaiden does for her sovereign—I don’t believe you would have been quite as hurt and furious with each other if that were the case—I am saying that your relationship had been unequal from the start, and with yourself never realizing that fact and, consequently, never acting with respect of it, you could not have built a lasting relationship with Cassandra no matter how much you both tried.”

Rapunzel chewed on that for a moment, silently.

Squeak, Pascal said gently from her shoulder, still partway underneath the stormy-gray shawl.

“Sometimes I miss how simple things were when it was just you and me and a window and a room,” Rapunzel said quietly. Then rubbed her eyes with a sigh, and looked at her mom again. “So every time Cass had told me, 'I don’t think that’s such a good idea,' or 'that place creeps me out,' or 'that’s too dangerous'—”

Queen Arianna nodded, a sympathetic look on her face.

“And when you asked me just now whether I had wanted her love or her obedience...” Rapunzel clenched her fists, feeling her fingertips come against the coarse burn scars across her palms. “I had tried to have both, hadn’t I.”

“To have someone’s love, you must accept that they will disagree with you and go against your wishes, sometimes. To have their love, you must give them the freedom to be as your equal, at least in private settings,” Queen Arianna said softly. “To have their obedience, you must assert the differences between the two of you, and their inferiority to yourself, without belittling them if at all possible. You cannot have both of the same person at once.”

“Cass had said once,” Rapunzel stumbled a little on the memory, painful as it was. “She told me once that I’ve never let her ignore that we had always been standing on the opposite sides of a divide between the beggars and the choosers.”

“That is a somewhat uncharitable assessment,” her mom admitted with a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah, well, she had a lot of reasons to be angry and... uncharitable... with me by then. And she wasn’t wrong, either.”

Queen Arianna sighed. “There isn’t a way for that divide to no longer exist between the two of you, and that is something you must accept. And, now that you know where you’ve erred, you have all that you need to not err in this way again.”

“And with another person.” Rapunzel leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes for a moment. “What do you think I should do?”

“That will depend on the person of your choosing, to a certain degree—on fitting your temperament against theirs.” Queen Arianna rested her head on a hand, one finger at her chin and another at her lips in a thoughtful gesture. “I would not advise you to choose any of the newer servants, both because we do not know them well enough yet to let them so close to the sole heiress of Corona and because it would be a slight to the loyalty of those who had been with us for years and decades now. Ethel is significantly older than yourself—by the time you take the throne, she will be advanced in her years enough for such an increase in workload to be quite a strain on her and possibly beyond her. Joanne... is a dear, but lacks... hm. Certain quickness of wit, I would say, at the risk of sounding uncharitable myself.”

“Faith, then,” Rapunzel said with resignation.

“That would be my suggestion,” Queen Arianna confirmed. “She had requested the honour of the position in rather passionate terms, as well, shortly after the Saporian insurrection.”

“And I’ve already been... not great to Faith, at that time.” Rapunzel rubbed at her forehead, both tired and embarrassed now. “I was trying to force her to be like Cass.”

To her surprise, her mom laughed quietly. “Forgive me, I was trying to imagine a sweet thing like Faith attempting to emulate a lion-hearted little bundle of audacity like Cassandra.”

Rapunzel smiled, for what felt like the first time in years. Cass was lion-hearted. And she was a bundle of audacity.

And unlike Rapunzel, she came to a realization as stark as it was obvious in hindsight, Cass had grown up in court.

She looked up at her mom again. “What was Cass like? When she was little?”

“I can’t claim to have been present enough in her life to be an influence, but... it had been comforting, in the most bittersweet way, to catch sight of her every now and then. To see her grow up, and grow stronger and sharper and only ever more steadfast, year by year,” Queen Arianna admitted, an old pain mixed with melancholy in her eyes now. “The Captain brought her in on the night you were taken. I’m not certain whether I believe in fate, but even on the nights I don’t, I think there is poetry to be found in such events. And on the nights I do...” she placed a gentle hand against Rapunzel’s cheek. “Well, if there is a cosmic spinner of destinies out there, then no one had felt the touch of their loom if not the two of you.”

“She saved my life,” Rapunzel said quietly, but with a stoic certainty of having realized as much over the months and weeks she had spent learning candid self-examination. “When Cass took the Moonstone, she saved my life. Everyone tiptoes around it or flat-out accuses her and calls her a traitor, but if I had touched the Moonstone back then, I would be dead. She took it so I wouldn’t have to. And I know it was also because she was already being lied to by Zhan Tiri, but I saw her panic when she accidentally lashed out with the rocks. She didn’t want to hurt anyone—and she didn’t want to watch me get hurt with my own stubbornness all over again. She didn’t try to fight us. She just yelled at me a lot, and defended herself when Adira attacked her to take the Moonstone back. All she tried to do was to leave. And, I’m realizing now, she had only yelled as much as she did because she was making her one last attempt to get me to listen, and she only left after I didn’t.”

“Perhaps it would be wise not to push Faith quite as hard, then,” her mom suggested with a smile.

Rapunzel laughed despite herself, the tension and gravity of the conversation breaking. “Do you think I can still make friends with Faith? If I say sorry for wanting her to be someone else, and don’t try to take so much from her as I had done with Cass?”

“I think it will be quite impossible for you and Faith to work together smoothly if you do not grow fond of each other,” Queen Arianna pointed out, if not unkindly. “But I don’t think you should view this situation as making a friend. Becoming your lady-in-waiting will mean an uptick in Faith’s status, but also in her responsibilities, and I think it would be wise to let her adjust before anything else. But... if you are determined to have more than a strictly professional relationship with her... it will require you both to, eventually, come to an understanding about what is necessary in public and what is permissible in private—only the latter space can accommodate displays such as informal ways of address, or honesty overruling politeness, or gestures of affection that would be seen as disrespectful in official settings. The sooner you understand where the difference between public and private spaces lies, for both of you, the easier it will be to maintain the necessary divide between you in public without letting it sour and injure your closeness in private. From what you’ve told me, it seems as if that was sorely lacking between you and Cassandra.”

“It was. It is. I’ve never thought about things between us like that, not until right now,” Rapunzel said with a sigh.

Squeak, Pascal reminded from her shoulder.

“...And I haven’t because I didn’t have to,” Rapunzel agreed reluctantly.

“I believe you have now discovered what privilege is,” her mom said gently. “The freedom to not even be aware of some matters, because they do not already affect you every minute of every day.”

Rapunzel trailed a thumb against the burn scars on one of her palms again. “I wish I could take so much back. I wish I could make it all up to Cass, one day. But I’ll start with not letting things get nowhere near as bad with Faith. I’ll talk to her first thing in the morning.”

“Excellent,” Queen Arianna said with no small amount of relief. “I’m glad you let me help you. And sweetheart... I know there is always work to do, and that as such, it is always a convenient excuse. But there is no point in postponing difficult conversations for when there is less work—there will never be less work. If you are struggling, I want you to remember than you can always ask to speak with me, and I will make time for you. We’ve been robbed of so many years together already. We can’t let a sense of duty rob us of any more.”

Rapunzel stood up from her chair and stepped closer for a hug. “I love you so much, mom.”

“I love you so much, too.”

Even after all this time, each embrace Rapunzel shared with her mom felt like they were making up for all they had been denied, all they had missed out on—like every hug was the result of thousands that hadn’t happened, of their ghosts laid to rest, of their echoes coming home.

“Well, you should probably get some rest,” Rapunzel said finally, and reluctantly stepped away. “There was one last thing I’d wanted to look at before bed, as well.”

“Burning the midnight oil so young?” Queen Arianna asked with a smile. “Don’t let the habit build. You’ll never escape it otherwise.”

Rapunzel laughed a little, even as she headed for the door, but hesitated and let her arm drop instead of pull on the handle. “Mom?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“You always say that problems are for being solved,” Rapunzel said slowly. “And Adira has been helping me with seeing the problem before I can solve it. But what about when I can’t see it? When I don’t know what I’m feeling, other than that there’s a lot of it?”

“That is certainly an obstacle,” her mom admitted, taken somewhat off-guard with the question, and considered quickly before speaking again. “You’re remarkably inclined towards working with imagery and with your hands—making things, particularly artwork. Have you tried drawing whatever it is that you feel so strongly? Perhaps that would aid you in examining the issue.”

“I haven’t, but...” Rapunzel imagined flipping through her journal a few years from now and looking at messy, dark, disturbing illustrations of her inner demons right next to the record of everything she loved, and winced at the very thought. “I don’t think I want to put those things in my journal.”

“Then start a second journal,” Queen Arianna suggested. “A journal of recovery, rather than life itself? Something you can close and put away when you no longer need the aid of its mirror.”

“...Huh.” That, Rapunzel realized, did sound better. A lot better.

“I know you’ve spent a lot of time, recently, very focused on your past. It is sometimes necessary to address one’s faults and failings in such a manner, and I couldn’t be more proud of how readily and how diligently you focus on work so difficult,” her mom said softly. “But it wouldn’t do to let yourself fixate on what you can’t undo, to get bogged down in guilt and blame. It is not the purpose of such endeavours to flagellate yourself, and they are not a punishment—you should not seek one, not within the endeavour and not elsewhere—quite the contrary, I believe you should find small ways to reward yourself for your persistence, and ways to look forward to the effort of it. Try out something new, perhaps. A different art style, or method, or medium. It could further help maintain a distinction from your regular journal, as well, if such a separation is something you want.”

“I think I know what the front page will be.” Rapunzel smiled at her mom again. “Thank you. I’ll try it out as soon as I can.”

“Be sure to let me know if it helped, honey. Good night.”

“Good night, mom.”

The door thudded closed behind her, and Rapunzel yawned as she headed towards her own room.

Squeak, Pascal said sleepily.

“Soon. Thank you for staying up with me this long, Pascal.” Rapunzel scratched his cheek with a finger. “I feel braver when you’re with me.”

Squeak, Pascal demurred, and made an inquisitive noise while moving his hands as if to open a book.

“I think it’s a great idea. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself, just—a second journal. It’s so simple.” Rapunzel scoffed at herself, a dozen ideas already milling through her head. “And you know, I think mom is right, I should try something new. I know it didn’t work out for me before, but that art teacher was an acolyte of Zhan Tiri, so what did she know?”

Squeak, Pascal said, the very sound of it derogatory.

Rapunzel laughed a little. A second journal, she thought again, and found herself smiling. Sturdier covers, though. No cheerful embellishments across them. Maybe metal fittings at the corners. A bookmark ribbon, deep red or dark gray. And, she decided as she remembered how it had felt to realize that someone she trusted—her father, no less—had read her journal without asking, a lock.

It’s not like a lock could not be pried off or picked, she knew perfectly well for dating a reformed thief. But just the fact that it was there, as opposed to simple cords of leather to be wrapped around the covers and hold them closed, would spell out that this one’s contents were even more private.

And if she painted some of these feelings, some of these fears and nightmares, maybe she could finally stop thinking about them, as well.

Rapunzel entered her room and closed the door behind herself, noticing that a single-candle lamp was alight at her desk. Next to it, a few scuffed albums had been left in an uneven stack, piled atop an atlas almost twice as large—and beside the books sat a cup of hot chocolate, long since gone cold and too thick to actually drink anymore. She smiled. Chocolate mousse wasn’t so bad, either, and she could eat it with a spoon.

She lit a second candle and replaced the nearly burnt-out one inside the lamp, all but one of its inner surfaces lined with mirrors to allow for an adequate amount of light for reading from a single little flame. Then, with Pascal’s help to unlace, she changed into a more comfortable nightgown, and sat with the books to wind down from the day before bed.

Came out near the Equis-Koto border, Cassandra’s letter had said—but not on which side of that border.

Rapunzel looked at the short note and the three mundane treasures sent with it. For most of her life, there had been only three books in the world—one about geology, one about botany, and one about cooking. Cass had sent a stone, a flower, and a feather from a game bird she had presumably caught and cooked for herself. She couldn’t remember whether she had told Cass of the tower’s three books, and consequently, whether this was intentional. But if it was, then it was yet another reason to love Cass dearly, and to miss her so much. And if it wasn’t, then it was yet another way to understand implicitly what her mom had meant about the nights on which she believed in fate.

It had taken a while spent with the atlas, even knowing that she was only looking at the border territories of Equis and Koto, before Rapunzel leaned closer to it with a feeling of triumph. A small mining town, built around a silver mine—both of which had been on the Kotoan side of the border when the cartographer was doing their work, but with the text beside the maps stating that the area was engulfed in a lasting conflict between the two kingdoms, and with an editor’s note scribbled in since then stating that the mine had been exhausted and shut down some seven years ago, now.

Rapunzel trailed her fingers over the map. What had she been up to, seven years ago? She would’ve been thirteen, back then. Cass would’ve been seventeen going on eighteen, she thought with a sad smile, and probably planning to apply for the Royal Guard on the morning after her birthday. Eugene would’ve been nineteen or freshly turned twenty, dodging the Royal Guard in turn. All lives that had seemed so clearly defined and so obvious with what their futures would hold—tower, service, adventures—all lives that had been so static and untested, from perspective. Seven years, and how many times each of their worlds had been upended? Seven years, and it barely merited a single note beside a cartographer’s work.

She took the dried flower’s stem into her fingers, carefully, to examine it in the firelight again. Eighteen years with the same book about botany, the same she had learned to read on and the same she would idly flip through every other day, and she could still recite most of its contents from memory. It did have a section on herbs—not a very large one, but still—as did the cookbook, with entirely different herbs.

Neither taught her about this particular plant, nor had the travels and classes she had taken since leaving the tower behind.

Rapunzel glanced to Pascal, fast asleep on her shoulder. Then to Owl, snoozing atop a chair in the corner of the room, an emptied bowl of choice cuts of raw meat nearby. She wiped a hand over the unopened herbariums piled atop her desk, then blew the lamp’s candle out and finally headed to bed. She would have to take this one victory at a time.

Silver was usually mined from ore, she thought sleepily as she drifted off, and Cass’ stone had a vein of native silver rather than a vein of ore. There was no way a mine would shut down on the pretence of depletion when there was still native metal to be found in its shafts.

Morning came all too quickly, but at least it came heralded with Eugene’s chipper voice, and Rapunzel sat up in bed with a broad yawn before calling out to him, “Come in!”

“Oh, someone’s sleeping in today, huh?” Eugene crossed the room while Rapunzel was rubbing at her eyes, and sat at the edge of her bed. “Well, I have excellent news: no holding court today, and no one to meet.”

“One person to meet. Send Faith in as soon after breakfast as you can find her,” Rapunzel said with another yawn. “I talked to my mom until very late last night, and I think I’m ready after all.”

“New lady-in-waiting?” Eugene asked.

Rapunzel nodded. “I hope you don’t mind?”

Eugene laughed. “Sunshine, we always knew this was going to be temporary. I don’t know what I’m doing! And it wasn’t about starting to know, but about faking it for long enough to buy you time. Don’t get me wrong, I’d do it again, but I’m a little relieved that it’s over. I’ve been thinking about a bit of a project, recently, and I’m glad I’ll have the time to really sit down with it, too.”

“What kind of project?”

“Well, I’ve been on the wrong side of the Coronian justice system a few times—maybe a few more than a few—I know that, you know that, everybody knows that. And it doesn’t work,” Eugene said simply. “The prisons are about as secure as a sieve. And getting punished for crime is all fine and dandy, but there’s not really an alternative for ex-convicts than going back to crime. You know the pub thugs: they’re good folks, under the grime. Lance, me, Angry and Catalina, we’re all doing good enough with the whole making an honest living thing, ever since we were given the chance to. I think we could get rid of a lot of crime in the kingdom if more people had the chance to, or if they knew that there were more options than to just... ruin someone else’s life.”

“That,” Rapunzel said slowly, “is certainly a project.”

“All the more reason to start early, am I right?”

“You are.” Rapunzel stretched, and got out of bed. The window was rain-streaked, she noticed as she walked past it, meaning there would not be a shared breakfast out in the gardens, this time. She came to a stop in front of Owl, who was idly cleaning his feathers in the corner of the room. “Do you think you’ll be able to fly back to her tomorrow?”

Hoot, Owl said, disgruntled.

“What about the day after?”

Hoot, Owl said in a considerably more favourable tone.

“Okay.” She turned back to Eugene. “There’s actually one last errand I’d like to ask you to run, as my... gentleman—”

“Up-up-up-up-up.” Eugene raised a finger. “I’ve decided to stick with 'valet', for my resume.”

Rapunzel laughed. “Can you take a note to a bookbinder from me?”

And maybe it ended up more of an incredibly detailed and specific order, rather than a note, but there was no way she wouldn’t be particular with a new journal. With breakfast not a communal affair this time, on account of some pressing matter or another having demanded her parents’ time, Rapunzel took the meal in her room, slowly reading through the stack of herbariums as she ate, Cass’ dried flower kept in sight for easy reference. There were no entries so far to reference it against, though.

Rapunzel looked at the book to have failed her first, frowning. The Complete Herbal of Corona. Either not as complete as it could be, or the plant didn’t grow in Corona at all.

She was halfway through a second album, still fruitlessly, when a knock came against the half-open door to her room, and she looked up to see Faith the handmaiden standing there nervously.

“You’ve asked for me, your highness?”

“I did. Come on in, sit.” Rapunzel pushed the album away, and only just noticed that her breakfast platter was still more than half-full. The perils of reading at breakfast. “So, uh. I’m sure you’re aware I was supposed to pick a new lady-in-waiting about half a year ago.”

Faith nodded, a cautious look on her face now.

“And I know we’ve... tried, and that had been a disaster,” Rapunzel looked away with a sigh. “I wanted to say sorry, I’ve been trying to force whoever took that place to be like Cassandra, and it was unfair to all of you. But if you’re still interested, especially when I don’t do that anymore, well, the position is open and I need someone in it.”

“I– yes, of course, it would be a great honour,” Faith blurted out immediately, the conversation obviously taking a turn very different from what she had been expecting. “As soon as you’ll have me, your highness.”

“Today?” Rapunzel hazarded, and was rewarded with an enthusiastic nod. “Look, Faith, I don’t– I don’t know you very well yet. But, I was hoping that rather than just work together, we could be friends? After we figure out where we stand with each other? If we took it slow, and were careful about it?”

“I’ll do whatever you ask of me, your highness, to the best of my ability,” Faith said slowly, that cautious look back in place. “But if I’m not mistaken, that is not what you’re asking.”

“It’s not. It isn’t... something I can order you to do.”

“I’m not opposed to the idea, but it might be prudent to establish,” Faith paused for a moment as she weighed her words. “Ways, to communicate whether we’re acting in an official or unofficial space, or to swiftly correct from one mode of conversation into the other as the situation changes?”

Rapunzel smiled a little, trying not to get too overwhelmingly excited. “Like code words?”

“That would be a way,” the handmaiden agreed easily. “Perhaps something to start with.”

“Then, do you think you could call me anything other than 'your highness' in an unofficial space?”

Faith leaned back a little with an uncertain, slightly overwhelmed expression. “Oh. Hmm. I’m not... quite certain if I could get used to anything overly familiar, that would go against everything I’ve been taught of in court. But, if 'princess' would suffice...?”

“I’ll take it,” Rapunzel said immediately, and felt relief washing away months of stressing over the matter from her soul when she caught Faith on trying not to smile. “Like I said, I won’t try to make you be Cass. You don’t have to call me by my first name, just not... that, when it’s not necessary.”

“Very well,” Faith glanced at the closed door, then inclined her head, “princess. And if I may speak candidly, from however little I’ve known Cassandra, I feel quite certain in that no one in the whole world can be like her. Though, Lord Hector certainly tries.”

“What do you mean?” Rapunzel raised a hand as she heard her own tone. “Like, 'how so', not 'I am offended with the comparison'.”

The newly-minted lady-in-waiting discreetly let out a sigh of relief before answering. “At his, um... sunniest disposition, he is somewhat reminiscent of Cassandra at her most aggravated.”

Rapunzel burst out laughing. “I’m sorry, I just—Hector, sunny—oh but that’s good...”

She bit her tongue before she could ask if she had mentioned that Hector had tried to kill her and all of her friends and companions on multiple occasions in the past. The Dark Kingdom’s last knights were all sharing a rather peculiar status in Corona; King Edmund was a guest of honour at the court, and would remain one until the end of his days, especially for the part where his heir was dating Rapunzel and had been for a while now. Quirin had returned to his farm in Old Corona with little fuss, to the life he had built since the mass exile, and with the respect of both of his kings. Adira was still in Castle Corona, despite having initially implied that she’d only hang around for as long as it would take Xavier to forge her a new sword, though half the time no one knew where to find her. And Hector had been a problem that no one seemed to know what to do with—except for Adira, who tirelessly pelted him with smug looks and 'I told you so's as thoroughly delighted as they were, in fairness, well-earned. He was too brutal for the guard, too volatile to become a knight-errant or an outrider, a diplomatic incident waiting to happen if he were to encounter an allied kingdom’s envoys and treat them like potential threats. And now he was also, apparently, growing restless in his boredom.

Rapunzel dragged her mind back to the matter at hand, and sent Faith away to prepare however she needed for the new function she was about to embrace. Finished her breakfast properly, and looked at the herbariums again before leaving the current one open next to the atlas beside the stack. She re-read the note Cass had sent, though she already had it near-memorized, and could imagine hearing it in Cassandra’s voice. Then she stacked the books away to make room for a few pages of stationery, and stared at the blank paper for a very long time as she thought about what to write—and how to write it, how to not push so hard anymore and how to still speak her mind well enough, but in a gentler way—and about what to keep silent, what would be unnecessary or too painful to bring up. And for the next two days, in-between testing the waters with another, in-between tending to her duties and her needs, she wrote. Thought about how much she missed Cass, and how Cass had a staying presence in her life even while absent from it, and she painted. Thought about how the puzzle Cass had given her to solve was proving unexpectedly hard, but how regardless of its answer, she knew that Cass was doing a lot where she was, even when no one knew her well enough to expect such actions, and she sewed. And when the two days have passed, Rapunzel made sure Owl was ready to go, about to carry a response that was maybe perhaps possibly a little disproportionate in comparison to Cassandra’s bare-bones note. But then again, that had always been true of the two of them—and maybe, Rapunzel hoped, it could be tamed into becoming a good thing.

“Look after her, okay?”

Hoot, Owl said primly, very clear on that she did not have to tell him so.

And once he was on his way, Rapunzel stared after him until he disappeared against the sky, before she sighed and went back to work.

Chapter Text

Cassandra wiped at her forehead with a wrist, cold rain mingled with sweat pouring into her eyes and dripping from the soaked locks of her hair, then took the soil-filled bucket from Ramon standing below her and passed it to the local standing behind her. Then the next one, filled with muddy water, and another full of water, and another full of earth. One of the resting diggers tapped ash out of the pipe he’d been smoking under the awning of the farmhouse’s roof, rolled his mud-stained sleeves back up, and went back down the ladder into the wide, long ditch.

It started raining on the day after Cassandra had brought the three outlaws’ bodies back as proof of their execution and aided in killing the fourth, and it didn’t let up since. But the dead at Richter farm had been left to rot under an open sky for long enough—rain or no rain, someone had to come bury them, and if Cassandra still wasn’t well enough yet to take a more demanding notice off the job board, she might as well help, she decided. So there she was. A knight-errant of one of the Seven Kingdoms. Digging a mass grave in unallied land, for people she had never met, taking buckets full of muddy earth and rainwater from a Kotoan spy and handing them to a Shanker bandit, if the knife tattoos on the inner side of both of that local’s forearms were any indication.

She was coming to realize that people needed a knight-errant far less frequently than they needed just about anyone willing to pitch in alongside them. She was also finding, Cassandra thought to herself as she took another bucket and passed it along, that she could live with that.

At least she didn’t have to be the one sewing bed linens and burlap sacks into funeral shrouds.

Between the six bodies of the Richter family, one belonged to an elder, two to middle-aged adults, and three to youths ranging from Cassandra’s age to barely into their teens. None of their faces were recognizable anymore, no matter the somewhat variable stages of decay they were in—what was still recognizable, however, was the injuries. If it weren’t morbid and extremely disrespectful to do so, Cassandra would be willing to bet that the corpse with multiple fractures all over the skull, multiple knocked-out teeth, and multiple broken ribs as if the person had been kicked repeatedly after falling was the barbarian’s doing; the one with at least two dislocated joints per limb was the minotaur’s job; and the one with bones broken and softer tissue torn like gauze in seemingly random places was the ogre’s last toy.

She and Ramon had been the only ones to barely react upon seeing the bodies. Most of the locals had rapidly looked away; one had thrown up. And now, the woman who was stitching up the shrouds worked with gritted teeth and dismayed eyes, the headband with a rat skull mounted at the forehead marking her as another bandit from the mine settlement. It felt almost like a diplomatic summit, Cassandra thought as she looked away from the Rat and passed another bucket to the Shanker, if on an infinitely smaller scale: two bandits from a different outfit each, a few ex-miners, a few commoners or craftsmen, all working together on a simple, straightforward task of burying their dead. And the Richters were evidently all of theirs: a family that each of them knew, and between all of them, they knew all of the Richters’ given names. One of them was already carving those names into a sturdy wooden board salvaged from the farmers’ destroyed dining table, drawing dark red ink into the lines, and putting together a rudimentary little roof to nail overtop the board afterwards.

And there was herself, Cassandra supposed, an outsider who did not try to blend in, working alongside them without a word and taking their cues for what was necessary and for what was appropriate.

Eventually, the grave was deep enough. The diggers took the ladder up in turns, and took turns again lowering the enshrouded bodies down into it, using a makeshift lift constructed from a wide bench and two long ropes, letting go of one side of each coil of rope to deposit every next corpse into its muddy resting place. After that, it was once again a communal effort of the whole small group, this time to toss the dirt back in, whether with shovels or with their bare hands. Then to pat the overturned soil down flat, once again with their hands, a sharp admonishment immediately correcting the one person who had tried to pitch in with their feet. Then to mark the grave’s edges with a border of large stones torn out of the farm’s already crumbling wall and ferried over on a squeaky cart pulled by Fidella and Ramon’s old chestnut, as well as mount the roofed wooden board of a grave marker in the centre between a few larger rocks. Then, with each of the group soaked with rain from the outside and with sweat from the inside, each panting and with their limbs trembling with exertion, the woodcarver went into the farmhouse to bring out a stack of small clay cups and pulled a small flask of dark glass from an inside pocket of his vest. Handing one cup to each of the others, he filled it with the dark amber-brown liquid from the flask for them—the former miners, the townsfolk, and the bandits alike. Cassandra stood to the side, silently, and looked up with a bit of surprise when he extended a cup to her as well.

“You too, Coronian. You brought their murderers to justice. They’ll rest in peace because of you.”

“Thank you,” Cassandra said, took the cup, and glanced to the others to see what they would do so she could do the same.

The woodcarver filled his own cup last, tucked the flask away, and cleared his throat. “Well. May the earth be light to them.”

A murmur of may the earth be light to them went through the group, as each member tipped their cup to the side, to spill a little onto the ground, and knocked back the rest. Cassandra followed suit, and was one of the three that coughed immediately after. Her first thought was that it burned. Her second thought, once the initial bite of the liquor had passed and turned into a much-needed torrent of warmth spreading down her throat and all across her chest, was to recognize it as a homemade whiskey. There had to be at least one pot still in the neighbourhood. The Brazen Brigand’s basement, most likely.

“The Richters were good folk,” one of the ex-miners said grimly. “They didn’t deserve to go like this.”

“Where the fuck were the guards?” another snapped, throwing his empty cup to break against the grave-marker rocks in a useless, frustrated gesture.

“Keeping their hands clean and their asses warm in the stockade, I bet,” the Rat who had been sewing shrouds murmured entirely loud enough for everyone to hear.

“I told them there was something going on at Richter farm, but did they listen?” Ramon grumbled. “No, why the fuck would they listen to me?”

“What are those guards even for?” the Shanker asked angrily. “The mine has better drainage than the town. The mine! The mine is not someplace people are supposed to live, and it’s only liveable because the Coon Tails never stopped trying to make it liveable, not in all these years. No patrols around town, because why the fuck put in as much effort as a damned mercenary outfit that half the time doesn’t even have a sponsor paying them to care, and they sure aren’t stopping crime, either!”

“I sure didn’t see them pitch in with the guy who attacked the clinic not too long ago,” Ramon pointed out, and nodded towards Cassandra. “She did, and Teagan, and Sigrid and Hanalei.”

“Oh, I saw them alright—waiting for the others to duke it out.” The woodcarver spat onto the ground, if only after respectfully turning away from the freshly dug grave. “If that huge piece of shit had thrown Sigrid into a fucking wall instead of a pottery stand, they’d shoot a few crossbows to mop up and say it was all thanks to them we were 'safe' now. More than that, we wouldn’t have a competent fletcher or a smith in town anymore, because Han would’ve gone batshit insane and gotten himself killed if he saw his wife go down and not get back up.”

Cassandra stayed silent, listening to the agent of Kotoan crown steer the locals’ outrage against the Equisian garrison. Growing up in the castle, knowing the practice of law enforcement and the theory of war from swathes of maps of the central region of Corona and innumerable city plans, and from moving guard figurines across them rather than from on-the-ground, up close and personal work, it was easy to forget that the big picture was comprised of little pictures. Like making sure the local populace had nothing but resentment for the forces wearing enemy uniforms. Or convincing the locals that said forces saw them as rabble to be controlled, rather than as citizens to be protected.

Then again, the Equisian guards had genuinely done half of the spy’s work in these matters for him, hadn’t they.

The group began heading back towards town, soon after—including the Shanker and the Rat, to Cassandra’s surprise. She took a page from Ramon’s book, and walked beside them rather than ride ahead. When one of the diggers started lagging behind, saying he must have pulled a muscle in his leg during the burial, she helped him climb into the saddle, and led Fidella by the reins more to let the man feel safer than to really steer the mare. With that, the entire group made it back to town before sundown—hard as it was to see through the rainclouds—and the curfew, if barely, with a small patrol of guards attempting to give the group trouble before the woodcarver stepped in and explained that they were all just returning from a funeral. With the ex-miners and craftsmen scattering home and the bandits, Ramon, and Cassandra herself all heading to the Brazen Brigand, the trouble blew over—but not without further hostility mounting towards the guards among the now-scattered group.

“I miss when Koto ran the show,” the Rat bandit grumbled.

“I miss being warm and dry, we can’t have everything we fucking want,” the Shanker shot back.

“Be a smartass all you like, but the Bayards had a school running. What the fuck did Equis ever do for this place? They brought the Reds in, that’s what,” the Rat snapped angrily. “And now this stupid curfew. It’s not even for anything! It’s just to show us small fry who’s boss.”

“Yeah, and I’m sure Koto wasn’t sucking out the marrow from the mine like Equis did,” the Shanker rolled his eyes at her. “They’re all the same. Wish they would just go kill each other somewhere else.”

Cassandra looked away from the squabbling bandits at the sight of firelight coming from across the town square. Even so late in the evening, Hanalei and Sigrid were still at work, the smith with his long curly hair tied back in a topknot as he tipped over a small crucible and poured glowing hot metal into a mould, the fletcher swaying from side to side as she sang with half-open eyes fixed on the casting, hands twirling invisible patterns through the air. That must have been her wardwork box they were working on, Cassandra thought, and hoped that the rain would let up for a little once they were done. She’d rather sort through the sorcerer’s junk outside of town than in the stable.

The pair of bandits headed to the Brigand’s dining floor, with Ramon handing off his chestnut’s reins to a stable boy so he could follow suit. Cassandra led Fidella into the stable herself, instead, and quickly changed into dry clothes before taking care of the mare. Then, after making sure the stable boy was far enough away and thoroughly occupied, she peeled her reinforced glove off and unwrapped her withered arm.

It had been aching, constantly and in a significantly more persistent pitch, ever since the rains came. The crack that stretched halfway down the forearm and forked over the back of the hand was no less deep, but after Cassandra had poured a rather generous amount of salt all over it, the edges did seem a little closer together. More than that, the salt made a considerable number of smaller, more shallow cracks to spiderweb from the large one’s edges, redistributing the pull of attempting to close her withered hand all across the outer side of the arm. Which meant she could hold objects in that hand again—if carefully, if at the cost of the withered skin coming worryingly close to flaking apart and crumbling off. And if the beating she had taken from the barbarian did anything for her, at least it made the two fingernails broken root-to-tip finally slough off. Between that and the now-manageable crack, wrapping her withered arm up was enough to keep it together and turn it almost useable again.

Cassandra sighed, using a soft paintbrush to whisk the last granules of salt out of the fissures and crevasses in the withered area, patted it gently with a clean rag to make sure no rainwater, no coagulated blood remained. Then she ground her teeth, salted her arm again, and bandaged it back up with a clean roll of silk. It hurt, but it worked. Even if 'it worked' meant, these days, only that her already pitiful range of motion wasn’t decreasing any further.

Now she just couldn’t get hit on that arm for the rest of her life.

She pulled her reinforced glove back on, wrung her wet clothes out and hung them out to dry, and headed to the Brigand’s dining floor for an evening meal. It had been growing slightly more crowded, every other night, and that night was no exception—the sight of dagger tattoos and rat skull headbands was becoming less and less uncommon. Some of the mine settlement’s bandits must have come for the last of seasonal work at the harvest; some were likely hoping to winter in town. And winter was coming swiftly indeed, every night chillier than the last, close to freezing the ever-present mud and painting frost blooms against windows, and past the point of transforming rain to sleet.

Cassandra found herself a seat at the countertop and hailed Sebastian, and waited for him to find a moment. To her surprise, however, he placed a full plate and tankard before her straight away.

“There you are. Ramon said you pitched in with burying the Richters. There wasn’t a way to hold a real wake for them, or any mourners to hold it for, but the group all pitched in to buy you dinner for helping.”

She stared for a moment at the small heap of baked potatoes and shredded beets, an entire thigh of roasted duck, and a pint of deep amber ale. Not the batch Sebastian was commonly serving, either. “...Thanks.”

“You worked for it, way I hear it.” Sebastian stepped away as he was hailed by another customer. Once that order was squared away, though, he came back to keep her company. “You know, it’s not every day someone like you shows up.”

“I was just trying to find something to do,” Cassandra said, not looking at him.

“Sure, and you picked things to do based on how needed they were, not how profitable or safely done. That happens just about never. If this heavens-forsaken place was even capable of heroic dreams, I’d call you a local hero by now.”

Cassandra laughed at that, shaking her head. “Running a few errands and killing a few criminals isn’t hero material, not where I’m from.”

“Then it’s doubly a good thing you aren’t in Corona anymore, isn’t it?”

And to that, Cassandra found she didn’t know what to say. So she just focused on her food once Sebastian was called away by a customer again.

Not a month ago, she had resigned herself to the work of an errand girl for a man she already knew was a con artist, so desperate for virtually any endeavour to go well for her that she would count even a successful completion of simple instructions as a victory. Not a month ago, she had given up on every dream she may have still harboured through all the failure and humiliation she had been put through, one hand tired and one hand destroyed and both still clutching onto whatever fragments she had managed to save from being tainted by every ordeal she was made to endure. Dreams of greatness and glory and recognition, all seeping from her fingers like handfuls of sand, jagged broken pieces tarnished beyond repair and too warped to still fit together. Not a month ago, she had finally let them tumble from her hands and walked away, and turned instead to unglamorous tasks that no one would thank her for.

And upon carrying those tasks out, she found that people were remembering her name, doing her small favours, telling stories of what she had done to others who hadn’t seen her do it firsthand. In letting go of lofty dreams, she found them returning to seep into her clothes and hair like fragrant woodsmoke—as if she had discarded shards of broken glass into the sea only to find them washed back ashore at her feet, sanded by the depths into charming little baubles no one would cut themselves on anymore, a child’s pretend-jewels free of the responsibility to hold any objective moral or monetary value. It was less that giving up on those dreams had restored them, and more that it had allowed her to see them in a different light; it was less that she would never see them realized, and more that she was already seeing them realized in a way she would have never expected. After all, what was it that she had done? Ran a few errands, spent a few days spelunking in unsavoury places, almost gotten herself killed with her own stupidity a few times—

Cassandra let that thought trail off, unwelcome and out of place as it was. She was done getting belittled, maliciously or unintentionally, and she was not about to let the memory of those who had done so drag her down all over again, even so far away from them.

What had she done?

She made sure a horribly beaten up woman wouldn’t die.

She made sure three Kotoan treasures wouldn’t find themselves in the hands of Equis, who would pawn them off like unwanted inheritance and spend the coin on hiring mercenary soldiers.

She made sure a half-dozen restless souls would be remembered, and with those that weren’t beyond her reach yet, that they were no longer as broken and lost as she herself had used to be.

She made sure four extremely brutal murderers were brought to justice, and that they would never torture or murder again.

And maybe these tasks had been straightforward—but they hadn’t been easy, or she wouldn’t have had to give herself time to rest and heal afterwards. Maybe they were simple, when broken down to their essentials like that, but they were not easy, or someone would have seen them done long before she showed up. The fact that no one had only served to underline that she was uniquely suited to such tasks, Cassandra acquiesced before the harshest judges she’d ever known: the tribunal of her ambition, her sense of duty, and her conscience.

People didn’t need a knight-errant as often as they needed just about anyone willing to pitch in alongside them. But there was nothing disgraceful about pitching in. And sometimes, when they did need a knight-errant, they already knew that the one beside them did not look down on them, or their livelihoods, or their troubles and their needs and their sorrows.

And if the things she had done were not all that much, then asking the respect she was being given for having done them was not all that much, either, Cassandra was forced to admit—and if so, then it was, truthfully, a very good thing that she was not in Corona anymore.

Cassandra speared another slice of potato with her fork. Growing up in the royal court, raised by the captain of the royal guard, she had never even questioned the fact that she loved Corona. Turning against it, she had to admit from perspective, had only made her as vicious and spiteful as she had been back then because of a truth that, to this day, still held true: for all her devotion to the kingdom, for all her actions and thoughts and feelings naming the good of the kingdom as the highest value, the place that made her did not love her back.

And maybe that had been the first misstep, the first desire formulated so poorly that it could not be sated, she thought. A nation was not a god—it did not demand worship, and cared none for any freely given. A nation was not a person—it did not deserve love, and could not return any. And she was old enough, Cassandra decided, to admit a broken heart and let it tumble from her hands, to gift it to the seas of the world’s indifference for being sanded into something better, and tend instead to simpler, harder, earthly matters of missing farmers and healing herbs and scamming thieves. And maybe, if she was to be kind to herself, she could hope a little that in tending to such matters, she’d learn to redirect that devotion and fondness from a faceless ideal to actual people, who could and sometimes would do right by her in return.

She ate in peace, a meal better than what she would have bought for herself, and went back to Fidella’s stall in the stable with the same hammock hung from the rafters. And before she slept, she wound the sounding cylinder of the same long-destroyed music box that was the only thing she had left from a home before home, and rewound it again, and a third time, until she found herself humming along with her eyes closed, watching any long-harboured feelings of unsated craving and rejection and inadequacy drip away like rainwater from the soaked change of her clothes, as she laid swaddled in the latticework of rope and in blankets layered over and under her.

What an insidious gift it had been—a display of affection that was designed to free its giver from a small child’s nagging pleas for affection, because she could wind it herself, now couldn’t she. A proof of love that placed brick after brick in the wall between her and any actual love, every time it was wound and sounded, because she had been given a gift already, what more did she want, why was she being so ungrateful for it.

It was something she hadn’t even remembered, not until the touch of a meddler so malicious as to truly be demonic yanked it into razor-sharp focus, burned it into the forefront of her mind as if the memory was a woodcut illustration, one that rendered in loving detail the history of how she had always been unwanted, undeserving, not enough, cast aside.

But it was hers, now—it was hers, again—and she could make it hers, her own, no one else’s and beholden to no wraith of near-forgotten past. And damn anyone who would use the same thing to hurt her all over again, Cassandra thought sleepily as she cradled her withered arm to her chest against the tune, she’d like to see them try once she built up a strong enough resistance to it all.

Morning came with rain, and only ever more rain. Cassandra spent the day idle for how badly her withered arm ached, interspersed with some modicum of assistance given to Eliza as she rearranged books and boxes and jars on new shelves and cabinets, the clinic’s renovation and repairs largely completed. The day after that, as rainy as too many before it, Bruno had poked his head into the Brazen Brigand to ask after Cassandra, and upon following him to the clinic, she found that the family of herbalists had thrown a little party to celebrate the work’s successful end with a little fruit pie and a heap of marmalade cookies instead of the usual biscuits set out for every afternoon tea—and that they had refused to entertain the thought of celebrating without her, as well. And even if Cassandra didn’t know what to do with gratitude, she knew what to do with the food, and maybe it was a good feeling to watch the three happier and more hopeful than she had found them, and to see them cheering with a laugh when Gadwall the griffincat deigned to sit in Cassandra’s lap for the first time.

The day after that, it was Hanalei to come looking for Cassandra and give her the wardwork box she had commissioned—its outer surface cast from bronze and decorated with a reasonably elaborate design of a coiling snake knotted across every side of the box, its inner surface lined in iron worked cold. The lid closed on four clasps, rather than two hinges, and on a simple but heavy lock in the centre that would turn thick bolts into the sides of the box, with the keyhole framed by the snake’s mouth and swallowed tailtip.

“Whatever doesn’t block on the iron, the ward will keep inside,” the smith told her upon handing off the box and its rather massive key. “It might be hard to find a disenchanter, but keeping things inside this will mean you’re in no hurry, at least.”

“You don’t have any idea where to start looking?” Cassandra asked.

Hanalei shook his head no. “Chanters more advanced than my wife rarely leave Ingvarr, especially for reasons as banal as sellsword work. I wouldn’t trust an Equisian sorcerer as far as I could throw them. Or a Coronian one for that matter, no offense—”

“None taken.”

“—mercenaries from farther away are generally rare in these parts, even moreso when you’re in the market specifically for magic users, I haven’t seen another Neserdnian in years. I guess you could cross into Koto to try and find a witch-knight, but there’s no guarantee they wouldn’t confiscate the items you’ve got instead of destroying them. So I think you’ve got yourself a bit of a long-term project here.”

“I’m beginning to realize that.” Cassandra thought for a moment. “You don’t think the dead witch-knight from Wolf’s Head Hollow...?”

Hanalei scowled at the mention of Étienne’s ghost. “Ornery bastard. Heaps of good steel went to waste because he’d rather have the dead look honourable and pretty in their stupid tin suits than let anyone remake them into a plough or a spade or a scythe and put it to work to feed the living. Good thing at least the dogs are gone, but it’s a shame he isn’t, too.” He sighed, the sound frustrated as it was drawn from deep within his barrel-broad chest. “No. No, I don’t think he can help where my wife can’t. Some things just need... well, a human touch, so to speak.”

And it did, unfortunately, make sense—if the ghostly witch-knight had been unable to pull the arrows and swords and spears from the bodies of his hounds, then it stood to reason that he was simply unable to interact with physical objects in general.

The rest of that evening, Cassandra spent sorting through the sorcerer’s belongings, testing each against the jar of magic-reactive ink she had gotten from the Kotoan spies—after making sure she herself was far enough away from it to trigger the reaction. The book, predictably, made it light up, and Cassandra lowered it into the box without even attempting to pry open the metal clasp holding its covers closed. The crosier, once she broke its head off, was just a thick length of wood; the crystal still hovering in the spiral’s centre, however, was magical enough. Cassandra weighted her options for a moment before laying the entire staff head into the box, atop the tome. She could always try poking the crystal out at a later time, if she needed to—at present, she didn’t need to, and didn’t want to risk the Brigand’s stable catching some sort of arcane fire.

She turned her attention to the small handful of other trinkets then. They seemed like nothing: two small charms meant for being carried in a pocket or a money pouch, five pendants carved from wood or bone, three bracelets woven from strips of leather or threads fit for embroidery work. But they all made Cassandra’s skin crawl as she touched them, and the small jar of ink lit up like a lantern next to every single one of them.

Cassandra placed the trinkets inside the wardwork box, shut its clasps, and turned the key to lock it, then found herself shaking with a sharp, involuntary, full-body shudder of abruptly released tension. Whatever she was keeping in there, she finally realized, it was at least as vile as some of the worst displays of magic she had seen—not quite as terrifying and horrible as the Moonstone’s decay spell, no, but certainly worse than Terapi Island’s idol with an unpronounceable name or the Saporian wand of forgetfulness. Possibly on par with the Mind Trap, she recalled, and winced against the memory. And given what the barbarian’s two-hander had turned out to be, especially when coupled with the horror stories the Coronian guards were telling of the sorcerer since she was very young, Cassandra could imagine more than enough reasons for why the charms that came from his hands would feel this bad.

The day after that, a thunderstorm broke across the sky, and the sun poked out through the diminished clouds after it had run its course. And in that sun, as Cassandra finally took Fidella out for a run again, she spied a stain of red uniforms and a reflection of light against polished helmets swimming along the road like a school of fish: an Equisian contingent marching down the north road, towards Silberstadt, easily half again as many men as Cassandra had estimated the garrison to count.

She pulled Fidella around and pushed her straight into a canter, intent on double-backing before the reinforcements could arrive. By the time she gave the heads-up to Sebastian and to the clinic family, Ramon had whistled at her from the entrance to the Brigand’s stable.

“It’s about to turn very unsafe here for anyone as visibly from the Seven Kingdoms as you and me,” the Kotoan spy gestured to himself, skin darker and curly hair coarser than what was commonly seen among the region’s locals, before nodding at Cassandra. “Your accent, that favour, you’re going to get bullied until you lose your temper and they turn you into a pin cushion for instigating unrest or whatever other stupid excuse they feel like drumming up. Find work, and find it anywhere that’s not here, fast.”

Cassandra bit her lip, and looked across the town square, to where the clay-skinned Neserdnian and the platinum-haired Ingvarrdian were working at the smithy. The furrier was Kotoan, likely after both parents. Tara was Kotoan, if still unable to walk, a dubious mercy at the moment. Eliza had higher cheekbones and eyes of noticeably different shape, likely after a Kotoan mother or grandmother. Sebastian had the unmistakable, middle-height but thick-boned, nimble build of a Pittsfordian highlander, and a shell-rimmed hat hung above the Brigand’s countertop to match. A lot of people Cassandra had eaten beside and played cards with at the Brigand, or returned the greetings of in the streets, or dug a mass grave with in the soil of Richter farm, were of mixed heritage tracing to at least one of the Seven Kingdoms.

“Oh heavens,” Ramon sighed. “I know that look. Please, anything but that look.”

“I can’t just split,” Cassandra said slowly. “If there’s something that needs doing away from here, I’ll do it, but I’m not leaving just because the garrison doubled in size.”

The spy dragged a hand down his face. “I’ll try to point someone at you, but for fuck’s sake, take their work, job board or no. You’re going to keep the lead toys up in the stockade on edge just with your presence. I need them cocksure and complacent so I can actually do my job. And while your death would solve that problem for me, I’d still hate having to explain later how we got a Coronian knight-errant killed and strung up like a smoked partridge.”

“I’ll be on my best behaviour,” Cassandra promised in a dry tone.

“You’d better be. If you ruin everything we’ve been building here since the Bayards died out, I’ll kill you myself and make it look like the guards’ doing.”

The day after that conversation, it hadn’t taken past noon for the regular patrols of Equisian guards to double in frequency and change from pairs to teams of four or five. It hadn’t taken until sunset for one of those patrols to antagonize a group hailing from the settlement in the mine, ending in a scuffle that saw the Shanker who had helped with digging the Richters’ grave unconscious on the ground in a puddle that was rapidly filling in with blood, and the Rat who had sewn the farmers’ shrouds clutching at a stomach wound with trembling hands. Ramon had been nearby, and pulled the Shanker across his chestnut’s saddle to take him to the clinic immediately, while Cassandra threw the Rat over her shoulder and ran after him on foot; by the time she got there, the three herbalists were already at work, Emil and Bruno rapidly stitching up the Shanker’s head wound, Eliza calling out at Cassandra to stay and help her in turn, even if just with holding the wounded woman down. Within minutes, the Rat died on the table, and the Shanker was stable enough to hopefully pull through—if he woke up reasonably soon.

Eliza stopped trying and walked away the moment it became clear the bandit was gone. Cassandra looked at Bruno and old Emil, noting that they seemed to have the still unconscious Shanker handled well enough, and went after her, finding her in the clinic’s backyard and rolling up a thin cigarette.

“Will you be okay?”

Eliza gave a crooked smile around the cigarette as she struck a match to light it. “It’s not the first time someone died on me in surgery, I can promise you that. It’s just been a while since the last time it happened.”

Cassandra was silent for a while. “Did you know her?”

“In passing. Marta, I don’t know her last name. Her family used to have a farm east of Wolf’s Head Hollow. Her greataunt was a maid in Château de Bayard. One of her brothers was drafted into the Kotoan army, her sister and father into the Equisian. All are likely dead by now.” Eliza took a pull on the cigarette, slowly exhaled the smoke, making sure to blow it away from Cassandra’s face. “Give me five minutes and we can go, there’s bound to be someone in the Brigand who knew her better to break the news to.”

“Okay.” Cassandra thought for a moment. “...You said Château de Bayard, not Fort Rimwarden.”

“Maybe I did,” Eliza allowed, her tone just short of challenging.

“I thought Equis and Koto were all the same to little folk, and it didn’t matter whose banner was flying off the town walls?”

Eliza laughed ruefully, shaking her head. “Equis leaves more leeway to what’s going on around here, on a good day, but I’ve seen few days that good in the past decade, and it’s not looking up. Koto is harsher, but fairer, and demands more order in return for giving us more. Like a school. Or a court of law. Or what little cobbles exist in this mud-flowing nightmare of a town. Or an opportunity to move to somewhere else within the kingdom—or six more kingdoms, for that matter—or a postal system to keep in touch with loved ones living away.” She reached to her neck, and pulled out a pendant shaped like a scallop shell. It took Cassandra a moment to realize what she was looking at: a medal of commendation dispensed only among the members of the two factions of Kotoan knighthood to be patroned by the King, its order ribbon cut off and replaced with a thin silver chain that must have been either an heirloom, or a wedding gift, judging from the nearly squalid level of wealth Cassandra had commonly seen from the locals. “My mother was a knight of the Hospital Order. She built this clinic damn near entirely with her own bare hands, and we’re only as good at what we’re doing as we are because she brought her order’s expertise to the folk knowledge passed down my father’s family. Bruno was studying to be a physician, in the same order, up north in Riddersbrug before Equis took over there again and started demolishing every Kotoan institution it could find. My father and husband know what I think about politics, and there’s no need to discuss the same things all over again where we all know I won’t listen to them any more than they’ll listen to me.”

“But Silberstadt would be flying Kotoan colours, if you had anything to say about it,” Cassandra said slowly, not really a question.

Eliza shrugged, grinding the butt of her cigarette against the doorframe pockmarked with identical marks, new and old. “I don’t. Now come on. Time to ask if there’s anyone left to bury Marta.”

And there was, once again a mix of Shankers and Rats, only further driving home the point Sebastian had made earlier on, about the two rival bandits outfits having recruited from a mix of local people who had lost their livelihoods or families to the endless border conflict between Equis and Koto in this region. The rest of the evening did nothing to discharge the heavier, stormy atmosphere across the Brigand’s dining floor, Cassandra noticed, furious murmurs rolling from every other table like distant thunder.

The day after that, another guard patrol rolled up to the smithy, the topspikes of two halberds pointed at Sigrid’s throat as the sorceress stood at her woodworking lathe with both hands raised in the air and unmoving, her eyes icy and furious, her face a calculating sort of calm as she answered the questions of an Equisian wearing the guard uniform and the distinctions of an officer—and her husband stood to block any other guard’s approach towards her, a massive pair of tongs in one hand and the other very close to an orange-hot length of steel in the furnace. Cassandra glanced around quickly. The town square and the surrounding muddy streets were rapidly turning into a chessboard mid-match: two guards threatening Sigrid, Hanalei covering her position, three more guards more than ready for escalating the situation if the couple tried anything, Teagan leaning against the side of the brick building that held the job board with his massive crossbow rested atop one boot and a few Rats not even pretending they weren’t staring straight at the stalemate by the smithy clustered nearby, another patrol loading their own crossbows from around the corner, a trio of Shankers reaching into their sleeves behind the patrol—

The officer signalled his men to withdraw their weapons, and Sigrid slowly lowered her arms, the murderous look on her face far from abating. With the layers of threatening positions rippling into a calm again—if one unmistakably preceding a storm—Cassandra turned from watching the chess pieces scatter, each on their way, to see Hanalei placing a hand on Sigrid’s shoulder and the fletcher answering a short question in an equally concise manner before she leaned in to give her husband a kiss, and the two went back to work.

Later in the day, Cassandra found them at the Brazen Brigand, speaking quietly with Sebastian at the countertop, and climbed into a high chair next to Sigrid. Whose feet also dangled a little off the floor, she noted, as the three turned to her without surprise.

“You two alright?”

“Worry about the guards, not about us,” Sigrid said calmly from over her tankard. “They try that one more time, and they’ll start finding bodies of their friends impaled atop the stockade.”

“Sigi,” her husband said in a tone that carried a little warning and a lot of tiredness.

“What did they even want from you?” Cassandra asked.

The sorceress rolled her eyes. “Magic, of course, to fortify the town by turning wooden walls into stone ones. Dumb fuckers. It doesn’t work like that.” She put Cassandra in a headlock to yank her closer, and murmured, “Except when it does, but they don’t need to know that.”

Cassandra pushed her off. “Think they’ll start gang-pressing people to repair the walls normally instead?”

Sigrid laughed. “With what stone? The only place to get that from without a convoy is the mine, and they’ll get obliterated before they even see a tunnel! Good riddance, I hope they try that.”

“They might try with a convoy instead,” Hanalei admitted thoughtfully. “But that would have to come all the way from up north, and given how much they’re already antagonizing the Shankers and the Rats, they’d have to hire the Scarlet Brigade as escorts for each wagon.”

“Even then there’s no guarantee nothing would happen. Gosh, and I was already planning to go out of town for some fletch.” Sigrid sipped her ale loudly. “I wonder if I could call in a few favours and get someone on third watch overnight for us.”

“Sigi, weren’t we supposed to be done fighting?” her husband said tiredly.

“Not when someone comes into our house and points a weapon at my face, we aren’t.” The hard look on Sigrid’s face softened slightly when she looked at Hanalei. “I know you’re tired, baby, but it doesn’t take clairvoyance to see that this place is going to get fought over again soon.”

“Sometimes I wish you couldn’t see things coming in either of those ways,” the smith sighed.

“Trust me, it doesn’t inconvenience you more than me.”

Cassandra looked to Sebastian instead of get into all that. “Still no news from the other two farms?”

“The Isards are alive,” Sebastian said with relief, though the stormy look on his face lingered. “Mind, they’re not great, the Reds raided them into ruin. It’ll be a miracle and a community effort both to keep them from starving until the spring.”

“And the Tysons?”

“No word. Except for the miss, but she came over before her folks dropped out of contact. And for the farmhand—Carter Jenkins, the fuck I’ve been throwing out every day—he insists he’ll only talk to her, but she’s scared of him for some reason, so he doesn’t get to. And Tyson farm is far enough away that you can’t make it there and back on foot in the same day. It wouldn’t be an issue without that stupid curfew, but, well.”

“I see.” Cassandra fell silent for a moment. The fletcher and the smith beside her were arguing quietly again, about arrows and magic and more, and she could gather that the matter revolved around Hogni Galdrsbani’s trophy rack of a two-handed sword without paying too much attention to them. She looked at Sebastian again. “How hard will this be on the town? Losing up to three families worth of farmers at the same time as this many soldiers show up?”

“Hard,” Sebastian admitted with a sigh. “The guards brought some provisions with them, but unless we have a really good spring harvest next year, it’s going to be lean for a while. It’s not even entirely clear who’s going to inherit the Richters’ land, much less if anyone will farm it. I really hope the Tysons are okay.”

Cassandra let the three of them be shortly after, and stepped outside into the night to think. Hopefully, Sebastian and Hanalei would be capable of talking Sigrid down from the warpath—magic or no, a single pack of warriors couldn’t destroy an entire garrison. All they’d accomplish would be provoking the guard into tightening their grip on the populace, more reinforcements getting called down from the city up north, and some deaths.

Maybe a lot of deaths, she admitted to herself, thinking back to the fight with the ogre. Especially because, if Sigrid could not be dissuaded, not only her husband would go with her. Sebastian, perhaps, even though he had much to keep and much to care for in town. Teagan, likely, considering his immediate aid during that battle; true enough that the ogre had been a big target, but he hadn’t missed a shot from that monstrously sized crossbow. Then there was the calling in of favours that Sigrid had mentioned, no doubt meaning at least a few more mercenaries who had long since settled down—and the part where the Equisian guards were gleefully, carelessly antagonizing both the Shankers and the Rats, who could well jump at the chance of having a few more seasoned ex-sellswords in charge of planning any acts of revenge.

She could join them, Cassandra thought carefully. She probably would, if they asked. But it would most certainly count as ruining the careful, years-long, quiet work of the two Kotoan spies. And even aside from Ramon’s doubtlessly very serious threat against doing so, Cassandra was inclined to believe that if there was to be any stability found for this region, it would genuinely be only after Koto established this new province that Tara had spoken of. Structured and rigid as Koto could be, it was likely to also mean security and a foundation firm enough, strong enough, to support any sort of growth. Equis, in turn, was on the verge of civil war between the monarch and the aristocracy, and even if King Trevor prevailed in such a conflict, he remained heirless and was not getting any younger. The looming perspective of a war of succession may have been banished from the immediate future of Corona, with the return of the Lost Princess—but Equis had no miracle of the sort to count on, and its skies remained dark with this threat.

Cassandra looked up at the moon, past another fullness and almost perfectly in its last quarter as it peeked out from between returning rainclouds. Perhaps she was letting her heart, passionate as it could be, simplify matters too much again. But in her mind, she felt with a slowly yet steadily increasing certainty that to advance Koto’s interests in the area would advance the locals’ interests as well, at least in the long term. She couldn’t be sure whether it was nothing more but the patterns she had spent so long living within—the ways of a prized bloodhound feeling at the indents of a collar at its neck in the absence of knowledge on how to be a wolf again—the loyalty she had never been encouraged to question singing its siren song of surrendering again to an easily parsed world and a stable place within it. An old yearning for glory rearing its head again in the form of seeing a town in trouble and defaulting to thinking of ways to solve it all by herself, as if such a feat was even possible and not just an insidious form of arrogance.

Then she saw a winged shape flit against the moonlight, and froze for a moment before pushing off the wall. She looked around in the dark, quite fruitlessly—but nevertheless, she held out her left arm, and hoped.

She felt a presence more than she heard the silent whoosh of wings, and turned her head just as Owl swooped down onto her forearm.

“There you are, I missed you so much—” Cassandra lost her tongue as she took a closer look. “What... are you wearing?”

Hoot, Owl said primly as he turned around on her arm and spread his wings, presenting a scroll case snapped around his torso with two straps criss-crossing his chest, quite like a backpack.

A backpack in royal purple, decorated with a seven-rayed golden sun.

“How did– what even–” Cassandra gave up with a sigh, and unstrapped the contraption from around Owl’s chest. “Did anyone see you? Did anyone pay attention to... all this?”

Hoot, Owl said negatively as he folded his wings and turned back around on her arm.

“Good,” Cassandra breathed out with relief. Because if anyone had paid attention to that, especially in a region already on fire with conflicting interests of two hostile kingdoms, they would assume Owl was a spy’s messenger bird and attempt to shoot him down. “Have you rested at home at all?”

Hoot, Owl confirmed easily.

“Because, tell me if I’m wrong, but it looks like you made the distance both ways in less time then I did on foot one way.”

Hoot, Owl said smugly.

Cassandra huffed a quiet laugh. “Thank you. It’s good to see you again.”

Hoot, Owl said pointedly, and narrowed his eyes at her.

“...I got into trouble while you were gone,” Cassandra admitted uncomfortably. “But I’m fine now, alright? Fidella took care of me, and then I went to other people for help—”

Hoot, Owl scolded.

“Listen– It was stupid, okay? I got hurt and it was almost a lot worse, but– listen, someone who was very hurt asked me for help, me personally and no one else, what was I supposed to do?!”

Owl snapped his beak at her angrily, and Cassandra levelled a withered finger at his face.

“Do not snap at me, mister.”

Hoot, Owl said with frustration.

Cassandra sighed, pinching the corners of her eyes for a moment. “I got my nose broken. It doesn’t hurt anymore, and it’s almost healed by now. I got injured on the right shoulder, but I dressed it best I knew how while alone, and found help for it as soon as I could. It’s very nearly healed up by now, as well. And... my arm is... worse, but I’m handling it. Listen, it wasn’t the smart thing to do, but I couldn’t do anything else. And I don’t want to ever do something like that again, especially not alone, not if I can help it at all. I said this to Fidella and I’ll say it to you, I know it’s unfair to depend on the two of you with everything I can’t do myself, and I’m going to find people to be with soon. Soon, alright?”

Hoot, Owl acquiesced reluctantly.

“Are you angry with me?”

Hoot, Owl said, conveying that he was indeed still angry, but that he was also less angry than he was concerned.

“Thank you.” Cassandra leaned down to him, and felt the flat of his beak press against her forehead for a moment, and finally smoothed a finger down the feathers on his head. “I missed you. Stay for a little before I write her back.”

Hoot, Owl told her softly before they pulled away from each other. Then he indicated the scroll case backpack with a wing.

“What, more than just the fact that Raps must have hand-sewed that thing entirely for—” Cassandra broke off as she opened it, and saw the sheer amount of paper inside. “—oh, brother.”

Hoot, Owl encouraged.

“No, I– no. Tomorrow. That is too long to start going through right now. Right now, let’s just get you something to eat.”

Hoot, Owl insisted.

“There’s art, too?” Cassandra asked dryly. Then shook her head, exasperated, but with herself rather than with the perspective of Rapunzel having packed drawings along with the letter. “Of course there’s art, what am I even saying.”

She tucked the scroll case away and walked back into the Brigand’s dining area, close to empty so late at night, and asked Sebastian for the best cuts he could give Owl at this hour. Soon after, she went back into the stable proper, where Owl and Fidella greeted each other with a hoot and a nicker before Owl settled comfortably on a rafter and was fast asleep seconds later. Cassandra smiled as she looked up at him, and opened the small cylindrical backpack to sort the multiple pages filled with Rapunzel’s rich, flowing handwriting from the paintings.

There were three, in total.

One was pretty straightforward: a cityscape of Castle Corona, in Rapunzel’s usual cheerful, almost lineless style and seamlessly blending pastel colours. It was still a representation accurate enough for Cassandra to recognize the sights, the streets, the shop signs—and an image much more put together than the one she had left behind. Repairs must have progressed without issue, she thought even as she started noticing details, more intricate ones than she was used to from seeing Rapunzel’s art and, occasionally, from having to scrub it from some of the flat surfaces the princess had gotten her hands and her paints on. She could pick out which buildings in the picture had newer walls and fresh plaster, like scars sheared against the city’s shell. She could guess which window the view had been painted from—and it was not Rapunzel’s room, surprisingly, but her own. And, she couldn’t help but notice, there was a lovingly rendered figure of a lone rider on the bridge to the mainland, heading away from the city under a sunset if the colours playing across the sky and the way the shadows fell were any indication, and into a star-wreathed moonrise.

One was a very thorough departure from Raps’ usual work, and Cassandra would’ve sat up at the sight of it if laying down in a hammock allowed the motion. Not only was the subject very different, but the method as well, a concentrated effort towards a more candid, almost photorealistic style—and the subject was hands, sometimes a pair, sometimes only the left, but each time turned so that the palm or palms faced the viewer, a study sheet of how the lines played against motion and light. Rapunzel’s own hands, Cassandra guessed, both from the angle and from trying to imagine her asking someone else to sit still for her long enough—cupped to drink water from, captured midway through a come-hither gesture, reaching out as if to grab something, folded inwards to examine her fingernails, and in the centre of the page, laced with palms open to the sky and the thumbs touching lightly, the way Cassandra knew Raps would usually hold them when she wanted to meditate. And in each but the central piece, Cassandra noticed on a closer look, there was a slightly discoloured stripe across the palms, the skin a little more glossy and hinting at a coarser texture. Burn scars, she recognized, and tried to think of when that could have happened, but came up with nothing. In the central piece, and that piece only, the scars were touched with colour: a hint of Rapunzel’s usual tendency for adding ornaments and embellishments, but even in that a very tame instance of it, working only with what was already there—glowing yellows curling in soft waves, icy blues carving in jagged crack-patterns. The Sundrop and Moonstone, Cassandra realized slowly, a rising recollection of an explosion consuming Zhan Tiri’s bloated demonic form, then a violent mixture of motion in impossible directions and pressure too crushing to remain human underneath and light so harsh as to be screamingly painful, then a starburst of something dizzying and incomprehensible inside her chest, then her lungs full and her heart beating, and her eyes cracking open, and the first thing she saw was Rapunzel, hair blown about and hands folded around something little and a spherical halo of the same glowing yellows curling in soft waves, the same icy blues carving in jagged crack-patterns, surrounding her entire body. So she was now carrying physical marks from the stones, too.

And one was almost a midway point between Raps’ usual style and this new effort at capturing a different way of looking at the world: a place, one that Cassandra didn’t recognize. A pond in the middle of a meadow full of indistinct wildflowers and low-to-the-ground shrubbery, a soft mist of fireflies rising through to illuminate it only barely enough for the edges of dark leaves and stems to be visible, here and there. The main source of light in the scene was a full moon, white and blue and impossibly large as it took up most of the sky. Its lowest edge stood framed with three extremely familiar, sharp spikes of glossy black rock—almost as if they were supporting it, like a small stand fitted to a fortune-teller’s crystal ball. And against the moon’s soft but unyielding light, two more details were visible: a spiral staircase leading down the pond’s clear water, and a dark silhouette of a person seated before the pond itself, with their back to the viewer, their legs crossed and their hands rested against their knees and their hair cut short enough not to reach their shoulders. Raps herself, Cassandra realized. Sitting still and contemplative in a silent, moonlit space.

She set the pieces aside for a moment, staring at the stable’s ceiling now. Apparently, the theme had stuck, and she didn’t quite know how to feel about that. On the one hand, taking the Moonstone had been one of the least selfless acts she could ever commit.

But it had, unequivocally, served to save Rapunzel’s life. For the princess, for the kingdom, for the oath Cassandra had sworn before King Frederic before they all left—it had served to protect the integrity and the future of Corona, and the life of her first close friend, even in her burgeoning resentment towards both.

Even in her defiance, it had been an act of service. Even in her rebellion, she had been used to advance the interests of another. And if Raps had associated the sun with herself and the moon with Cassandra, it was still a way to see and define Cassandra through the lens of how she related to Rapunzel, and not for who and what she was herself.

Yet on the other hand, ceding a lunar motif to Cassandra was almost an acknowledgement of her claim to the Moonstone. Almost a recognition of the act and an acceptance of it for what it was, for all that it was: a desperate attempt to make her listen, a display of loyalty despite having never been respected for it, and a declaration of war, all in one. Almost an extended hand so that Cassandra could take it and pull herself up to a position beside her, to a more equal status. And that—that felt good.

Cassandra looked at the piece with the pond again. She would have expected Raps to think of the black rocks as a threat, not a support; she would have expected Raps to be uncomfortable bathed in shadows and cold colours, not voluntarily paint herself at peace among them. But if she was looking at the moon and thinking of Cassandra—

She tucked the paintings back into the scroll case, and folded it into her arms. Now it was time to sleep, not to work herself up thinking about her feelings.

Morning came, and with it a drizzle, the rainfall not as intense as earlier in the week but entirely enough to feel like Silberstadt would never be free of mud again. Cassandra looked across the town square, relieved to find both Sigrid and Hanalei working at the smithy as they did every day, and entered the Brigand’s dining floor for breakfast. This time, however, she took her plate and tankard and Owl’s small bowl of raw meat to a seat beside the fireplace, hoping that the warmth would ease the persistent ache in her withered arm a little. And after she ate, with Owl perched atop a neighbouring chair, she opened his backpack again and unfolded the letter’s multiple pages at last.

Hi, Cass.

Thank you for writing, and for the gifts you sent with the letter—I haven’t figured out each yet, but I’m going to. What a wonderful puzzle! It was so sweet of you to give me something to solve, too, it’s almost like I’m out there in the world with you. Thank you for letting me be a part of your travels, even in a small way like this.

Cassandra smiled. Distance had helped to make it disarming, rather than frustrating, how Raps could get so excited about the smallest things. Of all the people Cassandra knew, the one who would treasure a bunch of clutter the most was the crown princess of a prominent kingdom—how ironic, and how rare an irony that brought with it a sense of warmth instead of a bitter aftertaste.

Hoot, Owl said, alerting her to the fact that someone in the tavern was watching her read.

“Oh?” Cassandra kept her eyes firmly off the direction he was indicating. “Then keep an eye and let me know if they start walking up or leave the building, please.”

Hoot, Owl acquiesced easily.

“Thanks.” Cassandra went back to reading.

I’m really happy to hear you’re doing better. I think I’m starting to, as well, even if it doesn’t feel like that at all. In my weaker moments, I miss the times when I honestly believed that getting better is a painless or effortless experience, that just feeling happy meant I was doing well. But, even when I think these thoughts again, I know now that confusing happiness for wellness like that was a luxury I’ve claimed at the expense of everyone around me. I know now that it was a disservice to myself, as well, no matter how comfortable it was to resist change like that. So I pause only for long enough to rest up a little, and then I try again, no matter how hard it’s going to be. And it is hard, and painful, and I feel ashamed and angry more often than I know what to do with. I look at what I’ve been doing, and at why I’ve been acting like that, and I find myself outraged and disappointed, with myself for doing it, with those I’ve learned such behaviours from, with myself again for letting them shape me this way without thinking and for dismissing the concerns and advice of people who have tried to steer me down a better path. I want to believe I’m better than that—or at least, that I can be, and try my hardest to do better and be better, so I don’t have to start honestly hating myself now.

You’re one of my closest friends, Cass. Do you remember when we agreed, together, to try and find out how to be friends? I think about that every day, about how you laughed and finally allowed me to really see you, and about how thoroughly I’ve been failing you ever since. For as long as we know each other, I’ve been treating you terribly, and whenever you tried to get me to understand it and to stop, I brushed you off so that I wouldn’t have to listen. I’ll never be able to apologize to you enough. The only way to come close, I think, is to make sure I become someone who will never treat another person like that again—for you, for me, for everyone I know and love, for everyone I’ll ever meet.

I thought the first promise I broke was to Varian. I can’t stand the thought, the truth, of that I couldn’t even acknowledge how many times I’ve gone back on my word when it had been given to you.

“You could have warned me she was going to get this emotional,” Cassandra told Owl, her voice a little weak and barely short of cracking.

Hoot, Owl rebuked firmly.

Cassandra cleared her throat, uncomfortably tight all of a sudden, and made sure to make the sound vaguely irritated. It was easier to be angry than to be hurt, and she was not about to cry in the middle of an inn where people looked up to her somewhat.

I’m sorry I kept pushing you to tell me things you weren’t comfortable sharing, and only ever dismissed them after you did. It was a horrible and thoughtless and cruel way to treat you. I’m sorry I refused to accept your choices and kept making excuses for you. I thought I was helping, but what I’ve done instead was belittle you yet another time and make it look like you couldn’t be left alone with your own actions. I’m sorry I drove you away, twice over now. I’m sorry I never listened. I’m listening now. Anything you decide to tell me. And if you decide that you don’t trust me with saying anything, that’s okay too, because I’ve earned distrust like that more than enough.

“...Damn it.” Cassandra rubbed at her eyes with withered fingers, sniffed, exhaled slowly. She was not about to cry in the middle of the Brigand’s dining floor, not before hell froze over.

I hope it’s okay to bring this up: do you know I’ve kept Pascal secret from Gothel, for all those years he spent in the tower with me? In what fragmented and twisted understanding of love I had back then, I loved her. If someone had asked, I’d say it outright, without thinking. (If there had been anyone to ask me, back there.) But even despite that, I couldn’t deny that she’d hurt him if she knew. I was afraid that she’d take him away from me, one way or another, if she knew. So I kept him secret when she was home, and played hide-and-seek with him when she wasn’t, so he’d have practice in keeping himself safe in case anything bad ever happened.

I feel so stupid for how long it took me to realize that I’ve spent two years forcing you to keep things secret from me in the exact same way. And so ashamed for having done that to you in the first place.

Cassandra closed her eyes for a moment. Even as Zhan Tiri had gleefully fed the blazing furnace of her anger, resentment, and hatred—even at her lowest and most fire-blinded with the intensity of those feelings—and as she was being steered towards taking out the pain of it all on Rapunzel, for taking everything from her down to and including her own mother, it hadn’t been about Cassandra’s mother being taken away. Not truly. Not to a girl who had been raised a servant in the royal court, looking up to the Royal Guard, a girl who breathed loyalty and thought in categories of responsibility and prided herself immensely on being unfalteringly reliable.

At the core, it had been about even the worst person in existence—the one who had destabilized the entire kingdom and its future with one abhorrent act—cutting her losses with Cassandra, only to raise another child. And it was only made worse for how her own father had neglected to tell her the truth, for how she knew by then that she could not confide even in her closest friends with the newly-regained memory and all its terrible implications. If that was where she had come from, if even that had discarded her at such a young age, how could she possibly be worth anything?

And from there, she had been so easy to manipulate into aggressively trying to prove herself, to herself, to the world. And she had been so easy to break, so completely, simply by revealing that she had been nothing but a tool the entire time, all over again.

And, Cassandra had to admit before herself as she felt her jaw tighten, even after that entire ordeal, she was still far from immune. What had she done, ever since leaving Castle Corona, ever since coming here to the endlessly fought over no-man’s-land between territories claimed firmly by Equis and Koto?

All she had done for almost three months now was trying to prove herself. To prove she was worth something. To prove she was good enough for something, for anything. Already, she had gone to suicidal lengths to prove it, before herself, before others, and she had only lived to tell about it and be told about because she had been smart, careful, well-equipped, and lucky. Three of which she could attribute to being raised by a brave, steadfast, good man. To plan, to measure her strengths against the enemy’s weaknesses, to demand supplies she needed without hesitation and use them to the fullest without any excess pride getting in the way—those were the lessons her father taught her. Those were the lessons worth holding close to the heart and carrying with her for the rest of her life. Not the ones branded against the same heart with the irons of her mother’s cruelty.

In allowing that decades-old cruelty to shape her in any way, in allowing it to dictate her actions and thoughts even so long afterwards, lied her weakness—and she would hammer it out if it killed her to do so, Cassandra promised herself coldly.

I’m a slow learner when it comes to people, I guess. Another thing I can probably blame on growing up in the tower. But I’m coming to learn, too, what the difference between a reason and an excuse is. Saying 'I spent my entire childhood and adolescence confined to a single room' is a reason for why I’m like this. Letting that confinement be an argument against growing up, no matter how belatedly, turns it into an excuse. I owe it to you, and to everyone else, to do better than that. I think I even owe it to myself to do better than that. If I love the world, if I love you guys, then I can’t act like a child anymore, or I’ll make a mockery of that love and turn it into a burden. And I’ve already been a burden long enough.

Remember when Eugene and you fought the disguised guards, back in Varian’s laboratory room, a few days after the blizzard? It was the first time I watched you hit the ground and not get back up immediately after. I don’t think I’ve been that scared, in my entire life, more than a handful of times.

Up until that moment, in my eyes you were unbreakable. Nothing bad could ever happen, because you were there, because you were so strong you could fight back everything I’ve ever been afraid of all by yourself. What a selfish and child-like way to think—to absolve myself of considering that you could be hurt, that your feelings were as real as mine, that I should act on the respect and admiration I feel towards you instead of let them be just a feeling and a meaningless one through how unexpressed it was.

It was a childish way to think, Cassandra admitted reluctantly, but if so, then it was no less childish to eat it up like she had. She’d been so desperate for someone to look up to her, for someone to rely on her and see her as strong and capable, that she allowed Rapunzel to push her into such a role with absolutely no resistance, no matter how impossible it was to measure up, and had been from the very start.

In the end, it had served neither of them. In the end, it had only enabled both of their worst habits: Rapunzel’s to push without a smidge of consideration, and Cassandra’s to yield against it on a desperate hope that the submission and the disregard of herself would buy her affection.

But, even in unlearning that unreasonable and unfair burden I had placed on you, I can’t even entertain the thought that you aren’t strong. You are. And I know it so deeply because you’re the one I learned the real meaning of strength from. Before I left the tower, I was kept afraid of the world, of its people, of dangers I wouldn’t even see sneaking up on me in the dark. I’ve not unlearned these fears yet. I don’t know if I ever will. I have nightmares of being afraid every other night. Some nights, I delay going to sleep for as long as I can, just because I’m scared of facing those dreams again.

You, though, you’ve never allowed fear to stop you.

When we were warned that the Moonstone would kill anyone who touched it, you grabbed it and smashed it into your chest. When I was confined to the castle for how unsafe it was beyond its walls, you snuck me outside and stayed near me the entire time. Whenever I insisted on doing something risky, you came along and kept me safe throughout, no matter how hurt you could get in the process. Whenever there was danger or difficulty, you found a way to conquer it. You always risked yourself first, and yourself only if at all possible. You never mocked me for how pulled I am to light and warmth, like the lanterns I’ve spend eighteen years dreaming of, and never allowed your own brightness to burn me like a moth or to fireblind me, only illuminated my way as you stood beside me. Instead of letting me pretend the world could never be as bad as I was made to be scared of, you showed me the beauty and the grotesque of it, and you didn’t let me feel betrayed or threatened by the latter. Instead of hiding me from the dark, you led me by the hand through it—Cassandra, you are my moonlight. No matter how far you go, you’re always with me in the ways you’ve poured yourself into my heart and gave me the courage to face its worst and ugliest corners. I’ll be as brave as you. I’ll be as honest as you. And I hope I can grow up into someone at least occasionally as strong as you, through it. I’ll look up to you like I look up into the night sky. I’ll make myself worth of all you’ve given me. I hope that one day, no matter how far in the future, I’ll become someone you can be proud of. And it’s okay if you don’t believe I’d do all that for you. Like I said, no one has the right to blame you for not believing me after I’ve failed you so many times already. It’s okay, because you also taught me that sometimes we need to do the right, difficult thing no matter what other people will think of us for it.

So that was where the motif had come from, Cassandra thought with her throat tight all over again. She pulled out one of the drawings again—the one with the pond in the meadow. The one where Rapunzel had painted herself sitting, peaceful and safe, under the light of the moon held up with three black rocks, as it shone down on her in an incredibly peaceful scene, an image that felt almost sacred for how soothing and intimate it was.

That was how she felt about Cassandra’s staying influence in her life?

I’m learning to see things as they really are. The world, my friends, my family, myself. I’ve scarred my hands taking the Sundrop and Moonstone after they were together again, did you know that? It’s okay if you didn’t. I tried to hide it from you. I didn’t know why, at the time, I just felt too many contradictory things about the possibility of letting you see. I can admit it now: I was afraid you’d hate me all over again for how it’s nowhere near as bad as your arm. Sometimes, when I feel terrible about myself or when I can’t sleep, I catch myself thinking that it should be worse—that I deserve it being worse, for what I’ve done to you with the decay spell. It’s the worst thing I’ve caused to happen, to you or to anyone else. And it’s yet another thing that had happened because I didn’t listen.

It’s so easy to feel guilty. It’s so easy to fall on old habits and make myself small instead of making up for what I did wrong, instead of making sure I never, ever, do these things again. To stay selfish and act like the pain and hardship I’ve caused to others is not about them, but about myself, like I can erase it by putting myself through the same amount of it.

I won’t let myself off the hook so easily. I won’t let myself stop trying to better myself just because it’s difficult. And that, too, is something I’ve learned from you, Cass.

Corona is rebuilding from the battle, from what Zhan Tiri did to us all. It’s only rebuilding because everyone is putting a lot of hard work into making things better. So I’ll put a lot of hard work into making things better, as well. If I’m to be responsible for this kingdom one day—if I’m a little responsible for it, already—I have to be worth its respect. I have to be worth being followed, like on the day the Captain had been hurt and you stepped up for him, and everyone rallied to you without a second thought. So this will be the next thing I learn from you.

I miss you. But I'm glad to hear from you. Be safe and happy in your travels.

Rapunzel.

Cassandra slowly sat back in her chair, laying the letter against the table.

She had been bracing herself for at least one plea to come home or at least visit soon. Nothing of the sort was present. Quite the contrary, Raps had finished with an indirect encouragement to run wild and free for as long as she wanted to, because a letter was enough—and maybe an implication that a letter was more than Raps had been hoping for, or considered herself deserving of.

This was a lot, Cassandra couldn’t deny as she folded the pages chronologically again and absent-mindedly smoothed her withered thumb over a small doodle of Pascal amid curling branches and leaves in a corner of the first page. And even if she hadn’t already asked Owl to stay for a little before flying back to Corona with a response, she was going to need a while to re-read Rapunzel’s letter, possibly more than once, really sit with it for a while, and think of what to write back to her.

But if Raps was serious about fixing things between them, she wouldn’t begrudge Cassandra for taking her time.

Come to think of it, Raps hadn’t said anything about Cassandra having taken over a month to write in the first place, she realized slowly. Only about how happy she had been to hear from Cassandra at all.

She looked at the letter again. Then thought about the paintings that had come with it, about the differences, the newfound depth of detail, the entirely unexpected and very thorough attempt at a different style.

Raps had already started doing some of the things she was talking about, without waiting for Cassandra’s approval, hadn’t she?

Owl gave an alarm call, and Cassandra’s head snapped up even as she folded the letter shut. A woman in undyed homespun clothes startled to a halt mere steps from Cassandra’s table at that reaction. She was recognizable, though not immediately—the one who had recently been taking a seat at the Brigand’s countertop in the spot hidden from the entrance, and slinked a little closer to the wall every time the Tysons’ farmhand tried to come in and was immediately yelled back out by Sebastian.

“May I, um, may I take a moment of your time?”

“Is that why you’ve been staring at me since I came in?” Cassandra asked, only a little incredulous.

The woman’s cheeks coloured slightly. “Well, I didn’t– you were eating, and then you were reading. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Considerate of you.” Cassandra pushed one of the free chairs away from the table with a foot. “Sit. What’s this about?”

“My name is Moreen Tyson,” the woman said as she perched at the edge of the offered chair, hands clasped nervously before her on the table. “My parents and me, we’re not from Silberstadt proper, our farm is a ways north-northeast from here. I was supposed to come over first and ask after what’s needed that we could sell or trade for, and my folks were to come a few days later, but... that was almost two weeks square past, and... no one showed up yet. No one but Carter, Carter Jenkins, he came to us for work shortly after my brother went into the Kotoan army, he’s been helping around ever since.”

“Sebastian said you were scared of him,” Cassandra said with a frown.

Moreen looked away with a strained look on her face, and nodded quickly. “He never... did anything, but... he never had the chance to, if you catch my meaning.”

“I might.” Cassandra cleared her throat after she heard how cold her voice sounded all of a sudden. “So what is it that you want from me? Put the screws to him until he tells me what happened?”

“No. No, he said that bandits came to the farm and he ran, but it’s safe to go back with him now.”

“That does sound like the exact last thing you should do,” Cassandra agreed with a raised eyebrow.

Moreen laughed a little, if nervously. “Bandits raiding, soldiers marching—it’s always a risk in these parts. But because of that, it’s always a convenient excuse for something worse, too. I don’t think he’s telling the truth. I’m afraid something worse had happened, and– Ramon said to talk to you, and Bastian here said you’ve been helping the clinic folks just because, and I don’t know if there’s anything left to pay you with, but, won’t you help me? Please? I don’t know if I have a home or a family to go back to—”

Cassandra leaned forward to lay a hand against the farmer’s arm. “Calm down. I’ll help. Just take a deep breath, then tell me what you need.”

“Thank you. Sorry. I’m– heavens, I’ve been worried sick.” Moreen pressed a hand to her eyes for a moment in an effort to calm herself down, then looked up at Cassandra again. “Could you please go to my family’s farm and check on them? Find out what happened and come back and tell me? I know it’s not a job board thing, and that Teagan won’t let you back in if you do work off the board, but I don’t know that I could pay the fee.”

“It’s fine. I was thinking about moving towns soon, anyway.” Cassandra withdrew her arm, and packed the folded letter back into the scroll case, then tied it to her belt so that it would be hidden under her cloak. “How many people are living at the farm, barring you and that Jenkins guy?”

“Just my parents. So two.”

“And Sebastian is keeping you safe here, I take it?”

“Yes. Yes, he’s been very good to me.”

“Do you think you can come out with me long enough to give me directions to your family’s farm?”

“Long as I’m not alone outside, yes.”

“Come on, then.” Cassandra tapped her left shoulder for Owl to perch on, and rose from her chair.

They walked outside the Brazen Brigand’s doorstep, and Moreen pointed down one of the mud-filled streets as she described the distance and the landmarks in an unexpected amount of detail. Once she was done, Cassandra placed her withered hand on the farmer’s shoulder in a gesture meant to reassure.

“Stay safe, and wait for me. I’ll be back as soon as I’m able.”

“You’ll go right away, then?” Moreen hedged in a hopeful tone.

“I mean, I just ate and I don’t have anything better to do.”

Moreen breathed out a sigh of relief. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“You can thank me after I bring you good news,” Cassandra rebuked, but tried to keep her tone gentle through it. “Which, you realize I probably won’t.”

Moreen nodded quickly, eyes downcast. “I know. It’s been two weeks. I’m expecting the worst, but I need to know for certain. So thank you for helping, even if it’s too late to help.”

Cassandra inclined her head at that, and watched the farmer go back indoors before she took Fidella out of the stable.

Hoot, Owl commented.

“I told you I don’t want to do dangerous things again if I can help it at all,” Cassandra said dryly.

Hoot, Owl praised.

Snort, Fidella said grimly, whipping her tail against her hindquarters in the rain.

“Oh, I know we’re going to find everyone dead. I asked her, and she seems prepared for it, too.” Cassandra nudged the mare down the street, towards the path to Tyson farm. “This is the second family I’m gonna have to dig a grave for here, you do realize that? I’ll need to buy a shovel at this rate.”

Chapter Text

Being a rain-soaked rat of a woman in these parts was, by now, an intimately familiar state of existence. Being a rain-soaked rat of a woman against this much windchill, however, was both new and worse.

Cassandra shivered in the saddle, bundled up against the wind whipping her with sleet as best she could. The light little cloak she had taken with herself when she was leaving Castle Corona, though reasonably water-resistant, was no longer an adequate outer layer of clothing, not this long into the autumn and not this far from her home kingdom’s comparatively light winters—barring the curse-caused blizzard two winters back, admittedly. The sea, she thought as she brushed the slowly building up layer of partially melted snow from her reinforced glove. While Equis wasn’t entirely land-locked, the nearest shore was quite a ways away, weeks of travel even in a bird’s flight—entirely enough for the air to turn dryer and the climate harsher. She was going to need a warmer cloak made. Or just a longer coat, if with slits on the sides to still allow for mounting a horse. And definitely boots, especially if the wet, muddy weather was to hold. Maybe just an entire change of warmer clothes, Cassandra admitted with resignation, in which case she should probably hunt something for pelts to save up both on money and on time.

She pushed her hood’s edge a little up her forehead so she could look around, squinting through the frozen rain. The lone, massive weeping willow Moreen had described loomed ahead, marking the spot Cassandra was supposed to take a left at to get to Tyson farm without trampling a field.

Hoot, Owl complained from where he was tucked into Cassandra’s neckline, his head nestled against her throat, as they began to trek directly into the wind.

Snort, Fidella echoed, whole-heartedly disgusted.

“Me too, you guys,” Cassandra grumbled as the tugged the hood of her cloak as far down as it would go.

Snort, Fidella repeated, more insistently now.

Cassandra paused at that. Lifted a hand to shield Owl from the sleet carried on the wind as she leaned into the next sharper gust to blow past, sniffed against it. “I can’t smell anything yet.”

Snort, Fidella said patiently and continued on, as if to emphasize the 'yet'.

Frowning, Cassandra readjusted her flimsy little cloak around Owl and herself. Horses had a keener sense of smell than humans, she was pretty sure, and so she wasn’t too worried. But the fact that she could smell nothing also meant she could smell no woodsmoke—just as she could see no lit windows in the distance, despite being on a path that led straight to a farmhouse, if directions given by one of that household’s members were to be believed. And especially when coupled with the autumn’s early nightfall, the chilly wind, and the sleet carried upon it, the lack of any beacons of firelight ahead meant that any last dregs of hope Cassandra may have harboured about the Tysons’ situation being just an elaborate misunderstanding were losing substance quickly indeed.

She pulled on the reins, signalling Fidella to stop, as she spotted something a little ways off the path. Folding one arm around Owl to cushion him from the impact of her feet hitting the ground, Cassandra dismounted and walked out into the field, towards a darker shape upon the ground. A cow, she realized quickly—or rather, the skeletal remains of one, gnawed on and cleansed of flesh rather thoroughly by whatever predators that felled it, by any carrion eaters that got to the carcass afterwards.

“Hm.” She looked to Fidella. “Think this is what you smelled earlier?”

Snort, Fidella said negatively.

“Same smell, though?”

The mare confirmed with a little whinny. Cassandra looked at the bones again.

“Well then.”

There were no tracks left in the soil anymore, not after that many days of almost non-stop heavy rain, and no way to tell what had been responsible. But any predator large enough to bring down cattle—whether wolf, bear, mountain lion, or something entirely unknown, or even just a group of hungry outlaws—was likely going to be a problem.

Cassandra climbed into the saddle again and nudged Fidella to continue on. Not a half hour longer, during which the frozen rain mercifully subsided at long last, Cassandra squinted through the rapidly descending nightfall as she thought she spied a darker shadow of buildings ahead. Another gust of wind, and she clasped a hand over her nose and mouth as she abruptly learned what the mare had meant earlier.

“Oh, son of a—”

Fidella tossed her head with a disgruntled whinny.

“—mother.”

The stench of death was heavy in the air so close to the farmhouse, a noxious odour of rotting meat hanging over the muddy courtyard like a cloud. Cassandra pulled a scarf out of one of her saddlebags and tied it around her face, wishing fervently that the smell of smoke from the Brazen Brigand’s hearth would cling to the fabric for as long as possible, then opened the top of her tunic to let Owl outside.

“Fly perimeter for me, please.”

Hoot, Owl acquiesced easily, and took off into the night sky.

Cassandra climbed down from the saddle again and lit herself a torch. The door to the house was closed, but that to the barn was laying in the mud, evidently rammed off its hinges from the inside—a desperate bull’s job, it looked like. She glanced inside the barn, but didn’t enter for how much more intense the stench of decay was there, and thought she spied the remains of at least one more cow within, at the edge of firelight from her torch. Noticing a chicken coop beside one of the barn’s walls, she broke the flimsy lock at its door to open it, and regretted that choice immediately as she found nothing but dead chickens, rotting feathers, broken eggshells, and a smell to match. Then she walked up to the house, switched the torch into her withered hand, and pulled the door open, finding that it hadn’t been locked.

The inside of the house hadn’t been disturbed much. There were still sacks and baskets and hams hung at the ceiling, the remains of a half-eaten meal long since finished by mice across the table—set for three people—the ladder up to a small attic area at the far end of the building hadn’t been pulled up, the chests and the cupboards were closed and orderly.

It certainly ruled out bandit culprits, Cassandra thought to herself as she wiped her boots on the doormat and walked inside. Whether for wealth or for food, anyone intending to raid the farmhouse would have ransacked it and taken as much as they could carry. Including the livestock—if not the cattle, then at least the chickens—instead of just leaving them to die where they stood.

She moved her torch in a wide arc, looking at the floor now, strewn with rodent droppings as it was. There were drag marks on the uneven clay surface underfoot, in how the straw scattered all across it had been pushed aside, in bloodstains that looked as if the blood had been sloppily wiped while wet but not scrubbed clean afterwards: two sets leading from inside the house to the doorstep.

Murder, then, and a very poorly masked one at that.

At least with Moreen smart enough to stay careful, and with Sebastian kind enough to consistently refuse service to the man who had most likely been responsible, Cassandra didn’t have to ride back overnight in an attempt to outrun impending tragedy again.

She sighed, then looked at Fidella over her shoulder. “Come on in. I’ll start a fire for the night, and look for the bodies once the sun comes up.”

Snort, Fidella said uneasily as she bowed herself enough to fit through the door.

“Well, it’s this or the barn with dead cattle inside it, you can pick whichever sounds better to you.”

Fidella gave her an unimpressed look, digging a hoof against the clay floor.

“I thought you might see my point.” Cassandra glanced up the chimney, and upon catching a glimpse of stars between clouds, she stacked firewood in the hearth and started it with her torch. While she was doing that, Owl flew in through the still-open door, and perched on a rafter. “Found anything?”

Hoot, Owl began counting out.

“So one in the field along the way, at least one in the barn, and another at the edge of the woods. Should’ve asked how much cattle they had before I left town,” Cassandra grumbled.

Hoot, Owl continued.

“Please tell me it was normal wolves, at least, and there was nothing as messed up as with the hounds in Wolf’s Head Hollow going on.”

Hoot, Owl confirmed.

“Okay, what else?”

Hoot, Owl told her.

Cassandra sighed again. “Of course he didn’t even bury them. Why would he, if he left the chickens inside the coop for weeks, and didn’t leave enough feed with the cattle. Anything more?”

Hoot, Owl said negatively.

“Alright. Good job. Let’s just stay warm overnight and I’ll deal with all that in the morning.” Cassandra closed the door and, upon noticing two iron hooks on its inner side, barred it for good measure. As she turned around, she caught a glimpse of colour—or reflected light, perhaps—under one of the cupboards. She walked up to it and knelt down, a prudent step away, so she could put her cheek to the floor and look under the cupboard.

An inhuman, high-pitched, modulated growl came from the darkness underneath.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” Cassandra said.

The cat hissed at her.

“Yeah, that figures.” Cassandra stood back up. “Owl, if you’re going to hunt for some of these mice overnight, can you catch a few for that fellow as well?”

Hoot, Owl agreed easily.

“Thanks.”

After hanging the clothes drenched with rain and sleet out to dry and tending to Fidella’s needs, Cassandra spent most of the evening going through the farmhouse to try and salvage what little was still left—cleaning the pantry of curdled milk and various foodstuffs that mice have gotten into, hanging a few more sacks from the rafters for protection against the rodents, climbing up to the ceiling to stuff more straw into the thatching where the recent wind and rain had caused a leak, sweeping the floors clean of old straw and rodent droppings. Keeping in mind that an actual burial would need holding, she went through several of the wooden chests in search of the most battered fabrics large enough to wrap an adult person in, to stitch into shrouds later. If the Tysons had been dead for nearly two weeks, they were not going to look pretty, and it would be a cruelty to let their daughter see them like that.

So much for no longer having to sew because of her arm, Cassandra thought tiredly as she folded a linen tablecloth with a few prominent stains that could not be washed out and a tattered wool blanket into her arms.

She considered climbing up to the small, open attic for the night, but decided that it would be weird to sleep in the dead people’s bed, and set out her bedroll on the floor beside the hearth instead. Mice weren’t going to be a problem with Owl around—and while she did crack her eyes open a few times, overnight, to the sound of a terrified little squeak abruptly cut short, none of her gear was gnawed on in the morning, and there were no new droppings within a fairly wide radius of the spot she had picked to sleep in.

There were also the scant remains of several unfortunate mice next to the cupboard, and the cat—its coat a two-toned, striped orange—was sitting beside it, instead of underneath, cleaning its muzzle with a licked forepaw when Cassandra blinked awake. As soon as she stirred, the cat startled, but froze in place immediately after rather than scamper back into its hiding place.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” Cassandra said again, without putting much heart into it. Then yawned and stretched slowly. “Alright, let’s not pretend we’re both stupid, I know you don’t like me.”

The cat licked its muzzle one more time, but otherwise stayed still.

“I’m going outside, then I’ll come back for a bit, then I’m leaving to bring Moreen back.” Cassandra watched the cat’s ears perk up at the name. “She’s okay, she’s the one who sent me. You just stay safe here, alright? I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you again.”

Mrow, the cat said in a forlorn tone.

“I know the other two aren’t okay. I can’t fix that,” Cassandra said gently as she sat up. “Did you see what happened?”

Mrow, the cat summarized.

“Not much of a fight, huh? Was it Carter?”

The cat folded its ears back and hissed, the sad doe-eyed look on its face instantly transforming into a visage of fury at that name.

“Yeah, that tracks.” Cassandra sighed. “I’ll leave a bit of better food for you, huh?”

And it was a good sign that the cat was eating in the first place, she thought as she left behind a generous handful of scraps sheared off the smoked ham by the ceiling. At least one thing was alive, and likely to stay alive, on this death-choked nightmare of a farm.

Snort, Fidella reminded as she followed Cassandra out of the house.

“I haven’t forgotten about eating, I just don’t want to eat before I’m done with the bodies,” Cassandra said dryly as she tied the freshly smoke-soaked scarf over her face again. “You can come if you like, but if there’s a wheelbarrow or anything similar around here, I’ll have to be using that instead of ride you.”

Snort, Fidella said nonetheless.

“Alright then. Give me a second.” Cassandra went into the doorless barn.

The significantly more intense stench of decay was coming from not one, but two dead cows, she discovered—both with the muzzles of their skulls laid amidst torn-up, spilled sacks of grain. Must have gorged themselves and died of bloat, Cassandra thought as the tried not to breathe and to look around as quickly as possible. There wasn’t a wheelbarrow in sight, but there was what looked to be the remains of another large wooden chest, lidless and with a pair of short, broad skis nailed to its bottom. It would do, Cassandra decided, and yanked on the rope attached to its front to pull it outside and through the ever-present mud. She then put her withered fingertips, glove and all, underneath the scarf and into her mouth to let out a sharp two-toned whistle at Owl.

“Which way?”

Hoot, Owl said, and flew ahead.

Finding the Tysons’ bodies wasn’t a challenge—not with a flying scout to lead her there. The shallow ditch they’ve been heaped into had since become almost a creek bed through the recent heavy rains, as well, turning the open grave into a deep puddle choked with muddy sludge. The challenge, Cassandra found, was in pulling the remains out of all that in a manner as respectful as at all possible. Then in stitching up the tablecloth and the blanket with a thick shoemaking cord that would hold well enough. Then in carrying the now-enshrouded bodies into that makeshift sled, while trying not to think about how swiftly the fabric was soaking through with rainwater and worse, how much work in the same vein was left with the barn and the chicken coop, how sickening the consequences could be if her reinforced glove was allowed to soak that sludge up. And by the time she was done, Cassandra found herself thankful several times over for deciding to delay breakfast after all of that has been dealt with.

She left the ditch as it was and started pulling the sled back towards the farm with one arm, her right glove tucked into her belt and her withered arm into her tunic, Fidella walking beside her and Owl perched atop the saddle. After dragging the bodies into the barn for now, Cassandra went back into the farmhouse to clean herself as thoroughly as humanly possible and change her clothes; the orange cat watched her throughout, curled up comfortably atop one of the wooden chests, but made no move—whether to approach or to hide. Finally, when Cassandra felt somewhere halfway to clean again, she ate a very late breakfast and tried to ignore how anything she put in her mouth tasted like ash, then donned her now-dried reinforced glove again and climbed into Fidella’s saddle to ride back towards Silberstadt, putting the mare through her paces this time.

When she arrived to where one of the dirt roads criss-crossing the town morphed into a street, however, it was to find a makeshift checkpoint under construction. The Equisian garrison was really beginning to take things seriously, Cassandra realized with more than a little surprise, raising one hand in a greeting as she approached.

“What business have you in town?” one of the guards called out to her.

“Sir, I’ve been in the neighbourhood for a month and a half,” Cassandra said calmly as she pulled Fidella to a halt in front of the checkpoint.

The guard’s eyes narrowed. “What’s a Coronian mercenary doing here for a month and a half?”

“I’ve engaged in a bit of sellsword work and in renovating the clinic, sir.”

“Oh yeah? Who’s running the clinic, then?”

“Emil, his daughter Eliza, and her husband Bruno,” Cassandra answered easily, growing frustrated. “May I enter, sir?”

The guard glared her a moment longer before he motioned his companions to open the checkpoint for her. “We’re watching you.”

Cassandra inclined her head to him as she passed through, and rolled her eyes as soon as she left the guards behind her. Equisian bastards, she caught herself thinking, and chided herself for it.

“Seven Kingdom scum,” she heard one of them muttering behind her back.

Never mind any more chiding she was about to engage in, then.

She gave Fidella’s reins to the Brazen Brigand’s stable boy, along with one more silver than she was supposed to pay, then turned as Owl alerted her with a hoot. A man was approaching her—modest-to-poor dress, unshaven for a few days—a local, and a familiar one. The same Sebastian had been yelling at to get out of his inn every day.

“You, Coronian—”

“Are you Carter Jenkins?” Cassandra cut him off.

Carter paused for a moment. “Maybe. What it’s to you?”

“I know what you did,” Cassandra said coldly.

He gave her an odd look—fear mixed with an attempt at intimidation. “Are you accusing me of something?”

“I don’t have to. I know exactly what you did. And in a minute, she’s going to know, as well.” Cassandra turned away from him, intent on walking through the Brigand’s door, and was pulled to a halt as the farmhand grabbed her arm.

“I can pay you. She can’t pay you. What do you want, huh? You’ll have it.”

“I want you to stop coming after her,” Cassandra said, slowly, and very clearly. “Now, hands off.”

Carter’s eyes darkened. His grip on Cassandra’s arm hardened. “Oh, you want her for yourself, is that it? Not if I have anything to say about it, you—”

He cut himself short with a yelp as Cassandra grabbed his wrist and stopped just short of dislocating it.

“Hands off, or I will break them off.”

“Like hell you will, right in front of the town square? The guards will break more than just your hands.” Carter laughed a little, a desperate look on his face now along with the fear. “Let’s be smart about this, huh? You tell her the truth—you tell her it was a bandit attack—and I’ll make you rich. She can’t do that. She has nothing to give you. But I do. We got a deal, yeah? You do your bit and I’ll do mine, partner.”

Cassandra heard her voice dip into a growl. “One more word out your mouth and you’ll be coughing it back up along with your teeth, you murdering piece of—”

“Oy, Kazandra!”

She turned at the sound of a familiar voice, if with a scowl at how the Ingvarrdian accent mangled her name, and saw Sigrid walking up towards them across the square.

The fletcher indicated Carter with a jerk of her chin. “Is he bothering you?”

“He is, in fact,” Cassandra admitted gratefully.

Sigrid gave an exaggerated sigh, and put the farmhand into a headlock, one far less gentle than the one Cassandra had been on the receiving end of. “Carter, Carter, we’ve talked about this. No one will think you’re cool enough to be gay just because you’re crushing only on extremely inaccessible women. It’s time to play in your league. I’m sure there are still pigs around that aren’t taken.”

“Agh– fucking—” Carter tried to push her off. The only thing he accomplished was that Sigrid flexed the arm she had around his neck. “Get off me, witch!”

“That’s sorceress to you.” Sigrid’s voice hardened from it’s demeaningly indulgent tone. When she looked up again, an odd look passed through her face, and her eyes momentarily flashed silver-and-black as she slowly sniffed at Cassandra and licked the smell from her lips. “You have the stench of death about you. What happened?”

Cassandra indicated Carter with a nod. “Why don’t you ask our little friend?”

Sigrid’s eyes, human-like again, narrowed slowly. “Ah-ha. I see.”

“You can’t prove anything,” the farmhand snarled at them.

“Can’t I? What was that about a witch, again?” Sigrid ran her knuckles across his scalp, only slightly too hard to be considered friendly, and yanked him off Cassandra, sending him stumbling away after herself as she walked off. “You know, it’s a real shame you don’t have feathers. I was thinking about finding myself something already soaked through with death.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—!”

“I’d pluck you like a chicken, little boy.” The fletcher gave a contented laugh as she hauled him away from the tavern door. “Oh, but that would fly like a dream.”

Cassandra smiled as she watched Carter finally break out of that headlock, exactly at the moment a guard patrol had begun walking over. With Sigrid heading back to the smithy, unbothered, Cassandra went into the Brigand’s dining floor, waving a hello at Sebastian as she quickly scanned the tables.

“Is miss Tyson around?”

“Yeah, right over where she usually sits,” Sebastian nodded towards the countertop’s hidden corner, at the same time as Moreen leaned out from it.

“You’re back so soon? Did you find what...?”

Cassandra folded her arms behind her back, and tried to make her voice sound gentle. “Your parents are dead.”

Moreen looked down, sagging a little where she was on a heavy sigh.

“Fuck,” Sebastian said softly. “Listen, if there’s anything I can do to help—”

“No. No, I already owe you enough.” Moreen pressed a hand to her eyes and took a deep breath before looking at Cassandra again and beckoning her over. “I knew this was what you were going to say, but thank you for going all the same. And I know there’s probably... not much left to go off after all this time, but... do you have any idea what could have happened?”

“It looked like there was an argument and a scuffle over a meal for three,” Cassandra said as she leaned against the counter rather than sit. “Then two bodies were dragged outside.”

“Carter.” Moreen’s voice dropped into a dangerous tone.

“That would be my suspicion,” Cassandra agreed, choosing to omit that a cat had told her as much. “There weren’t any obvious signs of theft. A lot of things are left in their places. It’s obviously not been a raid of bandits or marauding soldiers. So I think he killed them after you left, then followed you here, and has been around waiting for you ever since—just now, he tried to bribe me into lying to you. I can’t do anything in town, not with how many guards are swarming here now and not with how they’re just begging for an excuse to give me trouble. And I don’t have any actual hard evidence to make a formal accusation. But if you’re okay with going home, I’d like to tag along, because he’ll follow you again.”

“And you’ll deal with him away from the guards’ eyes?” Moreen asked hopefully.

“I’ve killed murderers around here before,” Cassandra said calmly. “I can do it again.”

“Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Moreen reached between them, and it took Cassandra a moment to realize that her withered hand was being held in both the farmer’s own now. “Did you see if the animals are okay?”

“I found four dead cows. Or what was left of them, rather,” Cassandra said uncomfortably. “How many heads of cattle did you have?”

“Four.” Moreen leaned her back against the wall, as if staggered with this next piece of devastating news. “And the chickens?”

Cassandra cleared her throat. “He left them shut in the coop without food or water this entire time.”

“Bastard,” Moreen hissed as she hid her face in her hands.

“I’ve, uh, retrieved your parents’ bodies,” Cassandra said as she reached to place a hand on Moreen’s shoulder in a gesture she hoped would be comforting. “If there’s any place you can think of where they’d like to be buried, I’ll help you dig.”

“He didn’t even bury them?” Moreen’s voice broke.

“I found a cat that made it through okay,” Cassandra offered lamely.

“Oh—” Moreen rubbed at her eyes furiously before looking up, a desperate attempt to latch onto the one glint of hope she was given. “Barley’s alive?”

Cassandra stared at her for a moment. “You named your cat Barley?”

“Well– she’s orange with darker stripes, yes? Like a field of barley at sundown.”

Cassandra shook her head slightly. “It’s a fair distance to your farm, but we can make it before nightfall if we eat now and go immediately after.”

“Heavens,” Moreen said in a hollow tone. “It is my farm now, isn’t it? At least until my brother comes back from war. If he comes back from war. I’m sorry, it’s just...”

“It’s okay. It’s a lot.”

Moreen nodded with a sigh. “Let’s eat and go. Let’s just... get things in order, at least.”

“Okay, then.” Cassandra looked at Sebastian. “Think you can whip up two servings of anything?”

“Give me five minutes,” Sebastian said confidently.

“And some provisions, as well, two people and a horse. A week’s worth?”

“Not a problem.”

“I knew there was a reason I kept coming here. Besides the stable, of course.” Cassandra grinned at Sebastian’s raised eyebrow. “How much?”

“Oh, on the house.” Sebastian raised a hand when Moreen tried to protest. “None of that. On the house. And I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” Moreen said tiredly.

Sebastian patted her arm consolingly, and gave Cassandra a deep, respectful nod. She inclined her head back at him, as much in response as it was in surrender before the observation he had made not a few days ago: that Cassandra’s method of finding something to do was based on how needed it was, not how glamorous or profitable or easily completed.

And what of it, Cassandra thought to herself in a tone as aggressive as if she were daring someone to have a problem with that. What, was she supposed to turn away someone who came up to her and asked her help, only hers and no one else’s? To turn her back on someone in danger, and pick a paying task instead, never mind that she still had enough coin for herself and for an emergency? Her father raised her better than that.

Sepulchral as the atmosphere was, the meal was completed quickly enough, and the satchel of more non-perishable foods was easily assembled within that time—hard cheese, travel bread, dried fruit, a sack of feed. Cassandra took Fidella out of the stable and motioned Moreen closer, only to find her just short of backing away and evidently daunted with the mare’s sheer bulk.

“You’ve never ridden horseback before?”

Moreen shook her head slowly. “We have a bullock cart. Had, at least. I don’t... know how to deal with horses.”

“Well, then it’s a good thing your first experience is going to be Fidella. Don’t be afraid, she’s very gentle.” Cassandra took her steed by the bitless bridle, more for show than to actually hold the mare still. “I’ll give you a boost into the saddle. Come on.”

She couldn’t help but think of Riccardo the halberdier and his own aversion to horses as she helped Moreen climb onto Fidella’s back, then followed, settling herself into place behind the farmer and reaching around her to take the reins. She was pulling Fidella around when felt Moreen stiffen, and followed her gaze to where she was focused on someone in the muddy streets—Carter, predictably, wild-eyed and with hair still mussed from Sigrid’s treatment of him.

Cassandra gave him a very mean smile, hoping to make the murderer angry enough to follow them out of town, then nudged Fidella into a trot towards Tyson farm. As soon as they passed the checkpoint at the edge of town again, she turned to Owl, seated on her shoulder.

“Keep an eye on that guy, would you?”

Hoot, Owl agreed easily, and took off into the sky.

“We’ll have an advanced warning now,” Cassandra said calmly. “Lean forward in the saddle a bit.”

“Um, okay?” Moreen tried to accommodate the request, even though she clearly had no idea what was expected of her.

“Think we can make it all the way before sundown?” Cassandra called out to the mare under them.

Fidella gave a confident little whinny, and dropped straight into a canter.

~*~

“I must confess, it eludes me why you’re so adamant about refusing him a place on the Royal Guard,” King Edmund said with a frown. “Hector is a very loyal and extremely capable man in his prime. It will not do to keep him idle anymore.”

“He’s also a violent sadist who only respects the rules when they let him be terrible to people, and putting him on the Guard would just let him do that more often,” Eugene countered, frustration slipping into his tone. “If he gets patrol duty, Corona will be terrorized by its own police force instead of by the criminals. If he gets jail duty, we’ll start finding dead prisoners, and I know someone had insisted to abolish the death penalty—” he blew a kiss to Rapunzel, who pretended to catch it with a smile, “—after yours truly had narrowly escaped being hanged. If we make him an outrider, he’ll attack the first envoy of an allied kingdom he sees, and say that he thought they were a spy.”

“True enough that he may be...” King Edmund speared a brussel sprout with his fork as he considered his words. “Overzealous, at times. But he is a great knight, and I insist that he must not be cast aside any longer.”

“We will find a position befitting a man of his standing,” King Frederic promised. “One that will not, hopefully, encourage any of those more unfortunate tendencies.”

“I appreciate the declaration, but we have been searching for such a position for nearly three months now. It’s been long enough,” King Edmund said sternly.

“Maybe we’re looking at it the wrong way,” Rapunzel spoke up, and looked at Eugene as both her parents and his father turned to her. “What was Hector up to when we met him?”

“Killing us,” Eugene said dryly. “Riding a rhino. Destroying the caravan. Beating Cass into the ground. Shouting matches with Adira as they tried to kill each other. Which by the way, if they don’t stop demolishing every room or courtyard they’re in when yet another one of those breaks out between them, we’ll never complete renovations of the castle. And I think he was also up to unleashing something left behind by Zhan Tiri at the Great Tree, after Cass had pushed him off that cliff.”

Rapunzel gently set aside the guilt coming with the memory of what else had been done to Cass at the Great Tree, focusing again on the matter at hand instead. “And Adira said that he was tasked with guarding the Great Tree?”

“He was indeed,” King Edmund confirmed. “Both to stand watch at the edge of the Dark Kingdom, and to ward the foul powers of that place from any who would seek to use them. I’m sure you are aware that demon had a cultist following.”

“Yeah, we’ve met a few.” Eugene scowled at the memories.

“What if,” Rapunzel said slowly, “we asked Hector to map Herz der Sonne’s tunnels again?”

Eugene stared at her for a moment. Then clapped his hands with a wide grin. “Sunshine, you are a genius.”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow,” King Edmund turned his attention to her more fully.

“One of the Coronian kings, centuries ago, had created a system of underground tunnels to move his knights and supplies through during a war,” Rapunzel explained. “But the only existing map of those tunnels was destroyed not too long before the battle with Zhan Tiri, and even that map didn’t account for all the damage the tunnels had suffered through all these years, or for the many traps strewn all throughout them. The Great Tree was like a maze—the tunnels are like a maze. Maybe Hector would enjoy this kind of thing.”

“And! It gets him out of the castle!” Eugene exclaimed happily, and rolled his eyes at King Edmund’s withering look. “Oh come on, half the staff are terrified of him and the other half are dreaming of the good old days when Cassandra was the castle’s resident stormcloud person. Which by the way, was Hector abandoned by his mother as a baby, too? Because—”

“Do not make that comparison,” Rapunzel said sternly.

“Alright, that is unfair to Cass.”

Rapunzel turned to King Edmund again. “I don’t think Hector will be able to take his rhinoceros with him into the tunnels, though, not with how low the ceilings can be. Also, some of the traps I’ve seen in there have been pitfalls.”

“And how many times have you ventured into these trap-filled, incredibly dangerous places?” King Frederic asked pointedly.

Rapunzel smiled her best innocent smile at him. “Only as many as the duty of the Princess and the good of the kingdom demanded.”

Eugene choked quietly on his drink, watching the conversation play out from behind his goblet with glee.

“Hm,” was all that King Frederic said, as he looked unimpressed and negatively impressed at the same time.

“I believe this task of exploration and charting would fit Hector most profoundly, especially if coupled with the responsibility for disarming any traps that may be still functioning. Possibly also running out any creature to have taken up residence,” King Edmund declared with a rare smile. “I will inform him first thing in the morning. Let us begin preparations then.”

“Then it is settled,” Queen Arianna said with no small amount of relief. “Excellent bit of insight, Rapunzel.”

Rapunzel smiled, and let the conversation between the three monarchs at the table progress into discussing details, while she caught Faith’s eye and winked at her discreetly. The handmaiden, who was waiting the table along with Friedborg, fought to suppress a smile.

After all, it had been Faith who brought the staff’s misgivings about Hector to Rapunzel’s attention, even if it hadn’t been entirely intentional. And with this, it could genuinely be the best solution for everyone—a much-needed yet mortally difficult task left in the hands of a man capable in an equally mortal degree, keeping Hector out of the public eye, maintaining a friendly relationship with Eugene’s birth father, getting Hector and Adira to stop destroying the castle every time yet another argument got out of hand.

And on the subject of Adira, hadn’t she implied that she was only going to stay for as long as it took Xavier to make her a new sword?

Rapunzel frowned slowly. She didn’t know how long it took to make a sword—Cass would know, and she hadn’t ever thought to ask, nor had she ever considered that Cass wasn’t going to be at her side ready to weigh in or lend expertise, not until the Moonstone. But even so, she was pretty sure that making a single sword didn’t normally take three months.

She beckoned at Faith, and once the lady-in-waiting leaned down to her, she murmured, “Could you try to find Adira for me, please? I’d like to speak with her after dinner.”

An uncertain look passed through Faith’s face. Adira was notoriously impossible to get ahold of, even though no one had actually seen her leave the castle, not once in all these months. “I’ll do my best, your highness.”

“Thank you.” Rapunzel caught her mom looking at her with mild concern as the handmaiden stepped away with a bow and hurried off. “Nothing, I just remembered there was an errand I’d needed someone to run.”

Queen Arianna inclined her head in an acquiescent gesture. “I was curious if you could weigh in on another of today’s little mysteries, as well.”

Rapunzel sat up, interest sparked. “What’s going on?”

“Earlier today, the Kotoan ambassador had delivered a joint missive from the King of Koto and one of his Grand Inquisitors. It’s a thanks for an act performed by a member of our court—it says your knight-errant...?”

“Oh, that’s Cass,” Rapunzel said happily as she cut another bite off her slice of meatloaf.

There was a sudden and absolute silence at the table.

Rapunzel looked between her parents, and pulled the fork out of her mouth. “...Did I forget to tell you that I gave her my favour and named her knight-errant right before she left?”

“I believe it may have slipped your mind,” Queen Arianna said, a bit of exasperation breaking through her usual diplomatic facade. “It does, however, explain... much.”

“Sorry,” Rapunzel said earnestly, far from the usual sing-song tone of her past defensive apologies. “There was a lot going on, back then. Can I see the letter?”

Her mom nodded, and handed Rapunzel a small stack of gilded stationery—one small bundle of it still sealed. “Don’t open that one, it’s meant for some acquaintance Cassandra had made on that endeavour. I’m not sure how we’re supposed to pass it to that man, or even to her, though.”

“I’ll just give it to Owl along with my own letter when she writes me again,” Rapunzel said absent-mindedly as she unfolded the Kotoan missive. “Unto Their Majesties and Her Highness, blah blah blah, send salutations, yada yada yada... to express appreciation and gratitude for the sterling conduct of Her Highness’ knight-errant, whose actions prompted by nothing but chivalry and faithfulness to the alliances that bind our kingdoms together have returned the equipment of a fallen knight of the Tribunal Order into the hands of his brothers and sisters, and three treasures that had been gifted to Our venerable grandparents on the occasion of their wedding into Our vaults... huh.”

“Did Cass mention any of that?” Eugene asked with a frown. “I don’t remember her mentioning any of that.”

“No, but I think this might be what she meant when she wrote about turning a con artist’s own scheme against him,” Rapunzel said slowly.

Cass hadn’t mentioned that she made a friend already, either. But to be completely fair, there were more than a few things that Rapunzel hadn’t mentioned in her first return letter as well. Maybe they were both uncertain how to talk to each other, after everything. Maybe Cass was feeling awkward and trying to figure out where they stood now, too. There was nothing to do about it but wait for Owl again and see, Rapunzel told herself as confidently as she could, even though she already knew that it was going to gnaw at her anyway.

“A woman of few words, then,” King Edmund summarized with a hint of humour in his voice. “Though I must admit, the logic of granting your favour to a recently pardoned traitor escapes me.”

“She wasn’t a—!” Rapunzel clenched her fists, fingertips coming across the scarring across her palms, as she heard herself raise her voice. She had a tendency to take. Even the agency. And she was working to no longer let that tendency speak for her. “Zhan Tiri was the real enemy. Cassandra risked everything, gave everything—up to and including her life—to help defeat her. There’s no one else in the entire world I’d rather grant my favour to.”

King Edmund gave a little sideways nod at that, accepting but unconvinced. “That is certainly the kind way of looking at these matters, though I am unsure if it is the wise one.”

“Sometimes it’s wise to be kind.” Rapunzel indicated the letter. “And Cass is already doing Corona proud, even if her recent history with us has been rocky.”

“That’s my girl,” Eugene whispered aggressively from his end of the table, effectively beheading the conversation, and with the studious disregard of the others’ discomfort spelling out that he had done that entirely on purpose.

Queen Arianna cleared her throat subtly. “You are staying in contact with Cassandra, then?”

“Yes, she wrote, though I don’t know how long it’ll take her to write again,” Rapunzel admitted. “She’s somewhere along the border between Equis and Koto—or was at the time, at least.”

King Frederic frowned. “Relations with Equis are strained enough already. I hope she can remain discreet enough to avoid becoming another point of imagined provocation.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Eugene said with a dismissive wave of a hand. “That region is chock-full of mercenaries, bandits, deserters, and fugitives of every stripe. She’ll just be a fancy one among many. Well, somewhat fancy. I’ve seen fancier, of course, mainly in the mirror, but not exclusively there.”

Rapunzel perked up. “Oh, you’ve been to where she is?”

“Not for very long. There’s nothing but farmland for miles on end, and it rains the. Entire. Time. Unless it’s snowing, and you know how I feel about snow. Lots more opportunities to fight than to steal, too, and sellsword work was never my first choice for a line of employment.” Eugene cocked his head thoughtfully. “Actually, Cass might love it there.”

“The fighting part does sound pretty perfect for her,” Rapunzel agreed with a smile.

From there, the dinner progressed without further arguments or revelations, the conversation tactfully steered back to domestic matters of lesser importance. And once the meal was done, with the monarchs and their heirs retiring for the night or heading back to their study rooms for a last bit of work before resting, Rapunzel found Faith leaning against the wall and breathing heavily right outside of the private dining room.

“West drilling courtyard,” the handmaiden panted before Rapunzel could ask.

“Oh, thank you, you’re the best. Get some rest and I’ll see you in the morning?”

Faith nodded, a look of gratitude for the early night on her face. “As you say, your highness.”

“Good night!” Rapunzel chirped, and bounded down the corridor to the west wing without waiting. She didn’t have to worry about making noise, not with still running barefoot, and soon enough she slowed down into a walk again, the initial burst of excitement exhausted and replaced with a mixture of uncertainty and worry as she remembered why she had wanted to see Adira in the first place.

And that, in turn, evaporated the second she saw the old warrior: stripped down to light exercise garb and practicing with an oddly brass-coloured sword profiled very much like the Shadow Blade had been, but with an actual proper blade rather than a solid chunk of unbreakable crystal. She moved with the grace of a dancer, flawlessly executing sets of movements as she advanced across the courtyard in a circular pattern—but still very much putting her bulk and momentum behind each and every next one of those movements, the near-constant modulated whoosh of sliced air turning the weapon and the warrior herself into a two-toned wind instrument, an Aeolian harp set out beneath the stars, the light of the last-quarter moon blocked by the mass of the castle and left to rise unnoticed across the opposite half of the sky.

Another pass around the courtyard, and Rapunzel noticed the focused expression on Adira’s face break into mild surprise. The sword was lowered, the combat stance dropped, and the well-worn thick jacket picked up from its resting place along the courtyard’s flagstones as Adira sheathed her blade and walked up towards the princess. “Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping at this hour?”

“I wanted to talk to you for a bit before bed, if that’s okay. And– sorry, I didn’t mean to stare,” Rapunzel admitted.

Adira raised her eyebrows with a little grin. “Oh, you may look, just not touch. It’s certainly what your Royal Guard has been doing.”

Rapunzel looked into the nearby lit windows—a portion of the Guard barracks, she knew—and thought she noticed a few immediately retreating faces. “I guess they find you... inspiring?”

“That is certainly a word for it,” Adira laughed as she tied her jacket closed. “If you wish to speak, come take a walk with me. Nothing good comes from standing in the cold at my age.”

“Right, of course.” Rapunzel paused for a moment as a belated realization hit her. “You know, I don’t think we’ve ever asked how old you actually are.”

“You haven’t,” Adira said airily, and chuckled at Rapunzel’s inquisitive look. “Fifty-four. It was never important, I don’t think. What is it that you needed of me?”

“Oh. Right. Well,” Rapunzel hesitated, eyeing the weapon Adira had sheathed at her back. “I guess I just wanted to ask when you were planning on leaving?”

Adira gave her a longer look. “I have no plans to leave. Unless there’s a matter you absolutely cannot entrust to anyone else in your entire kingdom, that is.”

“But I thought– didn’t you say that you were only waiting for having a new sword made? And—” Rapunzel gestured to the weapon. “I can see that it’s ready.”

“It’s been ready for weeks. And while, yes, that had been the initial idea, it was also before I acknowledged how much you needed help—serious help—and made it my business to provide some of it,” Adira said gently. “It would not do to open your eyes to how mired you are in your own mistakes without extending a hand for you to grab onto and pull yourself out. I am not leaving, not until you or King Edmund send me away.”

“Oh. Okay.” Rapunzel breathed out a deep sigh of relief. “Thank you. It really means a lot. And I do really need your help.”

“Rest assured that my motivations are far from selfless.” Adira folded her arms behind her back as her voice dropped into her usual focused tone. “I lacked a sense of purpose after the Moonstone and the Sundrop were expelled from the world together, and aiding you was as good a pastime as any. Besides, it’s simply very nice to feel needed, and to have comfortable accommodations for once.”

“But this is good,” Rapunzel said impulsively. “It’s more balanced, more equal this way. We both get something we needed and everyone’s happy.”

Adira watched her for a moment, a little smile about her lips. “You’ve been thinking about matters of mutual gain for a while, I see.”

“I’ve been trying,” Rapunzel admitted. “And, I know this might just be the tower speaking, because I’ve spent so long dreaming of such things, but... don’t you want to go out into the world, find adventure, see new places and meet new people?”

The old warrior gave a genuine laugh. “After a quarter century of trying to track down a legend, I think I’m all adventured out.”

“What about love?” Rapunzel hedged.

Adira shook her head. “Love is a very sad affair for me, princess.”

Rapunzel paused at that, taken aback. “How can love be a sad thing?”

In response, Adira lifted the back of her right hand to face Rapunzel with the Brotherhood’s mark: three black rocks against the outline of a full moon. “When you have dedicated yourself—your mind and your body, your heart and your soul, and your life and your death—to a person or a cause, what have you left to give to a loved one?”

There wasn’t an uplifting answer to that, Rapunzel realized slowly. There was only one answer: that there was nothing left to give—and that, truly, would make loving someone an incredibly sad thing. And even as she drew a breath to say that the war was over, the oaths were fulfilled, and there was nothing to be so beholden to anymore, the words died on her tongue, and she gave the old warrior beside her a keener look.

“You were ready to die, weren’t you?”

“Every day of the twenty-five years I spent searching for the Sundrop,” Adira confirmed calmly.

“Is that why you were acting like—” Rapunzel made a vague gesture with her hands. “Well, like you were? Abrasive and borderline mocking and purposefully cryptic enough to drive half of us insane? And why you refused to learn anyone’s names, too? You didn’t want to get attached, or for anyone to get attached to you. You were making sure no one would miss you once you were gone.”

There was a brief silence, during which Adira looked away for a moment, before she inclined her head slightly. “You are growing very astute.”

“So you would have just– if the Sundrop was still a flower, you would’ve just put them back together yourself,” Rapunzel said with dismay, remembering the resulting explosion when the stones had reunited, how it had thrown her off her feet, how it had taken Cassandra’s life, how there had been nothing left at all of Zhan Tiri’s enormous demonic form.

“That is precisely what I was planning to do.” Adira turned her head to give Rapunzel a long look, folding her hands behind her again. “I admit I hadn’t been prepared for the Sundrop to be a person... but it didn’t change much.”

“So, if Cass hadn’t grabbed the Moonstone?” Rapunzel asked slowly.

“I would have sacrificed you,” Adira said firmly, looking her straight in the eye, “and mourned afterwards.”

It was Rapunzel’s turn to look away at that. “...You know this means Cass was right about you from the start.”

“Of course she was right about me,” Adira said with a raised eyebrow, as if surprised that the matter had been in question at all. “Like recognizes like, and Shorthair knows loyalty of the same magnitude as I do. It’s simply that she found the only answer other than my own to the question of 'what have you left to give to a loved one', and fell in love with the one she was sworn to.”

Rapunzel sighed, grateful to the late hour’s darkness for hiding the heat that rose to her cheeks at that. “Well, we know how that story ended.”

“I wouldn’t say so. I’d say no one knows how that story ends, because it hasn’t ended yet,” Adira pointed out. “She still loves you, does she not?”

“Yes. Somehow. Even after all that. And I still love her, too.”

“Then that is the future for you to work towards,” Adira told her. “A good thought to go to sleep with, hm?”

“A very good thought.” Rapunzel smiled. Then hesitated. “May I hold your hand?”

Adira cocked her head with a quizzical expression. “Is this the moment you would usually tackle another person in a bear hug?”

Rapunzel couldn’t help a laugh. “It’s rapidly approaching that moment, yes. But I know you don’t like being touched, so... only your hand, and only if it’s okay to?”

The old warrior beside her chuckled, and came to a halt as she unfolded her arms from behind her back once more. “You may hold my hand. Briefly.”

“Thank you.” Rapunzel took Adira’s left hand into her right. She pondered at the coarse, scarred-up, weathered palm alongside her own for a moment, at the way Adira’s fingers closed around her hand in return, at the barely noticeable stiffening of the old warrior’s shoulders as she braced herself for the touch. “Thank you for talking to me tonight. Thank you for everything. And, I want you to know that I’m glad you didn’t have to die after all. I’m glad you’re here.”

Adira studied her for a moment before nodding. “I’m glad to be here.”

“That’s good to hear.” Rapunzel released Adira’s hand, keeping in mind the condition of 'briefly'. “Oh, I almost forgot: Hector will be leaving soon. We found something for him to do, and it’s a bit of a longer project.”

She watched perhaps the broadest grin she’d ever seen blooming on Adira’s face. “Now that is an excellent thought to go to sleep with.”

~*~

“Oh, heavens.” Moreen coughed when they were close enough to Tyson farm to smell it.

“I know,” Cassandra said in a strained tone.

They had been caught in more rain along the way, though mercifully not of the frozen variety. And though Fidella had slowly started showing signs of exhaustion, somewhere two-thirds of the way there, she paced herself well with interspersing the canter with bursts of a trot, weighing her speed against the distance. The last dregs of dusk’s dim light were still illuminating the sky when Fidella entered the muddy courtyard between buildings; Cassandra dismounted first, and helped Moreen slide off the saddle as well rather than fall from it, then motioned her towards the barn.

“I left them in there for now. It’s not, uh... it’s not pretty.”

Moreen nodded, setting her jaw as she braced herself. “Can you give me a minute?”

“I’ll wait here.” Cassandra watched the farmer go, then turned to Fidella and lowered her voice a little. “There’s a lot of work to be done in this place, and it might take a fair bit of time. Are you okay with that?”

Snort, Fidella confirmed, and put her nose to Cassandra’s forehead for a moment.

“You hold that thought until after I’ve done something to be proud of, here.” Cassandra stroked the mare’s neck. “But thanks.”

Fidella gave a pointed look around, as if to indicate the things Cassandra has been doing here already. Cassandra thought for a moment, but whatever she had planned to ask next was left forgotten as she noticed Moreen exiting the barn on shaky legs, and rushed over to make sure she didn’t collapse.

“You weren’t wrong,” Moreen said weakly as she leaned against the offered arm. “It’s not pretty.”

“Are you okay?”

“No. No, I’m really not. But it’s probably best to get inside and... and handle all that in the morning.”

“Come on, then.” Cassandra started leading the farmer, no less devastated than her livelihood, towards the house. “Do you mind if I take Fidella inside, as well? The barn is really no place to stay at the moment.”

“No, that’s okay.”

The moment they pulled the door open, a frantic meow came, and Cassandra left Moreen to gather up Barley the cat in her arms—and Barley to wiggle free, rub her head against Moreen’s hands and knees and anywhere else she could reach, and continue meowing and purring all the while. At least this was a good thing, Cassandra thought as she led Fidella in and shut the door, and busied herself with starting a fire in the hearth and putting the water on to make their evening meal a warm one. She was halfway through grooming Fidella when Moreen had recovered enough to help, although Barley protested immediately and began following her around, until Moreen picked the cat up and draped her across a shoulder. After barring the door for the night, Cassandra fed Fidella from the sack, and sat with Moreen to eat as well.

“Isn’t your bird coming back?” Moreen asked, scratching the top of Barley’s head with one hand, the cat curled comfortably in her lap.

“Owl is following Carter. And Carter won’t make it all the way to here until sometime around midday tomorrow, at the earliest, even if he walks overnight,” Cassandra said calmly. “He’ll break away and warn us when it’s time.”

“Um. Okay.”

Cassandra looked up at the uncertain tone of that. “It’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.”

“If you say so, it’s just that this—” Moreen picked the cat up for emphasis, drawing a startled little purr, “—is all there’s left. Everything else is gone. I can’t work the farm myself. I don’t have the coin to buy replacement livestock, especially not right before winter. Even if I could hire enough hands to make ends meet, I’m afraid they’d hurt me and take what they can for themselves. If I sell the farm, my brother’s home and my parents’ grave will be someone else’s to do with as they please, and I can’t stand that. If I stay here, I’m going to starve or freeze to death over winter, or worse if soldiers or some other bandits come.”

“How does selling land even work in Equis?” Cassandra asked with a frown. “I know Koto tends to document everything, but I don’t really know much about Equisian law.”

Moreen gave a little sideways nod. “Well, I am a citizen of Koto by birth.”

“You are?”

“Yes, by land and by blood—I was born when the Bayards were still in power, and my mother... was... a citizen as well.”

“That’ll make everything easier. Where do you keep documents?”

Moreen looked at her carefully. “I thought you were from Corona.”

“I am, it was just required of me to know at least the basics of culture and custom and law and such things of the other allied kingdoms as well.” Cassandra tilted her head to the side as she took in the newly-cautious expression on the bereaved farmer’s face. “I’ll only help if you want me to. If you don’t, that’s fine as well. But check if the documents are still where they’re supposed to be, at least, or if Carter took them.”

That gave Moreen pause, and she sat back on the bench a little, busying herself with scratching behind Barley’s ears. “That’s true. And I do want your help, and I’m grateful for it. You’ve done nothing to make me doubt you.”

“It’s okay. It hurts no one to be careful.”

Moreen nodded, and gently set the cat aside. Cassandra didn’t watch her rummage through one of the wooden chests, feeding a bit of meat from her stew to Barley instead, but she did turn at a grunt of exertion when Moreen heaved a metal cassette from under a stack of old clothes and blankets within the chest, then came over again and laid the flat strongbox on the table before opening it. The paper inside was yellowed with age, the ink across it faded somewhat, but still very much legible, and each document did bear the seal of a Kotoan magistrate indeed.

Moreen quickly counted the pages. “I don’t think anything’s missing, thank heavens.”

“May I?” Cassandra waited for a nod before she set her food aside and wiped her still-gloved fingers by habit, then started leafing through.

A summons for service in the Kotoan army, for one person of capable age from the household. A birth certificate and proof of citizenship, for Moreen Tyson. The same, for Roderick Tyson. A marriage certificate, of Ronan Tyson and Annabelle Martre. Another summons, this time for court proceedings; another one, for the army again, if noticeably more dated. More birth certificates of Kotoan citizens, interspersed with death certificates, each under the name Martre—and underneath all that, a three-page land grant for a Victor Martre, stamped with the seal of House Bayard as well as that of the magistrate.

Cassandra gently tapped the document with one finger. “This will be respected in any legitimate Kotoan court of law. I understand that you want to leave? Take all of these with you, and guard them with your life. No matter how long you’re gone from here, if you decide to come back and someone has moved in on the farm, these are ironclad proof that the land is yours and your brother’s—at least if the region is under Kotoan control when you return. And if you think the magistrate is acting suspiciously, as a citizen of Koto you have the right to demand that a knight of the Tribunal Order arbitrates the dispute. Though that’s far more likely to result in a harsh and thoroughly letter-of-law ruling, from what I’ve read.”

“That does all hinge on who’s in power here, doesn’t it,” Moreen said quietly.

“It does. I’m not familiar with laws of Equis, but from what I’ve seen of those on the royal Equisian payroll recently, I don’t think any lawmasters would consider another kingdom’s legal documents binding in a court case, not without being forced to somehow.” Cassandra laid the papers in the open strongbox again. “What do you want to do, from now on? Because that’s what everything else depends on.”

“I want to leave. I have to, or I won’t survive.” Moreen stroked a hand down Barley’s back again. “But I can’t cart her around with myself if I don’t even know I’ll have anywhere to live. And it’s not like I have the coin to travel, either. I’ll need to sell everything I can’t take with myself, and give away everything I can’t sell. And burn or bury the cattle and the chickens, because the state this place is in now, this is how plagues happen. After that, I don’t know. I don’t even know where to go.”

“It’s a good enough start,” Cassandra relented. “You have time to figure it out, especially with how much there is to do. Let’s take things one step at a time.”

And the first step for doing anything was to sleep, if they were to have the strength for tomorrow. Cassandra retained her last night’s spot, bedroll set out near the hearth, while Moreen took the ladder up to the attic area in the far end of the building. Waking up several times overnight for a moment to the sounds of Barley hunting mice, Cassandra thought she also heard the farmer crying silently, and pulled her blanket overhead in a helpless gesture.

Morning came, and with it the perspective of burying the second family Cassandra had found dead in this region. After burdening Fidella with a ladder, two shovels, and as many buckets as they could find, they began pulling the makeshift sled laden with enshrouded remains towards a spot that Moreen was leading them to.

“My parents got married there,” she had said of it as they went, her voice strained as she tried not to look behind herself at the sled. “It’s only right to let them be buried there, as well.”

They dug in turns, and deep as they could, knowing there was nothing heavy to place over the grave, nowhere to bring enough stones from to pile up a cairn; the ditch itself had to be deep enough to prevent carrion eaters from desecrating the Tysons’ bodies any further. And as the pile of dredged up earth rose, the sun advanced across the sky—and right as it was to crest into the zenith, there was a very familiar hoot!, and Cassandra looked up to see Owl landing atop Fidella’s saddle.

“He walked overnight, then?”

Hoot, Owl confirmed.

“Good.” Cassandra dusted her hands off, hoping to get some of the soil off the gloves, and set the shovel aside in favour of slinging her sword around her back, hilt over the right shoulder.

It would be very good to know whether she could still use the sword right-handed, anyway.

Carter’s silhouette was rising quickly through the mist—too thick to fully burn off even so close to midday—as he spotted them even in the fog and turned sharply from approaching the farmhouse to walking towards them. Cassandra whistled at him sharply through her teeth, and tossed her head at him, arms crossed, hoping to spark adversity and keep him focused on herself. Judging from how he immediately pulled out a knife at her, it worked.

“I told you to be smart about this. You could’ve been rich,” the farmhand spat towards her. “Now you’ll just be dead.”

“Your idea of smart is remarkably stupid,” Cassandra said coldly.

Moreen stepped forward from where she was, standing beside Cassandra now, her face pale but her jaw set and her eyes determined. “You killed my parents, didn’t you?”

“I fought for our happiness! They stood in the way, and didn’t listen, so I had to fight for our future together!” Carter screamed at her, then gestured furiously at Cassandra. “Now she’s in the way, too!”

“What the fuck are you on about?” Moreen’s voice trembled with a mixture of shock and revulsion.

“Your father refused me your hand in marriage! Your mother laughed at me even though I did them the courtesy of asking! They wanted to separate us, and they got what they deserved for it,” Carter took a step forward, pointing a finger at the Tysons’ daughter aggressively. “Now come with me, and we’ll be happy. Don’t let that Coronian stand between us, too!”

“I’m going to enjoy this,” Cassandra said quietly, an ice-cold murderous calm settling over her.

“I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last person alive, and that was before you murdered my family and turned my home into a ruin!” Moreen roared back at the farmhand. “There was never a chance you had with me! I will go nowhere with you, and you’re going to pay for what you’ve done!”

The fervent, desperate look on Carter’s face fell into something far more sinister. “Happy or no, you’re coming with me. This marriage, this farm, I’ve earned this. I’ve been working my ass off for years to earn this! I gave you a chance, and you throw it back in my face—!”

Cassandra turned her head toward Moreen, without taking her eyes off the farmhand. “Stay behind me.”

“Get out of my way, or I’ll clear you off it myself!” Carter screamed at her.

Cassandra drew her sword. “Then come on and clear me.”

It’s been a while since Cassandra fought in the position of a bodyguard, not a lone-wolf warrior, she mused as she dropped the knife from Carter’s hand with a single hit that severed the sinews in his forearm. Or since she fought to disable, rather than kill immediately, she mused as she reversed the grip on her sword and slammed her weapon’s hilt into Carter’s jaw with the force of a right hook driven from the hips behind it. It was good to flex those reflexes again, and find they hadn’t dulled, she admitted to herself as she swept his knees from under him and pinned him to the ground before the thud of his fall echoed through, wrenched his arms behind his back, and looked up at Moreen.

“Do you have anything left to say to him?”

“I hope the heavens’ embrace boils the flesh off your bones and never stops rending your rotten soul apart.” Moreen looked up at Cassandra then, both of them ignoring the murderer’s curses and threats. “Nothing more.”

“Then turn around, please.”

“No. I think I’d rather watch.”

Cassandra inclined her head, yanked at Carter’s hair, and slit his throat to drown the yellowed grasses in bright, pouring red. After cleaning and sheathing her blade, she gave Moreen a scrutinizing look, finding her a little paler than before watching a man killed, but a lot calmer than before watching the murderer of her parents and wannabe-tormentor of herself removed from her life, for good.

“That’s that, then.”

“Just about.” Cassandra rolled the still-warm corpse around and started turning out Carter’s pockets. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“You make it– you make this look easy.” Moreen finally looked away. “Like you always know what to do. How do you do that?”

“I’ve been trained for this kind of thing pretty extensively,” Cassandra said calmly as she studied a crumpled piece of paper. A complex, handwritten rebus, it looked like. She handed it to the farmer. “Does this look familiar at all?”

Moreen took it, and smoothed it out with a frown. “It’s my dad’s drawings. The tree and the pile of stones are that way,” she pointed off to the west, where the shadow of a tree did loom through the mist, “and under the stones there’s a... bird nest full of eggs? There aren’t going to be any eggs, not this time of year.”

“Let’s check it out after we’re done here.” Cassandra pocketed a half-ration of unidentifiable jerky and defaced a wooden charm with her boot knife before leaving Carter’s body be. “I’m in half a mind to just leave him here.”

Moreen shook her head, the hard look back in her eyes. “Bury him at my parents’ feet.”

And there was poetry in that, Cassandra had to admit as they finished digging up the grave, deposited the two sets of enshrouded remains inside it along with the sled, and heaped their murderer’s corpse in at the shorter side of the ditch without care for how he fell, only that he fell. She had certainly read of the glorious funerals of warriors, with the shattered weapons of the foes they slew before succumbing heaped at their feet as well.

There was significantly less glory to be found in putting her hands at the small of her back to stretch, then shovelling the overturned soil back into the grave. But the stories of warriors and glory never talked about those who outlived the heroic dead, unless it was to speak of avengers or of a new generation of heroic soon-to-be dead. Nor did they talk about those who had to bear double the work on their shoulders now that those who used to work beside them had chosen to burn bright and burn out, rather than remain at candle-dim for long enough to light a dozen candles more. There wasn’t a way to destroy darkness by striking it with spears and swords, not in the long run. Nothing worth doing was that simple or quick. But there was a way to destroy darkness by kindling and sheltering light. A thankless and easily-overlooked task, certainly. But so was digging a grave. So was fetching herbs for a clinic. So was giving a ghost her name back. And they had all been necessary.

Glory, Cassandra was beginning to feel, seemed to tend towards overrated.

“May the earth be light to them,” she said over the grave, as she had heard the team burying the Richters say.

“May the earth be light to them.” Moreen wiped at her cheeks, smearing soil across her face. “Except Carter. I hope he chokes on the earth for all eternity.”

They walked towards the tree and the heap of stones from the stolen puzzle map after that, Fidella following suit and Owl still perched atop the saddle. With Moreen’s instructions off reading her father’s rebus, Cassandra levered one of the flatter rocks up with a shovel to push it aside, and uncovered a small empty space in the middle of the pile—and true enough, there was an old bird nest hidden there, spiders scurrying away from the light and cold between what did look like eggs. Or eggshells, rather. Chicken eggshells, collected and dried after the eggs had been cracked and presumably eaten, wedged back together in two or three layers each. They were old, however—old enough that when Cassandra experimentally picked one up, it came apart in her fingers, revealing a small load of silver and gold jewellery. She extended them to Moreen in an open hand.

“Just a guess, but was your father a mercenary in the war?”

“Yes, I- yes, he was,” Moreen said weakly as she stared in shock. “I had no idea.”

Cassandra brushed the crumbled eggshell out of her palm and put the jewellery in Moreen’s hand. “Well, now you can pay for a place to stay in any settlement with a pawnbroker.”

And among the half-dozen 'eggs', each had been loaded with such baubles—earrings, pendants, necklace chains, wedding bands, in one case even a ring set with a large gemstone. That one Cassandra studied more carefully, but was relieved to find no crest carved in the jewel, no engravings across the band; it was simply a very fine trinket, not a signet or a mark of station.

The remains of the swiftly receding day were spent on gathering up firewood, with the farmhouse’s lingering supply having been exhausted through the two nights of keeping the hearth burning throughout. And after Moreen had turned in for the night, the exhaustion of physical effort and emotional trials of the day catching up to her, Cassandra found herself faced with a very insistent Owl, tugging the scroll case backpack towards her across the freshly swept floor.

Cassandra sighed. “I’ve not forgotten, alright?”

Hoot, Owl said firmly.

“I know this is looking like a longer—”

Hoot, Owl continued in the same adamant tone.

“No, I won’t get myself hurt again the moment you’re off like last time.”

Hoot, Owl said, and tapped a talon against the backpack.

“You said you’d stay longer this time,” Cassandra told him quietly.

Hoot, Owl reminded.

“You don’t have to tell me how to time things with the—” Cassandra bit her tongue. Then pinched the bridge of her recently-healed nose, and looked at Owl again. “Promise me next time you’ll actually stay longer, 'best circumstances' or no.”

Hoot, Owl promised.

“Fine.” Cassandra took Rapunzel’s letter and paintings out of the scroll case, and pulled out her small scribing kit as well. Then she considered the backpack, and winced as she gathered up ash from the hearth to thoroughly smear the purple-and-golden fabric with. “...Sorry, Raps.”

For the longest time, she felt, she sat at the Tysons’ table, reading Rapunzel’s letter again, and staring at the disdainfully blank sheet of paper next to it. But when the words finally came, it felt almost like an overturned bottle had been unstoppered, and though the last thing Cassandra could ever be was a poet, she thought it wasn’t too bad a reply as she read it over. Then she read it over again, and had to physically put the quill away in order to stop herself from crossing whole sentences out. Her withered hand ached enough already—she was not about to rewrite all that again.

Hoot, Owl said quietly as he watched her struggle.

“Not another word.” Cassandra packed his backpack, and snapped it around him with an eyeroll as he spread his wings to present himself in an exaggerated fashion. “There. Come back soon. I’ll miss you. I’m going to sleep.”

Owl tugged gently on the curled lock of hair over her forehead with his beak as she quietly unbarred the door and opened it to let him outside. A well-practiced motion of boosting him into the sky, and Cassandra watched him go until he disappeared between the stars.

She glanced back at the farmhouse. Then bundled her too-light cloak around herself and went on a walk. Before too long, she found herself standing before the Tysons’ fresh grave, without having even intended to—but intentions or not, she supposed it would be awkward without doing anything at all, so she drew her sword for a moment to salute with it. A gust of wind whispered past her, and Cassandra thought she felt a hand in her hair, ice-cold and gone as quickly as it came. She lifted her shoulders to suppress a shiver, jaw clenched to stop her teeth from chattering, and went back inside to actually do what she had said, and sleep.

Chapter Text

If there was one smell Cassandra had never expected to be relying on to block out worse ones, it had to be that of woodsmoke.

She and Moreen Tyson had spent the rest of the week burying the remains of chickens and cattle across a field, hoping to enrich the soil at least a little as it was left to lay fallow, and that the bones would not cause too many problems the next time someone would plough it—whenever that would be. The chicken coop was easy enough to demolish and burn, along with the straw, grain, and more that had been fouled by the bodies inside the coop and the barn. The barn itself, however, was more of a problem. With their other choices being to torch the building whole or to leave it as it was without even attempting to do anything, they mixed a small jar of burnt lime with water into the texture of thick paint, layered the most worn of the dead farmers’ clothes over their own, and set to painting the barn’s inner walls and floor in an effort to sanitize it as best they could. It was throughout that endeavour that Cassandra was finally confronted with another mark of time that had passed since she left home: her hair had gotten long enough to be an annoyance, endlessly brushing against the nape of her neck, falling in her face whenever she looked down, blocking her sight every time she wasn’t facing directly into the wind.

“I could give you a trim,” Moreen had admitted when Cassandra finally caved and asked her to. “But I don’t think you should cut your hair right before winter.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it gets cold here. Growing your hair out before the frost comes means a bit of another layer to keep you warm, without having to pay for it.”

Cassandra sighed heavily, resigning herself to the logic in that.

“I’ll find you something to tie it back with,” Moreen promised, a hint of humour in her voice.

And it was a good thing to hear, to know that there was still capability for laughter buried under everything the farmer had to become and undertake in order to survive what her life had turned into: a livelihood brought to ruin with thoughtless cruelty, a family murdered in a bid to claim her like an object, a man she had lived beside for years staking that claim to her on the back of his crimes. Even if Cassandra had woken up, barely two days into her stay at Tyson farm to help out as much as she could, to the sound of steps descending the ladder in the middle of the night, and lifted her head to look over her shoulder at Moreen laying down her blankets next to Cassandra’s bedroll on the floor.

“It’s cold,” she had murmured of it, all the explanation Cassandra would get.

“It is,” Cassandra had agreed, and lifted an elbow from her side to allow the farmer to snuggle up to her back.

She had been waking up with warmth pressed up against her and the sound of peaceful breathing in her ears ever since. On every other night, Barley graced them with her presence as well—whether curling up against the back of Cassandra’s knees, nestling into any small gap between the two of them she could find, or unceremoniously climbing over them to perch atop Moreen’s shoulder like a proud mountaineer and sleep there. And although the farmer’s hands always ended up only in respectfully neutral places, Cassandra would find herself torn at with conflicting emotions regardless.

She’d missed being touched. She had, and it brought an incredible sense of relief to exist within the personal space of another again; it poured into her bones the warmth of knowing that she must have done something right to deserve this, a feeling as indisputable as it was disarming, threatening to overpower her and transform the burning in her eyes into actual tears. She’d missed being touched, and it was good to be held again, even if just for a little.

But she also had no intention to stay. She was here to help for as long as help was welcome and needed, and then she would leave, probably never to see Moreen Tyson again. And that made every time Cassandra had caught the farmer looking at her with a smile on her face or with gratitude in her eyes almost uncomfortable, almost alarming.

And even beyond that mess, as if it hadn’t been enough, two more persistent thoughts returned each time Cassandra tried to rebuke them by day and ignore them in the small hours of the night, when there was no more activity to drown them out with anymore.

The first was a bloodhound sniffing out weakness, and barking at that overwhelming relief just to be held in another’s arms, growling that it was no accolade, no great proof of righteousness to receive such a simple and undemanding form of affection. That it was only her mother who would have her believe otherwise. That to sandpaper off the sharp edges she had been carved into with her mother’s negligence, she had to quit finding pride in how chiselled the shape of her heart was, and the sooner the better.

And the other was far quieter and far gentler and far, far harder to chase off, whispering that it was another’s arms Cassandra missed being held in, another’s warmth she missed pressing her back into, another’s breath she missed listening to when she couldn’t go back to sleep. But even at her loneliest, even as Cassandra curled herself up around the hollow space carved inside her ribcage and cradled her withered arm to it, even as she waited for that heart-rending longing to lull her to sleep and bring her dreams of green eyes and freckled cheeks and a laughter flowing like a cascade over riverstones, she had to admit at least before herself that she had been missing that for far longer than they’ve been apart. That just living together, be it in the castle or in the caravan, had never been enough on its own to earn her that warmth, that affection. That she’d had to work for it or grovel for it. And that just because Raps hadn’t done any of it on purpose didn’t make it any less hurtful.

And now there she was, standing in the middle of a field in late autumn, turning to face into the wind and tilting her head back to gather up her too-long hair as she held a ribbon in her teeth, after Moreen had insisted that she should pick at least three—one as green as Rapunzel’s eyes, one as blue as the Moonstone’s sparks crackling in tune with her fury, one as white as Eugene’s oppressor and sworn enemy: snow. There she was, far from home and determined to head even farther from it, craving closeness at the same time as she was backing away from it. At least the shovel didn’t ask her any questions. Neither did her withered arm, fingers closer both to straightening fully and to clenching into a fist in weather this cold, but in pain sharper and harder to ignore, or with the familiar-by-now lesser range of movement and lesser pain that never quite abated as she kept the hand close to the hearth, tucked into her clothes, wrapped in silk and encased in thick leather lined with fur and reinforced with banded steel.

And neither did Fidella ask her any questions as Cassandra took her out for a run, every afternoon like they had fallen in the habit of doing, the mare’s coat beginning to thicken somewhat against the colder weather. Mindful of Owl’s initial perimeter flight and the warning he’d brought her about wolves, Cassandra always took her bow with her and kept it strung throughout these daily little runs, yet for the first few days she saw neither hide nor hair of wolf. On the sixth, she noticed a shape following them through the yellowed grasses. On the ninth, their audience had swelled into a pack of eight wolves, keeping pace with them from different directions—and when it came to a confrontation, Cassandra killed one and threw a cracker she had taken from the Kotoan spies into the largest group of the rest, eliciting a few pained whines as it exploded with a resounding noise and effectively drove the wolfpack away for now.

“I didn’t realize you were going hunting,” Moreen said slowly as Cassandra led Fidella into the house, then dragged the dead wolf inside with a grunt.

“I hadn’t planned to be going hunting,” Cassandra panted as she heaved again. “I just didn’t fancy getting eaten. Or letting Fidella get eaten. Now please tell me you have skinning knives somewhere in this house?”

Moreen nodded, and dug through the modest pile of tools and clutter they had managed to salvage from the barn, laying a bundle of leather on the table and unwrapping it to display a set of large hunting knives—among them, a skinning knife entirely big enough to do the job on an elk, not just a wolf. “Keep these if you like.”

“Are you sure?”

Moreen shrugged. “They used to belong to my father. Had he known you, I think he’d want you to have them.”

“If you say so,” Cassandra said uncertainly, but relented at the farmer’s firm nod. “Alright then. Thank you.”

The process of skinning the wolf had taken her most of the evening, but even as she washed her gloves clean of blood and more, she had to admit that she had done a pretty good job of it—the pelt was intact enough to take to the furrier and ask for having it made into at least one piece of winter clothing. The meat was far less exciting, even when drained of blood and quartered and cooked in a stew, with a few more cuts hung inside the chimney to smoke over time, but it was not inedible, and the rations they had brought from the Brazen Brigand were already exhausted and leaving them to dig into whatever remained inside the Tysons’ pantry, anyway.

They spent the following days trying to convert the dinky bullock cart into something that could be pulled by a horse without putting too much strain on Fidella, and on sorting the entirety of Moreen’s belongings into what could be sold and what would need to be given away. With little more than a few items of sentimental value, the stash of Ronan Tyson’s looted jewellery, and two changes of clothes set aside to keep, Cassandra leaned over to trail her good hand over a large triangular shawl of woollen yarn finished with long tassels along the outer edge.

“This is quality work. Did you make this?”

“Yes, I did. I’ve been crocheting since I was very young,” Moreen admitted. “I broke my leg as a child, and my grandmother taught me, to keep at least my hands busy.”

“If this was dyed in more expensive colours, you’d easily see a minor noble wanting to wear it at informal occasions,” Cassandra said honestly. “You must have improved a lot on what you were taught.”

The farmer’s cheeks coloured slightly, but her eyes turned thoughtful. “You really think so?”

“Of course I do.”

“Because I’ve been thinking where to go. There’s another town, a little smaller than Silberstadt, about four days of a walk or a cart ride away. It’s across the Kotoan border right now—Espinheiro, I’ve gone with my father enough times, to trade and to meet people. I thought it might be the safer choice, but... I’m not sure people would welcome a stranger with a name as foreign as mine.”

“They must be used to refugees by now, but I see why you would be worried about it,” Cassandra conceded. “What’s the other option?”

“Riddersbrug. Up north, much farther away—and much larger, a city proper, not a little town like here.”

“Must be where the garrison reinforcements came from,” Cassandra mused aloud with a frown.

“It is. And I think the husband of Eliza at the clinic is originally from there, too.” Moreen took the shawl in her hands, extended it to Cassandra after a moment. “This is my best work, I’d say, but do you think it’s good enough to find work in a– a weavers’ guild, or tailors’, or similar?”

“I don’t know about Equis, but any Coronian guild and more than one noble estate would be happy to have you.” Cassandra trailed her fingers, gloved and not, along the tassels. “They might push you to work faster than you’re used to, and demand that you maintain the quality, but otherwise I don’t think you’ll have problems at all if you show this kind of work as your credentials.”

“Well, I will have problems getting there,” Moreen said in a tight voice as she turned away. “It’s almost winter, and... it’s far. Far enough that I’ve never been.”

“Lucky I was already planning to head deeper into Equis, then. I’ll take you there,” Cassandra offered calmly.

Moreen let out a breath she’d been holding. “You’d do even that for me?”

“I need to find a new job board,” Cassandra reminded, “and I promised someone I’d look for him in Equis soon as I got the chance.” Then she considered the sheer length of Rapunzel’s first letter, and the fact that Owl had probably almost made it to Corona by now, meaning she’d be carrying twice as much paper before the month was out. “I should probably find a bookbinder of some sort, as well. And even besides, if you say this Kotoan town nearby is even smaller than Silberstadt, then there’s not much of a chance to find a pawnbroker there, to sell that jewellery from your father’s stash to. All good reasons to head north instead. It’s not just for you, if that makes you feel better.”

“It does. But thank you all the same.” Moreen took Cassandra’s hands in her own. “I don’t know what I’d do without your help.”

“It’s fine,” Cassandra said quietly, just short of pulling away. “It was needed, and I was there.”

And that was what the entirety of her exploits out of Corona had come down to, she thought as she laid in her bedroll before the hearth that evening, wasn’t it? True as it was that she’d spent these months desperately grasping at any task that could be completed even by a tool discarded as many times as she had been; true as it was that she had taken at least one mission so suicidally dangerous that no one in their right mind would have agreed to it, simply because she craved tangible proof of her own capability that much—it wasn’t only her own past failures that drove her forth, and it wasn’t only a feeling of relief that she was, in fact, still able to accomplish absolutely anything that came out of these exploits. There were lives she had saved from being severed too soon in their years. There were souls she had eased the indignities or the suffering of, where nothing better could be done for them anymore. There were allegiances she had honoured, even though no one would’ve had the right to expect her to go out of her way to do that like she had. There were wicked men rotting in the ground whom she had put there, rather than let them rot the lives of others any longer. And now there was a farmer trying to salvage anything that was still left of her life, that she was devoting a solid month of her time and her strength to, without any prospects of being rewarded for it.

When something was needed, Cassandra was there. And when it was done, she moved on to the next thing that was needed.

It wasn’t glorious, and it wasn’t a destiny, she mused as she stared into the fire with Moreen embracing her from behind again and Barley vibrating with an idle little purr against the side of her belly. But it was something that neither of those had ever been.

It was real.

~*~

“And there’s nothing more on the subject?” Rapunzel pressed desperately as she and Faith deposited a stack of herbal albums on the royal library’s front desk. “Are you absolutely sure?”

“I am quite certain, your highness,” the librarian reiterated for the third time. “With respect, this is a very specific interest you’ve acquired. Were you inclined to broaden the field somewhat, I would be happy to point you at a dozen tomes expanding upon another aspect of it, any aspect you name.”

“No,” Rapunzel relented, disappointed as she was to admit defeat. “Thank you for all your help.”

“Well, I remain at your service, should you change your mind.”

“I’ll hang on to the atlas for a little more, if that’s okay?”

“As you wish, your highness.”

Rapunzel held back a sigh until after the library doors were closed behind them, but when she did sigh, it came out deeper than the grave and collapsed the set of her shoulders in resignation.

Squeak, Pascal said in a consolatory tone, as if to remind her that they had tried.

“I know,” Rapunzel said sadly. “I just really wanted to solve Cass’ puzzle.”

“It’s strange how this herb you’re looking for doesn’t seem to grow in several of the Seven Kingdoms,” Faith admitted with a frown. “Not Corona, not Bayangor, and not Koto?”

“Not most of Koto, at least. Those herbariums didn’t cover the northern provinces.” Rapunzel stared at the dried flower accusingly where it laid, inside a small box she had placed it in to prevent the heavier contents of her bag from grinding it into dust. “I didn’t think this would be easy, but I hadn’t expected it to be so difficult, either.”

“I could find out when the outriders are scheduled to check in, so you can ask them if they’ve seen anything like it,” Faith offered as they walked out into the castle gardens. “But I’m not sure if it would help all that much.”

“Maybe not, but it’s a good idea to ask people who travel a lot or have in their past,” Rapunzel admitted. “I’ve asked Eugene already, and he said Lance wouldn’t know, either. Who else do we know who had gone outside of Corona for a long time?”

Squeak, Pascal said, and changed colour into a visage of a pale redhead with a fang-shaped stripe of red facepaint down each cheek.

“That’s true, but the girls were looking for gold and valuables,” Rapunzel reminded. “And if this herb was valuable, Eugene and Lance would know about it, too.”

Squeak, Pascal conceded her point, then changed colour again, the top of his head white now and his face in split colours, one half of it brown and half painted red.

Rapunzel stopped dead in her tracks.

A quarter century of trying to track down a legend. One about a magical, golden flower.

“Of course Adira could know. I’ll ask her next time I see her.”

“Ask her what?” a cheerful voice sounded from behind them.

Faith startled with a yelp, and Pascal’s squeak came distinctly closer to a shriek as he reverted to normal colour, while Rapunzel just turned on her heel—to see Adira, a thoroughly satisfied look on her face as she took in the reactions to her appearance.

“How long have you been there?”

“Long enough to see your friend’s approximation of me,” Adira gestured to Pascal, who grinned uncomfortably and slinked behind the high collar of Rapunzel’s dress. “Admirable work your court’s gardeners have done. It is beautiful here, even so late into autumn.”

Rapunzel smiled. “Are you finding yourself a few favourite places?”

“I am, now that it’s been made unspeakably easier by no longer having to play hide-and-seek with Hector,” Adira admitted airily.

“Oh, you were trying to avoid him?”

Adira raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t going to let him walk all over me, but I didn’t enjoy demolishing our surroundings in every scuffle we got into. It’s unbecoming to display so little respect to everyone else’s work around here. What is it that you wanted to ask?”

“Right.” Rapunzel opened the little box again and extended her to Adira, showing her the dried herb. “Do you know what this is?”

Adira took it by the stem and lifted it into the sunlight, and tilted her head with a surprised expression. “Well, this is certainly the first time I’ve seen one of these in the past decade.”

Rapunzel perked up. “But you’ve seen it before?”

“Yes, this is starlight woundwort. It’s a healing herb, rare and very powerful, inherently magical. In the hands of a skilled practitioner of hedge magic, or an experienced enough herbalist, it could reliably drag someone back from death’s door if administered in time. It grows only in places already soaked with ambient magic—like ruins of wizard towers, or graveyards of magical creatures—and only at certain elevations. I still carry a few applications of medicine made from it, diminished with age as its potency may be, but other than that I don’t think I’ve seen it in your kingdom at all. Where did you get this?”

“Cass sent it,” Rapunzel said softly. “She wrote that she had resupplied a clinic on healing herbs.”

“That’s a score of lives she’d given them the power to save, then.” Adira lowered the woundwort’s stem, squinting at the sky now. “Speak of the devil. Isn’t that Shorthair’s bird?”

Rapunzel’s head snapped up at that. It took her a moment to make out the silhouette against the clouds, but there it was, unmistakably different from those of the castle island’s crows and seagulls, and heading directly for her window. She lifted both hands to her mouth and called out as loudly as she could, “Owl!”

If there had been any vocal response, it was carried away on the wind, but the distant silhouette sharply changed trajectory to one leading straight to her, now. Rapunzel quickly took the dried herb back, put it back in the box, and tucked it safely away, then held her arm out. Within moments, Owl landed on the offered perch, and folded his wings with visible relief.

“You’re back so quickly! I mean, in comparison. Is everything okay?”

Hoot, Owl confirmed easily.

His backpack, Rapunzel noticed, was smeared in streaks of black and gray. “Aw, what happened? Did you get into trouble?”

Hoot, Owl said dismissively, and Rapunzel wasn’t quite sure of his meaning: whether that nothing had happened, or that it was nothing he couldn’t handle.

“Okay then.” Rapunzel unstrapped the stained backpack from around Owl’s chest, and watched him fluff up his feathers a little. “How did she seem when you left her?”

Hoot, Owl described, concise yet diplomatic in his assessment that Cass had not been suffering or unhappy.

“That’s good to hear. Well, let’s get you inside, you must be tired? Hungry?”

“I’ll leave you to it.” Adira withdrew with her usual little smile. “Come find me if you need another midnight chat.”

“Okay, thank you!” Rapunzel called out after the old warrior, earning a nod, before heading back into the castle. “She walks like a cat, doesn’t she?”

“Sometimes I wish she would wear a bell around her neck like one, as well,” Faith admitted, her voice still a little faint.

“Well, it would certainly make for a unique Gopher Grab, to have people chase Adira and try to put a kitty bell on her, but I’m not that sure how much goodwill such an event would demonstrate.”

Faith snickered, hiding a grin behind a hand. Rapunzel watched her with a smile. Her new lady-in-waiting was a scaredy cat, and infinitely more timid than Cass, but the same traits made her observant and incredibly discreet. And even as Rapunzel missed Cass terribly, craving to see her around every corner and almost hearing the echo of her voice still reflecting off the castle’s walls, it was good to make a new friend—really make a friend, not just impose on them and call it good.

“I’d like some time to myself for now, do you think we can fit that in?”

Faith considered, and after a moment, nodded slowly. “It isn’t going to be very much, but I think it can be arranged. Any exceptions to not allowing people into your chambers?”

“Eugene can always come in.”

“Okay, then. I’ll come before the banquet to get you ready.”

“Great. Thank you so much.”

“Of course, princess.”

With these matters settled, Rapunzel headed to her room, where Owl took off from her arm to nestle in-between a few pillows rather than atop the back of a chair. Poor thing, Rapunzel thought as she watched him conk out immediately. She hadn’t been able to measure the exact distance between Castle Corona and the mining town that Cass had been in the neighbourhood of when she wrote her first letter, but she didn’t need pinpoint accuracy to be able to tell that it was hundreds upon hundreds of miles even in a bird’s flight. And Owl wasn’t just flying to and fro between them, but carrying messages both ways, too.

And thanks to him, Rapunzel now had Cassandra’s second letter in her hands. She thought of everything she had poured her heart out about in her reply to the first one, everything she had promised and everything she had kept quiet, then opened the stained scroll case.

There were a few sheets of paper inside, but only one carried the tell-tale marks of a quill’s nib pressing through and visible on its blank side. Rapunzel took that one out first, and was immediately struck with the state of Cass’ handwriting—shakier than usual. Far shakier. And not just in the way Rapunzel had seen in her own, through journaling in the evenings that crested days filled with physical effort, days that strained her arms more than usual. Cass hadn’t just been tired when writing that letter. Though she evidently was, as well, clear as day in the way the words at the end were scribed in wider strokes than those at the beginning, or a little harder to read, the differences between individual letters growing faint in places.

Something must have happened to her injured hand. Again.

Rapunzel swallowed, and took a deep breath, then started reading.

Okay, Raps.

You can be better than that. I know, because I’ve seen it sometimes. It just never stuck. But if you’re actually trying this time, you can make it stick.

I wish I could’ve talked to you about some things back when they happened. I’m starting to face a few of them again, but I don’t have to tell you how difficult it can be to scrub away the indents of other people’s hands on us. And it was more than just knowing by then that it wasn’t safe for me to talk to you about it, or that you wouldn’t listen. Sometimes, when you convince yourself there’s a problem, you start looking for whose fault it is like you need to prove it’s not yours, and scrambling to make it go away. And it’s usually either entirely out of your hands and not your responsibility, or outright not a problem at all, just a fact of life that you take issue with.

Your hands are not like my arm. I have scars on my chest from carrying the Moonstone. Those are like your hands. Those are both from things we chose to take.

The backpack was a good idea, but it can’t be in colours this noticeable. Things are tense where I am. If someone spots Owl carrying messages, they’ll assume he’s a courier trained by the enemy and shoot at him.

I’ve run a few errands for the locals here, joined them in a few tiring group tasks, and gotten rid of a few murderers. People have started to like me for it. It’s weird, and I don’t know what to do with it, but I’ll figure that out later. There’s a farmer who can’t handle everything alone, so I’ll spend some time helping out and move towns afterwards.

—Cass.

Rapunzel sat back heavily in her chair, overwhelmed already.

Oh, she knew that Cass was concise. That wasn’t news. She knew that Cass could be incredibly direct, especially when contrasted with the other Coronian courtiers and their diplomatically polite double-speak. That wasn’t news, either. But now, Cass was drawing limits in words as direct and concise as when they were actively fighting each other, if with infinitely less aggression. And that was news. And it shouldn’t be.

And Rapunzel had promised she would listen, this time, she reminded herself as she watched her first reflex rising to the surface to defend her, an urge to argue that wanting to solve problems was wanting to help people, and that helping was a good thing, a virtue—

She ground her teeth and closed her eyes, and imagined putting a hand on the head of that impulse and shoved it back underwater.

Cass had limits. And that wasn’t something to be treated like a problem. Not anymore—not ever, if Rapunzel had been a good enough friend to deserve the title of it at all. It was a fact of life, one that she had taken issue with on so many separate occasions, hadn’t she? One that she had tried making go away on each of those occasions, hadn’t she? How humiliating that must have felt, to be constantly disrespected and pushed like that, only to hear it interspersed with declarations of love. How devastatingly painful that must have been, to watch these two contradictory extremes happen in conjunction, and see the pattern of it for what it was: an unspoken rule that love was to be earned with submission and timidity and obedience, not to be received unconditionally.

Come to think of it, Rapunzel knew exactly what that felt like.

Squeak, Pascal said worriedly as he watched her grimace.

“Does it even matter that we’re out of the tower,” Rapunzel asked him quietly, “if we’re dragging the tower with us into everything we do?”

Indents of other people’s hands on her, indeed. Would that she could just scrub them away. Would that she could just take her monsters by the throat and drown them and be free.

She gathered Pascal up to press their foreheads together. “How do we leave someplace that’s built itself up inside us, hm?”

Squeak, Pascal told her gently.

Rapunzel managed a faint smile. “I don’t know if there even is a right answer to that, but 'together' is far from a wrong one, I think.”

She pulled her second journal out from its hiding place, in the gap between books stacked into a larger pile, and unlocked it to trail her fingertips over the title page, the image she had painted twice: the pool with stone stairs leading into the water and a full moon rising into the sky from behind three black rocks. The thought of Cass that kept her trying, the help of Adira who had her realize in no uncertain terms that she needed to begin trying at all, and the place of peace she had constructed between both of their influences, a mirror to look at herself in and see the poison behind the sickness of her actions, the reason for her habits and weaknesses, so she could brew herself an antidote.

And how was she going to take the tower out of herself, indeed? If it was possible at all, then 'one demanding and difficult session of honest self-examination at a time, one day of ceaseless self-improvement after another' seemed like a viable answer. Like a path that could genuinely lead her there—to dismantling the palace she had built on quicksand, and to finding the tower’s foundations at its centre, and to dismantling that in turn.

Maybe that would stop her flaws from sabotaging every work of her actual positive traits, at least.

She rubbed at her eyes with a sigh, then pushed the dark and unadorned journal aside to pull out the rest of what Cass had sent. Four sheets of paper, as it turned out—each thinner than the letter, and each holding the mugshot of a man and the seal of one of the Seven Kingdoms.

Wanted posters, Rapunzel realized slowly, for internationally wanted criminals.

One massive even in the perspective that only showed his head and shoulders, with a flat face and hateful eyes and a bulbous nose that looked like it had been broken and then set multiple times, his teeth jagged and some of them chipped and a lot of them bared in a murderous grimace. Below, the Pittsfordian griffon that marched ahead but with its head turned back to look over its shoulder, and a subtitle of DETLEV DREISTERNEN: MASS MURDERER, ARSONIST.

One square-jawed and scowling in contempt, several parallel scars shorn in his face as if with a set of claws that have been dragged from eyebrow to jawline. Whoever had painted his portrait had conveyed, in some unspoken detail, that the eye those scars ran across was still—and its iris was a slightly paler colour than the other one, as well. Below, the Ingvarrdian leafless and uprooted tree, and a subtitle of HOGNI GALDRSBANI: SERIAL KILLER, OATHBREAKER.

One with an expression so vacant that Rapunzel immediately felt as if she was being stared past, no hint of anger or scorn so prominent in the previous two’s expressions. No hint of anything, really. Only a pair of bull-like horns tied to the sides of his head at the temples with an elaborate set of leather headbands that looped across his forehead multiple times. Below, the Bayangoran cherry blossom, and a subtitle of TASSOS THE MINOTAUR: MASS MURDERER, CANNIBAL.

One far scrawnier than the others—not emaciated, exactly, but clearly with no muscle mass to speak of. Salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a thin braid at the back of his head, a round goatee framing a mocking little smile, eyes alight with avarice. Below, the Coronian sun, and a subtitle of CASIMIR THE SORCERER: SERIAL KILLER, ABDUCTOR.

Rapunzel found herself leaning away slightly from the last one. She’d seen people looking at others like that—looking at her like that, among those others. Sugracha. Tromus. Zhan Tiri. Gothel. Even Cass, for a time, when her eyes were a stark turquoise and equally stark hatred, rather than blue-green like seawater and endlessly warm with loving adoration. People who looked at another person, and entertained themselves with thinking how to best hurt them. People who looked at another person, and saw only things to be used and things to be taken, not another person at all.

Each charged with taking the life of more than one other person.

She looked up as a knock came on her door, and hid her second journal with a sigh before calling out, “Come in!”

It was Eugene who opened the door, and Rapunzel immediately felt herself smile and her shoulders drop. “Hello, sunshine—”

Hoot, a disgruntled reprimand came from the stack of pillows, making Eugene startle.

“And hello to you too, murderbird.” Eugene turned back to Rapunzel. “Cass wrote again, huh?”

“She did,” Rapunzel said softly, looking at the letter and the four posters.

Eugene studied her for a moment, a look of bewilderment cresting into worry on his face. “...And you’re unhappy?”

“I’m not unhappy. It’s just– I’m– she gave me a lot to think about.”

“Yeah, she does that sometimes. Man, remember the blizzard? I thought she was just giving me a hard time like we used to do all the time, but then it turned out, she was actually giving me good advice and pushing me to be a better person.” Eugene shook his head with a chuckle. “What has she been up to?”

“Helping people who live where she is, for the most part. And, um– bounty hunting, apparently.”

Eugene chuckled, taking a goblet from Rapunzel’s desk to sip water from it. “Oh yeah? Well, I can’t imagine she’d go after house names larger than yours truly—” he choked immediately when Rapunzel showed him one of the posters, his eyes wide with shock now. “—holy bounty hunter, is she okay?!”

“She didn’t write anything about getting hurt,” Rapunzel said slowly, a sense of dread creeping over her at Eugene’s reaction. “And Owl told me she wasn’t injured or anything when she sent him back. You know these people?”

“People? You’re telling me she went after more than the one?” Eugene leaned closer to look over her shoulders at the remaining three posters. “Oh. Oh mama. Wow. No, that’s– wow. And you’re saying she’s not even injured? How is she alive?”

Rapunzel took that in. Glanced to the letter again. “So when she said she’s 'gotten rid of few murderers' and sent these...”

“Yeah no, that doesn’t mean jail.”

“Oh.” Rapunzel sat with that, silently, for a long moment. “...So she’s killing people now.”

“If it makes you feel any better, if there is anyone who deserves to die, it’s people like them,” Eugene gestured to the posters. “Oh man, I gotta tell Lance about this, he’s never been afraid of Cass like he should be. And Cap needs to know, too, especially about the sorcerer.”

“But you were condemned to death at one point, too,” Rapunzel said quietly. “And a lot of our friends, they’re criminals too, aren’t they?”

Eugene raised an eyebrow. “I’d like to think that my death sentence was meant more to make an example of me, to show the whole of Corona what happens when someone dares steal from the royalty, rather than equate grand theft with mass murder, sunshine. I know you’re all about seeing the best in everyone, but with people like these four, the best that’s there to be seen is that they didn’t torture some of the people they’ve killed for very long before killing them. They are not like the pub thugs. They’re what the pub thugs are scared of at night.” He thought for a moment. “Actually, from everyone we know, they’re most like Zhan Tiri.”

“Wait a minute,” Rapunzel objected immediately. “But Zhan Tiri wasn’t a person, she was a demon from another realm.”

“Rapunzel, I’ve been all around the world, and the only demonic realm I’ve ever seen was cruelty and greed,” Eugene said, patiently but firmly. “Cass made the world a better place by taking these people out of it. And no, jail wouldn’t have solved anything, they’ve all broken out from behind bars multiple times. It takes a lot to earn a death penalty spanning all of the Seven Kingdoms without committing political crimes, and they’ve murdered their way into that, both before they’ve banded up and afterwards.” He took in the struggle playing across Rapunzel’s face, then reached to stroke her cheek with the back of one hand, and was rewarded with a small smile as she leaned into the caress. “Did Cass write anything else?”

“I’m getting the sense she’s not opposed to giving me a chance,” Rapunzel admitted with palpable relief. “Like she’s trying to show me a few places she can allow me into, and waiting to see if I do anything differently than I used to.”

“That’s a good sign, then.” Eugene leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “You just remember to take it slow and let her come to you when she’s good and ready. Cass plays things closer to the vest than you or me. If you show her that she can trust you with a few small things, she’ll try to see if she can trust you with bigger things, too.”

“I will. Thank you.” Rapunzel put an arm around Eugene’s waist, leaning her head against his chest, grateful for the comfort.

Not everything Cass had written of was a small thing. Already, she was extending a hand and hoping that Rapunzel would take it rather than scorch it, despite all experiences on the contrary, despite how much it must have hurt to have that hand slapped away so many times. If only Rapunzel could take all that back, she thought, she would.

But since she couldn’t, she’d do the next best thing, which was to take that hand gently and hold it until Cass decided either to pull it back, or to allow her close enough to kiss it better.

~*~

“I’m just here to help miss Tyson, sir,” Cassandra repeated for the third time.

“I heard you the first two times.” The guard standing in front of her looked no more convinced than before. His companions, each with a halberd at the ready, were growing visibly frustrated. “I have yet to hear why a bounty hunter from Corona would even take interest in a farmer’s daughter out here.”

“Sir, miss Tyson was the one who took interest in me. She sought me out for help, so I’m helping.”

“Likely story. I’m only going to ask this one more time, Coronian.” The officer beckoned at the other two guards, who pointed the topspikes of their halberds at Cassandra’s throat. “What do you want with the Tyson girl?”

“Sir,” Cassandra said tiredly, readying herself to grab at the two halberds and push them sideways if it came to fighting the guards. “Miss Tyson came to me for help, and said upfront that she didn’t know if she’d be able to pay me because of the tragedy that recently struck her family. I was well enough off at the time to not have to worry about being paid, so I decided to lend my aid for free. I’m honestly just here to help miss Tyson.”

“Then you won’t mind if we ask miss Tyson about that, I’m sure.”

Cassandra turned her head, still keeping the two guards threatening her in her field of vision, and called out, “Moreen!”

“Yes?” The farmer leaned out from behind the cart, and her face immediately froze into a horrified expression when she took in the scene: Cassandra standing very still with her hands held up, two guards more than ready to run her through with their halberds, the third clearly in half a mind to give them free rein to. “Heavens, what’s going on?!”

“We’re about to bring this bounty hunter in,” the officer said formally. “You won’t have to worry about being extorted by the likes of her anymore, miss.”

Moreen sputtered at that. “Extor– no! No, she’s been nothing but wonderful! Please let her go, she didn’t do anything wrong!”

The officer gestured at the cart, filled with tools and knickknacks of everyday use, an unimpressed look on his face. “Then what do you call forcing you to sell off your belongings to pay her fare?”

“No one is being forced into anything here,” Moreen bit back at him. “Sir, I’m planning to winter in Riddersbrug. This is to pay for the travel there, and for someplace to stay until I can find work. She’s been kind enough to help me get everything in order and prepare for the trip, and I couldn’t do it without her. So please, let her go and let us get back to it. It’s getting colder every day.”

Reluctantly, the officer signalled his men to withdraw their halberds—which they did with disappointment very clear in their bearing—and leaned his face into Cassandra’s with a glare.

“We’re watching you, Coronian. Make sure you don’t run out of charity.”

“What was I supposed to do, turn away a mourner in need?” Cassandra asked in a scathing tone. “My father raised me better than that, sir.”

“You keep that father of yours in mind and stay on your best behaviour, or we’ll send you back to him in a matchbox.”

With the patrol walking away, Cassandra lowered her hands, and fixed her too-thin cloak around her shoulders. A few Shankers across the town square unfolded their arms from behind their backs, a few Rats at the Brazen Brigand’s entrance took their hands off the handles of small axes or leaned on their spears again, the sound of metal hammered against metal flew through the air as Hanalei went back to work at the smithy nearby.

“Are you okay?” Moreen asked worriedly, wringing her hands in a nervous gesture.

“I’m fine. They didn’t do anything to me.”

“Well not for the lack of trying! Why are they harassing you like this?!”

“Politics,” Cassandra said with a shrug. “Equis and Corona haven’t been on the best of terms for a bit. And a different patrol was pushing Sigrid around just about as much, a few weeks back. I think they’re just stupidly jumpy because of how close to the border with Koto this town is right now.”

Moreen’s face pulled into a look of concern as she listened to that. “You know, I don’t think I’ve seen Sigrid since we came into town.”

Cassandra paused for a moment. Looked towards the smithy. Hanalei didn’t seem to be acting any differently than usual, and since he was there in the first place, his wife hadn't gone down the warpath yet. “She may have just gone out for some fletch, she had mentioned she was planning to.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m not, but I think we’d see more signs of unrest around here if the guards had done something to her. And besides, I’ve seen how capable a warrior she is. She can take care of herself.”

Moreen nodded slowly. “You’re right. She’s probably fine. But it can’t hurt to ask, can it?”

“Probably not. You go, I’ll keep an eye on things here.”

“Okay, I’ll be right back.”

Cassandra watched the farmer hurry towards the smithy, and heard Hanalei pausing in his work again to speak with her, but turned her attention back to her surroundings when she heard someone clear her throat nearby. One of the townsfolk, but not anyone she recognized.

“Those plates, how much are you selling them for?”

Cassandra looked to where the commoner was pointing. “One silver apiece, or one gold for the dozen.”

“And the platter?”

“Four silver.”

“What about the pitchers?”

“Three silver each, or five if you get both.”

She’d deferred to Moreen’s assessment for prices to set on everything the farmer had decided to sell, if after pointing out that they seemed too low to her—and after being told that it was a little to account for wear and tear, a little to make sure everything they tried to sell would go. And despite the cold she found herself standing in for most of the day, out in the open on the town square, Cassandra did have to admit that she hadn’t expected to spend her days selling clutter from a cart. Or for her appearance, which was so easily and so consistently getting her mistaken for a sellsword in these parts, to make people take the prices she listed at face value instead of try to haggle with her, like they did with Moreen.

Learn a new use for a weapon kept in clear sight every day.

She took the half-handful of silver and a gold from the person before her and helped them stack the dishes in their bag to protect them from getting banged up on their way home, then stashed the money with the rest of the profits and looked up to see another person approaching. Ramon. Not murderously inclined, though, at least at a glance.

“Can I interest you in some fine wares today?” Cassandra asked in a deadpan tone. “Only slightly used and definitely not taken from a murdered family’s home.”

“Very fucking funny. I thought I told you to get out of town,” the spy said politely.

“I did, and I will. Just helping the Tyson girl sell everything she can’t carry, then I’ll be escorting her to Riddersbrug.” Cassandra counted days back to when she had sent Owl to Corona. “Just under two weeks and I’m gone.”

“Can’t you leave any faster?”

“No can do, sorry.”

“I’m sure you are. Fuck.” Ramon stepped closer to the cart, looking through the items set out. “Got anything that a girl would love? Especially a girl who can’t walk.”

“Think I saw a nice deck of cards somewhere in here,” Cassandra gestured to a few small wooden boxes laid out next to each other. “Sigrid isn’t around, did something happen?”

“She snuck out of town two days back,” Ramon said dismissively as he opened one of the boxes and started shuffling the well-used deck. “Either a fletch trip, or checking on a few folks in the mine.” He chuckled at one of the cards. “Oh, that’s rich, the queen of diamonds is Saint Claire.”

“Who?”

“Patron of goldsmiths and gilders, mostly.” The spy pulled out a few more court cards, each with a nimbus around their head, and snorted at another one. “Heavens have mercy, they put the patron of grave diggers as the king of spades. Oh, this’ll give Tara a laugh.”

“Eight silver. How is she?”

“Just about how you saw her last. Doesn’t have to sleep as much anymore, though, and started moving her hands a little,” Ramon said as he fished out a few coins and pocketed the cards. “So she’s bored when she’s not in pain, and getting a little stir-crazy. Bruno says they’ll start physical therapy a few weeks from now.”

Cassandra nodded at that. “Good thing she’s recovering, even if it’s slow. I’ve been meaning to ask you something, do you think Fidella will need a blanket for the winter here?”

Ramon looked at the mare, who acknowledged him with a little upwards nod of her head. “You’re taking her out every day, yeah? I don’t think she will, then, not unless you’re planning to sleep outside. Which, you’ll freeze to death anyway, unless you keep a fire going overnight and wear something thicker than that flimsy little cloak.”

“That’s underway,” Cassandra assured him, thinking back to when she dragged the wolf pelt to the furrier. With enough coin spent next to it, she was going to get a very warm vest and pair of trousers, and a much longer fur-lined cloak, as well as a flat document satchel made of boiled leather for Moreen—not unlike the kind that the Seven Kingdoms’ couriers carried sensitive missives in against their chests, rather than in their saddlebags or carts. Dragging a strongbox around wasn’t going to be easy or advisable in a larger city, and it was out of the question to leave the Tysons’ documents behind. “Is there anyone in Riddersbrug you want me to give your or Tara’s regards to?”

Ramon chuckled. “Heavens no, you’ll float up in the river the day after saying that. I’ll send word ahead of you, though. Someone might try and find you if they’re in a pinch, but look for work on your own, too.”

“Done deal. Tell Tara I said hi.”

“I will. Don’t let the guards lock you up.”

Cassandra nodded at the spy as he left, and turned at the sound of footsteps as Moreen hurried back from the smithy. “Anything?”

“Sigrid just went out of town for fletch,” the farmer said with no small amount of relief. “Han says she’ll probably be back tomorrow.”

“It’s good to be sure.” Cassandra pointed her thumb at the cart. “We sold a few dishes and the cards in the meantime.”

“Okay. We might need to go back for more in a day or two, then.”

“I can work with that.” Cassandra turned to Fidella. “You?”

Snort, the mare confirmed calmly.

“She’s fine with it too.”

Moreen smiled a little. Then an expression of worry overtook her face again as her eyes were drawn to something in the distance, and Cassandra turned to look as well—at a panting, red in the face teen sprinting up to the clinic to frantically bang a fist on the door. Moments after he was let inside, Eliza ran out in turn, slinging a bag over her shoulder and buckling a cloak, and turned her head sharply a few times before spotting Ramon and calling out to him. The Kotoan spy, astride his dappled old horse now, headed towards her without delay. A rapid flurry of words was exchanged, then Ramon extended an arm and pulled the clinic’s best surgeon up into the saddle behind himself, and turned his steed towards a dirt road out of town.

Cassandra watched them get past the checkpoint, Ramon pushing his chestnut into a canter straight afterwards. “The mine settlement is that way, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” Moreen admitted with a frown. “I hope everyone is okay.”

Chapter Text

“I thought you would’ve left by now,” Sebastian said to Cassandra as he placed a full plate before her and Moreen each. “Gone home to Corona, or crossed the border into Koto. The guards aren’t going to get any nicer here, you know.”

“I know. I just don’t care all that much.” Cassandra slipped a silver to the server who brought them two tankards of the usual weak ale, and who beamed and grabbed the coin before scurrying off. “We’ll be heading north soon, anyway.”

“Riddersbrug, huh?”

Cassandra nodded. As did Moreen, if with a sigh.

“I can’t work the farm alone. I’m going to try and find a trade, and maybe... maybe if my brother comes back, we’ll see what to do about the farm.”

“Roderick, right?” Sebastian asked with a frown. “Stout lad, red hair, dogs love him?”

“That’s him, yes.”

“Well, I’ll tell him where to look for you if I see him.”

“Thank you. And Bastian? There’s, um– there’s one other thing,” Moreen said uncertainly. “I’ve a cat at the farm that it would just be cruelty to haul along, and there’s no one left to take care of her here, she’s an outdoor cat but she’s used to having people around and to sleeping inside, and she’s a really good mouser—”

Sebastian held up a hand in a calming gesture. “I’ll look after your cat for you. What’s her name?”

“Barley. And thank you again. I was– I was really worried about what would happen to her.”

“Hey.” Sebastian put a hand on the farmer’s shoulder. “We help each other out. That’s how everyone gets by. Trouble comes, and we face it together, and we pick each other up afterwards. Which, speaking of trouble, you’re not worried about Carter anymore?”

Moreen smiled a little. “I’ll never worry about him again.”

“He won’t be causing trouble anymore,” Cassandra said at the same time, slicing a chunk of beet into two smaller pieces.

Sebastian looked between them, then glanced to the hilt of Cassandra’s sword peeking over her shoulder and laughed. “That’s good. Damn, but I never liked him. Something just... wrong was staring out of his eyes, you know? Like he thought things were his just because he wanted them, and that people were things for him to own or toss away, too.”

“Those kind of people are a nightmare to live with,” Cassandra said flatly. When she realized that both Moreen and Sebastian were looking at her as if they expected her to continue, she shrugged and poked at her food again. “My, uh... my best friend was raised by a woman like that.”

Sebastian winced sympathetically. “Oof, that’s got to leave a mark. I hope they can walk out of her shadow, and sooner rather than later.”

Cassandra put another slice of beetroot in her mouth to delay answering, and thought back to the multiple pages of a letter packed away safely between rarely used belongings as she chewed. She thought of what she had written back in response to it, and what Raps probably had in her hands by now.

Forgiveness was a tough thing to dole out, and only harder for how it used to be squeezed out of her whether she had been ready to even consider giving it or not. But she did still love Raps, and hoped—against hope and against her better sense—for a day when that love was something she could safely give, rather than a chain to be threaded through the collar of her loyalty and yanked on to throw her to her knees and keep her back bent, her head bowed, her hands pressed into the ground. A day when that love was no longer poisoned with resentment she couldn’t help but answer such treatment with. A day when admitting that love was no longer an act of surrender and a trial of her bravery, a rephrase of 'do what you will to me', with no certainty that anything to come afterwards would be endurable.

But if Raps was serious about what she had written, and as ready to follow it up with concrete action as she seemed to be, then maybe there was a chance that such a day would really dawn. Someday.

She looked up when she noticed another person approaching, and recognized Teagan as he pulled up a chair at her other side.

“Curfew closed up shop, huh?”

“Hard to be selling when no one’s allowed outside to buy,” Cassandra said dryly.

“I guess it must be. Hey, Bastian. Just an ale, please.” Teagan passed a few silver to Sebastian before leaning his elbow on the countertop as he turned to Cassandra again. “So... you found yourself a job off the board.”

“So I did.”

“So you know I can’t let you back inside.”

“Yeah.”

“Um,” Moreen said as she leaned out from behind Cassandra. “I’m not actually sure whether I’ll be able to pay her at all.”

Teagan stared at her. Then dragged a hand through his hair in a frustrated gesture. “Well fuck, now my entire speech of 'rules are rules, and the rules are the same for everyone' falls apart, doesn’t it?”

Cassandra snorted. “I can listen to it anyway, if that’ll make you feel better.”

“Eh, that was pretty much the whole speech.” Teagan retrieved his tankard from Sebastian and tapped its rim against Cassandra’s, which she acknowledged with a nod. “So you’re doing this all for Moreen here free of charge?”

“Blood money paid well enough,” Cassandra said with a shrug.

“That it did.” The job board’s minder drank a long pull. “Damn. Now what the hell do I do?”

“Nothing. No need to give the guards any excuses. We’re leaving soon enough anyway, and I don’t plan to be coming back.”

“Fair. Heading south or north?”

“North,” Moreen said for both of them.

Teagan nodded at that. “Riddersbrug is a big place, but it might be a little safer for you to get away from the border. Plus, the citizenry is a lot more mixed there, with a lot of mercenaries as well. Don’t think the guards will be as abrasive as here.”

Cassandra gave him an unconvinced look. “Didn’t these reinforcements come down from there?”

“Yeah, but they’ve been ordered to keep a sharper eye on anyone who’s not Equisian enough. Sorry, 'to safeguard the loyal citizens of the Crown against insurrectionists', is how they put it.”

“Do they actually believe this town is capable of an armed revolt?” Moreen asked incredulously.

“I mean, fuck, if they keep harassing the mercenary veterans and the mine folks like they’ve been, they’ll have one on their hands whether we’re capable of it or not.”

Cassandra paused at that. “They’re splitting this place into the town and the mine versus themselves and the Scarlet Brigade, aren’t they?”

“I don’t think that was the guards’ or the Reds’ initial plan, but it’s certainly what’s happening,” Teagan admitted with a frown. “The Brigade has been going crazy for some weeks now, and it’s not normal for them to thrash about this much. They’re going hard at it. Really hard. I don’t know if the guards had someone instigate it, or if they’re just making use of a coincidence, but they’ve got the Shankers and the Rats in pincers. It’s hard to watch, really.”

“Aren’t those two groups bandit outfits?” Cassandra said dryly, keeping silent about the jade medallion she had pulled from the mine.

Teagan waved her off. “A little highway robbery never killed nobody! Least, nobody who didn’t already sign up for the risk. No one in the Shankers or the Rats has delusions of grandeur. Or in the Coon Tails, for that matter. They just want to live. The Scarlet Brigade, on the other hand, thinks it’s on par with a kingdom’s army and it’s dying to prove that point against anyone handy. That, right there, would be us.”

Cassandra thought that over, one hand at her chin. “What about the Shanker that the guards put in the clinic? The one who helped bury the dead at Richter farm?”

“Who, Simon? Never woke up. Died about a week ago.” Teagan stared down his tankard with a grimace. “The Rats lost one of theirs in that scuffle, too, didn’t they?”

“They did,” Cassandra recalled, and turned her head to look across the Brigand’s dining floor.

She was used to seeing the place reasonably crowded in the evenings—townsfolk, farmers, hirelings for work in the field and for work with a sword, bandits with rat skull headbands and bandits with dagger tattoos. She was also used to seeing the Rats and the Shankers keeping a reasonable distance from each other, a tenuous sort of unspoken non-aggression pact, a group of one outfit’s bandits clustered at their own table and a group of the other’s at least two tables away from that.

Now she was seeing Shankers and Rats at the same tables. Not exactly friendly to each other, not in the way they were with members of their own outfit each. But they were sitting in mixed groups nonetheless, talking and drinking together, playing games of cards and dice together, actually making a mutual effort to transform that non-aggression pact into a full-blown alliance.

Cassandra turned back to Teagan. “Are you sure Sigrid went out of town just for fletch?”

“You’ve got blue in your quiver, yeah?” the ex-mercenary who usually minded the job board sipped the remains of his ale. “Then you should know it’s not what she went out of town for, it’s what she’s gonna fletch with it.”

And that remark didn’t quite let her sleep afterwards, not when coupled with Sigrid’s comment as she had dragged Carter away in a headlock, I was thinking about finding myself something already soaked through with death. Coming from anyone other than a sorceress, it would’ve been a threat as empty as it was indirect. In Sigrid’s mouth, it was more of a promise.

Cassandra sat in the hammock hung inside Fidella’s stall in the stable, thinking. Then scratched her good hand through her scalp and untied her too-long hair. She ground her teeth as it fell in her face, and silently thanked whatever twist of fate or nudge of intuition responsible for that when she was gathering up things to take with herself on the road, back in Castle Corona, she hadn’t packed a mirror.

She combed her hair back with her fingers, and brushed it off her face again after laying down. Cut it back to a comfortable length or grit her teeth and grow it out until she could actually do something with it, things could only get better from here.

And no matter how tempting that dagger’s fine edge looked when she had her hair gathered up at the back of her head in the morning, she took the blue ribbon instead of the knife. She was far enough away from Corona. No one would know Gothel here. No one would look at her and instead see the cruelty and selfishness that had borne her.

Despite these thoughts, Cassandra was still far from fully awake when she walked out of the Brigand’s stable, intent on entering the dining floor instead. All traces of sleepiness evaporated when she looked up from rubbing her eyes open and saw a small procession of people limping into town from the direction of the mine, Ramon’s old chestnut pulling what looked to be an old mining cart with sides sheared down to turn it more shallow and filled with the forms of a few unmoving people covered in tattered fabrics and sheepskins, his rider on foot beside him and half-leading, half-dragging another person forward, a person who was one of many there to bear clear signs of injury: bloodied bandages, makeshift splints, leaning heavily on walking sticks or each other.

Cassandra rushed over, only speeding up as she noticed one of them walking on soft legs, and caught them seconds before their knees gave out. “Whoa. You’re okay, lean against me.”

She heard a tired chuckle, and the person she had just steadied on their feet reached one shaky hand to throw back the hood of their cloak, showing Eliza with a weak grin, her face pale and haggard, her eyes bloodshot and too glossy.

“I’m starting to see why the first thing my father called you was heaven-sent.”

“You’re injured as well?”

“No, but I think I have a fever, and I was up through the night. The guards, they—thank you—they refused to let us in before sunrise.” Eliza leaned her forehead against her shoulder when Cassandra swept her knees from under her and started carrying her towards the clinic. “Four people died overnight, because of a stupid curfew.”

Cassandra went silent at that. The ever-present mud beyond the town square’s cobbles was solid; a paper-thin sheet of ice covered every puddle in sight. There was being a stickler for the rules, and then there was gleeful malice from behind the excuse of upholding the law.

“What happened?” she asked when she remembered her tongue.

“There’s a gang war in the mine. I don’t know what else to call it. Heavens, my hands are shaking, I can’t operate like this...”

“I think more than just your hands are shaking,” Cassandra told the surgeon gently as she felt another tremor run through Eliza’s entire body—cold, exhaustion, who knew what else. “Let’s get you home to bed.”

Eliza let out a groan of protest at that. “No. I have work to do.”

“You know, someone very wise once told me that you can’t help anyone if you’re falling apart, yourself.”

“Why did I ever give you advice?” Eliza asked with a sigh.

“I don’t know, but I know there’s still going to be work to be done after you’re well enough to do it. Don’t waste your strength arguing your own advice with me,” Cassandra said as she carried the surgeon into the clinic.

And the clinic immediately became a pandemonium of frantic activity, what with over a dozen wounded coming in all at once, at the same time as one of the three healers there was put out of commission. Over the initial burst of work that Cassandra, Ramon, and a few able-bodied of the newcomers had stayed to assist with however they could—holding the wounded bandits down as their broken bones were realigned, helping others ascend the stairs to the clinic’s beds, heating water and passing bandages or remedies to Emil and Bruno as they called out for more—she counted six wounded with rat skull headbands across their foreheads, five with dagger tattoos on their forearms, and three with raccoon tails pinned to their belts.

By the time she walked back into the Brazen Brigand, Cassandra was feeling a little light-headed herself, for the amount of effort she had undertaken before having a meal or a sip of water. She found Moreen without trouble, and hailed Sebastian with her withered hand. “Sorry to have worried you, there was a bit of trouble at the clinic.”

“So I can see.” The farmer looked at the rest of the dining floor, where the uninjured of the newly arrived Shankers and Rats were still talking animatedly with their compatriots who had been in town longer. “Will we be alright to get more things for sale from the farm tomorrow, do you think?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Cassandra nodded at Sebastian as he came up. “Hey, whatever you’ve got left for breakfast, please.”

“Oh, we’re still running breakfast orders no problem, look at the crowd we’ve got today,” Sebastian said as he gestured at the amount of people in his tavern. “Are the clinic folks okay? I hear there’s been a bunch of wounded coming in, after some major scuffles in the mine.”

“Eliza looks like she’s caught a bad cold. Emil and Bruno are okay, but they have a lot of people on their hands now,” Cassandra said simply as she folded her hands across the countertop. “Three of them Coon Tails, from what I could tell.”

Sebastian’s eyes widened at that. He leaned towards the kitchen’s entrance for a moment. “José! Hie yourself to the smithy, check if Sigrid’s back yet!”

“I’m assuming injured Coon Tails are bad news?” Cassandra asked as one of the Brigand’s servers sped out the door.

“That is one way to put it,” Sebastian agreed in a strained tone. “First of all, it’s extremely bad news that the Reds raised a hand on the Coon Tails at all, instead of negotiate. Secondly, the Coon Tails are a 'one for all, all for one' club—if there’s any wounded among them, they will not sit down until the people responsible are put down, Koto-style, cut the tongue that gave the order and the hand that carried it out. Third of all, I’m pretty sure some of the old mining equipment is still stashed in some of the deeper tunnels. Fire siphons included. And the Coon Tails are the only ones who know how any of it works.”

“Fire siphons?”

“You know, old-but-gold mining technique, spraying the rock with burning oil and freezing water in turns?”

“No, I know, I just– they were fire-setting underground?!”

“Yeah, when Koto ran the mine, mostly. Or at least, there were fewer accidents with fire-setting when Koto ran the mine,” Sebastian amended with a wince. “It’s closer to oil cauldrons used for castle or gatehouse defence than to genuine Bayangoran fire when it goes wrong, but Equis knows jack shit about when it was safe to use, anyway.”

Cassandra shook her head, incredulous. “So now there’s a gang war with the three local outfits allied against the Scarlet Brigade, and it involves genuine, if improvised, siege weaponry?”

“That about sums it up!” Sebastian turned as the boy he had sent outside ran back in. “Anything?”

“Han says she’s home, but resting,” the server panted.

“Okay, good, get back to work.” Sebastian sighed when the boy disappeared back into the kitchens. “Must have snuck back in overnight. If there was ever a bad damn time for taking a nap...”

Cassandra frowned slowly. “Wait a minute. Eliza said the guards kept her and the wounded out the gates overnight. How did Sigrid past them?”

“What, you think she’s above using magic to go in and out of town whenever she wants?” Sebastian chuckled.

“Do you think the fighting is going to spill out all the way to here?” Moreen spoke up from beside Cassandra.

Sebastian shook his head. “If anything, the Reds and the guards are going to strike a formal alliance and start pulling Rats and Shankers of the streets for court-martial on banditry charges. But it’s not like we’re gonna let that happen, not in this house. Bulk of the trouble is going to stay in the mine, especially now that the Coon Tails are involved in the fighting, rather than in making it stop so they can go back to maintaining a reasonable upkeep of the place.”

“I was under the impression that it’s unusual for the Scarlet Brigade to stir up this much trouble.” Cassandra slipped a silver to a server who brought her breakfast: a veritable mountain of bread slices that have been soaked in milk whipped with an egg and pan-fried, each with a thin layer of fruit preserve on top, and a steaming tankard of something that was very distinctly not ale. And for the better—given how hungry she was, an ale would’ve gone straight to her head. “...Is that acorn coffee?”

“Yes to both. The Reds have had a bit of infighting over leadership recently, though, way I hear it. I’d say good riddance if the new officer wasn’t this much of a blood-drunk idiot, but on the flip side, if he’s enough of a blood-drunk idiot to piss off the Coon Tails, then a lot of people are going to be mad enough to actually do something against the Reds this time. Only bad thing about that is the amount of guards in town.”

“I’m surprised they haven’t sent anyone to negotiate the terms of employment with the Scarlet Brigade yet,” Cassandra admitted with a frown.

Sebastian coughed politely, and leaned closer. “See, here’s the thing. Sending someone out and having that someone arrive are... very much not the same.”

Cassandra smiled into her tankard, only partly due to the tangy, bitter taste of the acorn coffee hitting her tongue. “I understand.”

It was a little funny how one Kotoan spy kept a riding horse, and another kept an extensive supply of poison. It was a little funny how an Ingvarrdian ex-mercenary sorceress was apparently capable of bypassing the checkpoints on her way in and out of town, and how the guards had already given her more than enough reasons to consider them her enemies.

And, Cassandra thought as she and Moreen set up shop in the late morning, it was more than a little funny how the Equisian soldiers still seemed to think that she herself was the worst of their problems.

~*~

“Are you ready to begin?” Adira asked, her tone no different than normal, even though her eyes betrayed that she had evidently noticed that things weren’t quite normal this time.

Rapunzel shook her head. “No. I can’t sit still today.” She caught herself fidgeting with her hands again, and forced herself to stop. “Could you walk with me instead?”

Adira inclined her head in an easy acquiescence. “We can push this to tomorrow, and take a walk today.”

“Can it be the day after tomorrow? I’m supposed to be present for a tax dispute tomorrow, and one more evening to think things over might help me, anyway.”

“That is not a problem for me.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“What’s causing you so much distress?” the old warrior asked as they began to stroll along the battlements at a restless pace.

Rapunzel sighed. “Well apparently, Cass is killing people now.” She looked up at Adira in the expectant silence that followed. “And– you don’t think that’s worrying, either? She hadn’t killed anyone for as long as I’ve known her! Not even when Zhan Tiri was– Why does no one else think that if Moonstone Cass hadn’t taken a single life, then it might be strange for Right Now Cass to do it?”

Adira folded her hands behind herself, a genuinely bewildered look on her face. “Princess, you must be aware that Shorthair had always been ready to kill for you and to die for you?”

“Die for– no! Why would you even say that?!”

The old warrior cleared her throat. “Do you remember the first time I came to speak with you? Shorthair decided to fight me sooner than allow me a moment alone with you. I had her disarmed and on the ground with my weapon sheathed and both hands held behind my back. I had done that entirely on purpose, to teach her not to raise a hand on me again, because I could kill her where she stood if I wanted to—and that I didn’t want to, not unless she insisted on giving me a reason for it. I don’t think that is a lesson she ever forgot. Now, do you remember the Great Tree? Shorthair watched Hector and myself matched evenly, and then she watched him best me. She put herself between Hector and you regardless.”

Rapunzel placed a hand across her face for a moment. “Are you saying she was trying to get herself killed before having to watch something happen to me?”

“She was being clever,” Adira corrected, though not ungently. “She heard me call Hector sadistic beforehand, and played the mouse to his cat. She used her surroundings and Hector’s own cruelty to neutralize danger that she could not duel into submission—and succeeded.”

“And the part where you said she was ready to kill for me, as well?” Rapunzel asked tiredly.

“Hector, again. When Shorthair pushed him off that cliff, she had done so with the intention to kill. The only reason for why that intention had not resulted in death was that he landed on his feet.” Adira cocked her head slightly, a considering look on her face now. “Frankly, I was surprised he hadn’t tried to pull Shorthair down with him.”

“I know this is a little beside the point right now, but—” Rapunzel trailed the hand down her face and looked at the warrior beside her. “I can tell you actually remember all our names. Can you stop calling her Shorthair?”

“Just because she burned her name into my mind does not mean she’s earned the familiarity of me using it,” Adira rebuffed calmly.

“Right. That happened. Sorry. It’s just that we have gotten into fights, when we were travelling along the black rocks trail. And Cass had never killed anyone. And after she took the Moonstone, too, she was– she was cruel, at times. But she still hadn’t killed anyone. And now...”

“Okay, one at a time, then. When you were fighting people on the road,” Adira acquiesced, a note of studious patience slipping into her voice now. “Were they people who ran away when they realized they were outmatched? Besides Hector.”

Rapunzel thought back. Then hung her head. “Yes, mostly.” Then thought again as she realized something. “Wait. How do you know that? You weren’t there a lot of the time.”

Adira cleared her throat quietly. “Have you never wondered what I’ve been doing, when I was not in your presence during travel? Why I was able to head Hector and King Edmund off as quickly as I did, when you crossed into their domains?”

“I just assumed you had other things to do! You were following us the entire time? Why haven’t you joined us openly for the long run instead, then?”

“You were travelling in a masterfully constructed and richly decorated cart pulled by two palace horses, and had no guards or soldiers with you aside from the person currently driving,” Adira said with mild exasperation. “You must have been aware that you were a mobile silver platter set with gourmet meats and caviar to every highwayman within a five mile radius—if not you yourself, then Shorthair, or Fishskin, or Earring, even. I left the task of protecting you at close range to your companions, which they were adequate for against most threats, and kept at enough of a distance to spot anyone preparing to ambush your group, yet close enough to intervene before they could act. So to come back to the original question: Shorthair had killed no one because she didn’t have to—because I was wiping for you front and back. And when she had to, with Hector, it was not for the lack of trying that she didn’t. Now, when she was under the influence of Zhan Tiri, it may have actually been the cruelty you’ve mentioned that stayed her hand, along with the standards she still held herself to. She fought you time and again using the rocks, rather than close the distance and cut you down—she wanted you to suffer, not to end. She jailed your little alchemist and waited for you to take him off her hands, rather than kill him and be done—she held to the idea that revenge is to be exact, not indiscriminate, and that wanton slaughter was simply beneath her. She had not killed because it was not her goal to do so, and because she was too proud to do so.”

“She left me behind a cave-in, someplace filled with toxic fumes, once,” Rapunzel said quietly.

Adira raised an eyebrow. “That would be an event on par with pushing Hector off a cliff, then. I imagine she had been at the end of her rope to a similar degree, at the time?”

Rapunzel looked away, and nodded. “She was... she was very hurt, back then. And I wasn’t making it any better.”

“Live and learn,” Adira said calmly, “and you’ve devoted yourself quite fervently to the latter.”

Rapunzel smiled despite herself. Then let the silence linger between them for a moment. “So... Cass is killing people now, but it’s not as new as I thought.”

“You are still uncomfortable with that idea,” Adira observed rather than asked.

“Yes. If anything, I’m more uncomfortable with it.”

“Princess, if you are to rule this kingdom one day, then people are going to kill in your name. And sometimes it will be bad people who are killed, and sometimes it will not,” the old warrior told her patiently. “I am not saying you must grow comfortable with that thought, but you will have to grow accustomed to it eventually. And if I know Shorthair at all, then I would say that when she is killing people, it is to keep other people safe, herself among their number. It will not do to begrudge her for that.”

“No. No, it won’t.” Rapunzel exhaled slowly, frowning at the unabated heaviness in her belly. “...I understand now that you’re right, but it still bothers me.”

“Is it a matter of trust?” Adira asked calmly. At Rapunzel’s inquiring look, she elaborated. “Is it that you don’t trust Shorthair’s judgement on what situations can only be resolved with violence? On which people deserve to die by her hand?”

“No,” Rapunzel said fervently, without a beat of hesitation. “Cass knows what she’s doing and what she’s getting herself into. I trust her judgement. Yes, she may like to fight, but she hates putting herself or others in unnecessary danger. If she’s drawing a weapon on someone, it’s probably because they did it first, or because she really thinks it’s the only way. Or the best way.”

“Then, if it’s not to do with her, is it to do with the people on the business end of her blade?”

Rapunzel paused at that. The silence stretched on between them as they walked along the battlements of Castle Corona, stepping from sunlight to shadow to sunlight again.

“Isn’t it silly to say that it might be?”

“No,” Adira told her calmly.

“Because I– it’s like I care about those people more than I care about Cass,” Rapunzel said with dismay. “And that’s just so patently not true, I love Cass and we’ve just established that if she kills someone, it was someone who meant her harm, or someone who was going to do bad things to other people and she stopped them from doing that.”

Adira watched her with an increasingly bewildered look in her eyes. “Princess, is it the thought that there are people in the world who mean others harm, and need to be violently prevented from bringing the intent to bear, that which is causing you such distress?”

Rapunzel stopped dead in her tracks, and only barely noticed the old warrior beside her coming to a halt as well. She knew that there were cruel people in the world. She knew it as only someone who had been hurt by such people could know. She wanted to scoff that of course she knew, argue that she was not that obliviously naive, that of course she had considered that before.

And yet, she found that she couldn’t.

“I think it might be,” she said again instead, her voice weak. “But why is that, though? I know that. It’s not like I’ve never seen that, or like I’ve not been cruel, either, even if I didn’t mean to.”

“How do you feel right now?” Adira asked carefully.

“Disappointed,” Rapunzel admitted with dismay, “and frustrated, and– and angry.”

“We can still sit and examine this, slowly.”

“No.” Rapunzel cleared her throat when she heard how harsh her voice came out. “No, I need to be together for that dispute tomorrow. And I feel like going into this now is– is just going to tear me up inside. In two days’ time, I’ll sit with... all this, and you, and I won’t get up until I break it into a thousand pieces.”

“Okay.”

Rapunzel ground her teeth, eyes averted to cast her gaze over the crenellated wall, across the churning sea. “I’m not pushing off hard feelings again, am I?”

“I do not think you are,” Adira told her gently, and Rapunzel looked up at her when she felt a rare touch of a hand on her shoulder. “Quite the contrary, I think it’s very mature of you to consider your own state in the context of your responsibilities and balance your own needs with those of your station. Many who hold positions of power fail to recognize that distinction. I will see you on the day after tomorrow, princess.”

“Okay. Thank you again.”

Adira gave her a nod and stepped away, heading back the way they came. With a sigh, Rapunzel re-entered the castle proper—and before long, she turned her head at the sound of footsteps echoing her own to find Faith trailing her at a deferent half-step behind and to her left.

“Do you know where I can find Eugene?”

“I think he might be at the Captain’s office this time of day,” Faith replied, giving Rapunzel a careful look even as she held her folded hands out to Pascal to hop into and ferried him onto Rapunzel’s shoulder. “Are you all right, princess? You seem a little... out of sorts.”

“I am. Out of sorts a little, I mean. But it’s okay, no need to worry.” Rapunzel smoothed both hands down the sides of her head and back, a gesture meant for keeping her hair out of her face that she had yet to unlearn, and one she wasn’t trying to unlearn very hard—not with how grounding it was to feel the ends of her hair slipping from her fingers. “Let’s go. I needed to see the Captain about something, anyway.”

The handmaiden inclined her head. “As you say, then.”

They walked through the castle in an easy silence after that. Rapunzel let the meandering corridors lead her, long familiar with their layout by now, without concentrating on where she was going.

Squeak, Pascal said, concerned with her absent-minded manner.

“I’ll be all right, buddy. Really.” Rapunzel cradled his head with a finger, and smiled a little when he hugged it to his chest with a loving chitter.

It wasn’t so strange to find Eugene in the Captain of the Guard’s office, recently. A small desk had been set out for him there, and he made a point to spend hours every day reading old Guard reports and court protocols for as long as he could handle, interspersed with asking questions about what he found of the Captain and any of the guards with a career that spanned twenty years or longer. King Frederic’s crackdown on crime after the abduction of his infant daughter had been only as severe as it was thorough—and most of the laws concerning criminal justice established in that period were still in use. And seeing as Eugene himself had been a toddler at the time, he had concurred to the advice that in order to plan out a better future, he had to learn from the example of the past, whether it was worth emulating or only demanded correcting.

The Captain looked up as Rapunzel and Faith stepped into his office. “Good afternoon, princess. Faith.”

The handmaiden bowed slightly to him without a word, at the same time as Eugene sprang to his feet with a grin as if their arrival meant nothing short of salvation.

“Sunshine! Just who I wanted to see!”

“Are you implying that sometimes you don’t want to see me?” Rapunzel teased with a smile.

“No, only that sometimes I want to see you even more than usually.” Eugene put an arm around her as he picked up on her mental discomfort, muted as it was by now, and she leaned into him gratefully. “Everything okay? I thought you’d be doing your thing with Adira right now.”

“We’ve rescheduled,” Rapunzel summarized, though she knew the oddity of it didn’t escape Eugene, and turned to the man whose office they were standing in. “Captain, Cassandra wrote again. She’s still doing well, and says that people have started to like her where she is after she did some stuff for them.”

The Captain smiled a little at that, and nodded firmly. “She’s doing us proud, then, as I always knew she would.”

“That’s not everything. She sent these, and said—” Rapunzel cleared her throat as she pulled the set of four wanted posters from her bag and handed them over. “Well, word for word she said, I’ve gotten rid of a few murderers.”

“She also said she was okay,” Eugene added pointedly as they watched the Captain’s face change at the sight of who the posters were of. “Right, sunshine?”

“She didn’t say anything about getting hurt,” Rapunzel admitted, wincing at her own omission of how laboured Cassandra’s handwriting had turned—a hint of further injury to the hand and forearm already mutilated beyond recovery. “I asked Owl, though, and he said that she wasn’t injured or unhappy when she had sent him.”

The Captain blew out a long breath. “When the Kotoan ambassador passed us the news that these four’s executions have been carried out, and by a Coronian knight-errant, I thought there must have been a mistake. But, once again, I see that the Royal Kotoan Office of the Inquisition does not make mistakes.”

“I genuinely forgot to mention that I gave Cass my favour before she left.” Rapunzel sighed. “I asked if she wanted to, and she said– well, she didn’t say anything, but she did give me her arm to tie it onto.”

“Isn’t Cass in Equis right now?” Eugene asked with a frown. “How did we get the news on the authority of a Kotoan inquisitor?”

“She’s at the border between Equis and Koto,” Rapunzel corrected. “The region that’s been contested between those two kingdoms for a long time now.”

“Even if she weren’t, the fact that we learn of her deeds from a Kotoan inquisitor would not surprise me,” the Captain said simply. “Their spy service spans the continent and reaches beyond it with ease. I’m nearly certain there are three of its agents within the city here—depending on whether some suspect intel we’ve gathered in the past was true, up to five. I can’t imagine King Lysander would allow a region marked for re-conquest to slip through that net.”

“Wait, we have foreign spies in the capital?” Eugene repeated.

“Of course we do. At least a dozen have been rotated out since I first took this post, after my men had seen through their cover. And the number of active Kotoan spies within Corona had dwindled over the years regardless, as diplomatic relations with Koto have improved. And—” the Captain inclined his head to Rapunzel, “—now that her highness’ knight-errant appears to be helping advance the interests of Koto, however unofficially, in a region that Koto and Equis have been butting heads over for decades, I can only expect these relations to improve even further.”

Rapunzel mulled that over. First the glowing letter of thanks after Cass made sure that a few treasures that belonged to Koto would find their way back there. Now the executions of four terrible people, three of them hailing from kingdoms allied with Corona as well.

She had thought that Cass just wanted to find adventure and figure out where she stood without the weight of the past on her shoulders. She hadn’t thought that Cassandra’s search for her own destiny would involve doing any favours to Corona, or any of its allies, not for how similar it could feel to what had been constantly required of Cass while she was living in the castle.

Maybe except for Ingvarr, Rapunzel conceded before herself as she remembered the first time Cass had given up on something for her.

“Would being known as the person who... executed... the Ingvarrdian among those four earn Cass some respect or opportunities in Ingvarr?”

“If she can prove her claim, then I imagine it would,” the Captain admitted with feeling, folding the one-eyed outlaw’s poster to the front. “Ingvarr prides itself on solving its own problems whenever possible. I believe the last time it put out an international bounty, before this man’s, was almost a hundred years ago.”

Eugene shook his head, squinting at the poster. “I’ve heard enough to know this guy was bad news, but how do you even say his last name? Is it even a name?”

“Galdrsbani. It means 'Spell-Slayer'. He was known for murdering sorcerers who came from among his countrymen, wherever he came across them,” the Captain said simply. “Any other deaths he had caused were mostly in self-defence or somewhat accidental, somewhat off-handed in nature.”

“Oh.” Rapunzel thought back to the evening she and her father had spent with an Ingvarrdian sailor-prince and his personal protector—one of whom had told her that they taught all of their sailors enough magic to protect them from drowning, and the other was kind enough to act with respect both of Rapunzel’s curiosity about magic and her father’s resentment of it. A conversation about sorcery that stemmed from personal virtue and from knowing one’s own place in the world. And now, the knowledge that someone used to seek out and kill such people on purpose, paired with the knowledge that Cass, brave, strong, incredible Cass, had stopped him from doing that to anyone ever again, and two conversations of how Cass had been right to kill these people. “What... did the Coronian one do?”

The Captain sighed heavily, and shot Faith a brief look. Apologetic, Rapunzel realized after a moment. “Well, that is a case I’ll be happy and very, very relieved to finally close. Casimir was first apprehended a few years after your disappearance, princess. We tracked him down through a chain of transactions he had made with a few dozen other criminals of every stripe—common thieves and burglars, highwaymen and thugs involved in extortion rings—demanding they perform some favours for him in exchange for a... a charmed object, of sorts, with a single use and holding magic that assisted these criminals in evading the Guard, resisting arrest, or escaping from it.”

Eugene chuckled. “To think some knuckleheads need magic to break out of jail.”

“Fitzherbert, be serious for once. The favours he demanded were always of the same sort, and more than one of these criminals found themselves in over their head—some even turned themselves in, begging for protection in return for their testimony against him. I regret to admit that each of them had either disappeared, or was found dead shortly after.”

“What did he want from them?” Rapunzel asked hesitantly.

“Abductions,” the Captain said bluntly. “The burglars were to steal people from their beds. The highwaymen were to take prisoners, rather than demand valuables and run. Then Casimir would retrieve these unfortunate folks, and spirit them away to his heavens-forsaken hideout. When we finally found the place and stormed it...” He paused, an uneasy expression crossing his face. “An abattoir would seem clean and welcoming in comparison. We found multiple people, people who had been missing, dismembered all across it. As well as many more of those little charms we’ve intercepted prior, both unfinished and complete.”

“Oh,” Rapunzel said weakly.

“So he killed people to make things, to give out to criminals, so they would bring him more people to kill for making things to give out to more criminals...?” Eugene shook his head, a grimace of dismay on his face now. “Where’s the profit? What did he get out of it?”

The Captain lifted his hands in a shrug. “Satisfaction? Love of the craft? Practice before engaging in sorcery more purposeful and at least as nefarious? I can’t say, and I’m very happy I won’t have to try plumbing the depths of a mind that depraved ever again.”

“Yeesh. Man, am I glad I liked my crimes too victimless to cross paths with that guy.”

The Captain inclined his head. “One of your redeeming qualities, Fitzherbert.”

“One of my many redeeming qualities, Cap.”

“Those charms he made,” Rapunzel asked slowly, pushing through a sense of foreboding that screamed at her to stop asking questions that she was not ready to hear the answers to. “What did they look like?”

“Inconspicuous, really,” the Captain admitted. “We’ve identified many of those only after storming the hideout of that degenerate, from looking at the ones he had been in the middle of crafting, and we believe there were more sorcerers kingdom-wide involved in similar activities—anywhere between three and seven in total, depending on the year. And since these items had to slip under the Guard’s notice, they were often disguised as meaningless personal effects. Pendants. Good luck charms. Gambling tokens. Weighed dice. Friendship bracelets.”

“Do you still have any of them?”

She noticed Faith turning to her with a nervous glance. The Captain considered her carefully. Eugene put a hand on her shoulder, the one that Pascal wasn’t perched atop.

“Sunshine, I don’t think there’s any need to see that.”

“I am not going to do anything with them,” Rapunzel said with a calm she did not feel, the ashen taste of wither and decay and terrible consequences of carelessness with magic still staining her tongue. “I just need to see for myself.”

Eugene and the Captain exchanged glances, before the latter cleared his throat uncomfortably. “We... do still keep evidence from the investigation, yes.”

Rapunzel steadied her voice. “Show me.”

Despite the apprehensive look in his eyes, the Captain bowed his head at that. “Yes, your highness. If you would follow me, please.”

He led the small group towards one of the Guard’s archive rooms; Eugene fell in step at Rapunzel’s side immediately, without waiting for an invitation or permission, while Faith still trailed behind, despite the sudden tightness to how she held herself. After a few short minutes of looking across the neatly indexed boxes, the Captain climbed a stepladder to pull one off a high shelf, and rested it atop a nearby table.

“These came from Casimir’s hands, princess. I implore you to be very careful—some of these have been... discharged of their powers, and some have not.”

“I’ll be careful,” Rapunzel promised, and lifted the lid off the box.

Her first thought was that the charms did look inconspicuous. She took a few into her hands, if delicately. A bracelet of braided ribbons, all the same faded green—all centred on a sinew, she found with a sick feeling when she gently pried the fabric apart. Another, but woven of embroidery threads and fixed with a bone-carved clasp. A simple pendant, carved from bone as well. Another, carved from wood this time, linden if the depth of detail was any indication, covered with a thin layer of tallow-like resin.

Quite like the little pendants she had formed by pressing cookie cutters into rolled-out clay, then glazed into a deep glossy black with bone char paint. Quite like the beeswax candles she had coloured with a rusty reddish-brown pigment that was, in hindsight, very much not vermillion.

Distantly, she was aware of her breath coming in short and fast, now. Of the floor threatening to fall out from under her. Of the hands within her field of vision, and trembling now, being her own.

“Sunshine?” Eugene prompted, alarm staining through his voice. He looked from Rapunzel, pale as a sheet and staring at the trinkets as if she had seen a ghost, to Pascal—who had shrunk onto himself atop her shoulder, eyes wide and scales shifting colour to camouflage him against her clothes on a reflex, holding himself more still than Eugene had ever seen. “Frog?”

“Gothel used to make things like these,” Rapunzel said shakily. “And I– I—”

“I mean, we already knew she was a bottom feeder, but—”

“—I helped.”

“You what?” Eugene blurted out before he could think about it. “I’m sorry, what?!”

“I was a child!” Rapunzel screamed, raw desperation and panic echoing through the room. “I thought she was my mother! I saw her doing crafts and I just wanted to spend time with her, she was so rarely home! I didn’t know what she was doing when she went outside! I didn’t know where these came from, or where anything came from, the food, the yarn, the clay, the—!”

“Hey. Hey, hey, hey.” Eugene brushed the trinkets out of Rapunzel’s hands, leaving them to tumble back into the box, and held her tight, only as tight as she clung to him in return. “Rapunzel, we know you. We know you would’ve never done that on purpose. And you were not the one who hurt these people, Gothel was, so blame Gothel and not yourself. She was using you, like she had used you for the Sundrop in your hair.”

And it was true, true enough that Rapunzel didn’t even try to argue—not when she gripped the back of his vest in both hands in a desperate reach for anything to anchor the ground back under her feet, not after she calmed down a little from the initial shock and let the Captain get back to his usual work, not after she asked to be alone for a bit and spurned the spacious expanse of her room in favour of climbing into a spot that Cass had once termed her 'brood perch', half-affectionate and half-exasperated: a space cleared out on the highest shelf of a massive bookcase, nested with pillows and blankets and supporting her back against a giant atlas almost as large as her entire torso. It always made her feel better to tuck herself in there, when she was feeling sad or hurt or overwhelmed. To feel the walls against each but one side of herself: the bookcase’s edges in front, above, below, to one side, the atlas behind, and only have open space to gaze out over to her right. To open one of the tower’s three books in her lap and read one sentence, and watch the ones that followed rise up from her memory, billowing up in her head like a recitation and like so much smoke, shouting down and obscuring everything that made her climb up there in the first place, until she could breathe again.

Squeak, Pascal hedged with open concern, from where he was nested against the side of her throat—from where he hadn’t moved, not since they were led out of the Guard’s archive room.

“I don’t feel guilty,” Rapunzel told him quietly. “I feel violated. I knew that Gothel was using me for my hair, but it just didn’t occur to me until today that she was using me for my hands, too. She let me believe it was something good—some proof that she loved me—but it was just another lie I told myself for her benefit.” She gripped her hands into fists and opened them again, glossy burn scars across the palms shining against the setting sun. “Would I have even tried to make things in as many ways as I did, if she hadn’t encouraged me like that? Would have taught myself to work with clay and yarn and wax and paints?”

Squeak, Pascal said decisively.

Rapunzel smiled, even though there was no mirth, no warmth in it, and lifted her scars to the light. “You’re right. I’m not about to let her take that from me, to poison even that for me.”

She took the ladder down from the bookshelf, and walked over to stand by her desk, setting down the tower’s books in their usual prominent place across it and dislodging a stack of tomes taken from the castle’s library to pull out her second journal from between them. After unlocking the covers, she trailed the backs of her fingers over the title page one more time, the pool of self-reflection illuminated by a full moon, and herself in an understated, humble silhouette before both.

Tend to her duties tomorrow and walk into that pool the day after, and keep walking until she was deep enough for everything to make sense, she promised herself fiercely.

Rapunzel flipped the page, turning to a two-page spread of twin illustrations in sheer black-and-white, deep dark ink confined within lines as thin as they were severe, left uncoloured across the paper. On the left page, Cassandra, sprawled bonelessly across torn-up cobbles, her perfect face obscured with her hair falling across it like a curtain, her limbs limp at awkward angles, her chest and stomach opened up with the barest hint of cracked ribs poking through as a grotesque amount of black blood poured out to form a monstrous, bloated shape cut with jagged lines of a grinning demonic maw, two angular eyes shaped like lacerations burning stark white among that sea of ink, a pair of curled ram-like horns spanning the breadth of the page like a crown. On the right, Eugene, slumped against a wall in profile, his own chiselled face hidden among shadows in turn, and the shadow tied to his feet not his own, but Gothel’s, outlined in chainlinks and shackles and brambles and snakes, pieces of a shattered mirror and a bloodstained dagger strewn across the floor, and again a grotesque amount of black blood pouring out of the stab wound in his side to form the tower’s brickwork downwards, downwards, until the bottom edge of the paper cut it short.

She flipped the page again, turning to another ink painting—this time of her parents, standing side by side, their faces bewildered and showing absolutely no recognition, and their images formed of words they had called her with and told her, honey, sweetheart, I’m proud of you, there’s more in you, how strong you are, the ink dark at the bottom of their figures and gradually fading upwards, until their wide eyes and confused faces were as faint as when they did not remember her, did not remember saying these things to her.

It was the only place within her second journal where there were any words at all. Normally, in her actual journal, she interspersed the art with verbalized memories. This one, however, she filled with what she was struggling with, what she had no words for just yet, what she had to pin down and hold still to look at it before she could think or talk about it at all. So there were no words, except for typography.

Rapunzel exhaled slowly, looking up from the journal to the brood perch: an elevated, confined space that a girl raised in a tower would crawl into whenever she needed to make herself feel safe. She shook her head at herself, even as she trailed her fingertips against the blank page next to the painting of her parents and snapped the journal shut.

“I think we’re going to need a bigger canvas,” she told Pascal calmly, and turned her gaze to the wall.

It was still strange to pencil silhouettes beforehand. She was more used to passionate, spur-of-the-moment captures of what she felt and saw, almost lineless figures and colours blending smoothly from one into another more often than not. But this was different—this was structured, quite like her sessions of sitting down and walking into the water with Adira—and for that, it was more fitting, and for how unfamiliar and how much more demanding it was, it was that much more rewarding.

And it did serve perfectly well to tire her out before bed, enough that she could sleep even despite the churning millstones of emotions too dark and too vicious to name still wheeling inside her after everything. Enough that she could sleep, and come morning, disentangle herself from the slick and coiling viper nest of restless dreams, half-remembered memories kneaded through with recurring older nightmares and fears. Enough that she was not exhausted before the day had even started, and that she relished to start it, to put that entire quagmire to the side for a bit.

And come sunset, the tax dispute condemned to a standstill until an investigation into a nearby count’s estate returned verified estimates and records of wealth, Rapunzel was leaning her arms against the back of her chair as Faith worked to unlace the back of her dress, and breathed with her whole chest before letting the air out on a sigh of relief.

“Are you quite alright, princess? You’ve been terribly focused today, relentless even. And what with last night being as, um... impactful as it was...”

Rapunzel chuckled breathlessly, one hand rising to her face. “Impactful sure is a word for it. I knew Gothel was a horrible person. I did. I just wasn’t prepared for that she would’ve involved me in something that evil. I feel like my heart needs a shower.”

“I wasn’t aware that it was a witch who had taken you, as well,” Faith said quietly.

“Well, she didn’t do much magic in front of me. Only enough to keep me scared. Illusions, blowing out the lights.” Rapunzel paused as something registered. “Wait a minute, 'as well'?”

There was a brief silence only interrupted by the rustle of loosened laces. Then Faith cleared her throat quietly, and when she spoke again, it was haltingly and in a tone barely above a whisper.

“I’m not surprised that you don’t remember, princess. But some time after you left... I was on my day off, visiting family on the mainland. I thought I’d heard someone in my room, at night, but I blacked out directly after. When I woke up, there were bars, and we were in the back of a moving cart. Day after day, we’d hear voices, men and women arguing about what to do with us. I think we were meant for one of the sorcerers like the Captain mentioned last night, but who vanished overnight, and that– that made us surplus, one of them had said. A fight broke out eventually, and one of the winners had thrown a ring of keys into the back of the cart before they ran, and then one of us managed to reach these keys and let us all out, and... we didn’t know where we were. We were just trying to find a road, or a village, or– or anywhere, and people started splitting off, and eventually it was just me and a boy who was from here, from the capital, too. We’ve wandered through a forest for days, without seeing another soul, and when we came into a meadow with a– a little house, and a pair of people who asked if we’d like some tea...”

“The birds,” Rapunzel said faintly. “The teapot?”

Faith nodded, eyes downcast and lower lip between her teeth now. “We’ve climbed high enough up into the sky to see which direction to go to Corona. Then... well. You know what then. If you and your companions hadn’t arrived...”

Rapunzel turned on her heel and grabbed the handmaiden in a bear hug, paying no mind to the fact that she was essentially down to her smallclothes. “It’s over now. It’s over, and it’ll never happen again, not to you, not to anyone else.”

Then she realized what she was doing, and was on the verge of pulling away, a breath drawn to apologize for the outburst, when she felt Faith hug back.

“Thank you. I knew you’d understand, princess. It’s why I wanted a place at your side so badly.”

“Did you tell the Captain what you just told me?” Rapunzel asked, trying to sound gentle.

Faith nodded into her shoulder. “I told him everything I remembered, and went back once or twice with another detail I’d recalled later. I’m... trying not to think about it, or about how it was not the worst that could have happened to me, how I’m lucky to be alive at all.”

“Well, you know I have a personal beef with abductors,” Rapunzel hazarded, and was rewarded with a shaky laugh. She let Faith pull away, and led her by the hand to a chair, then threw a nightgown over her shoulders and sat as well. “And Cass broke the teapot, as well.”

“Oh yes, yes she did. It was the only time I’ve ever seen Cassandra cry,” Faith admitted, wiping at her own face now. “And the first time I’ve been afraid of her.”

Rapunzel watched her for a moment, letting her settle down while pieces were clicking into place. A servant who had been absent from work or unable to work for a few months. What her mom had said about Faith having asked to be made the princess’ lady-in-waiting after the Saporian insurrection—after she had come home from the journey towards the Moonstone. “How did you get home? You and the boy with you?”

“Well, we walked. A day or two after you’ve lifted that curse from us, we woke up and found a stack of warmer clothes, travel food, and a decent amount of coin next to ourselves. I don’t know who left it there for us, but it was enough. There was another terribly dark forest in the way, so we went around it, and by then we’ve chanced across a Kotoan merchant caravan heading towards Castle Corona. I don’t know what they assumed my relationship to the boy was, but I can’t claim to care, not when they took us along anyway.” To her surprise, Faith managed a smile. “I can barely look at hard cheese anymore, but I have to admit, it did get us home.”

They spoke for a little longer, of the boy who had gone back to his parents and of how he hid or pretended he didn’t know Faith every time they saw each other in the market, of Faith blaming him none as she assumed she was simply a reminder of a horrifying period of his life and hoped that he was young enough to forget it entirely, in time, of having to explain the whole ordeal before being taken back to work in the castle, of recovery from helplessness and terror and hurt. Then Rapunzel sent her handmaiden to bed, with another hug and much less stiff this time, and a smile.

And then she tore her second journal from its hiding spot and yanked out her coloured inks, and spent hours furiously painting a knotted frame of grasping hands and screaming mouths and bloodshot eyes along the edges of the page, and within it, a little golden bird with a feathered mane in the upper half of the space, with the lower blanketed with a thin cover of snow—and a chain of the bird’s footprints leading up to it, footprints rapidly filling in with deep dark red from beneath. Pieces had clicked, and were still clicking, hard cheese on the road, a deadly dark forest blocking that road, never leave home without hard cheese within that forest, I was wiping for you front and back from the same person a day ago. And when she was tired enough to sleep, with a waxing moon already high up in the sky, Rapunzel slept with a pillow tucked over and around her head as if she could smother her nightmares right along with herself—and wasted no time after breakfast with tracking Adira down, rather than wait until sundown.

“Were you the one who left enough things for Faith and that kid so they could make it back home?”

To her surprise, Adira actually winced, before looking at her from where she was polishing her new sword. “Good morning to you as well, princess. I assume you haven’t told her yet that it was me, if you’re asking about it in the first place?”

“It was you, then.”

“It was me, yes. I had a job to do, so I didn’t lead them back. But if I was killing bandits left and right for you and your retinue anyway, I could at least put their belongings to better use,” Adira said, perfectly matter-of-fact about the whole endeavour, and wiped a soft cloth along the odd, brass-sheen blade one more time. “I would appreciate it if you kept that to yourself, though.”

Rapunzel dragged her eyes from the weapon, strangely familiar as it seemed despite knowing she had never seen one like it, and to the old warrior’s face. “Why?”

“Because it will just make running into her awkward,” Adira said in an even tone. “I didn’t know she was a servant at the Coronian court. Nor had I expected to find myself living in the Coronian court. There is nothing lost if she doesn’t know, and nothing to be gained by letting her know. So leave the matter be.”

Rapunzel thought that over, and had to admit the logic of it. And if Adira didn’t want to be thanked, that was her business, wasn’t it. “Okay. I won’t say anything.”

Adira inclined her head gratefully. “Okay, then. Am I right to assume that you would like to sit with me sooner rather than later?”

“Yes, if that’s alright with you? I understand if you have things to do before that, but I’d rather get this underway as soon as we can.”

“I can make time.” Adira gave her sword one last pass with the rag, then sheathed it at her back and sprang to her feet in an effortless motion.

They took one of the castle’s unused room for how cold it was getting outside this time of year, dust shimmering in the sunlight that fell across long-unswept floors and sheet-covered furniture. And once the incense was burning, once they both shifted into their preferred ways to sit for meditation, Rapunzel took a deep breath and closed her eyes, and let the water rise behind them.

“Find the pool,” Adira told her in a steady tone, “and tell me what it’s like today.”

“It looks the same. Dark meadow with fireflies, three black rocks standing out against the full moon, spiral staircase leading down the water...” Rapunzel trailed off when she noticed that there was, in fact, something different. “The water is steaming today.”

“Okay,” she caught a note of surprise in Adira’s voice. “And where are you?”

“At the top of the stairs. About to walk down.”

“Then go ahead, and tell me how deep we are heading.”

“Deep. Until I can’t see the surface from where we are anymore.”

“What can you feel?”

“It’s hotter here. The water, it’s almost uncomfortable, and air bubbles are escaping upwards.”

“Okay. Why is the water boiling?”

“Because of what we’ve talked about the day before yesterday. About Cass killing people and about how bad people exist.” Rapunzel drew a deeper, slower breath to steady herself. “Because I’ve learned that there are people who abduct and murder others and fuel magic trinkets with their deaths, and the woman who raised me was one of them. Because I’ve learned she had me helping her make some of those trinkets. And that there’s someone in my life who had only narrowly escaped being murdered like so.”

Adira was quiet for a moment. “Concentrate on the thought that started this all. That there are people in the world who take pleasure in hurting others, and have to be violently stopped from doing it again.”

Rapunzel did so, and saw red mist rising through the water. It took her a few seconds to realize that she had also audibly gnashed her teeth. “Agh. Sorry—”

“Don’t. Let yourself be angry. And tell me why the prospect of accepting that thought is so repulsive to you.”

“Because it would mean she was right,” Rapunzel bit out, her voice dropping into a snarl. “Gothel, she kept telling me the world was dangerous and that people were terrible, that anything and everyone I came across would only find ways to hurt me, she kept me caged with that fear and worried sick for her every time she went outside, and all just so she could use me yet again and in yet another way. She was wrong, in everything she did or said to me, she was evil and cruel and I will never let her chain me up again, I will never let her keep me scared again, and I will not let her be right.”

“Was this Gothel,” Adira mouthed the name as carefully as if it were a curse, “as bad as the dangerous people she told you scary stories about?”

Rapunzel barked a laugh, the sound of it something she never knew could come from her, enraged and vicious. “All of that and more. She was the worst person I’ve ever known, right up there with Zhan Tiri. Actually, it feels like she was worse than Zhan Tiri, but I know that’s just because Gothel had hurt me and lied to me, personally, ever since I was baby. Zhan Tiri did almost the same thing to Cass, I just didn’t have to watch that. So it feels like less when I’m not thinking about it.”

“Take what you just said, and set it side by side with your refusal to permit that people can enjoy evil.”

Deep in the steaming volcanic vent of a pool, Rapunzel lifted her hands up, one-half of an oyster’s shell in each.

“Gothel was the worst person I’ve ever met,” she repeated slowly. “And I can’t accept that people can be bad, because it will mean that she was right.”

She folded her hands, and the shell, and unfolded again to find a pearl between them, a perfect little orb as if the depths had its own tiny pale moons to give her.

“This is not a problem. It’s not something I’m responsible for fixing, and not something that can be fixed in the first place, not by anyone but every person who chooses between doing something evil or not doing it. It’s a fact of life that I took issue with.” Rapunzel took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, and watched the red mist clear and the boiling water cool somewhat. “Being wrong in every way that matters doesn’t make Gothel any more right than she already wasn’t.”

“How do you feel right now?”

“Better. I’m still angry, though.”

“Rapunzel,” Adira said patiently, “you are allowed to be outraged on your own behalf.”

That gave Rapunzel pause for a long moment. “Isn’t it wrong of me?”

“No. Anger is not something to get rid of. It’s a feeling, and it’s important—and as with love, what matters is not how we feel, but what we do about it. You don’t have to smile through it anymore.”

Rapunzel choked out a shaky laugh at that. Then tears trailed down her cheeks. And then she had to unlace her hands and clamp them over her mouth, as her back bent under the onslaught of everything that simple permission had ripped up to the surface, as hysterical laughter and heart-rending sobs wrenched out of her at the same time, as she folded down on herself like an axe had just been slammed into her stomach and chest to cleave her in half.

Distantly, she registered a rustle of fabric next to herself, even though she couldn’t move, not even turn her head, not even open her eyes. Then the next tears-choked burst of laughter that tore out of her mouth turned into a painful whine, when one of Adira’s hands came against the nape of her neck and started gently stroking her rigid back, down the spine, as if to ease out the two decades of pent-up anger, fear, frustration, resentment, and worse, and Rapunzel cried, and screamed her way through every shuddering exhale.

She couldn’t tell how much time had passed until her shoulders were no longer tense, but trembling, until she could start wiping tears from her face rather than just dig her fingertips into her jaw and cheekbones. The hand over her back rubbed across her shoulders more firmly, then stilled, but stayed as Rapunzel slowly straightened up where she sat and turned to look, finding Adira with one leg folded down under herself, the other drawn up to her chest so she could rest her chin on her knee, and with a sympathetic look on her face.

“...That happened, huh?”

“How are you feeling?” the old warrior at her side asked gently.

“Like I’ve just retched up a world’s worth of poison,” Rapunzel said weakly. “Which I guess I have. My world’s.”

“And it’s not something everyone can do, no matter how necessary.” Adira withdrew the touch, and busied herself with untying a canteen from her hip. “Give me your hands, splash cold water on your face.”

Rapunzel extended cupped hands to her. The water was indeed cold—she thought she could hear the clinking of ice cubes from inside the flask—and it helped, and she found herself sighing with relief as she wiped it from her face with a kerchief, along with sweat and tears. “Thank you.”

“Do you want to finish like we always do?”

“Yes, please.”

“Okay.” Adira pulled her leg down to sit on her heels beside Rapunzel. “Fold your hands at your heart, and lift it up. Thank the world for seeing you to this point; thank yourself for the work you’re putting into helping yourself get better.”

“Thank you,” Rapunzel whispered as she bowed herself forward, marvelling at how wonderfully loose things felt inside her chest. She waited for Adira to tap her hands to her forehead and mouth the words soundlessly, and open her eyes after. “And thank you, so much, for all of your help, for everything you’ve done for me and helped me do.”

A small smile pulled at Adira’s lips, and she shook her head as she looked at Rapunzel again. “What a start to the day.”

“Oh gosh,” Rapunzel groaned, “I forgot it’s morning.”

“This is why I’d originally proposed that we take these sessions in the evenings.” Adira watched her sympathetically. “Are you needed for much of public appearance today?”

“Not much, thank goodness. But I think I might just... cancel my study period, this once.” Rapunzel smoothed her hands over her hair, sighing with relief when she felt the ends brush against her scarred-up palms. “I need to rest up a little. Write Cass back. Paint something for her.”

“Make sure to find someone who can give you a hug,” Adira said gently, something very much like pride in her eyes. “You’ve made a big step forward today.”

~*~

“You know, you don’t have to sleep in the stable,” Moreen said hesitantly as they finally passed the guard checkpoint back into town, the Tysons’ dinky cart laden with more clutter of everyday use for sale. “There’s space enough for you in the room that Bastian is renting me.”

“I know. It’s that I have some things that I don’t want to leave unwatched,” Cassandra said, glancing to the large leather satchel that held the wardwork box. “Plus, with the guards as keen on giving me trouble as they are, I worry they’d have someone sneak in and try to injure Fidella.”

Moreen winced a little. “I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

“Hopefully I’m just paranoid.” Cassandra leapt down onto the town square’s cobblestones and extended her arms for the chicken cage that the farmer had been holding in her lap the entire way. “Hanging in there, buddy?”

Mrow, Barley said miserably, bundled up in a little blanket inside the basket.

“Stay strong, you’ll stretch your paws and figure out your new home in a minute.”

She had sat down with the cat the evening prior, after making sure Moreen was otherwise occupied, to explain the situation to Barley in simple terms and tell her to choose between staying at the farm, in which case she should leave before the morning, or coming into town to live with a man who had been good to Moreen, in which case it would save everyone a lot of time and effort if she got into the basket. And come morning, they found Barley curled up inside the basket with an unbearably sad look on her face.

With the farmer taking the basket back to walk into the Brazen Brigand’s dining floor, Cassandra and the stable boy pulled the cart and Fidella into the stable. Once that was squared away, she stood at the entrance for a moment, giving the town a once-over. The guard patrols were as numerous as usually, the new normal of too many in too large groups that had been established when the reinforcements had arrived. The mine settlement’s bandits were mingling with the townsfolk, talking or doing business or heading inside with their relatives from town, groups of Shankers and groups of Rats and slightly more often now, groups of mixed Shankers and Rats, occasionally with an errant Coon Tail that the members of both other outfits clearly deferred to without discussion and without trouble. The brick booth holding the job board was being closed up so close to dusk, Teagan waving a hand at Cassandra as he walked towards a backstreet inn that was distinctly not the Brigand. And at the smithy—and drawing the nervous stares of many a guard—Hanalei and Sigrid were both hard at work, the smith hammering away while the familiar silhouette of a two-handed sword with a thick, jagged blade rested in the furnace, the sorceress’ voice weaving through the clanging of metal on metal. This time, however, she didn’t look entranced within her work as much as she looked strained, all reaching arms and grasping hands, face twisted up in a grimace of desperation, voice closer to a lament or a funeral dirge than a sung spell and breaking into a vibrating wail on every other note. A flash of spectral blue shone behind Sigrid’s shoulder, an indistinct figure reaching out to her, and another at the right, and another at her side. The sorceress shivered as if dunked into ice-cold water, but didn’t falter, only hiked her shoulders halfway up to her ears and kept on singing, and her husband kept on forging.

Cassandra dragged her eyes away and walked into the Brigand’s dining floor, just in time to watch Barley nosing carefully at one of Sebastian’s hands, and nodded a greeting at him. “Any new cataclysm happen while we were gone?”

“Nothing that wasn’t already here, thank heavens,” Sebastian tapped a knuckle against the underside of the countertop. “Eliza’s gotten really sick, so the clinic fam is struggling a little with that entire boatload of wounded they’ve got on their hands now. And I guess Sigrid’s been scaring everyone who hasn’t seen her magecrafting yet.”

“I saw, they’re still at it,” Cassandra said with a frown. “That doesn’t happen often, does it?”

“No, but she’s been really insistent that we’re going to need... well, whatever it is that they’re making. Really hope it’s finished soon, though, they’ve been going for a day and a half now. She has a great voice, don’t get me wrong, but it’s getting hard to listen to when she’s been singing the same three nearly identical verses the. Entire. Time.”

Cassandra paused at that, watching Barley slink away from Sebastian’s hand for now. “She has some... foresight, right?”

Sebastian grimaced. “She can’t do it on command, and it’s usually so vague that you only get what she meant in hindsight. And she kind of hates it, anyway, so do me a favour and don’t raise it with her.”

“Done deal. Think we can get some dinner from you?”

And though the food was as good as ever, onion soup with croutons tossed through in quite a generous amount, the evening meal was a sombre affair, the stormy atmosphere across the Brigand’s dining floor far from relaxing as the Shankers and Rats mostly populating the tavern these days kept each other’s company and talked in murmured, worried voices, losing sleep over thoughts of friends and families, of the makeshift home they had struggled so to make a living in. Eventually, some began retiring for the night—in pairs or threes, Cassandra noticed, rather than alone. Sebastian must have started quartering them wherever there was enough space for another bedroll or hammock, regardless of how many the Brigand’s rooms were designed to hold. And then there were some who laid down to sleep on the dining room’s benches, and some, on the tables that weren’t immediately visible from the entrance.

Food supply was going to start becoming a problem very soon, Cassandra thought as she laid in the hammock that had been kept for her in Fidella’s stall in the stable. However well the local hunters and ex-mercenaries—or still-mercenaries, really—could supplement the Brigand’s stores with venison and whatever they could smuggle from that nearby village across the border with Koto, it would not be enough for very long. Unless the bandit war nearby was resolved, there would be no stability to be found for people who had none of their own anymore. And if the Scarlet Brigade was to emerge victorious, no matter how decimated, it would only mean a more affordable amount of more experienced mercenary soldiers ready for being hired, further fortifying the border against the Kotoan army.

With a sigh, Cassandra sat up, and started going through everything she had from here. A few small rock shards, threaded with veins of silver. A spare roll of silken bandages. A long-since fulfilled bounty poster, the first she had taken, Emil’s shaky handwriting and multiple detailed drawings of starlight woundwort across it. A set of hunting and skinning knives, gathered up in a small leather case along with a small whetstone. Three slightly faded hair ribbons, knotted loosely together to keep them in one place. Three reports, or letters, or who knew what else, penned in Colette Bayard’s young hand and long-since turned entirely illegible with years upon years of frost and rain. A bag of poison and crackers and smoke bombs, gifted to her by the Kotoan spies. A wardwork box holding the belongings of a Coronian serial killer she had pursued against her better sense and executed, and against all odds, lived to tell about it. A dozen liquid-carrier arrows fletched with falcon flights dyed bright turquoise, and forged for use against monsters.

A cynical part of her was grumbling that she shouldn’t have stayed in one place as long as she did. The rest of her, unfortunately, was only ever maintaining that once again, there was something needed here—and that she was here, and she was capable.

And that, this time, she was not the only person both willing and capable.

Cassandra set her belongings aside and stood up, and gathered up her hair again. As she was tying it off, with the white ribbon this time, she turned at the sound of a sleepy little nicker. “Just going indoors, don’t worry. I’ll be back soon.”

Snort, Fidella reprimanded gently, but argued no further. Cassandra patted her shoulder, then left the stable to walk back into the Brigand’s dining floor.

It had to be close to midnight, what with how cold it was outside. With that estimate, she found herself mildly surprised when she saw Sebastian still awake and at the countertop—and only more surprised with seeing another person there as well, one who had not been there at any point of the evening before, slumped with head and both arms against the polished wood and with an empty glass before her, platinum blonde hair reaching half down her back, an undercut sheared against both sides of her head. And right now, one hand rising slowly from the countertop, to point a finger at Cassandra without looking.

“Don’t ever bring me anything as fucked up as that sword again, Kazandra.”

“I almost didn’t recognize you with your hair down,” Cassandra said dryly as she sat next to the clearly drunk sorceress. “Don’t you have a bed to sleep in?”

Sigrid laughed breathlessly, her voice raw and reduced to a near-soundless rasp. “You try sleeping with a quiver full of ghosts.”

“You reforged that into arrows?”

“Yeah. Now I just need to fletch all that. But not before I get nice and fucking hammered.”

“I hope you’re not here to keep her company in that endeavour,” Sebastian said tiredly.

“Oh, fuck off, Bastian.” Sigrid flicked her fingers at her empty glass, pushing across to him for a refill. “You dealt with those kitties yet?”

Sebastian looked at her from over pouring more whiskey into her glass. “What kitties?”

“What fucking kitties, he says. Barley’s litter! I know you said you were gonna keep Pilsner and Cookie, but anyone showed up yet to adopt Pancake or Scarecrow?” When the resulting silence lingered, Sigrid rattled out a frustrated groan and lifted her head marginally from the countertop, only to thump her forehead down on it. “That hasn’t happened yet, has it.”

“No, I just got Barley today,” Sebastian said gently. “And stop making these sounds, you’ll tear your throat up even worse.”

“Pour me half a tankard, and do you have anything of a snack handy to go with it?” Cassandra asked the tavern’s owner while Sigrid grumbled inaudibly to herself.

Sebastian sighed, but smiled through it. “You know what, screw it, might as well bring out the nice stuff if we’re getting drunk in the middle of the night.”

“You really don’t need to—”

“Well, I’m already pouring my best liquor into that, aren’t I?” Sebastian pointed a thumb at Sigrid, who dragged one arm up solely to give him the middle finger. “Give me a moment.”

While he disappeared for a moment into the kitchen, Sigrid studiously pushed herself up and cocked her head at Cassandra. “Huh, growing your hair out? Nice. That’s going to be a really cute look on you. ...Oh, shit, touchy subject?”

“Don’t. Just—” Cassandra forced herself to unclench her teeth, and shook her head instead of snap again. “Just don’t.”

“You got it.” Sigrid raised her glass at Cassandra, who acknowledged the gesture with a nod. “Why are you awake, anyway?”

“Just thinking about how the Scarlet Brigade started thrashing about right after I pulled a treasure from one of their stashes,” Cassandra said with a frustrated sigh.

“Oh, that was you?” Sigrid sipped her whiskey. When Cassandra looked askance at her, the sorceress shrugged, entirely unfazed with the confession. “I wouldn’t ascribe this entire shitstorm to yourself if I were you. No single stash would kick all this off, and Reds have a tendency for destroying themselves from the inside whenever they aren’t under contract. All you did was give one officer an excuse to tear out the throat of another. And really, this is working out so far, anyway, because the Coon Tails finally got involved.”

“You’re planning to get involved, too, aren’t you?”

“Oh, honey.” Sigrid gave her a wolfish grin. “You think I aren’t already?”

A tankard and an oval plate heralded Sebastian’s return, the latter heaped with a small mountain of thin strings of cheese that had been braided and smoked. “Missed anything important?”

“Your little folk hero’s asking after when we go kick Red ass,” Sigrid summarized with a sideways nod at Cassandra, and knocked back the rest of her glass.

Sebastian raised his eyebrows. “And you’re telling her that just because. I think it’s time you start drinking water.”

“It’s fine, don’t be a little bitch.”

With a heavy sigh, Sebastian refilled her glass again. “Promise me you’re not going to sing before you sober up.”

“Well, since my voice is completely shot, I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

“Didn’t you say just a few hours ago that she’s a really good singer?” Cassandra asked dryly, between bites of the braided cheese.

“It’s not about how good a singer she is,” Sebastian said as he poured himself a glass of whiskey as well. “It’s that getting a chanter so drunk they no longer care what they’re singing is a very bad idea.”

Sigrid chuckled to herself, forehead rested against the wrist of the hand she was holding her glass in. “It’s usually real funny afterwards, though.”

“Not to the one who has to clean up,” Sebastian said pointedly.

“I know, I know.” Sigrid looked over to Cassandra. “You caught responsibility, huh? I thought you were going to leave with the Tyson girl, not pine after kicking mercenary ass.”

“No one says I can’t kick mercenary ass and then leave with the Tyson girl,” Cassandra shot back.

The sorceress rasped another little laugh, and stretched her back until her vertebrae cracked. “I knew I had a good feeling about you. And that’s before you started racking up the favours like nobody’s business. That’s what, three now?”

“What are you talking about?”

Sigrid pointed at the gold-trimmed kerchief still tied around Cassandra’s left bicep. “That one’s just nice, but then there’s the pendant, and another thing you’ve got going. What, you didn’t know?”

Cassandra stared at her incredulously. “How do you even keep doing that?”

“It’s not like I can stop. Least, not without this.” Sigrid knocked back the rest of her drink.

“You can’t just decide not to do it?”

“No, because foresight is normally a thing you can decide to do or not to do past a trial above me,” Sigrid pushed her glass at Sebastian again. “Technically, I’m ready for taking it, so there’s a bit of... whatchamacallit. Bleedover, of sorts. I’d probably be able to do it consciously if I passed that.”

“Do you plan to try?”

“Fuck no. What, do I look like I need to be this shithole’s bonafide village witch? I’d rather shoot myself in the foot with an actual arrow, thank you.”

“When you saw me the first time,” Cassandra said slowly. “You remember?”

“Oh yeah. You still reek of old magic.”

“Can you tell what it came from?”

“Nope. Just that it was something real big, and probably older than dirt.”

“Do you think other chanters could, just by looking at me?”

Sigrid sniffed thoughtfully, swirling the whiskey in her glass. “I wouldn’t bet money on it. Maybe some people who’ve passed all the trials—maybe—but that’s like, I don’t think you’re ever gonna meet one. I know I haven’t. This part of the continent, you commonly get people with two under their belt, sometimes three, doing sellsword work. Specifically a leadership position, and you might someone who did four, but I wouldn’t count on it. And even if you do go up north, the higher the count, the rarer they are.”

“How many have you passed?”

“Five.”

“Out of how many?”

Sebastian placed a hand on Cassandra’s shoulder, putting his arm between her and Sigrid. “Time to back off.”

“Oh, lay off her, Bastian.”

“Sigrid, you just told her three things that I didn’t know.”

“Did I?” the sorceress considered that for a moment. Then shrugged, and emptied her glass again. “Well, now you know.”

Sebastian sighed, and placed a pitcher of water in front of her, then turned back to Cassandra. “I know you’re from Corona, and probably have shit experiences with sorcerers, but she isn’t one of those sorcerers. You need to stop asking her questions she wouldn’t answer while sober.”

“Alright,” Cassandra relented.

“I’ll check if I’m mad at you in the morning,” Sigrid said calmly, leaning against the wall now. “If not, I’ll come find you when it’s time. If yes, well, I might still come find you, but I’ll be hoping that you die in the fight.”

Cassandra grinned at that. “It takes a good deal to kill me.”

“Good. We’ll have a good deal to handle. Because top dog in the mine right now is a chanter as well.” Sigrid slowly poured herself a glass of water. “Or was, rather.”

“How do you stop being a chanter?” Cassandra asked with a frown.

Sigrid cleared her throat, and winced at the uncomfortable feeling against her already stripped raw throat. “You ever read any Ingvarrdian sagas? Or heard them sung?”

“I’ve read a few. Why?”

“Right, you remember the parts about where the monsters come from?”

“Like the one who turned into a dragon out of the greed and evil in his heart?”

“Yeah, that’s how you stop being a chanter.”

Cassandra stared at her incredulously, looking for signs that she wasn’t serious. There were none to be found. “I thought that was a metaphor!”

Sigrid sighed. “My people’s metaphors tend towards extremely literal when magic is involved. I told you before and I’ll say it again, monsters are only real if they used to be people who chose to abdicate their humanity. Hard part is that this guy is still looking vaguely like a human. So the Reds, especially those who aren’t from Ingvarr, are still behind him and think he’s awesome because ooh, magic powers. They either don’t realize, or don’t even mind that his existence has been reduced to battling every day and feasting every night. We’ll see if they fucking mind when he runs out of enemies and mutton, and the only thing left around for him to fight and eat are his own followers.”

“And that’s why you’ve been forging arrowheads for two days?” Cassandra asked slowly.

“Arrowheads. If it was only the heads...” Sigrid shook her head with a grimace. “You asked if it’s possible to put that nightmare of a trophy rack to rest, you remember? They’ve been defiled, so in order for them to find rest, they have to cleanse a defilement—like a sorcerer who allowed his own magic to twist him inside out until he wasn’t human anymore.” She rubbed the tip of her nose, and gave Cassandra a considering look. “If you’re good enough to shoot carriers, you’ll be shooting ghostloads, too, because I’m going to need a backup archer for when I’m busy with spells or in melee. It’s still going to be a day or two, at the least. I can’t say if we’ll be fighting above ground or in the tunnels, either, so take that time to prepare for both. Go catch up on sleep for now, and come see me in the morning.”

“Alright.” Cassandra stood up from her chair, but hesitated before turning to leave. “Hey, uh... sorry about asking you things you weren’t going to share.”

The sorceress studied her for a moment, then smiled and reached over to ruffle Cassandra’s hair with a heavy hand. “You’ll go far, you know. Don’t die in a ditch before you can get there.”

Chapter Text

On paper, catching up on sleep for the imminent future was a grand idea. In practice, Cassandra had woken up earlier than she usually would, even despite the night prior having ran longer, and spent at least another hour curled up around her withered arm and the pain gnawing all throughout the scarred area, before she finally gave up the hope that maybe it would ease soon and let her sleep for a little longer.

Snort, Fidella said with open concern, looking over her shoulder as Cassandra tried to tie her hair back, failed repeatedly, and eventually gave up with a frustrated groan after the third unsuccessful attempt.

“It really hurts today,” Cassandra said tiredly as she put the ribbons away and gingerly pulled her reinforced glove on. “I guess that means it’s raining.”

And it was, pouring down in sheets against the muddy town, its uneven stone walls and moss-covered thatch roofs whipped with partially frozen rain, the wet and clinging cold only made more biting with intense windchill. Cassandra tucked her withered arm under her flimsy little summer cloak even for the few steps of a walk between the Brigand’s stable and dining floor, wincing as the sleet bit against her cheek.

There were still few signs of activity inside—some of the bandits who slept across benches and tables beginning to stir, the muffled sounds of several people moving about in the kitchen, Sebastian at the countertop as ever and chewing on a thick slice of bread and a wedge of cheese in turns. When he saw Cassandra, he put one finger to his lips, asking for silence as he pointed a thumb to the side, where Sigrid was still dead to the world with her head and arms folded over the countertop, a blanket now wrapped around her shoulders and tucked into her lap. Cassandra nodded at him, then looked down when she felt something slink against her legs, and found Barley rubbing against her boots.

“Hello,” she said quietly as she reached down to scratch down the cat’s spine. “Can I pick you up?”

Bprrt, Barley acquiesced graciously.

With an armful of cat cradled against her shoulder, Cassandra came to the countertop, a little ways off from where Sigrid was sleeping. “How are you always awake?”

“I sleep exactly as much as I need to. Which is more than I can say for you, looks like,” Sebastian dragged a fingertip under one of his eyes, as if to indicate the dark rings under Cassandra’s. “We’ll have first batch of breakfast ready soon, if you’re hungry.”

“I am. Thanks.” Cassandra let go of Barley when the cat wiggled onto the countertop and marched across it to sniff at Sigrid’s ear. After a few seconds, one of the sorceress’ hands dragged itself upwards, to grab gently at the back of Barley’s neck.

“...Kitty.”

The cat bit her hand.

“Ow.” Sigrid stayed where she was long enough for Barley to walk across her shoulders to the other end of the countertop, then slowly pushed herself up, and picked at the blanket wrapped around her for a few seconds before the incomprehension cleared from her face. “Oh, thanks.”

“How hungover are you?” Sebastian asked dryly.

Sigrid sniffed and scrunched her face up, silent for a long moment as she took stock. “Not that much, really. I thought it would be worse. I can already tell that I’m a little stiff, though.” She tried to stretch, and wheezed with a pained grimace. “Fuck, I’m not twenty anymore, am I?”

“Perks of sleeping at my damn countertop instead of in your bed, with your husband, who’s probably still waiting for you at home.”

“Ah, shit.” Sigrid disentangled herself from the blanket in three flailing motions and scrambled towards the Brigand’s door, where she stuck her head outside and gave a loud, echoing whistle on her fingers before waving an arm towards the smithy. Moments later, she climbed onto her toes to give Hanalei a kiss, the smith’s broad hands at each side of her face and his thumbs stroking over her cheekbones. After a short exchange of words, they both headed back inside.

“As long as you don’t do this too often,” Hanalei was saying as they re-entered Cassandra range of hearing.

“No, I think we’re safe for at least half a year.” Sigrid climbed back into her chair, leaning against her husband as he came to stand behind her, muscle-corded arms cradling her loosely and hands clasped at her midriff. “We also got someone to join us, one-off, on what we’re doing soon.”

Hanalei gave Cassandra a curious look. “Interesting. I look forward to fighting with you again.”

“Likewise,” Cassandra inclined her head back at him, before she looked to Sigrid again. “So you’re not overly mad at me, I take it?”

“It was real sneaky of you to wait until I was five glasses in to ask me questions, and I don’t appreciate that, I’m not about to lie,” Sigrid said in a strict tone. A sudden frown on Hanalei’s face left no doubt that he didn’t appreciate that, either. “But you did apologize, and nothing of what I’ve told you last night that I wouldn’t today is information you can use, so I’ll let it slide this once.”

“Thank you. And again, I am sorry. I shouldn’t have let my experiences with magic dictate my treatment of you to that degree.”

“Clever girl. Let’s put something in both your bellies,” Sebastian pushed off the countertop, turned to Hanalei. “You?”

“No, not hungry yet.”

“Suit yourself.” The innkeeper withdrew into the kitchens for a moment.

Sigrid, in the meantime, was giving Cassandra an incredulous look. “The hell is your track record with sorcery, then?”

“Witch who kidnapped the heiress to the throne,” Cassandra said with a sigh. “Ring of abductors disappearing random people off the streets to supply sorcerers with human sacrifices. Blizzard that almost froze the entire capital over. Another abductor-type who almost succeeded in brainwashing half a dozen citizens into voluntarily summoning an ancient evil. Another who trapped us inside a weird little house with no exit, where we got replaced with bloodthirsty doppelgangers for a while, among other things. A wand that erased a friend’s memory at least two years backward, with the counterspell potion taking forever to brew, and trying to convince her all the while that things were normal and she was getting taken back home. A teapot that turned everyone who drank from it into a mindless songbird. A talisman that erased the free will of the most dangerous warriors I’ve ever met, and put them under the complete control of another person. That one time we got chased by slayerwolves. That other time we almost got eaten by a giant bear thing with horns—”

“Okay, shit, what the fuck is wrong with Corona?!”

“That’s just off the top of my head. And I haven’t even gotten into the old magic thing you can smell off of me, apparently. Or an alchemist who genuinely doesn’t believe in lab safety, but has a penchant for making grenades or elixir cannons out of everything he can concoct.” Cassandra turned when Sebastian placed a plate full of baked potatoes and slices of fried ham before her and Sigrid each, and thanked him with a nod as she took a fork in her left hand. “If there’s one thing I don’t miss about home, and never will, it’s the magic and alchemy.”

Sigrid shook her head slowly. “You’re gonna need to ask me more questions. I don’t want you freaking out when I start to chant.”

“About that. You said last night that you want me as your backup archer for shooting... ghostloads, you called them?” Cassandra waited for the sorceress to nod. “There’s a problem with that.”

Sigrid gave her a keener look, and pulled the fork out of her mouth. “Okay, talk to me.”

Instead of doing that, Cassandra lifted her withered arm, and stopped trying to mitigate the way it was trembling. As if on command, the fingers twitched sharply, the still-persistent pain flaring against the involuntary motion. “This is what my draw hand looks like on a bad day. I’m going to botch every shot I attempt.”

“It’s been weeks,” Hanalei said with a frown, “and your arm is still injured?”

Cassandra cleared her throat. “It’s always going to be injured.”

“Oh, one of those, huh?” Sigrid stared intently at Cassandra’s arm for a long moment. “Your wrist’s still steady, I see.”

“What does that matter when I’m pulling the bowstring with my fingers? They seize up like that again, and I loose without meaning to.”

“This is going to be a longer conversation,” Sigrid said calmly. “And I’ll need my tools for it. Give us a quarter, half hour after we’re done eating and come see us at the smithy, and bring everything you’re using for archery—your bow, your arrows, your finger tab or glove if any, your spare bowstrings, everything. Because I saw that Bayangoran’s body you dragged into town after you shot poisoned carriers at him, and that was top work; you have a lot of skill, you just need a workaround for that hand of yours.”

Cassandra stared at her sceptically. “There isn’t a workaround like that, not unless I learn to shoot left-handed, switch to a crossbow, or only shoot on days when it’s not as bad as today.”

“Then it doesn’t hurt to mess around and find out, does it?” Sigrid asked with a shrug. “The worst thing that can happen is that you’re right, in which case nothing changes. Now talk magic to me.”

With a frustrated sigh, Cassandra conceded that point, and resolved not to pointlessly get her hopes up. “Well, since you two just made a whole batch of enchanted arrows—”

Sigrid held up a finger. “I can’t make enchanted items. I can manipulate magic that was already there. Hogni Galdrsbani’s sword had the soul of every chanter he murdered getting dragged along with the dagger he had hammered into the blade, and what I did was work with their ghosts, which took a whole fucking lot out of me over the past week and had me drinking myself into a stupor last night to catch a break. If something wasn’t magic before, I can’t make it be magic now—it’s possible, but way, way beyond me—and turning one mundane thing into another makes me work within so many limits that it’s almost always easier to just make it from material untreated by magic like a normal person. I can turn wood into petrified wood, for example, but not into granite. And before you ask, no, I can’t turn lead or mercury into gold, you’d have to talk to an alchemist about that.”

“Take the box we’ve made you,” Hanalei supplied, looking up from the leisurely task of braiding his wife’s hair back up. “The wardwork layer is bronze. We bought the copper magic-laced prior.”

“What about the ward around Wolf’s Head Hollow?” Cassandra asked with a frown.

“Madder dye mixed with woundwort sap,” Sigrid said simply.

“Fair enough. I saw you singing spells, every time you were using magic,” Cassandra pointed out, the same tune of break these earthly chains and set the spirit free to have collapsed her knees beneath her and scorched her arm beyond recovery, and of save what has been lost, bring back what once was mine to have wrestled her heart into beating again and shoved the breath back into her lungs thick in her ears. “What is up with that?”

“The term is galdr. It translates closer to 'incantation' than 'spell' or 'charm', like I’ve heard most of the mainland sorcerers terming their craft. Ingvarrdian sorcery rests on three pillars,” Sigrid started tapping her fingers. “You dunk yourself into a trance-like state, you make a conscious decision that you’re about to work magic, and you hold yourself to a high moral standard from the moment you pass the first trial for the rest of your life. If one of these is missing, you fail—if you can’t focus, you can’t cast, and it’s impossible to cast by accident. If the one missing is... work ethics, so to speak... you turn into a monster, and it’s the responsibility of every chanter who knows that you’ve gone wrong to put you down. Part of the requirement of their own maintaining of work ethics, you see.”

“So you going after that Scarlet Brigade chanter in the mine is just self-preservation on your part,” Cassandra summed up with a frown.

“Not entirely. I wouldn’t turn as well just from neglecting to fix this, but there’s no point to letting this continue, anyway. It just offends me that he’s become such a... a creature.”

“What do those work ethics look like?”

Sigrid shrugged. “Pretty standard. Don’t murder, don’t cheat, don’t steal. Keep your word. Do good deeds, and don’t tarnish yourself with evil ones. Everything except the oathbreaking and some really vile acts is pretty lax, though. Stealing from thieves can be fine. Poisoning people you can’t take head-on can be fine. It takes two kinds of people to actually turn: those who enjoy their cruelty too much to mind that it’s literally turning them into monsters inside and out; and those who decide that their humanity is an acceptable price to pay for achieving a goal, usually to spare loved ones or innocents from having to make a fucked-up choice.” She paused for a moment, then gave a little sideways nod, wincing now. “I’ve snuck into an enemy camp in shapeshifted form once and injured all of their horses, and that was a foul act to have committed. It worked, in the sense that my group wasn’t pursued afterwards, but the horses did nothing wrong and didn’t deserve that kind of treatment, so I had to do a bit of penance afterwards to keep myself on the straight and narrow. Killing enemy combatants in their sleep would’ve had the same effect, just heavier, because of how dishonourable that is. Tearing them up in combat, one-on-one, would have been fine though, because it gives them a chance to legitimately defeat me. Slim as that chance may be against something twice their size and faster than any of them.”

“And do you plan to be doing that in the mine?” Cassandra asked dryly.

Sigrid chuckled. “If all the rest of you die, sure, but I’d rather avoid getting to that point. No, the first go-to is going to be a group-wide war blessing to help keep you all safe, the second a group-wide protection from arrows if we get shot at too much. If I get pulled into single combat, I’ll be singing an enhancement for my own weapons, or a destruction of the same on my enemy’s. If we had a troop of Ingvarrdian warriors, I might be singing berserkergang, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”

“Okay.”

“Keep in mind: I can only hold one spell at a time. If I’m singing an arrow shield, you don’t have armour anymore. And if I can’t breathe, I can’t cast, or hold a spell on anyone other than myself. You and the boys will have to take me in the centre of formation and keep things at bay so I can focus. Magic’s useful, but it won’t keep you safe if you don’t keep yourself safe.”

“Isn’t that just the truth.” Cassandra flexed her withered fingers experimentally, testing if the pain had subsided at all. It hadn’t. “You keep talking about trials. What are those?”

“See, this is where I’d normally tell you 'mind your own business, foreigner', but you already pulled out of me that I’ve got five under my belt and could take the sixth if I wanted to,” Sigrid said dryly. “They’re based on myth told and re-told among my people, and what they look like varies extremely widely from sorcerer to sorcerer, sharing only a broad overall theme. How many you’ve passed, and how well you understand each of them in the context of every next one you’re passing, dictates how much you can do with your spells. I can work ice and seawater, fire, everything wild or feral or a little monstrous, command, and everything that already exists in the mundane world on its own rules. And that is already more than I’m willing to discuss with you.”

“That’s fair.” Cassandra thought for a moment. “Which of these was the snake knot thing I’ve seen you sing on that Pittsfordian?”

Sigrid rolled her eyes. “Last one. There’s a story about a giant snake in the ocean, so large that it encircles the planet by biting on its own tail. I always liked it, and thought about it as something of a metaphor that personifies undersea currents and teaches us about how the world is a complete circle without a beginning or an end, so some of my spells are using the imagery. It’s a common motif in wards, too, since it already gives you a closed circuit of sorts to work with.”

“That makes sense.” Cassandra paused, considering whether to ask one more lingering question she had, and decided that it would not be received well. Maybe at another time, after giving the sorceress more reasons to trust her with the answer. “I’ll see if I think about anything more to ask you later.”

“Okay, then.” Sigrid finished her food and stood up, Hanalei stepping away to give her room for the motion. “Check in soon, and remember to bring your archery gear.”

Cassandra nodded, and watched the couple leave—the Neserdnian smith throwing on a hood and folding his cloak closed, the Ingvarrdian sorceress walking straight into the pouring rain and closing her eyes for a moment to lean her face into it. She took time with the remains of her meal, slowly sipping an ale next to the food, and watched the Brazen Brigand slowly stir to life: the Shankers and the Rats streaming into the dining floor again, servers beelining between the tables and the kitchen, townsfolk coming in for breakfast and leaving to tend to their business afterwards. She noticed that Barley had nestled into a shelf on the inner side of the countertop, the space cleared for her between flagons and bottles and more and lined with an old woollen jumper too damaged to wear anymore. Before too long, Moreen came downstairs, one arm placed lightly around Cassandra’s shoulders in a fond gesture and yawning from behind her other hand.

“Morning, you’re up early.”

“It’s fine. I’d rather avoid standing out in the rain today, though.” Cassandra rubbed at her right arm just below the elbow, where the sensation of her own hand on her skin tapered off as abruptly as if trimmed with a knife.

Moreen nodded, raising an arm now to hail Sebastian, who was busy with another group of customers. “I’ll ask Bastian if we can set up indoors.”

“That’d be great. I’ll take care of something and join you. And there’s another thing: I might need to leave for a day or two, soon.” At the sudden look of alarm on the farmer’s face, Cassandra placed a hand over Moreen’s. “But I will come back for you, and I will take you north. Just wanted to give you a heads-up so you don’t think I ran off.”

“Well, you’ve been forthright in everything else so far,” Moreen admitted after a moment’s hesitation. “So I’ll trust you this time, as well. Just promise me you’ll be careful?”

“I can promise you that.”

Cassandra kept the farmer company over breakfast, and with Sebastian’s easy permission, helped set up the stand of the Tysons’ wares in a corner by the door, then took her archery gear from the stable and headed across the town square to the smithy. Sigrid and Hanalei were both outside, shielded from the rain with a screen of slatted wood tiles pulled to form a wall between the pillars of the smithy’s gazebo-like roof, the smith patching a hole in the bottom of a cooking pot, the sorceress working her other trade as she painstakingly trimmed flight feathers and waved her over without looking.

“I’ve never seen fletch like this,” Cassandra remarked as she came closer. The feathers were long, long enough to have come from a large falcon or a small eagle, but they were clearly from neither—even before they had been dyed a bright red that made her think of arterial blood and marked with three thick stripes of black each. “What did you get these off?”

“Griffincat. Don’t worry, they were dead when I found them.” Sigrid carefully set the feathers inside a lidded box and pushed her tools aside. “Show me your bow.”

Cassandra did, and couldn’t hold back a little smile at the sight of Sigrid’s eyes widening immediately.

“Hello, beautiful—” Sigrid let out a sharp whistle, genuinely impressed as she lifted the bow, tilting it this way and that to admire it. “Elm, isn’t it? Horn nocks, too, and is that another patch of horn at the arrow rest? That’s amazing, I have got to remember that.”

“Then you’re a bowyer as well?”

“Not officially, no, I don’t like the thought of getting shot at with something I made myself.” Sigrid put a fist at the bow’s grip, on the belly side, and straightened a thumb to measure distance to the bowstring. It came right against her fingernail. “Perfect. This is halfway to a work of art, not just a weapon.”

“I know,” Cassandra said with a grin.

Sigrid chuckled. “Good. Now let’s make sure you can do something with it. What draw do you use?”

“Split finger.”

“With a tab? Glove?”

Cassandra shook her head. “Just the gloves I’m wearing anyway. They work well enough for a bracer, too.”

“Nock an arrow for me.”

Her withered fingers were no more cooperative than earlier in the day. Cassandra seethed silently at the pain, at the unsteadiness of her hand, at the heavy wind and rain that was putting her through so much more than she’d had no choice but to begrudgingly get used to. The world didn’t need to be given reasons to sideline her and push her away from any possible achievement—it was good enough at finding them on its own—and yet it still had been given another, one she wouldn’t be free of ever again.

“I’ve had a few ideas,” Sigrid was saying as she took Cassandra’s hands, still on the bow’s grip and the bowstring’s nocking point, into her own to tilt them to the light. “But they’re going to depend on how often your hand is acting up like this.”

“This is normal now,” Cassandra said dryly.

“Okay, now I have one idea. Put all this on my desk and give me your draw hand.” When those instructions were followed, Sigrid pulled out a short, two-fingers-thick leather belt and tied it around Cassandra’s withered wrist, buckling it at the back of her hand. “Not too tight?”

Cassandra tested it with her left hand. “Slightly too tight, but we can fix that once you’re done showing me what you’ve cooked up.”

“You can’t feel that without checking with your– you know what, that’s none my business.” Sigrid turned Cassandra’s withered hand palm up and pulled out a measuring tape to get the exact distance from the small belt’s centre to the bowstring’s nocking point, then unstrapped the belt again. “Give me five minutes and we’ll see if this works at all. You got that wire for me, baby?”

“It’s on your left,” Hanalei called out from beside the furnace.

Cassandra watched, bewildered, as Sigrid sewed a small loop of hastily hammered iron wire, no doubt bent into shape just for the purposes of this experiment, onto the belt with thick shoemaking thread. Then tied a length of strong cord onto the loop as well, and threaded its other end through the eyelet of a smooth-edged hook that looked like it had been pried off a coat hanger, but with a protrusion at ninety degrees straight upwards. Then cocked her head at her creation, whatever it was.

“This is going to shred the bowstring. I’ll tie a piece of string around the nocking point, is that okay?”

“As long as you can untie it later without messing the bowstring up,” Cassandra allowed with a frown.

“Oh, don’t worry.” Sigrid bent down over the bow, painstakingly tying a much thinner cord onto the string in a small, D-shaped loop, then trimmed the rest of the cord off. She headed inside the house for a moment, and came out carrying a straw target mat and a handful of blunt-headed practice arrows. Waving at Cassandra to give her the withered arm again, she snapped the small belt back around Cassandra’s wrist, and laid the hook hanging off the thick cord in her hand. “I want you to nock one of these blunts and catch this hook on the loop I just tied on your bowstring to draw it. Put your index finger on this little protrusion here, pull on it like it’s a crossbow’s trigger to loose when you’re ready, and shoot that target for me.”

Cassandra stared at her, incredulous. Then took her bow instead of argue, a burst of frantic hope catching the edges of her soul on fire, and nocked one of the practice arrows between the loop’s knots. Catching the hook in the loop securely enough to pull taut the cord between its eyelet and the makeshift loop of metal on the belt around her wrist took her two tries, but it was far from impossible. She held her breath and drew the bow until the fletching’s edges came to the corner of her mouth, and found with surprise that she had to put her bicep, her shoulder, and her back to work that much more when she wasn’t actually touching the bowstring, her trembling fingers well away from it. Putting her index finger on the makeshift trigger, Cassandra looked through the arrowhead, and pulled.

The hook slid smoothly off the loop on the bowstring, and with a thunk resounding even in the rain, the arrow sank into wood-backed straw at the bull’s-eye circle’s edge.

Sigrid burst out laughing, the sound of triumph itself. “I told you your wrist is still steady!”

Cassandra looked at her withered hand. Then at the target mat. And then, moving as if in a dream, she snatched another blunt-headed arrow and shot again, and a third time, until she broke into a shocked burst of laughter as well.

“It doesn’t– it doesn’t hurt to shoot.”

“That’s great, and that belt needs to come off now, you said it was too tight.” Sigrid took Cassandra’s wrist, and Cassandra allowed her, still too stunned to remember to pull the withered hand away. “We’ll make you one of these for real, and probably a spare as well, and something better for these little loops to tie onto your bowstrings. I’ll look for you at the Brigand in the evening and we’ll ask Bastian to clear you enough space in the basement for a target range. I have never done this before, so I can’t say how much you’ll have to adjust your shooting habits, and I want you to have those habits adjusted before I put a ghostload in your hands. So practice until you drop, or until you break every blunt I give you for it.” She paused, and tilted her head slowly. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

“What?” Cassandra croaked, dragging her eyes from her withered arm and the three blunt-headed arrows sticking out in or very near to the bull’s-eye.

Sigrid gave her a longer look, an expression of concern crossing her face now. “Do you maybe need to sit down?”

“Maybe, I just—” Cassandra broke off when the sorceress grabbed her under the arms and seated her atop the nearby workbench as if she were a child. “I didn’t think I’d be able to shoot with this arm again unless it was very cold outside.”

“Well, you thought wrong,” Sigrid told her with a grin. “And doesn’t it feel great to eat shit every now and then?”

Cassandra laughed again, the fear that this wasn’t going to work and she would just get her hopes up for nothing finally burning away. She let the sorceress take a few detailed measurements more for her withered hand, and when her legs felt sufficiently steady again, she hopped off the workbench and walked back into the Brazen Brigand, a sign now set outside to advertise the ongoing sale of the Tysons’ belongings, and spent the day helping Moreen keep a handle on everything. Come late afternoon, Sigrid showed up as promised, looking incredibly pleased with herself and bearing two of these newly-created archery aids, each much sturdier than the prototype and with a metal rod housing the trigger hook, rather than a length of cord. Each also had a coil spring inside—pried out of a lock no one would need repaired anymore, Sigrid had said of it dismissively—that would reset the simple trigger mechanism, rather than require Cassandra to move it back manually after each shot. The little D-shaped loops they tied onto Cassandra’s bowstrings then, both the one in current use and the spare, were also made from materials and with methods used to craft bowstrings, and it gave Cassandra pause to think of how much inventiveness and work and material cost had just gone into the simple task of making sure she could still shoot.

“How much do I owe you for this?”

Sigrid studied her for a moment, then looked away and placed a hand on Cassandra’s shoulder. “Listen. I may have complained about the time you brought me that sword, because it was difficult to deal with and the process of it was very hard on me. But you brought it to me on the assumption that my husband or I would know what it was. And when you heard that it was essentially defiled grave goods, you gave it away so it could be put to rest, in a way that would account for my custom and theirs. You didn’t sell it to me. You gave it away for nothing. That was very upright of you. So right now in this moment, we’re even, one-to-one if you want to keep score. Alright?”

Cassandra hesitated, even despite the sorceress’ usual irreverent manner being very thoroughly absent. “You’re sure? This took you both all day.”

“Girl, watching you shoot with that dinky prototype I whipped up in five minutes was the first time I’ve ever seen you happy,” Sigrid said calmly, and lightly put a fist into Cassandra’s shoulder. “I’m sure. Just spend a few evenings on as much practice as you can handle, so that you know what you’re doing when we need you to.”

And so Cassandra did, shooting the same six blunt-headed practice arrows into another straw mat in the Brigand’s basement over and over for hours, getting used to pulling the bowstring with the archery aid instead of with her withered fingers, to the change in how strongly the muscles in her upper arm and shoulder and back had to work now to draw the bow, to the aid and the loop on her bowstring changing the length of the draw so that she had to move the anchor point from the corner of her mouth to the edge of her ear, and only for the better, as the old one was so thrown off by how she just could not stop smiling.

She used to be one of the best archers on the Guard—maybe the singular best, even—and that was without ever actually being on the Guard. The index-triggered release was the easiest part to get used to, for how the Guard’s standard-issue crossbows used a trigger release as well, rather than the older lever release—but archery was harder than shooting a crossbow, and so she trained until becoming more than just capable in each, and kept training with a bow until she could reliably do trick shots on command. Just another way to prove herself; just another way to never earn being acknowledged. Yet even despite that, she still prided herself immensely on her skill and her accuracy, and enjoyed how good she was at it, until it was ripped away from her on the day her arm was charred with searing cold, burnt clean of sensation and of so much ability. And no matter how stubbornly she had tried to relearn afterwards, the hard lesson of it was that she simply wasn’t going to be able to shoot like that again—and that if she were to shoot at all, it would be single arrows at a time, days apart, and only on a scarce good day at that.

And now she could do it freely again.

No more worrying about fouling a shot when her hand seized up. No more worrying whether her fingertips were going to crumble like so much charcoal if she worked them against the bowstring too often. The area that was giving her the most trouble had been bypassed entirely, and she no longer had to pull forth a cart on square-shaped wheels when she had been given round ones.

She packed the technical drawing of the entire simple device that Sigrid had given her next to Rapunzel’s letter, into the safest and most waterproof depths of her belongings, before going to sleep that night. And before going to sleep that night, she wound up the remains of her old music box again, and only smiled more against how the melody could not even make a dent in that, this evening, she felt strong.

The day after that, the wind and rain were still going strong, and Cassandra woke up early after a long night again. After three nearly identical remarks that she looked like she was in a good mood, but in considerable pain as well coming separately from Moreen, Sebastian, and Bruno as he came into the Brigand for a food supply run for the clinic, Cassandra finally caved, and followed the physician to get some medication for the pain, if only to be able to sleep properly and rest up before the coming battle.

“One spoon per half-pint of water, three times a day at the most, and do not just take a sip straight from it,” Bruno instructed her firmly as he handed her a small flask of dark glass, corked and wax-sealed for good measure.

“I’ll remember that. Thank you. How is Eliza?”

“Still running a fever, but she’s moving around a little, much as she can. She’ll be okay. I’ll tell her you asked after her.”

Cassandra nodded. “And how are things here?”

“Hard,” Bruno admitted, a slightly overwhelmed look on his face. “But we have two Coon Tails and one of Eliza’s friends helping out, as much as they know how. We’ll be okay for now.”

'For now' being the operative term, Cassandra supposed as she practiced her archery again through the late evening and into the night. Hopefully putting a dent in the Scarlet Brigade’s leadership, and racking up a major victory for the other three bandit outfits, would help teach the Equisian garrison a lesson about the perils of harassing the locals too much. That was the problem with pushing someone to their breaking point, Cassandra mused as she thought back to bright turquoise lightning and countless spikes of indestructible rock—sometimes, instead of breaking, they snapped.

The day after that, she visited the furrier again, and was presented with the document satchel and the winter clothes she had commissioned. The vest had a stiff, high collar, closing on a row of metal clasps against the side of her throat, loose enough not to put pressure on her windpipe yet snug enough to function in a scarf’s stead, and left her arms free to manoeuvre without having to worry about tearing the stitches during a fight. The cloak was wide enough to bundle herself up into overnight, with a hood deep enough to tug down nearly to the tip of her nose and reinforced shoulder pads for Owl to perch on without damaging the whole thing; its bottom hem came to an end just below her knees, making sure that it wouldn’t trail behind her or fray up too quickly, not unless she got up to wading in the dirt deep enough to pour into her boots anyway. The trousers were loose enough to layer over her regular ones, in times of extreme cold, but fitting enough at the bottom that she could tuck them into her boots, as well. With the very warm lining of each, she was genuinely going to be dressed for the weather once the frosts came—and with the hems and stitches of each garment trimmed with wolf fur, and each made of waterproofed leather, it lent her a severe, take-no-shit look of one capable enough to be reckoned with, be it as a hireling or as an enemy. Not to mention that, having come from under the same craftsman’s hand, everything matched her reinforced glove as well.

“I am not about to lie: if I didn’t already know you’re an angel, I wouldn’t want to meet you in a dark alley,” the furrier admitted as he watched her try the clothes on, making Cassandra chuckle. “You’re still going to need heavier boots than these for the winter, but unfortunately, that is out of my area of expertise.”

“Is there a cobbler you would recommend?” Cassandra asked, folding her new outfit for now.

“Well, not anymore, our cobbler around here was Edwin Richter. I’m told you helped bury him and his family. But word is that you’re planning to leave soon and go north? I don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding cobblers in Riddersbrug.”

Cassandra thought for a moment. “If you were to make boots—or any clothes, I guess—for someone who can only use one hand to put them on, what would you replace laces with?”

“Buckles, I believe,” the furrier said thoughtfully. “Like the strap that’s keeping your glove snug right under the elbow, but a row of three or four if we’re talking about boots. Not the cheapest option, to be sure, but certainly the easiest on the wearer and the most resistant to wear and tear.”

She’d asked a few more questions about maintaining her new gear and about how harsh the winters typically were in the area, before leaving the furrier’s workshop and heading back to Moreen to carefully move the Tysons’ old documents from the strongbox into the reinforced satchel. It was easy enough to wear, thankfully, and easy enough to conceal under a layer of clothes—and the farmer seemed to find the weight of it comforting, as well, Cassandra noticed, a physical reminder of thought and effort put into keeping her and the remains of her livelihood safe. She spent the evening practicing archery again, and took the pain medication before bed—and slept like a log through the night and late into the morning afterwards, finally waking up when she was rested rather than when she was in pain.

On the day that followed that morning, the heavy rain had finally relented into a familiar drizzle, and eventually let up entirely. With the sky so much clearer, now, Cassandra was far from the only one who noticed thick plumes of dark smoke rising against it, from where the mine was.

That evening was a tense affair in the Brazen Brigand, the locals on edge and the bandits only more so. Cassandra was at the countertop, listening idly to Moreen and Sebastian talking through both their worry about the state of things, when she felt a hand come against her shoulder and turned around to see Sigrid standing beside her.

“It’s time,” the sorceress said simply.

Cassandra nodded, and rose from her chair, turning to Moreen first. “I’ll be back for you.”

“You make sure you do that,” Moreen told her, the anxious look in her eyes cutting her firm tone.

Cassandra patted her shoulder in a manner she hoped the farmer would find reassuring, and followed Sigrid to a different table. Hanalei was there already, as was Teagan, as well as one more person—a woman with a rat skull mounted on a headband across her forehead, her eyes widening and her face turning pale as she leaned away from the sight of Cassandra being led towards her.

“You look familiar,” Cassandra said with a frown. More than that, the look of terror on the bandit’s face looked familiar. “Haven’t I fought you before?”

“Y—” the Rat’s voice broke immediately. “Yeah, you killed two of my friends and almost me?”

Cassandra cocked her head at that. She hadn’t killed that many people here, had she? There was Carter, the four outlaws she’d almost died several times trying to execute, before them the con artist that Riccardo had shot off the back of a horse, and before that she had gone into the outskirts of the mine—

“Oh, you’re the one who yielded when the three of you ganged up on me.”

The bandit gave a rapid, shaky nod, still frozen in place otherwise.

“Valdis,” Sigrid said firmly, immediately commanding the Rat’s attention. “Tell her what you told me.”

“Uh,” the Rat turned to Cassandra uncertainly. “There’s, uh. The Coon Tails had a– a bit of a safehouse built at the top of the plateau, and they’ve evacuated as many non-combatants and livestock as possible through an upwards mineshaft there. It’s not great living, worse than in the tunnels, actually, but it’s safer than the tunnels right now—and the entryway is fortified enough for just a few folks and one fire siphon to defend it okay. With the rain recently, we flooded a few stopes that the Reds were using as barrack chambers and whatnot, but they got to one of the fire siphon crews and, uh... well, the good news is that they don’t have prisoners. Or a working fire siphon.”

“What’s the bad news?” Teagan asked immediately.

“That a big load-bearing pillar got exploded. And that the Coon Tails said if the Reds get to the other fire siphon and destroy another piece of rock like that, a big chunk of the mine might just collapse like a bunch of dominos, and that even aside from the damage it’ll do to the tunnels, the shelter topside might go through a bit of an earthquake from it.”

“How many fire siphons are still in use?” Cassandra asked.

“One fortifying approach to the shelter, and one in the fight. Bernard’s been using it mostly to herd Red deserters away from the exits. He said that any Reds escaping now would call for help from the soldiers in town, so we haven’t let them leave.”

“Bernard’s alive, then? Good, that’ll make things easier.” Sigrid caught Cassandra’s questioning look. “Leader of the Coon Tails. Used to be the foreman of the mine, and its architect as well. Is he taking prisoners?”

“Not a whole lot of them,” Valdis said honestly. “Mostly, the Coon Tails have been demanding any surrendering Reds drop their gear and go back inside to their own, which uh, I don’t think their captain took that so well.”

“Did you see him?” Sigrid pressed.

The bandit nodded with a wince. “He looks like his armour has grown on top of his skin, like feathers on a bird, except that it’s plates of sheer metal stacked like– like layers on a cake. And I don’t think he sleeps anymore. He pushes the Reds to fight us the whole day, squad after squad, dawn to dusk every day like clockwork, even though he’s not seen sunlight in weeks, and then just... just gorges himself on any meat his troops can find for him overnight. And if they can’t find anything, he’s eating corpses. Doesn’t even cook them anymore. The metal down the front of his– of him is just painted with gore, and I think I saw the... whatever it’s called, the flanges at his cheeks? I think I saw them moving like the helmet’s part of his jaw now.”

“And if there are no corpses?” Hanalei asked calmly.

Valdis gave him a little sideways nod. “Well, let’s just say there hasn’t been a Red yet who was seen surrendering twice.”

“And how’s the morale among your own?” Cassandra spoke up again. “Any feuds with the Shankers coming into play now that the usual order of things has been completely thrown off?”

“No. We’re done letting the Reds play neighbour against neighbour.” The bandit rolled up her sleeves, showing a still healing tattoo on the inner side of each forearm—a rat skull with a dagger stabbed through in such a way that the blade formed a tongue sticking out from between the open skeletal jaws. “We’re all Shank Rats now. And the Coon Tails are done letting the Reds think that might makes right, too. They brought that monster inside our home? They can get penned inside with it and eaten by it.”

“We go tonight,” Sigrid said simply, her tone brooking no discussion, and looked between the others at the small table—Cassandra, Teagan, Hanalei, Valdis the Shank Rat. “Meet up at the bar four hours after sundown, we’ll have enough cover to slip past the guards by then. We make our way to the Coon Tail outpost at Richter farm and spend the night there. Come morning, we walk to the mine and join up with Bernard or whoever he’s left in charge of things, and we kill us a monster. Kazandra, bring your horse in case we need to give chase on the surface. Valdis, we’ll need a guide through the tunnels; stay close, don’t try to be a hero, and you’ll make it through okay. Are there any questions?”

Cassandra cleared her throat. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

Sigrid jerked her head at the others to clear out. “You know when and where to show up. Go get ready.”

Once they were alone—or as alone as they could be, what with sitting in the middle of a crowded tavern—Cassandra leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Sigrid, arrows aren’t going to punch through layers of scale mail or plate. Not far enough to cause damage.”

“These arrows will,” the sorceress said calmly, and laid a quiver on the table. “Put them back afterwards, because I need you to actually sleep tonight, but take one in your hands right now. Or hand, I guess.”

Cassandra glared at her for that last remark, but pulled one of the arrows fletched red-and-black from the quiver. The first thing she noticed was how heavy it was—and that the shafts were metal as well, not just the arrowheads sharpened to a razor-fine edge. The second thing she noticed was that the metal of it was oddly banded, the memory of several separate daggers hammered together and reshaped far more thoroughly now, and far more seamlessly. The third, an abnormal chill biting through the leather of her left glove.

“...It’s cold. How is it cold?”

“I didn’t call them ghostloads for nothing.” Sigrid drank from a tankard that Teagan had left behind. “They’re each going to be single-use. But that’s fine when they’re each going to need to only hit once. When you were shooting carriers, the arrow was a delivery method for whatever that poison you put inside was. These are no different, you’re just shooting at poison, and draining it from the world at large on impact.”

Cassandra was silent for a long moment at that. “What was it you said about poetry among your people often being incredibly literal?”

Sigrid chuckled. Her smile didn’t last, though. “When you start shooting at him, I want you to keep shooting until he drops. If he falls on his ass, you keep shooting. If he’s down on his knees, you keep shooting. If he begs for mercy, you keep shooting, and shoot until his face hits the floor. We are not about to fight a human, you understand? Take the yields from Reds if you want, like you did with Valdis when she and her friends tried to take you three-against-one, but that thing dies tomorrow no matter what.”

“If he’s half as bad as your friend just described, I doubt he’d even attempt a yield anyway.” Cassandra idly rubbed her withered hand against her left collarbone, over the starburst nest of gray-black scars spiderwebbing from where the Moonstone used to sit against her chest. “It’s one thing to make a questionable decision. It’s another to start a gang war, for nothing, for pleasure.”

“I see I don’t have to tell you that falling so far is not an event that happens overnight.” Sigrid took the heavy, uncomfortably cold arrows back, razor-sharp broadheads that seemed to trail a faint bit of spectral blue and griffincat fletch dyed sheer red-and-black. “Whoever used to live inside those bones was never entirely human, not with how he let fury and greed and bloodlust overwhelm what little compassion and kindness he might have had in him. Now the outside just matches the inside.”

Cassandra didn’t answer that, and went to tend to her belongings soon after instead. Some, she re-packed into saddlebags, and prepared those for a long walk overnight; some, she left behind under Sebastian’s eye to watch over until they returned. She tended to Fidella, readying her for the upcoming endeavour, or maybe just putting herself to work on a task that had more point to it than only an exercise in passing the time and pushing away her thoughts.

“Is that how you guys were thinking of me, I wonder,” she mused aloud as she combed Fidella’s mane. “Like me taking the Moonstone was something that couldn’t have been predicted, and a change that happened overnight?”

Snort, the mare said, and pressed her head to the side of Cassandra’s face.

“Because it wasn’t. It took me years of trying to earn anything before I cut my losses and just took what I wanted, instead.” Cassandra leaned her cheek against Fidella’s. “Do you want braids? I think I can give you braids.”

Snort, Fidella acquiesced to braids.

“Do you know,” Cassandra said calmly as she started plaiting Fidella’s mane, careful to do the actual work of it with her good hand and only hold the braids from unravelling with the withered one. “I don’t regret taking it. Not even for how I was just being used as its vessel until someone else could snatch it and its twin both. Not even for all that happened to me, and because of me, afterwards. I’ve never regretted it, and I still don’t, not one bit. And if Raps doesn’t have to be forgiven for trying to shove me back into everything I fought so hard to break free of, then I don’t think I need forgiveness for taking one thing for myself, either.”

Snort, Fidella said, ruling that the logic tracked.

“And now I’m going to be dealing with magic again.” Cassandra sighed. “I am so tired of dealing with magic.”

The mare gave an inquisitive nicker.

“No, I’m not counting the ghosts. They’re just... I don’t know. People, just dead people. And I’m not counting the sorcerer’s things, either. All I did was put them in a box. Doesn’t get much less magical than that.” Cassandra paused for a long moment, long enough to complete another braid. “Last time was when I died.”

Fidella made a worried little noise, looking over her shoulder now.

“I mean, there’s not much to talk about.” Cassandra shrugged, and couldn’t quite tell whether the motion was to project her disinterest or to suppress a shiver. “I blacked out. It hurt. And then I was awake again. I think the Sundrop was meant for things of... I don’t know, things a few orders of magnitude bigger than just bringing one person back. It sure felt like an overkill amount—I mean, you wouldn’t try to hunt a bunny rabbit by shooting ballistae at it. But I guess I never asked Eugene, or Pascal, if it was that painful or confusing for them, too.”

Snort, Fidella encouraged her when another pause fell between them.

“It didn’t hurt any less than when the Moonstone’s song burnt my arm,” Cassandra told her quietly. “I think it maybe hasn’t stopped hurting yet, either. I think it’s maybe a good thing I don’t remember that much of it.”

She closed her eyes, and put her arms around Fidella’s neck for a moment.

“I think I’m starting to feel like maybe—maybe—it isn’t wrong that I’m alive.”

The mare gave her another loving little nicker.

“Sigrid keeps calling that turned chanter a monster, and keeps saying that even the fact of his existence is a defilement of the world around him,” Cassandra said calmly, not moving from where she stood, face buried into Fidella’s halfway-braided mane. “Tomorrow, I’m going to fight him, and I’m going to decide where I compare.”

Snort, Fidella said gently.

“Well how else am I supposed feel, when I come from—” Cassandra gave a sharp tug on a fistful of her own hair. “—that, and my dad didn’t even trust me with the knowledge? When I’m only as loved as I’m obedient or of use to someone else? What am I, a half-slayerwolf mastiff?”

She shook her head and stepped away when she felt her eyes burn, her throat tighten. This was no time to cry, and she had not left Corona only to wallow in its treatment of her everywhere else that she went, too.

“Enough of that. We’re doing something with people, one-off, tonight and tomorrow. And as soon as Owl comes back, we’re leaving. I’ll think things over along the way to this city we’re going north to, and if everything goes well now, I’ll look for someone to join up with then, like I promised you. Think it’s enough of a plan to go with?”

Snort, Fidella confirmed.

“Good, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

After finishing to plait Fidella’s mane into a series of little braids, Cassandra sat in the hammock and carefully unwrapped the silken bandage from her withered hand. It looked no worse and no better, charred muscle visibly pulling against every motion she attempted in the deep crack that the barbarian had smashed into her arm. She sprinkled more salt into the gaping wound, hoping it would help somewhat against the moisture in the now partially flooded mine, and took time carefully wrapping it back up, each finger separately as before. Slow as it was, she was starting to grow practiced in this. And after that was done, she wound up the sounding cylinder of her music box again, and wondered nothing as the tune she knew by heart for the second time in her life filled the space between her thoughts.

When the scheduled time came, Cassandra leaned outside the stable, and stared incredulously at the roiling plumes of thick mist permeating the town. This was no time of year, no weather for fog.

But she was about to join the war party of a sorceress, after all.

She led Fidella to the Brigand’s door and entered the dining floor alone, finding Sebastian at the countertop and chatting quietly with Sigrid and Hanalei. The smith wore no armour, banking instead on speed and freedom of movement much like Cassandra herself, save for a simple skull cap with a noseguard and a shield large enough to protect his entire massive torso, painted in bright colours and worked in a peculiar shape, almost like a filled-in figure eight. A long spear leaned against the countertop, a one-handed axe stuck into the back of his belt, and the larger, two-handed, double-bladed axe he had been using in the fight against the ogre slung across his back completed the picture: Hanalei was ready for fighting in the confined spaces of a mining tunnel as much as for anywhere with the room to swing. Sigrid, in turn, was wearing chainmail padded with a thick gambeson, another simple nasal helmet laid at the countertop next to her folded arms, but with no shield in sight. Instead, there was a sheathed longsword and a large axe with a bearded head at her right hip—a very popular setup among Ingvarrdian warriors, Cassandra recognized, where the sword would be drawn with the left hand and the axe pulled straight up from its belt loop with the right—at her left side, a quiver filled with ghostload arrows fletched red-and-black, a composite bow slung over her shoulders, her shrike-headed sorcery dagger square in the front of her belt and a signal horn at the small of her back. Faced with the couple positively bristling with weapons, Cassandra found herself feeling almost underdressed.

Unsurprisingly, it was the sorceress who looked to Cassandra first, and nodded her to come over. “Valdis is picking herself out of bed. We’re just waiting for Teagan now. You feeling ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Cassandra said with a shrug.

“Good.” Sigrid turned towards the sound of footsteps down the staircase, and nodded at their guide in turn, giving the bandit’s sword and modestly sized crossbow a scrutinizing look. “What, nervous?”

“Less for knowing you guys are on my side, and your Coronian, too,” the Shank Rat said around a yawn. Valdis, Cassandra tried to remember. “We almost ready to go?”

“Almost. Teagan’s on his way.”

And soon enough, he was there, clad in scratched half-plate and with the visor of his close helm raised for now, carrying another spear and a rectangular tower shield entirely large enough for himself and another person to crouch behind for cover, a sword at his hip and the heavy crossbow Cassandra had seen before on his back. He caught Sigrid’s eye, and they exchanged nods, before the sorceress pushed herself off the countertop and tucked her braided hair underneath her helmet.

“Keep them safe,” Sebastian told her as they clasped hands, hard, as if to arm-wrestle.

“I will, or I’ll die trying,” Sigrid said calmly.

“That is not reassuring.”

“No, but it’s a promise.”

Sebastian sighed, and let her go, waving Hanalei over in turn. Instead of exchange words, they put their foreheads together for a moment, breathing the same air before the Neserdnian smith stepped away. Teagan came up to the countertop then, and he and Sebastian put an arm around each other’s shoulders across it, the physical barrier only barely preventing them from earnestly crushing each other.

“Don’t die, idiot.”

“I’ll try not to,” Teagan said dryly. “And if I do, I’ll tell Rose you said hi.”

And after that, they were off, no sound echoing from them through the thick fog—not the clank of armour, not the thump of boots and horseshoes against cobblestones and mud, not their hushed voices as they kept together even despite being barely able to see each other. Cassandra took the opportunity to watch the silhouettes of the three ex-mercenaries leading her and the bandit: two with a shield or a two-handed weapon to choose from, one a dual wielder. It raised the question of whether to do anything with her own off hand, now that her previously-off hand had become her main hand—and what, if anything. A shield was out of the question; given how the barbarian had massacred her withered arm, it was no longer capable of withstanding that kind of impact. A parrying dagger would be much the same, in every situation other than a honourable one-on-one duel against someone with a rapier.

Cassandra smiled to herself a little as she considered a few more different options. There was a question for the future, to look forward to finding the answers for.

Chapter Text

Though there was little left of the night by the time they arrived at Richter farm, Cassandra slept even more shallowly than usual, and cracked her eyes open a fraction each time the older ex-mercenaries rotated on watch. Their Shank Rat guide had tucked herself into a spot the farthest away from Cassandra—unsurprisingly, given how Valdis had taken two heavy hits and lost two friends the last time she had met Cassandra—and in the corner of the farmhouse, leaning for comfort against as many walls as she could find in one spot, also unsurprisingly given that she normally lived in whatever quarters to have been carved out in the spent tunnels of a silver mine. The other three fell into an easy order that included neither the bandit who was to guide them nor the knight-errant who kept their company, stoking the fire and keeping watch, a familiarity born from years of practice and scarcely dulled with the years of peace that have passed for them since. They spoke little overnight, and it must have been close to sunrise when Cassandra surfaced again not to the sound of their footsteps, but their voices in a murmured conversation.

“Go back to sleep. Catch at least an hour more.” Sigrid, but devoid of any firmness, any mocking irreverence that usually permeated her voice. “We need you as strong as you can be.”

“You think an hour this way or that will even matter?” Teagan, resigned—calm, but hopeless. “We can’t take the entire Red detachment on our own.”

“I don’t think we’re gonna have to. That turned chanter will have decimated his own men by now. I’ll be surprised if what’s left of the Reds after that, and after the culling that the Coon Tails and the Shank Rats gave them, isn’t split into factions already.”

“That’s great, but it doesn’t help us much, does it?” Teagan grumbled. “I’ll do everything I can, you know that, but it’s just us and that girl from Corona. We’re going to lose someone.”

“I know.”

Teagan sighed. “I just wish Chloe was here.”

There was a slightly longer pause before Sigrid spoke again, and in a significantly colder tone. “Well, she’s not. Chloe’s gone and Rose is dead, and Bastian has to hold the fort, because the Shank Rats are going to need a safehouse in town regardless of whether we live or die. It’s just you boys and me now, and those two kids we’ve got along.”

“You knew this would happen, didn’t you?” Teagan pressed. “Wasn’t there time to try and go get her?”

“Why would I try that? So she could threaten to kill me again? Tee, Chloe is the one who left us, not the other way around.” Another sigh, and a noticeably more frustrated one. “I don’t want to go into a fight mad at you, alright? Don’t talk to me about her again.”

“Alright.”

“Just focus on keeping the Coronian safe, she’s small enough to fit behind your shield with you. I’ll stick with Hanalei and try to keep Valdis behind me. With any luck, she’ll know her way around well enough to lead us down through narrow paths, and it won’t matter that we can’t do any defensive formation worth crap.”

They fell silent after that, and Cassandra drifted off again, managing to sleep for almost an hour longer. Then, the whole group began to stir, waking each other up and putting on a simple meal that would give them energy for the coming day. Cassandra rolled up her bedroll and slung her sword across her back, hilt over the left shoulder, before sitting at the Richters’ hearth as Teagan waved her over to watch the food while he put his armour on. Sigrid was beside the fire as well, a small mirror set out on the floor in front of her as she carefully lined black contours around her eyes with a blunt-tipped little stick dipped in a glass vial. Kohl, Cassandra recognized after a minute, with no small amount of surprise.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen people paint themselves before battle,” the sorceress said calmly without looking.

“I’ve met a few who wore warpaint every day, but I’ve not really seen people treating eyeliner as warpaint.”

Sigrid chuckled, and threw Cassandra a menacing glare across the hearth before winking at her, as well. In fairness, both were significantly emphasized by the kohl lining her eyes, and it did look rather inspiring on her. “I’m almost done. If you want to wait your turn, I have enough to share.”

“No, but thank you.”

“Suit yourself.”

They split the ghostload arrows over breakfast, nine each, and Cassandra had to suppress a shiver as she packed the heavy broadheads fletched sheer red-and-black into her quiver. Each time she touched one of them, be it with a bare hand or through a glove, a faint bit of pressure appeared at her forehead and temples, an absence of sound that she could almost hear pressed up against her ears. She watched Sigrid’s eyes drift out of focus for a moment as the sorceress tended her half of the arrows and had to be shaken by the shoulder to return to reality. Cassandra snapped the archery aid around her withered wrist, and flexed her jaw until she felt the joint pop like a cracked knuckle against another inaudible whisper as her hand brushed the fletching.

She was so done with magic.

A hike across the Richters’ fallow fields and a little longer across the land unsuited for being farmed, and they exited a small thicket into the flatter, communal area in front of the mine. The pottery kiln Cassandra had seen a few weeks prior was cracked, and the ramshackle thatch-roofed workshop shared between a tanner and a dyer was no more than a smouldering ruin of charred timbers and soot-stained rocks. Instead of communal cooking stations, there were funeral pyres, some in the process of being re-stacked to dispose of more bodies, and every elevated point in the area—a tree branch, a tunnel entrance’s corner, a rock outcropping poking out of the hillside—was being used as an anchor for chains of laundry lines with the red scarves of the Scarlet Brigade tied upon them, the area festooned in trophies presumably taken from the bodies of mercenaries who had been killed or forced to surrender, putting Cassandra in mind of the garlands of Coronian flags set out each year when it was time to release lanterns in an empty hope of calling the lost princess home. The only other presence in the area were patrols, each armed and each comprised solely of people with Shank Rat or Coon Tail marks on their garb, and one of which had immediately noticed the approaching group, and let out a piercing whistle to alert more sentries.

From where she was walking on Sigrid’s other side, Valdis put two fingers in her mouth and whistled back, the exact same tone, as she raised her other hand to wave at the patrol. Crossbows were lowered, and the Shank Rats crowded around the Coon Tail walking towards them briskly.

“You came after all,” was his greeting.

“Luc, you’re alive,” Sigrid said to him with a nod. “Where’s Bernard?”

The Coon Tail, a middle-aged Kotoan with cornrows and a small scar down his left cheek, pointed a thumb behind himself at an entrance to the mine. “Inside, at the first major tunnel intersection, with the fire siphon crew. Valdis, you tell her about the Red captain?”

“He dies today, or I do,” Sigrid said calmly as the Shank Rat at her side nodded.

“Well, you’d better not, we’re gonna need you with the pyres.”

“How many dead?”

“Engineers are down half,” Luc said, his tone disaffected and his face a mask of murderous fury. “Rest of the Coon Tails, down some one-third. Shank Rats, probably down between a quarter and one-third. And while it’s not much of a consolation—” he raised a hand to indicate the lines upon lines of red scarves, some bloodstained and some charred, tassels blowing in the wind. “—we made them work for it.”

“No more,” Sigrid told him simply. “Any defectors from the Reds?”

“Not to my knowledge, no. You’d have to ask Bernard.”

“Does anybody need to ask Bernard to know what he thinks about making peace with any faction of the Reds? Especially if he’s still with the fire siphon crew?”

Luc crossed his arms, unimpressed. “They’ve not shown us any more kindness than we’re giving them back.”

“No, I don’t imagine they have. Watch the warhorse until we’re back, if you would.” Sigrid clapped the Coon Tail on the shoulder and walked past him. “Let’s head inside. Valdis, stay behind me and point the way. Boys, on the flanks. Kazandra, on my left.”

Cassandra fell into formation, but not before giving the bandit patrol a glare. “Any of you mistreats my horse, and I will know.”

“You trained the horse to go for the eyes, too?” Valdis murmured as they headed into the mine.

“Do you want to find out?” Cassandra deadpanned before she could think about it.

The Shank Rat looked away with a wince, and Cassandra noticed her shivering briefly. “I can’t wait to never see you again.”

They entered the mine, closed lanterns hanging on the walls every dozen or so feet giving off faint light, the entryway tunnel wide enough to walk four abreast. Soon, a more narrow passage split off on their left, and Valdis directed the group to continue on forward. Another tunnel to the left and a matching, if only a few feet deep, to the right. Another tunnel to the left and another to the right, both continuing on beyond the reach of the wan light. Another tunnel to the left and another to the right, the former forking before both of its pathways disappeared in the dark. Another tunnel to the left and another to the right, the latter at an angle and twisting back the way they came; Cassandra glanced down it, squinting, and thought she could see a sledgehammer and two pickaxes set upright against one of the timbers supporting the roof. Another tunnel to the left and another to the right, and the Shank Rat pointed them right. Another tunnel to the left, and another to the left, the angles no longer straight or grid-like, and another to the right, twisting back the way they came; Cassandra glanced down that one, as well, and thought she could see the same sledgehammer and two pickaxes. Another tunnel to the left, and sheer walls to the front and right, and Valdis waved them into a diagonal turn to the front and right as soon as they cleared the bend, the tunnel now winding gently from side to side. More passageways, short and long, broad and narrow, splitting off like blood vessels rather than straight underground roads, and Cassandra forced herself to take a deeper breath to keep her cool as she finally understood why the Equisian garrison hadn’t dared harry the bandits inside the mine and only gave them trouble on the surface.

She would not be able to find the way back out alone. And neither, she presumed, would the soldiers.

“Hold up,” Valdis murmured, and pushed to the front of the group. Then paused for a long moment, turning her head this way and that.

“You lost?” Teagan asked calmly.

“Please, I live here.” The bandit held up a hand for them not to follow, and took a few steps into a tunnel to the right, sniffing at the air a few times. “Well, that’s decay. Something must have drowned in the flooded stopes.” She stepped into the tunnel to the left then, sniffing at the air again. “Okay, that’s smoke, let’s go.”

Cassandra narrowed her eyes at a hint of firelight in the distance. The way the shadows fell, it must have been a somewhat larger chamber, or at least a cross-intersection of a few broader tunnels. She drew a breath to ask, but before she could say a word, the hint of firelight flared into a spray of flames flooding down one of those intersecting tunnels, and a chorus of agonized howling and shrieks rang out as Cassandra tried to blink the afterimage from her eyes. A staccato of rapid commands hammered through, on both sides, as the fire siphon was readied again, and this time Cassandra heard the grinding of wooden wheels against the hard rocky ground just in time to shield her eyes, just before a second load of burning oil was squeezed down another tunnel where the mercenaries of the Scarlet Brigade were attempting a push towards the exit.

“GET BACK AND ROT IN WHATEVER HELL THAT SPAWNED YOU!” one of the Coon Tail fire siphon crew roared down the tunnel.

“Bernard!” Valdis yelled towards them.

The shadows before them whipped around, crossbows at their shoulders and bolts gleaming in the firelight. “Who goes there?!”

“It’s me and my husband, and a few friends!” Sigrid called out.

“Oh thank fuck, I know that voice. Lower your weapons—”

“Bernard, left!”

“Ah, fuck!” The Coon Tail leapt to the fire siphon that his crew of two was refilling already. “Saint Florian, ward us from the flames—”

Another gout of burning oil, and another choir of screams, the Scarlet Brigade’s attempts to return fire with arrows and crossbow bolts failing to breach the Coon Tails’ fortified checkpoint of piled-up rubble and wooden barricades covered in soaked hides.

“You got a saint to tell me where their captain is?” Sigrid barked at the Coon Tail leader.

“Saint Jude, patron of lost causes!” Bernard snapped back, without looking away from reorienting the fire siphon. “Salome, how much more fuel?”

“We can do this all day,” another Coon Tail assured him with murderous glee.

“Splendid, because we might have to!” Bernard turned to Sigrid then. “Their only way out is through this spot, now that they’ve buried Crew Beta in a cave-in northeast and we’ve flooded the one you went around already.”

“And the corkscrew up to the shelter topside?”

“Walled off, and even if they were smart enough to find that, Crew Alpha and their siphon is bunkered down on that approach. They’ve been making a three-way push, hoping to overwhelm us, every few hours for a while now. No sightings of that thing that leads them since last evening.” Bernard ducked his head when a few more arrows struck the barricade or whizzed overtop it. “And we seem to be dealing with the half that damn near worships it!”

“Then one of us gets to be a godslayer,” Sigrid growled, and pulled her weapons out: axe in the right hand, sword in the left. “We need a chamber large enough for room to swing, but small enough first to take, then to hold with just the people we have. Which way do we go?”

“I’d say left-side.”

“Burn us a path on the left-side tunnel, and we’ll take care of the rest.”

Bernard let out a laugh. “Diego, Salome, turn the siphon left!”

Another bright flare of burning oil that Cassandra shielded her eyes from, and she drew her sword to follow the three veterans into the resulting breach, Hanalei and Teagan with shields in front and spears thrusting to make room for further advance, Sigrid following close with both weapons drawn and slamming the flat of the sword’s blade against that of the axe’s head a few times in a rhythmic fashion before the smoke-tinged, hot air of the mining tunnel was cut with a new sound that was not the clash of metal on metal, not the shouting of wounded and dying.

“Ef ek skal til orrustu leiða langvini,
und randir ek gel, en þeir með ríki fara—”

One of the Scarlet Brigade mercenaries pushed past Teagan’s tower shield with his own, and Sigrid hooked the bearded head of her axe around its edge to pull it aside and bring down her sword. Another slammed into Hanalei’s shield, giving room for two pairs of hands to wrest his spear away, and the smith drew his own one-handed axe in its place to cleave through the head of whoever it was in front of him. Another tried to get around Teagan’s left, to get at his shield-arm and make him drop it, and Cassandra made short work of him. She walked into Teagan as he stopped against another pouring out of a side tunnel, and she pushed the veteran forward to keep his shield in front of the group, and parried the flanking Red’s next hit only to find that he had a friend with a spear behind himself, too. Without enough light to see where the spearhead was, she couldn’t try grabbing at it with her withered hand, and there was no time for weighing options with a swordsman on her—so she backhanded him in the face with her reinforced glove, and opened his stomach up with a swipe of her sword as he staggered. An impact came against her side, but no sharp pain of injury, and Cassandra didn’t waste time staring into the second Red’s terrified eyes as she grabbed at the spear he’d just tried to skewer her with and yanked it out of his hands to hurl it into his retreating back. Still no pain, she noted, and looked down at herself to find that a faint shimmer of silver mist had formed the shape of a full suit of plate over her clothes, and heard Sigrid’s voice breaking through the din as the sorceress still sang, deep and low and challenging.

“—heilir hildar til,
heilir hildi frá,
koma þeir heilir hvaðan—”

Before long, they were treading bodies, even as Teagan lost his spear as well and was now hacking forward with a sword, even as the cries of chanter! chanter! fall back! rang out from up ahead among the Scarlet Brigade. The mouth of the open chamber loomed before them, and Sigrid charged into it without waiting, a score of blows from the mercenaries waiting for them to enter striking her and each glancing off the protective magic she was still singing for herself and for others. She barrelled through the Scarlet Brigade’s formation in a whirlwind of blades, Teagan and Hanalei followed immediately after, as did Cassandra, further breaking enemy ranks and forcing the mercenaries into a retreat through the only other exit from the chamber. And as soon as there was no more Reds within earshot of that exit, Sigrid stopped singing, and leaned her hands on her knees without dropping her weapons, panting heavily.

“Fuck. One minute. I gotta—catch my—breath.” After a moment, Cassandra watched the sorceress’ silhouette, barely visible as a darker splotch in the darkness, straighten up again and turn her head this way and that. “Sound off.”

“I’m fine,” Hanalei said.

“I’m here,” Teagan called out.

“Kazandra?”

“I’m good,” Cassandra said calmly.

“Valdis?”

“Miraculously, I’m alive,” the Shank Rat’s voice was unsteady, but with adrenaline rather than with pain.

“Who’s got torches?” Sigrid asked, still a little breathlessly.

Cassandra reached into a reinforced belt pouch and pulled out the small jar of magic-reactive ink, blinking a few times with a wince as it lit up against her withered hand. The others turned away or shielded their eyes as well, the radius of light small but blinding after having spent most of the day so far in the darkness.

“Okay, shit, that’ll make striking sparks easier.” Sigrid tucked her axe into its belt loop, then yanked the red scarf off one of the mercenary corpses on the chamber’s floor and cleaned her sword before sheathing it as well. “Come on, we need more light.”

Between the five of them, they had eight torches, and spent a moment to spread them across the chamber far enough apart to bring dim illumination to the entire area—some twenty by thirty-five feet, no larger—wedging the torches into scars sheared into the walls with mining tools, using the weapons or hands or boots of the freshly dead mercenaries across the floor as sconces. With that done, Cassandra tucked the jar of ink away again, and looked to Sigrid.

“Why are we setting up here? We still don’t know where he is.”

“That’s about to change,” Sigrid said calmly, and reached for the signal horn that hung at her belt. “Cover your ears, kids.”

Cassandra clapped both hands over her ears and opened her mouth slightly, but the resounding roar when Sigrid tilted her head back and blew the horn still made her wince. Dust shook off the ceiling, and the sorceress lifted the horn from her lips, listening to the sound ring through—and before too long, a vicious little smile curled her lips as an answering horn echoed back to where they stood.

“Now we know where he is. And he’ll be here soon, so nock.”

Cassandra cleared her throat, but said nothing about how she would have appreciated more of an advanced warning, only readied her bow and checked her archery aid, and made sure she had the ghostload arrows within easy reach, as she listened to Sigrid asking their bandit guide a few more questions about the place they were: how close to the Scarlet Brigade’s usual haunts within the tunnels, how many ways around it to the Coon Tail checkpoint.

“Only through here, so they’d have to storm back in and walk down the path we just came through,” Valdis was saying as she held her dinky crossbow to her chest like it would protect her from everything that had just gone down in the walls of the place she called home. “Every side tunnel between here and Bernard is a dead end, far as I know.”

“Then why did one of them try to run away when I threw his spear back at him?” Cassandra asked with a frown.

Sigrid and Valdis both turned to her, the bandit’s face confused and the sorceress’ breaking into a look of fear as soon as Cassandra’s words registered. And in that endless split second of clarity between them, that moment of abrupt chill running through her entire body like on the night she’d sent Owl away, the night when she stood before a grave she had just dug and felt cold fingers carding through her hair, Cassandra moved through that cold without thinking—

She grabbed the back of the Shank Rat’s belt with her withered hand and yanked, throwing Valdis behind herself—

Before the bandit even hit the ground, Sigrid let out a startled cry of pain and stumbled backwards as a throwing axe slammed into her shoulder hard enough to stagger her, and though her hand was already halfway to pulling her own weapon from its belt loop, she barely had the time to bring it up—

—a man-shaped mountain of steel hurtled through the mouth of the tunnel they had just come in through, and hit the sorceress like a battering ram.

Hanalei was in motion immediately, grabbing at the fallen chanter’s back to heave him off of Sigrid. Wherever his hands found purchase in the Scarlet Brigade captain’s backplate, the metal seemed to slither and coil around his grip, brambles tangling around his wrists, barbs digging into his fingers, leaving Hanalei’s skin torn up and bleeding as he maintained his hold, and yanked, and threw. And although the fallen chanter crashed into the wall with a clamour of metal on stone, he was far from landing in a heap, and easily brought his gauntleted hands up to grab at one of the blades of the two-handed axe that the smith attempted to hammer him against the anvil of the wall with—and instead of the axe cleaving through his hands, gauntlet and all, Cassandra watched the fallen chanter snap the massive weapon into pieces as if it were made of tissue paper, and put a foot in Hanalei’s gut to kick him away with a reverberating snarl that sounded like nothing that had the right to come from a human’s mouth.

Teagan charged in then, and the fallen chanter simply extended a hand to the side; Sigrid barked in pain again where she was picking herself from the floor as the throwing axe still embedded in her shoulder dissolved as if into a spill of water thrown from a bucket, a surge of quicksilver flying back into the fallen chanter’s hands, where it froze again into the shape of two swords, and Teagan’s advance abruptly changed into a retreat as the blades struck against his tower shield like a hailstorm and, before long, cut it into ribbons. The fallen chanter brought his hands back together then, and there were no more swords, but a heavy mace, and he slammed it into Teagan’s half-plate as if hammering on a bell, the flanges on the mace’s head cleaving through the armour as the sheer force of the strikes bent its plates inwards.

Before the overhead blow meant for Teagan’s close helm could swing down, Sigrid caught the head of her bearded axe around the fallen chanter’s elbow with a roar and yanked with everything she had left, her own helmet cracked and forgotten on the ground, a dark stain of blood pouring through her braided hair. A backhanded blow into her good shoulder with the flanged mace, and she tumbled to the ground again; the fallen chanter turned to face her, and the weapon in his hands dissolved into a mercurial surge again only to take on the form of a barbed spear, raised high to pin the sorceress to the ground—and fell from his hands as he seized up with a screech of torn metal, as a heavy broadhead fletched sheer red-and-black sank into the small of his back.

Cassandra nocked a second ghostload, and could swear she felt three pairs of hands come against her shoulders and push down as the fallen chanter hurled his spear at her; it clattered to the ground as she easily ducked underneath. A feather-light brush of fletching at the edge of her ear, and she pulled the trigger on her archery aid, the arrow striking the fallen chanter’s right arm halfway between the shoulder and elbow, demolishing the bone and sending the twisting metal brambles of armour splintering off. She nocked a third, and could swear there was a hand on her bow arm, gently correcting her aim, and loosed to shatter a chunk of steel off the fallen chanter’s left hip, throwing him to his knees and halting his jerky, slow advance towards her just like she had put his weapon arm out of commission. She nocked a fourth, and sound all through the cavern dwindled, the fallen chanter’s echoing roar of hatred and pain coming as if from behind a thick wall as she could swear another whisper rang in her ear the moment she pulled the arrow’s fletching to its edge—

—cattle die, and kinsmen die,
and so one dies oneself;
one thing now that never dies,
the fame of a dead man’s deeds—

—three voices singing a condemnation and a mourning and a furious rebuke as she loosed, and struck at the fallen chanter’s throat, and nocked a fifth, and loosed, and struck at where his heart used to be, and nocked a sixth, and loosed, and struck square between the flanged plates at his face now folding open and closed on their own volition as if to assist his laboured breathing, and reached for a seventh, and stayed her hand at the sight of the fallen chanter toppling onto his back, legs folding out from underneath him and head lolling to the side. And with a flash of spectral blue, the half-dozen arrows she had skewered him with crumbled into dust, leaving behind only piles of iron shavings and a scattering of trimmed griffincat flight feathers dyed sheer red-and-black.

There was a faint cough in the silence that followed.

“I am so done with magic,” Cassandra said weakly.

“Fuck me. Good work, though.” Sigrid pushed herself up onto an elbow with a hiss of pain. “Sound off, who’s alive?”

“I am,” Hanalei wheezed from where the fallen chanter had kicked him away.

“Tee?”

“Ow,” Teagan croaked from where he was crumpled into a heap.

“Valdis?”

“I’d say I want to go home,” the Shank Rat whimpered from where had backed herself into a corner of the chamber, still behind Cassandra. “But this entire clusterfuck has been going on inside my home.”

Sigrid laughed breathlessly, and collapsed back to the floor for a moment—pain, relief, who knew what else—then picked herself up again into a sit. “Alright, on your feet, the lot of you. More Reds can still come at us from two directions now.”

Cassandra took her bow into her withered hand and turned around, extending her good arm to the bandit guide squeezed into the corner. When the Shank Rat didn’t move, just stared at her with terrified eyes, Cassandra shrugged and lowered the offered hand, and walked away from her to take a closer look at the fallen chanter’s remains, using the small jar of glowing ink as a lantern.

Plates upon plates of grime-covered steel, falling almost like folds of fabric when the light hit them just right. A stripe of dried blood and worse staining the front of the corpse from chin to waist, tiny shreds of muscle and sinew and offal and more caught on the now-still barbs and brambles sticking from the armour. Cassandra pulled at one of the flanges at his cheeks, and found that his mouth was opening in multiple directions all at once, the joint at each side of it no longer a hinge like an elbow or a knee but closer to a shoulder or a hip, and the lower jaw split at the bottom like that of a snake, the resulting maw capable of forming a nearly conical shape now. She tried to find someplace the helmet was separate from the face, some straps tied underneath the chin, some gap between the visor and the eyes. There were none to be found. The plume overtop the corpse’s helmet was as good as his own hair; the armour, barbed like the scales of a pufferfish, as good as both skin and carapace at once. She lowered the jar of ink towards the shattered hip she had struck with one of the ghostload arrows, and found that there was no exposed muscle, no bone splinters, no blood—only whorls upon whorls of banded metal, as if the fallen chanter’s body had been cast into a mould and yet layered from watered steel, all now torn up and twisted and broken into sharp-edged shards like so much earthenware.

Was that why he had been eating corpses, Cassandra wondered with a sick feeling, to remember what it felt like to have flesh and blood inside himself?

“Kazandra,” Sigrid called out to her, though not ungently. “There’s no need to do that.”

“There is for me.”

Sigrid grunted as her husband tied a dead mercenary's red scarf around the cut in one of her shoulders and laid her other arm in another scarf tied hanging off her neck like a splint. “Then I hope you’ve stared your fill, because we’re about to leave, and we need to be quick. Come on and help Teagan walk.”

Cassandra tucked the ink away again, and walked to the armoured veteran who still struggled to stand. Between her and Hanalei, who wasn’t straightening his back for his part, they managed to drag Teagan to his feet and drape his arms around their shoulders. Sigrid, meanwhile, picked up her signal horn from the floor where it had tumbled away during the fight, and helped Valdis stand with a grunt of exertion.

“Right, you lot start walking. I’ll give you a bit of a head start.”

“Sigi,” her husband said in a warning tone.

“If we want the Reds to start surrendering, we need to let the whole mine know who won this challenge.” Sigrid tapped a finger against the horn. “I’ll catch up. Get Tee outside, he can’t walk.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Teagan wheezed, even as Hanalei lifted him off of Cassandra, slung him over one shoulder, and gave Sigrid an unimpressed look. “I feel great.”

Sigrid gave a frustrated sigh, glaring at her husband. “Why did I marry you? You’re more stubborn than a mule.”

“You’d lose your mind with someone meek enough to never stand up to you,” Hanalei shot back dryly.

“Shut up, I love you.” The sorceress emptied her lungs with a huff, then drew a deep breath and blew the horn again with all the force she could muster. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

And so they ran, Valdis in front to lead them out this time, and frantically shoving them into a side tunnel to wait for a Scarlet Brigade squad to go past, twice, and running in front again as they panted and stumbled in the dark. A hint of firelight in the distance, and heavier shadows of piled-up barricades, and both Sigrid and the Shank Rat called out to the Coon Tail fire siphon crew before the group came within range and risk of friendly fire. With the news of the Scarlet Brigade captain’s demise, the three Coon Tails started withdrawing the fire siphon, pulling it out of the mine—and once outside, Cassandra hissed in pain against the bright, cloudless, early afternoon sky, and shivered when a gust of cold wind bit through her sweat-soaked clothes.

With the Shank Rats and Coon Tails, fire siphon included, setting up a bully circle around the exits from the mine to greet whatever remains of the Scarlet Brigade that would attempt a last stand or a surrender, Cassandra made sure to grab the first teenager she saw and send them into town for one of the clinic’s medics. The three veterans she had just fought alongside had set out in one of the communal cooking areas, and were taking stock: all of Hanalei’s and Teagan’s weapons were gone, as well as Teagan’s shield, and multiple sections of his armour were sundered and bent out of shape. Sigrid’s helmet was gone, as was her bow—broken when the fallen chanter had rammed into her and knocked her flat. As for injuries, Sigrid had a shallow cut across her scalp, a deep cut in one of her shoulders, and a fracture or full-blown break in the other; Hanalei, minor cuts and a few abrasions all over, as well as probably two broken ribs; Teagan, laid out flat atop Sigrid’s cloak after his friends had peeled him out of the mangled half-plate, and his multiple broken bones were being tended to by whoever it was that passed for a healer in these parts.

Maybe 'being tended to' was a bit of an overstatement, Cassandra had to admit with a wince and she heard the veteran yowl in pain again. “Fuck you!”

“I know how to work sheep, not people!” the Shank Rat next to him barked. “You want real help, find a real physician instead of complaining!”

“I sent some kid to the clinic for help,” Cassandra offered as she came by. “Stick it out until then, you’ll be fine.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” Teagan rasped to the sky, eyes squeezed shut in pain. “Isn’t that just the pinnacle of reassuring.”

Sigrid laughed a little despite herself, then pushed herself up to her feet again with a hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Watch him for me?”

Hanalei made a come-hither motion at her with one mangled hand, and leaned his head up for a kiss. “Now I can do that.”

“Oh, you big baby.” Sigrid dragged a hand through his hair in an affectionate gesture. Then she looked at Cassandra, and motioned her to follow. “Come with me, you’re unhurt and there’s work to do.”

“Agreed.” Cassandra fell in step beside the sorceress. “Do I remember something about pyres?”

“You do, but that’ll have to wait until a work gang pulls enough bodies out of the tunnels. Let’s find Bernard first. And, probably, your warhorse.”

Cassandra grabbed the first Shank Rat they passed. “Hey, where’s my horse?”

“Oh, one moment,” the bandit stammered at the look in her eyes, and ran away as soon as she let go of their arm.

Sigrid snickered at the exchange. “Do you enjoy scaring them like that, or are you not doing it on purpose?”

“Is it too convenient if it’s both?” Cassandra asked dryly. Then shrugged. “I don’t enjoy scaring people, it’s just useful when they’re a little afraid of me. Keeps them from giving me trouble. I don’t need to make friends everywhere I go, especially if I’m just passing through like here.”

“I think it’s a little late for not making friends here,” Sigrid told her with a raised eyebrow. Then the corners of her lips twitched up again. “Then again, you don’t have to worry about Valdis trying to be your friend. At least not until she figures out that this axe—” she tapped her bandaged shoulder, “—was meant for her head, not my arm. You have good reflexes and a good nose for magic, from what I’ve seen.”

Cassandra ground her teeth, and pulled the three remaining ghostload arrows from her quiver to hand them to the sorceress. “Just take these back and don’t say any more.”

“Suit yourself.”

They found the Coon Tails’ leader still beside the fire siphon: in the sunlight, Cassandra could now see that Bernard was a Kotoan man with salt-and-pepper hair and deep brown eyes and a soot-smeared face, like the faces of both of his crew. While Sigrid was speaking with him, one of the Shank Rats streaming through the area led Fidella back to Cassandra, and she asked the mare about how they’ve been treating her to be answered with a snort that she took more seriously than the incredulous stares of the bandits around them. Before Sigrid and Bernard were done talking, a piercing whistle of alert went through the group encircling the exit from the mine, and a scared-but-steady voice called out everybody stay calm out there! we’re coming out! we’re not armed! before about two dozen haggard mercenaries with hands in the air and red scarves of the Scarlet Brigade wrapped around their necks exited to the surface. After a brief negotiation, an agreement was reached to let the Reds go, on the conditions that they would leave behind all their gear and all weapons but for a knife each and that they would not double-back to the mine or the town—a sentence barely short of an outright execution, Cassandra knew, especially when considering the season and the weather.

With being the only rider in attendance, Cassandra offered to keep an eye on the retreating mercenaries: just under fifty strong, if the term 'strong' could truly be applied to a band of empty-handed exiles trekking across the countryside. Visible as she was on horseback, she knew she was more of a scarecrow and a guarantee that they would indeed avoid double-backing towards Silberstadt, rather than a legitimate threat—and she did notice the Reds turning over their shoulders to check if she was still within sight, every now and then. Once, a few of them split off and started walking back towards the mine, so she nocked a regular arrow and very demonstrably shot in their direction, without dismounting or without aiming, a warning to stay away. And the warning of it was heeded, judging from how the mercenaries stopped, and turned on their heel afterwards to re-join their compatriots.

They were heading north, Cassandra noted with a frown as she followed them back to a road. The road that she would be taking, too, as soon as Owl came back. Maybe it would be prudent to stall for a few days more, and let them clear out.

She pushed the Scarlet Brigade survivors away until night took the sky, then turned Fidella around and rode back to the mine. There were significantly more people there now, as well as chickens and sheep that she’d seen a few weeks ago; the shelter at the top of the plateau must have been given the news already. There were significantly more bodies, as well, laid out in orderly rows and each field of them attended by a Coon Tail speaking to grief-stricken mourners. They were identifying the dead, Cassandra realized, and keeping a list of who they had lost in the fighting. But given how many of the Coon Tails—especially the older ones, and those who seemed to hold positions of leadership—were of clear Kotoan descent, perhaps that wasn’t really so surprising to see. Despite the late hour, work gangs were still hard at work: some pushing water-filled mining carts out of the mine, no doubt from a pumping station reused or hastily constructed to drain the flooded stopes, some hauling felled spruce trees into the area and preparing them for replacing the timbers that had been damaged in the fighting, whether by rot or by charring, the Coon Tails’ fire siphon no longer within sight. And for propping whatever tunnels that the Scarlet Brigade had dug out on its own, Cassandra supposed, as well as the newly-collapsed section where another fire siphon crew had been buried.

She didn't know how dangerous that cave-in would be to the rest of the mine, or how lasting the consequences would be. Briefly, she considered asking someone about it, but dismissed the idea quickly. There was nothing she would be capable of doing with the knowledge, anyway.

Snort, Fidella said, and tossed her head to indicate a direction when Cassandra looked at her.

“Oh, hello.” Cassandra smiled a little at the sight of Ramon’s old chestnut standing beside a thick tent set out near one of the communal cooking stations, and led the mare that way. Sure enough, she found the Kotoan spy inside—as well as Teagan, Hanalei, and Bruno. “The Reds are leaving, heading down the north road.”

“Probably going to try licking the boots of the Riddersbrug detachment until they’re adopted,” Hanalei said calmly.

“Probably,” Teagan agreed, still laying flat on his back, now with something more of a bedroll underneath himself.

Cassandra looked to Bruno, and gestured at the veterans. “These two gonna be okay?”

“Nothing life-threatening, but I don’t want Teagan moving yet.” The physician gave Cassandra a long look, incredulousness mixed with something not unlike awe. “And based on what I’ve seen on them and heard in camp, you are incredibly lucky to be alive, as well.”

“I think that every day,” Cassandra deadpanned, then looked to Ramon. “With two horses, we can hang a cradle between them to take Teagan back to town.”

The spy nodded. “Good thinking.”

“Sounds great,” Teagan offered from the ground.

Cassandra inclined her head to him, and turned to Bruno again. “Did you see Sigrid? She was injured, as well.”

“Yes, I did. She insists she’ll walk it off, even though I would beg to differ.”

“Where is she, anyway?”

“By the pyres,” Ramon said, and waved at Cassandra to follow him out of the tent. “I’ll walk you over.”

She waited until they were out of earshot of the others before speaking. “I hope this didn’t count as ruining your and Tara’s work here.”

“You like sticking your toes across firm lines, don’t you?” the spy asked her, not bothering to keep the frustration out of his voice. “At the very least, this wasn’t your idea, you just pitched in to help keep a few important community members alive. And the Scarlet Brigade is gone. So I’ll let it slide, this once. Though you certainly did make things harder on me in town, yeah.”

Cassandra winced. “I will be gone soon. In a week and a half, miss Tyson and I are leaving.”

“Good. Give it at least four months before coming back. Better yet, don’t come back at all, and not because I don’t like you.” Ramon dragged both hands through his hair in a tired gesture. “Anyway, I hear that congratulations are in order. Again. I hope your luck against suicidal odds holds true, knight-errant.”

“Thank you.”

Ramon gave her a nod, and split off as Cassandra walked towards one of the burning funeral pyres. There was a single figure of a woman before it, though seated in a rather sizeable wicker armchair, idly nodding her head from side to side as the sound of another sung spell coiled through the air, weaving between the crack of logs splitting in the flames. After a moment, the singing stopped, and Sigrid raised an arm to wave Cassandra forward without looking.

“Come on over.”

“I can see you’re busy,” Cassandra offered as she came to stand beside the sorceress, and folded her hands behind her back in a neutral posture.

“I’m exhausted. I need a break, anyway, and this’ll burn for a while with or without sustain.” The sorceress leaned back in the wicker armchair, the dressing at her right shoulder far cleaner and thicker now, the splint at her left heavier and sturdier. “Are the Reds leaving like they said?”

“Yeah, they hit the road and went north last I saw them. Hanalei says they probably want to join another detachment near Riddersbrug.”

“He’s probably right. Don’t tell him I said that.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes at Sigrid’s little smile. She wasn’t prepared, however, for Sigrid to turn to her and give her a genuinely concerned look.

“Are you doing alright? You spent a while giving that guy an awfully close look.”

Cassandra was silent for a long moment. “...I have a lot of uncomfortable questions.”

“Then I probably have uncomfortable answers,” the sorceress offered in a disaffected tone.

“I used to have unbreakable armour that I couldn’t take off, and a sword that could cut everything,” Cassandra said quietly. “Both afforded to me with an old and powerful magic of some description. I don’t... know where the difference lies.”

“Well, for starters, in the fact that we’re having this conversation. If you were a monster like him, you wouldn’t be able to think straight enough to reason with me anymore. Two, when a chanter goes wrong, they are no longer a magic user—they’re a twisted version of whatever fate they could have had beforehand, and they can’t do magic consciously anymore, just discharge it. Think building up static charge on a griffincat’s fur. Or act on whatever magic-augmented senses they have, like slayerwolves.”

“I don’t know what happens when you build up static on a griffincat’s fur. We don’t have those in Corona.”

“Right, I keep forgetting. Go pet Gadwall one of these days, and you’ll find out.”

Cassandra sighed. “You keep saying that monsters are only real if they used to be people.”

“Yeah. And each of us wakes up every day, and makes a choice whether to act like a monster or like a person,” Sigrid said calmly. “You aren’t special in that, Kazandra.”

“And if you were to turn, would you be as bad as that guy?”

The sorceress gave her a long look. Gentle. Almost sad. “No, girl. I’d be worse.”

“How much worse?”

“Incomparably. Got any more uncomfortable questions in you?”

“Just one.”

“Well? Might as well ask, after the last one.”

Cassandra cleared her throat quietly. “Whose huskarl were you?”

Sigrid closed her eyes before looking away, a resigned expression on her face now. “How long have you known?”

“I’ve suspected since you showed me your dagger. Watered steel is rare, and expensive even where it’s accessible. Not to mention that the shrike head at the pommel has jewelled eyes.” Cassandra paused, and after a moment, decided to admit the rest. “But I wasn’t sure until after you told me that normal sellswords pass two or three trials, those in positions of command pass four, and you’ve passed five.”

“That’ll learn me to drink with strangers,” Sigrid muttered to herself. Then sighed. “I think the continental term would be marquis. The family holds land in a territory that borders some kingdom or other republic that’s outside of the alliance. I used to be one of the lady’s top retainers, so I was put on rotation for the personal guard of one of her sons. But then the young master died, and I... well, I didn’t. So there’s probably still an outstanding bounty for me under an oathbreaking charge in Ingvarr. Or some parts of Ingvarr, at least.”

Cassandra took that in with a frown. Murder and oathbreaking were the heaviest of crimes under Ingvarrdian law, and both usually answered with capital punishment. To level such an accusation simply because a bodyguard had outlived their charge seemed excessive, even to her. “What was his name?”

“I don’t get to say his name anymore, Kazandra.”

“I meant the noble family’s name. Or steading’s, I guess. I want to see Ingvarr someday, but if that’s how unreasonable the lady and lord are, then that’s a region I’m definitely going to avoid.”

Sigrid gave a hollow little chuckle. “And what makes you think that charge was unreasonable?”

“Just about everything you’ve shown me of yourself,” Cassandra said dryly. “You are liked here, and respected, and relied upon. Your husband and your friends defer to you immediately when there’s a leadership role to be taken. Your neighbours worry about you when you’re gone. You’ve been nothing but good to me, and fair—if infuriating, too, but I’ve had worse—and yes, you may avoid taking on responsibilities if at all possible, but I watched you step up and do the right thing every time it was needed. Besides, you’ve also told me that an oathbreaking chanter is a chanter who turns, and you are very clearly not—” she nodded towards the mine, where they had killed the fallen captain of the Scarlet Brigade. “—that. So if you used to be sworn to serve and protect an heir of some description, who then died while you survived, that means you’ve legitimately done everything you could within the confines of your oath to keep it fulfilled.”

Sigrid was silent for a long moment, staring into the pyre. Then she gave a small shake of her head, a pained look on her face now. “How was I supposed to keep that fuck-stupid, obstinate, idiot kid alive when he was actively sabotaging my efforts to do so?”

“You can say that again,” Cassandra murmured with feeling.

“What, same experiences?”

Rather than answer straight away, Cassandra reached into her breast pocket and pulled out the wanted poster of herself that she had been carrying there for three and a half months now, the portrait unmistakable despite depicting her still with turquoise hair and eyes, naming her both traitor and pardoned. “I betrayed an heiress I’ve been sworn to protect, partly because I was done with how she treated me. And partly still to protect her, because she was preventing me from actually doing that when I was at her side.”

“And now you’re her knight-errant,” Sigrid said slowly, staring at the gold-trimmed kerchief tied around Cassandra’s left bicep.

“And now I’m her knight-errant.” Cassandra took the poster back and folded it back into her breast pocket. “Things get complicated when people with power over us don’t acknowledge that power, huh? Or their off-handed use of it.”

“Don’t they just,” Sigrid sighed. “I really don’t know what to make of you.”

“Trust me, I don’t know what to make of me either.”

“What I do know is that I owe you now,” the sorceress said pointedly. “This was a lot, you do realize that?”

Cassandra shrugged. “I barely did anything. You just needed someone to shoot a few arrows. Anyone could’ve done—”

“Valdis was supposed to die,” Sigrid cut her off in a harsh tone. “I spent two weeks dreaming of this fight, trying to find the least costly resolution to it, and she died every night like clockwork. And then you showed up when I was chugging Bastian’s whiskey so I wouldn’t remember dreaming the same thing again, with that kerchief on your arm and that pendant around your neck and a ghost’s touch at your forehead, asking after when we were going to brute-force a solution to this shitfire of a gang war, because you wanted in on the action. Now you’re standing next to me, with that kerchief on your arm and that pendant around your neck, and you have no blessing of the dead on you anymore, but Valdis is going to sleep in a bed tonight, not in this pyre. Yeah, we could have done this without you. We could have done this with another person. But someone would’ve gotten hurt. Someone would’ve gotten killed. And now we’re alive, and none of us are injured beyond recovery, because you were here. Because you decided to involve yourself, regardless of that the fight wasn’t even yours. You scored a blessing from the Tysons for protecting their daughter, and you used that blessing to protect someone else’s daughter, too. You helped me keep those I care about safe, and do something that was my job, not anyone else’s.” Sigrid slowly heaved herself onto her feet, and opened her arms, if with difficulty. “So bring it in, you stubborn ass.”

Cassandra laughed a little, even as she stepped closer and allowed Sigrid to hold her. It was as firm as her handshakes had been, and as her entire demeanour, and with the same underlying tenderness she had exhibited through her decision-making: hard enough to stare down the worst horrors that walked the earth, warm enough to give the world at large and each of its myriad facets the reverence it was due. She hugged with the same strength that she hurled a javelin with, and she smelled of smoke and sweat and something sharp and unrecognizable that must have been the residue of protective magic she had sung for each of her group, and Cassandra caught herself on not wanting to let go just yet.

“If you find yourself in need as dire as this has been, call on me for aid and I’ll answer,” Sigrid murmured next to her ear. “And that, Kazandra, is a promise. Send your bird to find me and tell him to lead me back to you, I’ll worry about keeping pace and travel time.”

“You don’t need to bind yourself for me like that,” Cassandra protested weakly.

“Well, too late. And I will complain if you pull me far enough from home for it.” Sigrid patted her back—not patronizingly, thank goodness—before pulling away and holding Cassandra at arm’s length for a moment longer. “Get some rest. I’ll need you to keep watch on the Reds tomorrow, too. One more day, and then you can go back to the Tyson girl, and wherever you’re headed with her afterwards. Just make sure to hang around long enough to benefit when we go bother Bastian to roast us a duck and crack us a bottle.”

Chapter Text

“This is so nice,” Teagan quipped from where he laid, swaddled in a makeshift cradle one side of which hung from Fidella’s back, the other from the back of Ramon’s chestnut. “Just need a lullaby now.”

“You’re not going to wake up again if I sing one of those for you,” Sigrid grumbled good-naturedly, her fractured arm in a sling and her injured arm tucked into her belt as she walked beside the horses.

Cassandra rolled her eyes at their antics, but without any actual frustration. The fact that the veterans around her kept up a light banter on the way from the mine back to town meant that they had the strength to spare on jokes, and therefore none of them were injured too severely, not even the one who hasn’t been allowed to move on his own yet. She looked to the physician, the smith, and the spy walking along with them as well. Overall, the group seemed in high spirits, what with the victory they had hard-won the day before for all who called the region home—or at least, the others were in high spirits, while the spy was faking it well enough.

When the town walls and the guard checkpoint were in sight, she waved Sigrid aside for a moment and lowered her voice. “Aren’t you going to make fog like on the way out?”

“Oh, the fog wasn’t me,” Sigrid murmured back to her calmly. “I could do a similar thing, but I’d have to sing throughout to keep it up.”

Cassandra frowned slowly at that. Sigrid had seemed incredibly sure of herself when she had called for the strike team to assemble four hours after sunset, saying that the cover of night and fog would be thick enough to shield them from the guards by then. Normally, she was only that sure of things that she herself could do. So if the fog had not been her doing, it had to have been conjured forth by someone Sigrid knew and trusted as deeply as she knew herself and her own capabilities, and the only person Cassandra had seen her open with and reliant on in a similar capacity who wasn’t already present was—

“Sebastian?” she hissed at Sigrid, if still quietly. “Sebastian is a sorcerer?!”

“Pretty good, huh?” Sigrid grinned at her openly. “He only knows how to do three or four things, but damn if they aren’t useful. And who’s going to suspect the smiley, domestic, one-for-all all-for-one little innkeeper when there’s a loudmouth like me being weird and rude in plain sight?”

Cassandra didn’t answer, busy as she was abruptly reconsidering the past dozen or so weeks. She had been sleeping under a sorcerer’s roof. Eating a sorcerer’s food. Asking a sorcerer for advice, for local lore and custom. She had left some of her most sensitive belongings, including the wardwork box full of a murderer’s craftsmanship, in a sorcerer’s care.

“Hey.” Sigrid placed a hand at the small of Cassandra’s back, reaching no higher in an attempt not to tear at the injuries in either of her wounded arms. “I won’t have you thinking any less of him for that.”

“No, you’re right. He’s done right by me, by everyone I’ve seen him have dealings with,” Cassandra admitted, reminding herself of as much. Sebastian’s agreement with the clinic to supply meals for them, his immediate refusal to tolerate Carter in his inn simply because Moreen had asked him to keep the farmhand away from her, his protective attitude towards the Shank Rats even before the two bandit outfits had joined forces—all she had seen of Sebastian spoke of a righteous man who knew unjust laws too closely to respect their authority anymore, a man ready to rely only on a few carefully chosen friends to bring any semblance of justice into the world, for himself and for all who weren’t strong enough to take that stand on their own as well.

It didn’t change the fact that she had let her guard down, for sure, but at the least, this time it had happened with someone disinclined to take advantage of her the moment it happened.

“I know you’ve had shit experiences with magic, and I remember that you haven’t even started telling me about the heavy part,” Sigrid said, her tone firm but not ungentle. “I know that Corona taught you that magic is dangerous and everyone who touches it is too, that you need to fear and hate both the hammer and the nail. But if you’re going to spend any length of time in this part of the continent, you need to get it through your head that magic is like emotions—neither is inherently good or bad on its own, and the only thing that matters is what we do with it—and that sometimes, sorcerers can be good people.”

Cassandra ground her teeth and looked away. She’d have a thing or two to say about magic that wasn’t just not unlike emotions, but actively influenced by emotions, if it weren’t pointless to speak of in the first place. The Moonstone was gone—and so was the way it lit up like white-hot iron every time she lost her temper, the way it spat forth sparks and enshrouded her in a crackle of bright blue lightning every time she felt nothing but pure volcanic rage welling up in her soul. There would be no more black rocks in the world—and there would not be, either, any chance anymore to summon forth thrice as many with half the effort when she was furious enough, or to turn them red and so much more dangerous when for a moment, she cracked, and lost her grip on herself, and panicked.

Was that why she hadn’t experienced any of the Moonstone’s pull to reunite with the Sundrop, Cassandra thought slowly for the first time. The stones’ visceral need to be back together had sent a devastating trail across kingdoms and villages and no-man’s-land alike; Raps herself, she recalled, had been able to lead the group through the Dark Kingdom’s former seat of power by following the Sundrop signalling its counterpart how near it was, and the Moonstone’s response of folding the black rocks into a path to itself. And true enough that the rocks had been incomparably easier to call forth whenever the Sundrop was near, a bristling cage and a chasm-spanning bridge built at the slightest gesture and without any experience with handling the magic, yet a terrible struggle to dredge up a single pitiful spike afterwards, but there had been no pressure on Cassandra herself to chase after the Sundrop and its vessel, to close the distance, to be together, to touch. Not in all the time she had carried the Moonstone. Was that part of the reason why she had been led by the hand into so much anger—to provide a catalyst for turning the Moonstone’s screaming for its other half, screaming to be whole again, into a blaze of cosmic rage? To manipulate that which she had taken, along with herself?

“What, that hard a concept to parse?” Sigrid asked dryly, pulling Cassandra back to the present.

Cassandra looked at her again. “Would you say that you’re a good person?”

“Ask around in town, and I imagine a lot of people would tell you as much.”

“I’m asking you.”

“Then no,” the sorceress admitted easily. “I don’t go out of my way to make the lives of others better, I don’t do charity. Being good, and doing good, is more than just the lack of bad.”

“Then what do you call what we’ve just done?” Cassandra pointed a thumb over her shoulder, towards the mine.

“Bare minimum,” Sigrid said simply.

Cassandra raised her eyebrows. “You know, that does tell me a thing or two about you.”

“Spare me the flattery. If I decide to brag, you’ll be able to tell that and this conversation apart, trust me.”

“I’m sure I will.”

Cassandra let the matter rest afterwards, deep in thought as she walked. She’d spent too long a time in one place—long enough to stop watching herself the entire time, to stop being as cautious as she should have been. That carelessness had put her, as well as Fidella and Owl, in danger that was perfectly avoidable, and she had only stayed safe by lucking out. Thanks to some chance or twist of fate, the people she had left herself wide open for hadn’t manipulated and exploited her this time. Thus far.

And especially with moving towns soon and leaving behind the one where she was at least moderately liked in, she would have to go back to being more careful, Cassandra knew.

But she was still very lonely. And she was still going to have to look for more permanent company, like she had promised Owl and Fidella she would. And if she were to approach looking for company with the excessive caution she had just been chiding herself for throwing to the wind, then truthfully, few could be blamed for cutting their losses with her. Again.

And she was very tired of people cutting their losses with her by now.

Cassandra sighed to herself silently. Distrust was a shield only as simple as it was effective, but at what point was it cowardice and wilful blindness to keep hiding behind it? How much open trust should she extend to strangers, particularly ones who would probably have been in the sellsword market for years longer then herself? Corona had its annual Goodwill Festival to celebrate charity and togetherness and lack of conflict, but from the perspective of a handmaiden in the royal court, of one who had to prepare the festival each year and clean it up afterwards, Cassandra knew extremely well that it was little more than putting on a show. But she was not in Corona anymore, and there were people around her who displayed actual goodwill. The family of physicians and herbalists who ran the clinic seemed to have no source of income, yet treated everyone who came to them, without charging any of their patients a penny. The Brazen Brigand was a safehouse for all who didn’t have their own accommodations in town, and a space kept safe for all who had no choice but ask for sanctuary there. The Coon Tails, with their Kotoan faces and names and engineering expertise and penchant for retribution with blood and fire, must have been founded upon one of the occasions when their kingdom had been ousted from the area, but they’ve converted the mine into whatever makeshift living spaces they were able to for anyone who lived in that wide and bickering anarchist commune, not only the now-displaced Kotoan citizens among them. And then there were the mercenary veterans around her—one of whom had decided to hold herself responsible for rectifying the monstrous conduct of a stranger from a similar walk of life, and the others who had refused to let her fight that battle alone.

And if outside of Corona, some sorcerers kept their powers in the back pocket for emergencies—whether caused by cruelties of the mundane, or by calamities of the magical—then maybe not all of magic and its users deserved the suspicious, hostile sort of caution that Cassandra had learned to rely on in her service to the Coronian royal family.

That conclusion was, she decided, good enough to settle on for now. Then, but a moment later, another thought arose from it, and Cassandra felt herself frown against it:

She was not a servant anymore.

No longer did she have to think about everything in terms of usefulness to someone else. No longer did she have to ward off danger, real or imaginary, in such an excessive degree—she could decide for herself how much she was comfortable with, and how much she was capable of handling. If the people she found and joined up with treated her poorly, then she could leave and find somebody better; and if they treated her well, then she could relax around them a little more, maybe far enough to let them alleviate her loneliness, maybe even far enough to let them sate a little bit of her mounting, gnawing, persistent need for being touched. And most important of all, it was going to be not only okay, but extremely necessary for her to work herself into one more habit: to question her orders.

And with a whole new sky opened up wide and endless before her just like that, Cassandra scarcely noticed that they had made it to the guard checkpoint into town, and startled when one of the Equisian soldiers hailed them in a curt tone.

“Halt! What business have you in Silberstadt?!”

“Sir, we live here,” Bruno shot back, his voice equally devoid of patience.

The guard cocked his head at the amount of injuries on Sigrid, Hanalei, and Teagan. “The hell happened to you lot?”

“Oh, you had to be there,” Sigrid dismissed with a lazy grin. “Wild party last night.”

The guard stared at her for a moment before turning his attention to Teagan. “You?”

“I fell down the stairs,” Teagan deadpanned, staring the guard straight in the eye.

Frowning now, the guard jerked his chin at Hanalei, and made an inquisitive noise.

“Well, you see, sir,” the smith said serenely, “when you marry an Ingvarrdian woman, things like this just happen sometimes. And then you say thank you, and tell her which parts you enjoyed, so that she can do them again at some point in the future if you’ve been good, and then you do something for her, as well, if she’s so inclined, like—”

“Okay, okay, fuck! Just—” the guard motioned them sharply into town, a disgusted look on his face. “Just keep walking and don’t cause any trouble!”

“You only say shit like that when I already can’t elbow you in the ribs,” Sigrid hissed at her husband as soon as they were out of earshot of the checkpoint.

“I wonder why,” Hanalei said thoughtfully, to the accompaniment of Teagan cackling shamelessly from the cradle between horses, Cassandra shaking her head, Bruno blushing a scandalized beetroot red from behind the hand at his face, and Ramon only partially succeeding in his own attempt not to laugh.

After the ferrying of Teagan to the clinic’s doors was done, Bruno and Ramon had taken the makeshift cradle on each end to carry him upstairs into a bed, and Cassandra busied herself with ridding both Fidella and the spy’s chestnut of the latticework of rope that used to support the construction. The mare took a moment then to put her nose to Cassandra’s shoulder and puff a bit of warmth at her affectionately, and Cassandra smiled as she stroked Fidella’s neck. The sorceress and the smith beside them had meanwhile agreed which of them would check if everything was in order at home and which would go to the Brazen Brigand to give Sebastian the news, and Cassandra turned when a hand came lightly against her left forearm.

“Go watch the Reds today as well, will you?” Sigrid asked of her quietly. “Just today, and if they keep walking, I’ll leave you alone tomorrow.”

“Not a problem. I already told you I’d do it.” Cassandra paused for a moment. “If you see miss Tyson, tell her I’ll be back this evening, okay?”

“If I see the Tyson girl, I’ll tell her that you’re unhurt and you’re running an errand for me,” Sigrid told her in a calming tone. “Both of which are true. I’ll vouch for you to her if you’re scared she’ll think less of you for not clocking back in straight away, don’t worry.”

Cassandra stared at her for a moment. Then lifted a finger. “Uh, it’s not like that at all.”

“No? Then maybe I was mistaken,” the sorceress said flatly, looking entirely unconvinced that such was indeed the case. “Well, get moving, huh? The day’s still young, but it’s not getting any younger.”

Shaking her head, Cassandra climbed into the saddle and turned Fidella back to the road out of town. The guard at the checkpoint frowned at her when he saw her approaching.

“What, leaving already?”

Cassandra lifted her hands for him to see, the left bare and the right clad in her reinforced glove. “I forgot the other one.”

The guard gave her a long look. “Are you taking the piss out of me, sellsword?”

“Sir, it’ll be a hassle to get another one made,” Cassandra said calmly, resigning herself to the fact that it would be best not to take the piss out of that guard anymore. At least today.

Maybe she could ride back into town through a different checkpoint later on, she considered as she nudged Fidella into a trot back to where she had left the Scarlet Brigade’s survivors the evening before, and took her left glove from where it had been tucked into the back of her belt to pull it on.

Sure enough, a group of about a dozen Reds had splintered off to double-back towards the mine. And could she really blame them, Cassandra wondered even as she put two fingers into her mouth and whistled three piercing notes, echoing out over the plain loudly enough for Fidella to fold her ears against it and whinny her disapproval. The Coon Tails had offered either death, or terms of surrender so steep as to mean death very nearly as certain as in the fire siphon’s flames, only delayed and elsewhere. With no winter gear, the remaining Reds would have to march from one location at least pretending to provide shelter from the elements to another, and keep campfires burning overnight for the slimmest chance to live through every next night. With no provisions, no weapons with which to hunt for food, and no equipment to make even rabbit snares or anything more complicated than a primitive pitfall trap, they would soon have to choose between stealing and starving.

And that would be a very easy choice, as well as terrible news for anyone living between Silberstadt and Riddersbrug, Cassandra admitted to herself with a grimace as she snapped her archery aid on and loosed another warning shot towards that dozen-or-so Reds. They seemed to pause, and argue for a moment, some of them visibly no longer up for it since the alarm call entirely loud enough to alert any possible Shank Rat and Coon Tail patrol nearby. Cassandra stood up in the stirrups, looking over to where the rest of the Scarlet Brigade’s remains had been last, in case the smaller group was just a decoy. Forty, at a glance, or just under that. At least the numbers checked out.

When the splintered-off dozen divided into two teams of six, Cassandra sighed, and ignored the one heading to the mine in order to pursue the one heading to the town. If she tried to herd them away, not unlike a bloodhound coursing game, maybe they would take the hint and give up.

They did not give up.

She dropped the first Red with an arrow that caught him through the throat, from too far away to aim properly and try for non-lethal shots. That, unfortunately, drove the remaining five into taking a stand rather than running; the second Red attempted to throw his knife at Fidella, though the blade fell into the grass far from its mark. Cassandra nocked another arrow, and this time when she sent it straight into the Red’s face, it had been very much on purpose. She tossed her bow into her withered hand then and drew her sword with the left, swiping at the third mercenary as she rode past and straight into the fourth, to ram Fidella’s chest into him and trample. Then, there were hands grabbing at her right leg, trying to yank her to the ground, and Cassandra kneed the mercenary in the chin without thinking before jumping off the saddle to grace him with a woefully short duel and open his throat up ear-to-ear.

Snort, Fidella said, indicating a direction with a little upwards nod of her head.

Cassandra turned to look, and found the sixth Red running away as fast as his legs could carry him. Heading back the way the group had come from, as well. “Good. We’ll deal with that in a minute.”

She went between the others, strewn on the ground, bleeding out into the yellowed grasses and muddy topsoil, and finished off the two that weren’t dead yet. Cleaned and sheathed her sword, and put the bow back in its case at the saddle. Mounted Fidella again, and gave the area one last look, scowling now.

Five more dead, for nothing, fed to the fields that had already swallowed so many. Five more deaths that would have been perfectly avoidable if it hadn’t been for Kotoan retribution, if the pitiful remains of the Scarlet Brigade had been not only told to leave, but allowed the means to make the journey.

What a waste.

With a frustrated sigh, Cassandra nudged Fidella straight into a canter, chasing down the last of the half-dozen. He was starting to flag, she could see, but one glance over his shoulder was enough for him to gain a desperate second wind and redouble his efforts to get away.

Still not enough to outrun a horse, though.

Cassandra pulled Fidella to pass by on the mercenary’s right. When they caught up, she grabbed at the Red’s clothes with her good hand and hauled him up, throwing him across the saddle in front of herself like a sack of grain. “Stop wriggling, you don’t want to fall off at this speed!”

“Please don’t kill me,” the Red squeaked as he went very still, clinging to whatever he could grab on for dear life.

“If I wanted to kill you, we would not be speaking!” Cassandra barked at him.

She rode towards where the other half-dozen Reds had been approaching the mine from. Sure enough, she found six more bodies with red scarves around their necks, and a patrol of three Shank Rats with a Coon Tail for an officer. Cornrows, small scar on the left side of his face. Luc, Cassandra recognized, the same who had greeted Sigrid’s war party at the entrances to the mine a day prior.

“You have quite a way with alert calls,” he greeted Cassandra. Then he noticed the Red slung across her saddle, and his eyes turned far colder. “And a penchant for pets?”

“I will thank you not to ever make that comparison again,” Cassandra said flatly, and pointed her withered thumb over her shoulder to indicate the way she came. “There’s five more bodies that way.”

“Why not six, though?” Luc gestured to the Red she was just hoisting off of Fidella’s back and setting back on his feet, where he immediately lifted both hands, open and empty, at the sight of three crossbow bolts trained on him.

“I didn’t drag him all the way here so you could kill him.” Cassandra waved the Coon Tail aside, just far enough to get out of immediate earshot, and lowered her voice. “Do you actually want his friends to leave?”

“I want them gone,” Luc told her coldly. “I don’t much care if they leave for anywhere that’s not here, or for the heavens.”

“Look, if you wanted them dead, you should have killed them when they came out of the mine. Now it’s just pointless cruelty,” Cassandra snapped at him quietly. “They aren’t going to leave if they know they’ll just starve before they even get halfway there. They’re going to keep trying to get back in—either here, or into town, and if they go into town, they’ll pull the guards down on all your heads.”

The Coon Tail crossed his arms, entirely unconvinced. “What do you care?”

“I don’t leave jobs half-done,” Cassandra ground through her teeth. “This is a problem, and I want it solved before I leave.”

“And how do you expect us to solve it? By giving them food and charcoal? They killed all of our oxen and a lot of sheep, they torched half our hay and slaughtered entire families,” the Coon Tail bit out at her. “We’re hampered enough as it is with the aftermath of their own fucking captain kicking off this entire problem, as you say, and they’ve already gotten all the mercy we have to spare for the likes of them. They can leave, or they can die, and I’m pretty sure I speak for everyone here when I say that we don’t mind either way.”

Cassandra pinched the corners of her eyes with her withered fingers. “Is there any chance I could buy a few sheep and chickens from you people?”

Luc said nothing at that, limiting his answer to a deeply unimpressed look.

“I can pay,” Cassandra said tiredly.

“I don’t doubt you can, but we can’t eat your gold before the first spring fair, now can we?”

“Listen, it doesn’t have to be your best animals. Any old rooster, or hen that doesn’t lay anymore, or ram that you’ve been dying to get rid of will do.”

In the end, it was three sheep and five chickens, paid for with an amount of coin that was nothing short of exorbitant and ate clean through Cassandra’s reserve of gold she had set aside for emergencies. She was going to have to find work first thing in Riddersbrug, she knew, even as she tied the dinky wicker cages with chickens overtop Fidella’s saddle, took the Red she had taken prisoner by the scruff of his scarf to drag him away, and handed the cords of rope tied around the sheep’s necks off to him.

“Take these and follow. What’s your name?”

“Tiachren,” the Red said uncertainly as he pulled the sheep along. “What’s yours?”

“Mind your own business. Tell your friends to eat and keep walking, you hear? We’ll just kill the rest of you if you don’t leave.”

“Um. Sure.”

Snort, Fidella said, her tone as long-suffering as Cassandra felt.

“Oh, don’t even start,” she grumbled at the mare.

“But I didn’t say anything,” the Red beside her mumbled.

“Not you.”

Cassandra led him to a point reasonably halfway between the Scarlet Brigade’s miserable excuse for a camp and the mine settlement’s sentries, then piled the chicken cages on the ground and climbed into the saddle again.

“I’m going to clear out. Bring a few people to carry the chickens to your camp.”

“Okay,” the Red said slowly, still clearly uncertain what was going on. Or why, rather. “Uh, thanks.”

Cassandra gave him a longer look. He seemed younger than she was. Closer to Raps’ age, maybe. Or if the patchy stubble on his face was any indication, he was just a teenager, and so closer to the age Colette Bayard had been when she had died in another battle with no victors that solved nothing.

With a sigh, she pushed Fidella a step closer to the Red. “Hey.”

When he turned towards her again, Cassandra shoved all but the day’s worth of her rations into his hands—travel bread, hard cheese, dried fruit, and a metal tin stacked with paper packets full of various seasonings she had taken from Castle Corona—then unbuckled her flimsy little summer half-cloak from around her shoulders and threw it to him as well.

“Find something better to do with your life, Tiachren, alright?”

He blinked at her. “I’ll... try?”

“Make sure you do.” Cassandra turned Fidella around, and clicked her tongue at the mare to get moving.

And sure enough, a few more Reds came quickly for the chickens when Tiachren returned to camp alone but with three sheep in tow. Immediately upon arrival, the animals were butchered, and though Cassandra had known that the Scarlet Brigade’s roots were in an Equisian attempt to form a foreign legion, she still found herself a little surprised with that there were no scuffles over the food, no further unnecessary deaths. Not only that, but from what she could see at this distance, the Reds had some of that food left over. Whoever had taken command in the aftermath of the gang war in the mine was clearly capable of maintaining enough discipline to implement half-rations and still retain authority.

But when the Reds were done eating, they did move on, and spent the rest of the day slowly trekking north. Cassandra tailed them at a distance, as she had the night before, and noticed that the mercenaries were moving in a loosely defensive formation; what few wounded were still walking among them, they made sure to take in the centre, and the sentries at the edges rotated out every hour. Some of the younger members, Tiachren possibly among them, were also splitting off at a faster pace every now and then—but only ever ahead, very mindful of Cassandra’s continued presence and the fact that they had just suffered eleven deaths among their already decimated numbers—and coming back with loads of firewood, with scarves full of the soft underlayer of tree bark that they could boil and boost their meagre rations with later on, with animated reports they gave to someone at the front of the group as they pointed towards an errant mesa, an overgrown orchard, a long-since burnt down farmhouse. Cassandra tried to count them several times, and each time came away with thirty-six. There must have been another violent change of leadership overnight.

It was a very fortunate thing that the current officer had only come into power after the Scarlet Brigade had already lost, Cassandra thought to herself. Then she looked to the sky to gauge the hour, and at the road south to Silberstadt to gauge the distance. With little time to spare until sundown, she rode back, crossing back into town maybe a quarter hour before the Equisian guard’s pointless curfew.

With the smithy closed up, Cassandra wasted no time heading to the Brazen Brigand. The near-reverent look in the stable boy’s eyes told her that the rumour mill was already going full steam ahead, and she took a moment to brace herself before walking into the tavern’s dining floor.

It still hadn’t prepared her for the applause cut with cheers and wolf whistles that erupted as soon as she came in, the Shank Rats and farmers and townsfolk having obviously heard about who it had been to kill the twisted, deadly creature that the Scarlet Brigade’s former captain had become. And judging from the insufferably smug look on Sigrid’s face from where she and her husband sat at the countertop, Cassandra knew exactly who to blame for that.

Before she could offer the sorceress a report on the Reds’ movements or a death threat, however, Moreen Tyson leaned out from behind Hanalei and rushed towards Cassandra to take her hands and look her up and down, twice, three times, as if fearful that she was missing something for wanting so badly to see her well. “You really are alright, then?”

“I’m fine. Not a scratch on me,” Cassandra told her, and stiffened on a reflex when Moreen pulled her into a hug. After a moment, she managed to pat the farmer’s back awkwardly with her withered hand—and caught Sigrid’s eye over Moreen’s shoulder, the sorceress mouthing I told you so at her soundlessly.

There were definitely going to be death threats involved, Cassandra decided with murderous calm.

“You’re freezing cold,” Moreen murmured next to her ear before pulling away. “Come and eat something. Where’s your cloak?”

“It’s fine,” Cassandra repeated mechanically, trying to find an opportune moment for getting everyone out of her personal space. “It didn’t rain today.”

“No, there wasn’t a cloud in sight all day long, we’re going to have frost soon.”

“I welcome whatever sorry excuse for a frost this place can give me,” Sigrid grumbled into her tankard as Cassandra sat on her other side, and was joined by Moreen on her left in turn. “Shame our little friends are going to get caught in it, but also, do I care. How’re they doing?”

“Down to three dozen square, and spent most of the day walking. They tried to give me and the mine folks trouble, and it ended very poorly for them,” Cassandra said, choosing to omit that it had also ended with her very nearly flat broke. “Whatever new officer they have is keeping them in impressive shape, though, all things considered.”

“Really? Huh.” Sigrid sipped her ale thoughtfully. “I’ll take over with tailing them tomorrow, just to see if they try anything silly. But if that’s the kind of officer leading these three dozen to join with another detachment up north, it might be something to keep in mind for your future, maybe.”

“I know.” Cassandra looked to Sebastian, who had just emerged from the kitchen, and greeted him with a nod. “Do you think I could get some dinner from you? And a refill on rations, I’m out.”

“Sure, but only for the price of a story,” Sebastian told her with a grin, and indicated Sigrid. “Everything that homegrown poet said about it has been outrageous.”

“I waited until I had a clear shot, and then I kept shooting until he dropped,” Cassandra said flatly.

Sebastian burst out laughing. “All in a day’s work, huh?”

And with this day’s work, too, being done, Cassandra spent the evening with the three mercenary veterans around her, eating a hefty meal nothing short of a feast for the local standards and speaking with them of what the Scarlet Brigade’s disappearance from the area would mean for the mine settlement and for the surviving farmers within a few dozen miles’ radius, of how the amount of deaths among the bandits and the farmers would affect the food stores for the coming winter, of the town’s most experienced combatants having lost most of their gear in the battle against the turned chanter and of what could be done to have it replaced. And when Cassandra went to sleep that evening, she found herself drifting off as soon as she laid her head down for all the exhaustion of the day and the day prior, yet claimed in an equal degree by dreams just as screamingly bright, sudden, and violent as the events of those past two days, a mixture of memory and imagination and fear. None as vivid as the courtyard of Castle Corona, and Raps standing before her, still with golden hair and with shock and fear on her face, and then an impact against the side of Cassandra’s black rock armour-clad torso, hard enough to make her stagger onto her back foot, and a sound of shattered glass and a cloud of elixir fumes and then she could no longer move, her legs encased up to mid-thigh in what looked almost like a slab of translucent yellow glass—and then that yellow stain in the air settling over the black laid against her body and clinging to it, and making it sizzle and bubble and bloat and twist, inside and out, and her dream self screamed out as the sheer black spikes wriggled into motion and knotted up into amber brambles, thorns inch-long and longer growing through her skin and muscle with absolutely no resistance, the sleek opaque black warping into chunks of yellow too thick to allow for motion or for bending joints anymore, and still warping afterwards, blurring even the contours of her form, a human-like shape reduced to a malformed, crystalline hedgehog bristling with tangled barbs as the amber kept surging upwards and over her neck, and still upwards, over her eyes to turn the world blurry, her face to choke off any desperate attempt at drawing breath against the sheer mass of crystal too firm over her chest to allow its rise and fall, her brow as it settled overtop into a mockery of a crown shaped like five grasping hands reaching upwards, upwards, as if to drag down anything she could have stood for along with herself, and a faint ray of consciousness shone dimly through, then shattered the image and sensation and sound of all around her as if they were a pane of glass, as Cassandra thrashed in her sleep one time too many and fell out of her hammock, landing on the stable’s floor with a thud and a grunt, and the first thing she did was frantically paw at herself, finding fabric and skin and leather with her left hand and absolutely nothing with the right.

Snort, Fidella said worriedly, looking over her shoulder.

“It’s a dream,” Cassandra wheezed, and allowed herself to thump flat onto her back in the hay. “Oh, it was just a bad dream.”

Fidella nickered at her, now only more concerned than she already was.

Cassandra raised one arm at the elbow to give the mare a dismissive gesture, not inclined to move before she could breathe right again, before her heart settled down into a normal rhythm again. “It’s fine. Don’t fuss. I had a nightmare, that’s all, nothing to write home about.”

It had taken quite a while before she could go back to sleep that night, but eventually she did sleep, and without any more similar misadventures. Morning came with frost, the mud turned hard with the cold and the puddles frozen from the surface to the bottom, and Cassandra threw her longer, warmer, winter cloak around her shoulders before slowly testing her withered hand. With a smile, she found that she could close it. Not squeeze, not without starting the slow everyday buildup of persistent pain, but she could close a fist freely in the cold.

True to Sigrid’s word, she did not see the sorceress throughout the day, or through the next day, but she did notice something else: the Equisian soldiers in town had suddenly turned distinctly more polite. There were much fewer attempts to start shit with the Shank Rats, to harass the locals of non-Equisian descent, to provoke a fight with anyone who looked at their uniforms wrong. And if it came at the cost of at least one patrol tailing Cassandra everywhere she went in town, with varying degrees of success at being discreet about it, then she could work with that, she decided as she went back to helping Moreen sell her family’s belongings.

The day afterwards, Sigrid was at the Brigand’s countertop again, with her usual lazy grin and with news of the Scarlet Brigade’s survivors having continued on north without stopping or doubling-back anymore. The day after that and the following one, Cassandra spent on a one last trip to Tyson farm, where Moreen took the last remains of anything worth a couple of silver coins and spent a long moment at her parents’ grave before leaving behind the only home she’d known so far. The day after that and the one that followed, Cassandra spent still on helping the farmer sell what she didn’t want to keep or couldn’t carry.

And over the nights that followed those days, Cassandra dreamed the nightmare of living crystalline amber armour crushing her alive twice more, yet each less intense than the last. Maybe she should have been more careful with herself than making a point of inspecting the turned chanter’s corpse, she admitted to herself reluctantly. But as the dreams were fading, then so too did any persistent distress she hadn’t allowed herself to admit and struggle with, so she spoke of it to no one, and only ever insisted before Fidella that she was fine and there was no need to worry.

On the ninth day after the battle in the mine, Cassandra exited the Brazen Brigand’s stable in the morning only to be greeted with a very familiar hoot!, and her head snapped up at the same time as she held her left arm out on a reflex, and Owl swooped down to perch on it.

“I missed you—” Cassandra wrapped him up with her withered arm and smooshed him up against her chest for a moment, disregarding another startled hoot, but easing off once he flapped his wings at her to stop. “Did you have safe skies?”

Hoot, Owl confirmed easily, and gave her a stern, inquisitive look in turn.

Cassandra held up a finger at him. “This time when I got into trouble, I made sure I wasn’t doing it alone, and I didn’t get hurt. Ask Fidella if you want. She wasn’t there for it, exactly, but she saw me before and after.”

Hoot, Owl conceded, and put his face into her cheek for a moment as a reward for that forethought.

Cassandra laughed a little, and kissed the top of his head, earning herself a gentle pull of his beak on the lock of hair curling over her forehead. “We’ll be taking a trip, okay? It’s time to keep moving.”

Hoot, Owl agreed easily. Then shifted his shoulders at her to indicate the scroll case on his back.

It was not the same scroll case.

The first letter he had brought back to her, he’d carried inside one with a circular lid and coloured in the royal Coronian purple and gold. This time, the backpack had an oval lid, with the cylinder’s flatter side laid against his back, and the whole of it was beautifully patterned and coloured to match Owl’s feathers.

Cassandra blew out a sigh of relief as she took it. Raps was listening. She hadn’t just been saying what she thought Cassandra had wanted to hear, to keep her affection and bargain for as much closeness as possible. She actually was listening now, and a lodestone-heavy weight of fear fell from around Cassandra’s heart at the first proof of it.

She walked into the Brazen Brigand’s dining floor, raising her withered hand at Sebastian to hail him, and didn’t have to ask for raw scrap cuts along with food for herself. Moreen was at the countertop already, and greeted her with a smile from over her own half-empty plate.

“We can leave today,” Cassandra told her as she directed Owl to shift onto her right shoulder and took a seat as well.

The farmer’s eyes flicked to Owl. “You were just waiting for him? I thought he ran away!”

“No, I sent him on an errand. And while he’s very smart, I can’t expect him to find me after I run away on him to who knows where, now can I?”

Hoot, Owl reminded.

Cassandra wagged a finger at him. “I know you’ve technically done as much in the past, but it would be more difficult now than back then, and I don’t want to be putting you through your paces so much without a good reason.”

Hoot, Owl acquiesced graciously.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Cassandra turned to Sebastian as he brought her and Owl their breakfast each. “Thanks.”

“I don’t see this guy around you all that much anymore,” Sebastian said curiously, indicating Owl. “Bit of a wild spirit there?”

“No, loyal to a fault.” Cassandra chuckled and smoothed a finger over the feathers on Owl’s chest when he turned his head almost a full ninety degrees sideways to press against her cheek. “It’s just the errands I send him on that take a while.”

“Right,” Sebastian said slowly, just as disbelieving as Moreen in her silence. “And you’re the one who has a problem with magic.”

Hoot, Owl said derisively.

“This isn’t magic. He’s just a good friend.” Cassandra handed another scrap of raw liver to Owl at the tip of her knife before slicing one of her baked potatoes into bite-sized pieces. “And if I keep seeing good uses for magic, I think I might stop having a problem with magic. Or as much of a problem, at least.”

Sebastian raised his eyebrows. “Well, look at that.”

“How soon do you think we’ll be ready, then?” Moreen asked, leaning against the countertop now.

“Before midday,” Cassandra said with a one-shouldered shrug, careful not to unbalance Owl’s footing on the other. “I’m good to go after I eat and read something. Though, I guess I should make the rounds and say goodbye to a few people here before we leave.”

“Midday at the latest, then? Meet up here when we’re ready?”

“I can work with that.”

The rest of breakfast was a quiet affair after that, the farmer by Cassandra’s side growing noticeably anxious now. But that had to be expected, Cassandra supposed, and wondered idly whether Raps had felt something similar when she stepped out of the only world she had known within the tower’s walls. Then she made sure there was no one nearby poised to read over her shoulder, asked Owl to stand watch for her like before, and opened the scroll case backpack, pulling the letter out first this time.

Slightly shorter than the last, but not by much. Still on multiple pages of gilded stationery and scribed in expensive ink, and with coloured doodles in the corners, fern leaves and suns and moons and an errant Pascal in places of greater honour.

Thank you, Cass.

Even so far away, you keep looking out for me. What you said about me taking issue with facts of life that I don’t like and treating them like problems—you were right, and admitting it helped me address and dismantle another little bit of the nightmare that Gothel had crowded me into. A little over three years out of the tower, and I still live inside it, isn’t that just laughable? Every time I was proud of how far I’ve come, every time I’ve said that I’m not the same naive girl just now treading grass for the first time, and it turns out that I’ve just been ignoring how I haven’t moved a step.

Sorry for putting Owl in danger. I haven’t thought about the backpack like this, that it would make him a target. I tried to think of how to fix that, but since I can’t make it change colour to help camouflage Owl against different environments, my next best idea was to camouflage it against Owl—so that it would be less noticeable on his back even if he’s spotted. Tell me if this is any better, and if it’s not enough, what to do instead.

She was listening, Cassandra thought again, the relief of it no lesser for coming in words as well as in deeds. She was not only listening, but implementing what she had been told, and asking for clarification to make sure she understood right and for further pointers.

It didn’t erase never being treated seriously for two years on end, whether a servant and protector or a traitor and enemy of the state. But it did end them, and quite irrefutably.

Speaking of messengers and letters, we got a letter from the King of Koto and the Grand Inquisitor of the Tribunal Order, and it was practically singing your praises after you sent their stuff back to them. Was that what happened with the con artist you wrote about? It must have been such an adventure! And you made a friend on it, too! They wrote a smaller one to him, as well, so I’m adding it in. What’s his name? Does he treat you well? What does he look like? Oh, I want to ask so many questions, but I don’t want to push you. These are the important ones, at least, I’ll be as patient as I can.

Cassandra chuckled a little, and reached into the scroll case again. Sure enough, there was an unopened sheet of more gilded stationery, but distinctly different from the usual set used in Castle Corona, still letter-folded and held closed with a wax seal coloured vermillion red. Cassandra squinted at it, unwilling to pull it out into the open among company on Equisian soil, even here in the Brazen Brigand. She couldn’t make out much detail, but she thought there was a division per pale on the seal. From the Grand Inquisitor, then, rather than from the Kotoan monarch.

Well, that was two reasons now to try and find Riccardo again.

And the posters you sent—Eugene choked when he saw them, and he was really impressed when he remembered his tongue, too. Your dad was so relieved when he heard that the Coronian one of those four outlaws was killed, and so proud of you. I asked him about that man’s crimes, and I think I found out more than I bargained for. There are sorcerers in Corona who kill people and make magical trinkets from parts of their bodies, did you know that? And he was one of those sorcerers. The Guard seems to have never discovered why, and Eugene was confused when he heard about it, because he couldn’t find any part of that scheme that would result in a profit. I don’t know how to think like a criminal, but he does, and if he can’t say why a criminal would be committing his crimes, then what does that mean? And how can anyone even think about doing something like that to another person? Who would come up with such a thing, and why are there multiple people emulating it?

That, Cassandra stopped smiling at.

That was what her wardwork box was full of.

The sorcerer and his companions, each deferent to him somewhat, had been arrested in Koto shortly before they had crossed into Equis, according to what Tara had told her earlier. From what she had seen with the Kotoan agent brutalized at their hands and with the carnage they left at Richter farm, their general approach to other people had been not only cruel, but extremely utilitarian in that cruelty—the sorcerer’s threat to divine her entrails moments before she killed him, the minotaur’s penchant for cannibalizing his enemies as if to absorb their strength into himself, the barbarian’s trophy rack of a two-handed sword to shackle the memory of those he killed and use them to kill more of their kind. So if Fitzherbert hadn’t been able to see any gain in the sorcerer’s usual modus operandi, it meant that there wasn’t a gain to be seen, and that the blood trail tied to the sorcerer’s feet wasn’t the goal.

Cassandra frowned slowly, one hand at her mouth and chin now. Coronian sorcery was either hedge witchery and simple herbal remedies, or the exploits of a bunch of Zhan Tiri wannabes; that much she knew, and that much still held true. And she had spent enough time with the real deal—being tutored by it on the subject of harnessing and channelling the magic of the Moonstone, no less—to have a reasonable idea what the runner-ups would be attempting to emulate.

“Practice,” she murmured to herself quietly.

Whatever dozens the sorcerer had taken and butchered and defiled even after death, they had been neither the destination nor the journey. They’d been an exercise. And with having seen the others—the minotaur’s headdress of horns that was no longer a headdress, but a part of his skull; the ogre’s bloated, monstrous size; the barbarian’s blind eye that saw in light and in darkness—Cassandra was reasonably sure that exercise had been finished successfully, yielding any insights that the sorcerer had been hoping to gain. Whatever it was that he’d been headed towards next, on his way through Koto and into Equis, it would not have been as trivial as a few dozen missing people dismembered for use as arcane components, Cassandra thought gravely.

Then she went back and re-read the part about her dad being proud and Fitzherbert being tongue-tied, and felt a smirk curling her lips again.

I’ve been having a bit of a hard time recently. I started a new journal not too long ago, to have someplace separate to draw messed up things in. It helps a little, especially when I don’t know what it is that’s giving me so much trouble, or when I don’t know how to talk about it yet. I wanted to paint something happy for you, but I just couldn’t at the time, every next piece came out more unsettling than the last. But I’ve been trying not to force myself to be happy all the time—to not be scared of emotions harder to deal with, and to stop dismissing those of other people against a burning wall of forced cheer. So I hope it’s okay to show you things like these, and that you don’t hate them too much.

Cassandra paused, and took the paintings out of the scroll case as well, at least for a cursory look. There were three this time, as well—and Cassandra sat up straight when she noticed  that one of them was a map, drawn on fine parchment rather than paper. Not only that, but there were little indents at the parchment’s corners, left by small but heavy clasps that were typically used for copywork, to make sure that the paper or parchment the copy was being made on overtop the original did not move during the process. Raps hadn’t just drawn that, she’d traced it for her from an atlas. Which meant that it was to scale.

She pulled out her own map, which had to have been scribed by a Coronian cartographer either unaware of, or unconcerned with the ongoing border dispute between Equis and Koto, and sparing little attention for the contested region. Her old map only barely accommodated Silberstadt itself near the northwestern corner, with a small arrow pointing further north and subtitled with TO RIDDERSBRUG. The one that Raps had just sent had Silberstadt square in the centre, and held not one, but three major cities to the north, as well as a glimpse of the western seashore, a branching web of rivers, a few small mountain ranges, and a smattering of lakes, one of them enormous.

Cassandra huffed an incredulous bit of laughter. Puzzle or not, Raps knew exactly where she went, and all she needed to make the connection was getting her hands on a rock shard with a vein of native silver, a dried stem of starlight woundwort, and a pheasant flight feather.

She tucked the map back into the scroll case to study properly later, and blinked in immediate surprise at the other two pieces. There was an unprecedented amount of dark colours, with the few and far between splashes of bright paints serving only to contrast how muted and heavy the rest of it was. And even aside from the fact that Cassandra hadn’t seen Raps using so much black paint between all the pieces and murals and sketches and journal entries and whatever else she’d painted to date, the brush strokes were visible, short and sharp and layered overtop each other, lending both pieces a choppy, restless look.

Raps had not been okay when she made them.

I haven’t shown these or things like them to anyone else yet. (Except for the one on the wall, which is a little impossible to hide, but that’s just been sitting in the open as I make progress on it rather than being purposefully shown to other people. Does that make any difference? I feel like it makes a difference, but at the same time, it’s still pretty visible, so I don’t know anymore.) And I asked for a lock on that other journal; Pascal has the only key other than mine. I almost feel like I’m not allowed to paint things this bad, like it’s wrong of me somehow to put things this dark and scary into the world. I’ve always used art to feel better. This new way of using it feels like a perversion, but even as it does, it still makes me feel less bad. Which is not the same as better, I guess, but it helps all the same, so how different is it, really?

Everything is so confusing when I’m trying to fix the problems in my behaviour. Sometimes I feel like I’m just second-guessing everything I do, and have ever done, and making no progress at all. But then I think about how everything I’ve been doing for so long has been based on an awful approach and incredibly wrong assumptions, and I think that maybe I should have been second-guessing it from the start, I just didn’t know any better. And then I think about how people I spend the most time with seem a little happier and a little less tense around me, these days, and I think that maybe I’m making a little progress after all. But I’m not sure of anything, anymore. It’s hard on me. I’m scared when I’m uncertain like that. I just try to be brave, and I try to be calm, and ask for advice more often now, and I ask more people than I used to. And if I’m still not okay afterwards, then I draw another horrible thing, and it helps take a little pressure off. I still have a lot of nightmares, though. I’m starting to grow really tired of them. I miss sleeping well.

That kind of uncertainty was quite unlike the Raps that Cassandra knew. Or not exactly, she admitted as she thought back. It was a little similar to what Raps had been like after the blizzard, when she had to set aside things she’d wanted to do or things she’d been comfortable with and focus on things that were needed of her. And yet, even as she was a nervous wreck in the aftermath of it all, she had tried to pretend that she was alright, as if convincing herself and others that there wasn’t a problem would make the problem go away.

Burning wall of forced cheer, indeed.

It had to be hard on her, Cassandra thought, but it was a good sign that she wasn’t stopping just because it was hard. And not just for the relationship between them—for the entire kingdom’s future, for decades to come.

But I think about you often, and it helps. I think back to every time you stood watch for us on the road when everyone else went to bed, and how I’d just look at you until I fell asleep, and it’s easier to fall asleep again. I think about how you were ready to face anything, fight anyone, all to keep us safe, and I think how I should have been infinitely more scared for you; I think about the terrible people you’ve gone after, and that you’re okay even despite how dangerous they must have been. (You are okay, right? Owl wouldn’t tell me yes or no directly.) I think about how you were always ready to do anything that was needed of you—no matter how sad or hurt or angry you were, you just pushed right through it and you held fast to what you believed in, and acted on it. And I find it a little easier to breathe. Because if you could do that, and show me how to always keep doing that, then I think maybe I can do it, too.

Enough about me, though. The puzzle you sent with your first letter turned out to be really difficult, with the flower in particular, but I solved in the end! Did you know that it doesn’t grow in Bayangor and Corona at all? And not in southern, western, eastern, or central Koto, either. I’m told it can only be found at certain heights—did you have to climb? I saw mountains on the map, but have you been that far yet?—and in places where magic is or used to be present, too. Did you meet someone who does magic? Were they any better than people we’ve had dealings with in the past, or did you have to fight them? Was it a creature like the kurloc or the drexis? Or was it that the place itself was very magic, like the Deadly Forest of No Return?

There was the signature Rapunzel enthusiasm. Except that it wasn’t as annoying anymore, Cassandra found with a bit of surprise, and couldn’t quite put her finger on why. Maybe it was that Raps seemed genuinely interested, and not just like she was always curious about everything—but in the context of what these things meant for Cassandra, specifically. Maybe it was that Raps was waiting for answers now, rather than formulate her own and talk over any possible response. Maybe it was the distance between them, and how Raps was neither able not attempting to close it, to see what Cassandra had and take it out of her hands for a few minutes of fleeting interest and, once again and all over again, leave her with nothing.

Maybe a little bit of each, and more.

You were in Equis last time you wrote, weren’t you? Eugene said that he had been to that region of it at one time, too, but didn’t stay very long because he didn’t like the weather and because there wasn’t much worth stealing there. What is it like where you are? It must be so different from Corona! And you said you were going to help a farmer; I can’t help but imagine you in a straw hat and with a blade of grass in your teeth, and it’s an amazing picture. In all seriousness though, it must have been a lot of hard work, are you well after all that?

And, if I may ask, how is your arm?

Cassandra winced at that. Her arm was a constant source of pain and reduced functionality, and an extreme vulnerability in combat. Her arm was the reason she had needed a staggering amount of sustained effort to relearn at least some of its functionality with her left hand, as well as invention to circumvent its sorry state or protect it from deteriorating any further, like with her reinforced glove that she’d bought from the Kotoan furrier and the archery aid Sigrid had created for her, and blind experimentation and sheer coincidence and luck to see what helped and what didn’t, like with the silken bandages the clinic family had gifted her and the salt she had been sprinkling the deeper wound with. And Cassandra didn’t feel like talking about it with the person who had first caused it, then told her to suck it up and get over herself, rather than apologize for it or even acknowledge the part they played in her injury.

She didn’t want to answer that question. And paused on that thought for a long moment.

Raps had said that she was listening now, and proved it. Raps had also said that if Cassandra didn’t want to say anything, then that was okay too. So maybe it was time to test if both these things were true.

You said you were going to move towns, as well, so I understand it’s going to take you a little longer to write again. Take all the time you want afterwards, too. Anything you write is worth waiting for.

Rapunzel.

Cassandra folded the letter closed, and tucked it back into the scroll case for now. Raps was genuinely trying to be a better friend now. A better person, really, if what she wrote of others around her was true. In the last letter Cassandra had sent her, she'd pointed out a dangerous mistake, if while attempting to temper it with mild praise; in response, Raps had apologized, fixed it, explained her previous reasoning, and asked whether the new one was okay now or if it could be further improved upon.

Which meant that maybe Cassandra could actually try to start being honest with Raps again.

It’s been such a long time since she had last tried. Since it had been safe for her to try. Since it hadn’t been doomed to failure before she even opened her mouth. And she wasn’t sure how to go back to trying.

But that was okay, because this trip would take her more than a few days, and so she had enough time to figure it out along the way. So she tied the scroll case backpack to the side of her belt, where it wouldn’t be immediately visible from under her new, thick, fur cloak, and stepped out of the tavern to make the rounds before leaving. The sun was still low in the sky, peeking out from between a few gray wisps of clouds, nothing as heavy as to herald more rain to come.

Straw hat. Cassandra shook her head with a smile.

Maybe she’d get one, if she ever went somewhere too sunny.

~*~

Rapunzel took the paintbrush out of her mouth and called out, “Come in!” as a knock came against her door. It came out quieter than usual, and still took more out of her than she was used to.

The door opened, showing Eugene with a tray in one hand and a concerned look on his face. “You okay, sunshine? It’s not like you to skip breakfast. Faith said you weren’t feeling well?”

“Yeah,” Rapunzel admitted, and lowered herself into a chair. The brush she had been using, the one she had been holding in her teeth, and the one she kept behind an ear went into a jar of water, blotting muddy dark through it, and she pushed the palette she had set on the corner of a table a little further from the edge to avoid accidentally knocking it to the floor. “I don’t know. I’m really tired for some reason, and it’s so early in the morning. I mean—” she gestured to Pascal, who was curled up on himself atop a little pillow in the centre of the table and trailing her every move with worried eyes. “Pascal feels heavy today. I’ve been carrying him for most of my life. I know the last thing he could ever be is heavy. So I tried to paint something instead, but it’s not coming to me, and I get light-headed if I’m standing up for too long. I don’t know why. It’s a little annoying.”

“You should really eat something,” Eugene said slowly, setting the tray of food down beside her. “You’re almost as pale as Cassandra.”

Rapunzel shook her head. “I’m not hungry at all.”

“Something small? I got you apple mousse? You don’t have to take anything else with it.”

That did sound a little closer to something she could manage, Rapunzel decided after a moment’s consideration. “Okay.”

Squeak, Pascal offered, a tiny sound soaked through with discomfort.

“Aw. Come here, frog.” Eugene cupped his hands for the chameleon to hop into. Before he could ferry Pascal onto his shoulder, though, he caught sight of the black-brown-gray mess in the jar with the brushes. Then looked at the palette, filled with shades of purple and green and whatnot so dark that they were virtually indistinguishable from each other, with an errant flash of acidic yellow or red as bright as to put him in mind of arterial blood. Then he looked at the wall, where Rapunzel had just started applying those colours.

He’d noticed the knotted mass of linework on the wall before, of course he had. It was hard not to. But Rapunzel seemed to always be painting something on the walls, and he was no great art critic unless it was something valuable or portraits of himself, which, how different were the two, really, there was a definite overlap, and so whatever it had been that she’d spent slightly over two weeks pencilling against the plaster hadn’t caught his attention at all.

It did now, however, as he came to stand next to the chair where Rapunzel was slowly eating apple mouse straight out of the bowl by the spoonful, so slowly as if even that much was an effort and a struggle. And looking at it from this angle, from beside the chair that she had set out before this roiling tangle of snakes and brambles and tendrils of smoke, Eugene finally saw a recognizable shape within it. Not familiar, exactly, since he’d only seen the place three times, had been otherwise occupied rather profoundly each of these times, and on the third it had come down around his, Cassandra’s, and Rapunzel’s heads.

“Sunshine?”

“Mm?”

“Why are you painting the tower’s window on your wall?” Eugene asked gently.

Rapunzel turned her head to look at the partway-done mural, and stayed silent for a long while. “I’ve been thinking about it for some time now.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I am talking about it,” Rapunzel said with a gesture at the nightmare on her wall. “The only way I know how right now.”

“Okay.” Eugene stroked her shoulder, earning a small smile. “Take all the time you need.”

“I’d kiss you, but my mouth is full of apples.” Rapunzel gave a little laugh, even that sound diminished and tired. Then she looked up at him again, suddenly thoughtful, more serious. “Eugene?”

“Yeah?”

“I need to ask you something,” Rapunzel said quietly. “And I think I know what you’re going to say, but I need to hear you say it, because I’m really scared I could be wrong, like I was wrong with... everything about Cass, so—”

“Rapunzel,” Eugene interrupted her in a calming tone. “Just ask.”

With a nod at that, Rapunzel drew a deeper breath as if to brace herself, and looked at him in a very new way—careful, inquisitive, and giving away very little else. “Would it make you love me any less if I said I’m not always as happy as I look, and I’m scared every day, and I’ve been having nightmares at least three times per week for years now?”

“No, it would not,” Eugene told her firmly. “If anything, it would make me love you more, because everyone feels sad or scared or stressed out sometimes, and if you’re feeling like this, too, then it just means you’re not living in a different world completely out of the reach of a guy like me or all our friends. And because it means you trusted me enough to tell me something uncomfortable like that. And that means a lot, sunshine.”

Rapunzel smiled at him, gratefulness and relief in her eyes, and leaned back in her chair more easily. “I love you, Eugene.”

“I love you, too.” Eugene kissed the top of her head. “What did you think I would say?”

“I thought you’d say no, but I didn’t expect you to say everything else.”

Eugene nodded at that. Then tilted his head slowly. “Have you been crying?”

“No,” Rapunzel said earnestly, a bit of confusion on her face at the question. “Why?”

“Your eyes are all red.”

“I don’t know why that would be. I don’t remember hitting myself, or rubbing soap in them,” Rapunzel said with a frown. One that relaxed immediately when Eugene put one hand on her forehead and the other on his own, and she leaned into the touch without thinking. “Oh, that feels good.”

“Well, no wonder. You have a really high fever.”

“And a fine fever to you too, sir.” Rapunzel patted his chest affectionately. “Aren’t we having an excellent fever today– I don’t know what a fever is.”

Eugene stared at her. This was the second time that her hair was short, and brown, and no longer magic, and she’d been in perfectly good health both beforehand and for the two years that the entire Moonstone situation had taken to resolve. Surprising in hindsight, really, that nothing like this had happened before, especially given that she walked barefoot everywhere and regardless of the weather, even on sheer snow.

But it hasn’t been four months yet since she was not the Sundrop anymore.

“Sunshine, have you never been sick?”

“No? Not that I can remember. Well, I do feel a little off and in pain and uh, bleed a little, every fourth week or so, but it’s different from when I cut my finger or something, and it always goes away after a few days. And of course, Gothel kept scaring me about—” Rapunzel trailed both hands through the air as if to draw an embellishment not unlike the little ornaments she was so fond of painting, the world’s most resentful air quotes. “—the plague, but I think that’s just another thing she made up to be mean to me.”

“Okay, the thing that happens every month? That’s a period, which is normal, and I am begging you to have that conversation with your mom,” Eugene said, eyebrows raised nearly to his hairline. Of all the topics he’d never expected to have the greater amount of knowledge on. “Did you never ask Cass about it?”

“I didn’t think to,” Rapunzel admitted with a shrug. “And she never started the subject, either. I’d notice she looked a little more irritable, or a little paler, for a day or two per month, but she always just... dealt with it, like she did with everything. I think we were having that at the same time from a certain point, so since she was just going about her business like normal, I thought it was something everyone handled on their own.”

“Great. Wonderful. Now I actually wish you’d heard the lecture we were given about it in the orphanage every year.” Eugene sighed at the memory of that. And of how, one unforgettable year, one of the older girls had just stuck a hand into the waistband of her skirt and pulled it out with blood on her fingers. Half the kids had been fascinated and the other half disgusted or scared witless, age and gender notwithstanding. “Please talk about it with someone close to you who experiences it first-hand, which I don’t. And uh, plagues are real things that exist.”

“Oh.” Rapunzel chewed on that for a moment, silently. “...There’s more than one?”

“But I think you just caught a bad cold,” Eugene continued hastily. “Which is why you’ve been feeling so tired, by the way. So, what you do when you catch a cold is, you get a lot of rest, and keep warm, and eat something light like you just did. I’ll let Faith know we’re gonna need chicken soup on the menu. Oh, and I’ll get the court physician for you in a minute, he’ll give you some medicine to help get you back on your feet and make sure this doesn’t turn into something serious. Then you just make sure to take it like he tells you to, you give other people a berth so they don’t catch it from you, and you stay patient with yourself, and a few days later you’re all better.”

~*~

Before the sun was halfway to the zenith, Cassandra had finished her circuit between the few places in town that were not the Brazen Brigand where it would be polite to say goodbye. The clinic family had insisted on gifting her an extremely generously stocked first aid kit that included three variants of medicine made from starlight woundwort—an ointment from the pollen, a paste from the leaves, and a tonic from the petals that could be applied externally or internally—and gave her a very heartfelt hug each, if a little weaker from Eliza, who was still recovering from her recent illness. She’d visited Tara in her sickbed, as well, the spy in noticeably better health and spirits now and clumsily setting out a game of solitaire before herself with the painted deck of Ronan Tyson’s cards. Teagan had shaken her hand without getting up from his seat inside the brick booth that held the job board, a sturdy pair of crutches leaning against one wall; Hanalei had as well, patting her shoulder with his other hand, and Sigrid had given her another hard embrace and a usual irreverent grin. She’d found Ramon and visited the furrier, as well, before going back to Sebastian at the inn and finding that he, too, had prepared her a goodbye gift of some slightly better rations, and quality feed for Fidella, and scraps of smoked meats for Owl. And between everywhere she went, people she didn’t recognize by their faces but by the bandit marks they carried and people she knew the faces but not the names of, came up to her on their own, an endless litany of thank you, we’ll miss you, be well, thank you, thank you.

When all of that was done, Cassandra and Moreen had dragged the Tysons’ dinky bullock cart out of the Brigand’s stable, and abandoned it just out of the city walls—whether to be commandeered by someone who could make use of it, or taken apart for firewood, as the locals saw fit. When all of that was done, Cassandra gave Moreen a boost into the saddle, and climbed up behind her, and swept her cloak back over Fidella’s hindquarters before reaching for the reins around the farmer to turn Fidella towards the road north and nudge her past the guard checkpoint out of town. And going out of town, facing a new road and a new adventure, Cassandra found herself humming the melody of a long-destroyed music box that she knew by heart once again, and felt strong with no give against the tune, and nudged her steed forward to challenge that horizon.

Chapter Text

“What kind of a person tears up the road?!” Cassandra yelled through the wind again, still fuming.

“Well, it’s not like people here have easy access to quarried stone!” Moreen called back from where she was walking on Fidella’s other side, struggling somewhat to make herself heard over the snowstorm around them, the mare’s sheer bulk breaking the wind for them a little as they walked almost huddled to her sides. “So it’s not all that surprising that someone would pull up a few flagstones to patch a wall in their house or a fence around their pasture!”

“It’s a ROAD! It’s something everyone is using, that person included, to get to– anywhere! The neighbour’s house! The fields! The city! I am not going to believe that people here never go to fairs on account of being able to manufacture everything they need, not after I saw the inside of their homes!” Cassandra roared, the wind now no more than an excuse to vent her frustrations at a volume that brought her some relief.

“At least it’s not a gravestone they used for such things, because I’ve seen that happening more than once!”

“What kind of a person tears up a gravestone?!” Cassandra yelled, outraged all over again.

“Someone who can’t read what’s on it or refuses to, or thinks that disrespecting the dead who aren’t theirs doesn’t matter, and needs an easy source of stone for grindstones or cowshed walls or another person’s grave!” Moreen shouted back. “It’s not that uncommon when you have Kotoan watchtowers and Equisian farmers on the same soil! Or just cemeteries of a different ethnic group living in the same kingdom!”

“That is barbaric and an abominable practice!”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying it’s what happens without a quarry nearby to get stone from!”

“You know what would help getting quarried stone to their houses?! A ROAD!”

Hoot, Owl admonished from where he was, tucked into the deep hood of Cassandra’s winter cloak and almost backpacked onto her shoulders.

“Do not tell me when I’ve had enough, mister, you’re the only one who’s comfortable here,” Cassandra growled back at him, then promptly lost her balance and almost took a tumble when she stepped into another pothole on her next step forward. “Son of a mother!”

Fidella whinnied at her to stop, and begrudgingly, Cassandra shut her mouth.

Truly, if the anger did anything for her, then at least it kept her warm.

With the frost holding, and the region’s omnipresent rain and sleet transformed into sheer snow, they took to riding nearly dawn to dusk in the short winter days, with only a single rest in the middle, and rode from farmhouse to farmhouse—exchanging handfuls of silver that Moreen had earned selling her family’s belongings for a rest indoors, for a seat at someone’s table, for a bit of floor to set out Cassandra’s bedroll on and bunk down for the night. They still slept together, huddled for warmth and for comfort, but with Cassandra insisting now that the farmer took the side closer to the hearth each time. With the fur-lined winter clothes she now wore, and the cloak large enough to fully wrap herself into, she didn’t have to worry about cold, while Moreen was clearly unused to the travel pace they were maintaining—and only more clearly with each passing day, as exhaustion mounted in ways only as subtle as they were persistent, and compounding on one another.

On their third day of travel, Fidella tripped on a snow-concealed hole in the road, and lost a shoe in the process. And while Cassandra managed to improvise her something of a hoof boot as a replacement, just so the mare didn’t have to keep limping forth for days on end, it did still mean more walking than riding. As well as that the list of places to find first thing in the city grew ever longer. Lodging. Pawnbroker. Guildhouse of spinners, weavers, or such. Farrier. Job board. Shoemaker. Bookbinder. Generally in that order, by priority in sort descending, with some room for switching around as needs dictated. And Cassandra hoped fervently that the list would not grow any longer than it already was.

On the fifth day, the sun deigned to grace the skies without veiling itself in clouds, and Cassandra used that period of increased visibility during their mid-day rest stop to open her wardwork box for the first time and take out the head of the sorcerer’s crosier. The crystal was still hovering at its centre—and after walking a little ways off from her and Moreen’s temporary campsite, Cassandra stomped on the snow a few times, then set the spiral of wood down and slowly, carefully, reached into its centre with her withered hand to gently pry the suspended crystal out. Nothing happened. She laid the jar of magic-reactive phosphorescent ink beside the crosier head, and walked a few steps backwards; the ink stopped glowing once she stepped out of range. She then laid the crystal on the jar’s other side, and watched the glow continue on unabated once she withdrew the same distance away. Reasoning that in this case, the staff was just wood shaped into a spiral with perfectly mundane means, she tossed it into the snow a bit farther away from the road, and paused to examine the crystal more closely before taking it back to the box.

It no longer hovered, for one.

At a guess, it was likely a citrine: translucent golden yellow shot through with whitish threads, and carved into an eight-sided diamond two inches high, half an inch wide. Each facet was intricately engraved, grooves distinct under Cassandra’s touch when she pulled her left glove off and ran her fingertips over the gem's sides, but she could not tell what the faint patterns were, no matter how long she stared at them. More than that, the longer she stared at them, the faster the images seemed to seep from her mind once she stopped looking.

“I do not like this at all,” she said quietly to Owl, who had been assisting her from a perch on her shoulder throughout.

Hoot, Owl postulated.

“You’re probably right that this must be part of the magic. Makes it harder to duplicate, for sure.” Cassandra rubbed the tip of her nose with the back of her withered hand, checking if she still had feeling in her face, at least, against the cold. “What would benefit from being one-of-a-kind and impossible to read or copy? What is this thing meant for?”

Hoot, Owl encouraged.

“A seal? But it would only need one side engraved, unless it was a cylinder seal, which it’s not the right shape for. A cipher key? How would anyone even begin to use it, if you look at it and can’t memorize anything?” Cassandra shook her head. “I don’t know, Owl. If it were anything that would benefit from being kept secret, he wouldn’t have been carrying it out in the open like this. It’s almost like he treated it as a... a mark of station, of prestige. And if this thing was such a badge for someone who used to abduct people to murder and dismember them for use as material for magic arts and crafts, and graduated from that to attaching bull horns to a man’s skull and turning another’s man blind eye into seeing at night just as clearly as during the day, then whatever this thing is for can't be good.”

Hoot, Owl suggested.

“I didn’t want to think about that,” Cassandra said dryly. “But yeah, whatever it’s for probably involves even more... sculpting... in what’s still alive. Or would have been, if it weren’t for him.”

She put the crystal back into the box, giving its other contents a long look before locking them away again. Ten trinkets—each of them all that remained of a murder victim, as she now knew—and the sorcerer’s tome, still closed with a sturdy lock clasping the covers, still unexamined. And to stay unexamined, Cassandra decided after considering for a moment. Never mind the chance to glean some insights into the dead sorcerer’s sick aspirations, the crystal’s purpose, or the identities of his victims; Coronian sorcerers of the Zhan Tiri wannabe variety valued their magic above all else, and relied on it to do anything and everything for them. Which probably meant that the tome was warded or cursed in more than one way, with some of these failsafes set to trigger whenever anyone other than the author himself tried to open it. And Cassandra had enough trouble dealing with the aftermath of being within the blast radius of one cursed incantation already—and would for the rest of her life.

A week into the travel, and the farmhouse they stopped by for the night seemed a little cosier and a little wealthier than the ones Cassandra had previously seen in the region. The family who lived there seemed wary of them at first—most did, really, what with the thick clothes trimmed and lined with fur that Cassandra wore, the kerchief richly embroidered with gold thread tied around her left bicep, the weapons she must have seemed to bristle with to people unused to dealing with sellswords or soldiers, Fidella’s sheer bulk and massive size setting her miles apart from any draft ponies the locals were keeping, Owl snoozing or idly awake on her shoulder during daylight, and next to all that, the company of an endlessly unassuming, worried-looking young woman with hands rough from work in the field and work with a spindle. In an effort to seem as non-threatening as possible, Cassandra found herself falling back on many habits she hadn't needed for a very long time, and not just the manners she retained both as a point of honour and a point of personal pride—habits from her years at the Coronian court. To speak when spoken to, and not before. To do anything and everything that was asked of her without discussion, and do it quickly, impeccably, and silently. To remain on call for whatever was needed, round the clock, no matter what it was to be needed.

How had she lived like that, she wondered.

But at least on that seventh evening, she didn’t have to parade herself like a toothless hound for a stranger’s comfort, because when the middle-aged man leading the household took their money and beckoned them inside, Moreen’s relieved and infinitely tired thank you, may Saint Martha bless your house made him beam and his entire family visibly relax, as they recognized Moreen, at least, as Kotoan just like them. It made the evening meal a significantly less unbearable affair, as well, with the farmers animatedly asking Moreen where she came from, what sent her so far from home this time of year, whether she had any news from down south—and regarded Cassandra with curiosity, if still a reserved one, rather than the open fear she'd been treated to prior. With half of the dinner’s flagon of ale down and the conversation continuing well enough without her, Cassandra wiped her still-gloved fingers clean by habit and took out the map Rapunzel had sent her to study it properly in the wan, yet adequate candlelight.

With Silberstadt square in the centre of the parchment, near to where the ruins of Château de Bayard and the defunct silver mine were marked, Cassandra wasn’t surprised to find the stylized, familiar silhouette in the map’s bottom left corner and the subtitle of CASTLE CORONA. The wanderings she had embarked on straight out of its gates must have carried her through a gap in the Kotoan border patrols, as she had emerged somewhere halfway between Silberstadt itself and the smaller village of Espinheiro, one that Moreen had mentioned before, a little ways to the southeast from Silberstadt. Northward of it, as they were heading now, lied a bulkier stylized red-brick gatehouse symbol of a city, subtitled RIDDERSBRUG, straddling a thick and winding ribbon of blue ink: a river flowing from a singular massive lake in the east and towards the distant seashore to the west, the name WITTEND copied in Rapunzel’s excited hand beside it. Northeast of that city, further than the distance between Silberstadt and Riddersbrug itself, another stylized gatehouse perched atop the westernmost peak of a short mountain range and reasonably near to that lake, with Raps’ handwriting naming it MONT SAINT MAURICE. And to the west—far, far west, nestled into a shallow gulf against the distant shoreline—was a third stylized gatehouse, with two little tallships bobbing in its coastal waters, subtitled VELDEN. The massive lake itself, largest among a smattering of many more, sported the name of EEDENMEER between its shores; another river flowed through it, subtitled ZWARTEND and pouring through a valley between mountains, running from further north and through the lake and flowing back out to wind eastwards again, soon disappearing behind the map’s decorative border of curling fern leaves inked in rainbow colours.

Every name on the map save for that of Silberstadt came in some Kotoan dialect or another, Cassandra noticed with a furrowed brow. Riddersbrug was a strategic point of a fortified river crossing, that much she knew, and that much she was aware would be entirely enough for any Kotoan advance to target it immediately. The other two cities, she would’ve said she was uncertain about: the mountain-straddling one seemed extremely hard to besiege even on a map of such a scale, and the port one was incredibly far away.

But that was before she factored in the way that Kotoans—at least in the region, if not throughout their behemoth of a kingdom—spoke about saints.

Oh, she was aware of the existence of some folk heroes whose veneration was sanctioned by the Kotoan Crown. She’d just assumed they were more a legend than a continuously invoked name, more like the ancient Coronian inventor Demanitus; that their 'feast days' were more like the festival, though hopeless even in its hopefulness, celebrated on the Lost Princess’ birthday as the entire capital released lanterns in a futile attempt to call her home.

But Moreen’s father, of Equisian descent that he may have been yet married into a Kotoan family, used to own a deck of cards with the court cards patterned after some of those saints—and patterned clearly enough that Ramon had recognized a few at a glance, and saw the humour in the matching of saint to card. Bernard, the former foreman and architect of the Silberstadt mine and leader of the Coon Tails ever since, invoked the name of another saint to ward away the flames each time the fire siphon was used against the Scarlet Brigade’s desperate counterattacks, and named yet another in a scathing response to Sigrid’s question about the turned chanter in the mine, if only to call the effort of seeking that chanter out a lost cause. Now the stark change in this entire farmstead’s demeanour as soon as Moreen wished them well in yet another saint’s name. And a city named after yet another one still, with Equisian forces in power rather than those of the crown who had elevated someone called Maurice to the rank of a saint.

Cassandra waited for a lull in the conversation before she looked up at the farmer who invited them indoors. “Excuse me, sir. I am from quite a ways away, and still new in these parts. Could you tell me anything about the cities in this region, I wonder?”

“Well, you’re headed right to Riddersbrug, you are,” the man nodded at her curiously. “Couple more days and you’ll make it. Big place—very big—each bank is a city in its own right, really. We’ve been enough times, once or twice a year, depending on how much we have for a fair. Farther than that, but oh, weeks of travel on foot further, there is Mont Saint Maurice. Beautiful city, so she is, if harried in these years.”

“You’ve been to there, then?”

“Aye, just the once, me father took me on a pilgrimage to the saint’s tomb when I was a young lad. A man needs to show piety to the Crown at least once in his life, so he said.”

Cassandra felt herself frown again. “The city is named for being the saint’s resting place, then?”

“So it is. Mind, she wasn’t always Mont Saint Maurice, just renamed in his honour after his heroic deed that saw him, well, be a saint in the first place.”

“And when did that happen?”

“Oh, some centuries past. Nobody remembers what the name used to be, anymore.”

“I see,” Cassandra said slowly.

That would absolutely be grounds for reconquest and returning into the fold of Koto. If severing the Bayard line was a deed that the Kotoan monarch could not leave unavenged, then how much more deserving of retribution was Equisian occupation of a pilgrimage site, how much more demanding to be retaken was a national hero’s tomb?

This would not be a short campaign, Cassandra thought to herself as she turned her attention to the map again. Not with the prospect of Koto aiming to take at least two of these three major cities that she could see on the parchment before her, and enough land to feed them. Which would, most likely, mean all three of them after all.

But given that even Silberstadt, middle-of-nowhere as it was with its defunct silver mine, was the site of operations of at least two Kotoan spies—and that Tara had named three more operating north of it only as mercenary team recruiters and negotiators, speaking none of the number of those working in a capacity more like her own and Ramon’s—perhaps the campaign wasn’t going to last as long as Cassandra would estimate, either.

However that would shake out, though, there would likely be no shortage of work for a Coronian knight-errant in these parts, not anytime soon. Cassandra felt at the thoroughly unassuming, cog-shaped medallion of scratched steel through her vest. Not for a knight-errant under the throne of Corona, and not for one already named Favoured of the Crown by an inquisitor of the Kotoan one.

She spent a while longer at the corner of the table, unbothered by the Kotoans chatting amiably among themselves over the long-finished meal, and tucked away the map Raps had sent her in favour of pulling out the other two pieces. Disturbing as they were, when compared to her usual paintings, there was something about them that made it hard to look away—something candid, Cassandra decided to call it in the end. Art and its history were her toughest subjects, mostly because both tended to bore and frustrate her to the point of howling or the point of having to physically bite down on her tongue to keep herself from lashing out at the tutor about how useless the knowledge was, how wasted the time spent on being forced to memorize it. The sole honourable exception was architecture, since it at least bordered the questions of how defensible the construction was, how stable, how easy to undermine with a shallow tunnel and a well-placed keg of gunpowder or Bayangoran fire, how difficult to scale and enter through a window, how many entrances and exits, how to conceal any secret escape routes, how effectively hidden would archers or crossbowmen be along the elevation. And although she would never breathe a word of it—for how pointless saying it aloud would be, and thoughtlessly cruel to boot, and, frankly, for how dealing such a low blow was way, way beneath her—Raps’ usual art style was extremely not her speed, and more often than not, Cassandra found it asinine and childish.

This new flex towards honesty and sharply paid attention, however, took Raps’ pre-existing understanding of colours and shapes and motion to someplace Cassandra found herself both surprised and interested with. And especially in conjunction with the letter, with how Raps spoke of struggling to learn how to be a better person, yet persisted in that effort regardless and was actually beginning to show the first budding signs of improvement, to someplace where Cassandra could glean a bit of how Raps was really doing.

One of the pieces was taken up in an overwhelming part with what looked, at first glance, like a waxing crescent of sickening bright green cracking through the fabric of the sky. Upon closer examination, however, that crescent turned out to be an almost fully eclipsed sun, only a thin arch of light escaping from behind the black shield of the moon and tossing wan, ominous radiance across the restless sky. Beneath that eclipse, two figures were down on the ground, with the ground itself cracked in an irregular pattern like the surface of a desert, the grooves painted with thin and jagged strokes of sheer black against the heavy browns and greys—on one side, herself, thrown onto her hands and knees and with a deep fissure sheared into her chest, a wound that wept a shower of turquoise sparks; on the other, Rapunzel, face-down on the ground if not for an elbow she had braced against it and a desperate, yet futile attempt to push herself up with her other arm, shaky and far from straightening as it bore almost her entire weight, as a thin torrent of golden light bled out of her chest to disappear quickly against the scarred-up ground.

The day of the eclipse had brought them both to their lowest, Cassandra recalled despite herself. Nary four months past, she had been stunned into utter inaction with the sheer magnitude of her failures, shortly after seeing for the first time a look of completely new, uncomprehending panic on Raps’ face as losing the Sundrop knocked her flat and left her struggling not only to move, but even to breathe, for a while.

Probably the first and only time Raps had been that helpless, Cassandra admitted silently with a wince. And the thought that at least it was herself who caused it, rather than someone who would actually wish Raps dead, someone who wouldn’t pause to bask in the gut-wrenching yet extremely satisfying pleasure of seeing her suffer and would just kill her instead, didn’t really make any of it much better.

It felt good to beat Raps into the ground. To give her what’s good, for every time she had cheerfully belittled Cassandra, for every time she had disregarded Cassandra’s safety or wishes or better sense. To outmanoeuvre her, and give her just enough time to adjust, and to outdo her again. To show off in front of her, sometimes, and show her that she was not the only one with powers anymore, not as unique as everyone thought, not beyond compare. To be the one who took what Raps had, for once, rather than the other way around. It felt good, back then, and Cassandra wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that anymore.

No, not quite. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what to do with it. She knew exactly what she should do: apologize.

But to do so would skew too closely to what she had spent years on end doing—two years with Raps, and just about her entire life before that—denying herself the right to anything but servitude, making herself only ever smaller in order not to encroach on the comfort of those above her, those whose existence held more merit than hers. No matter what could happen in the future, no matter what fate she would claim for herself, she would not be a servant anymore, not ever again. And if treating Raps with cruelty used to feel good, for a time, then it was because Raps had been treating Cassandra with cruelty, unintentional though it may have been, for far longer a time.

To apologize would be to undermine her own position, one that she and Raps had put each other through hell for before she was finally allowed to crawl into. It would mean admitting being in the wrong, and with regards to the only thing they’ve managed to agree on thus far, in this fledgling rephrase of the terms of everything between them: that Raps had not been treating Cassandra as well as she should have. It didn’t mean that an apology wasn’t deserved. But it did mean that it wasn’t going to happen. Not yet.

After she had a firmer foothold, Cassandra decided. Once she felt secure enough, once she felt that saying sorry for a part of her behaviour could no longer be misinterpreted into denunciating of the whole of it, then she would apologize for her cruelty.

And maybe it wasn’t going to take that much longer, she caught herself hoping, before she folded the painting of the eclipse back and looked once again at the third piece Raps had sent with her most recent letter.

Sheared in half with a vertical symmetry line down the centre, the third piece after the eclipse and the map was the tower. On the left side, a vine-covered pillar of stonework crested with a bulbous little house that looked incredibly cosy, like something straight out of a fairy tale—against a sky so gray as if it was about to weep a torrential rain, about to wash away the lie and strip the paint of comfort to expose that little house for what it was, a prison cell with bars inset within the inmate’s own mind rather than in the windows. That half of the tower was itself painted in heavily muted colours, as well, putting Cassandra in mind of a mourning veil thrown over the viewer’s eyes before they were allowed to behold the image. And then in stark contrast, on the right side, the tower was a singular crystal of glossy black stone, the sheer mass of it easily surpassing its predecessor, its spikes and sharp edges standing out starkly even against the deep ultramarine blue of the night sky and illuminated by dozens upon dozens of fireflies rising all around it. This side of the painting was done in brushstrokes no less choppy and short and overlaying than the other, but on the right, the colours were deeply saturated, and the light fell in fuzzy, muted reflections against the mirror-like black rock. And although there was no turquoise lightning there, no moon across that deep blue sky, in comparison to the left side it felt... real, almost, or at least more real than that.

And that, Cassandra didn’t quite know what to do about, either.

It felt like a mourning and rejection of Raps’ own claim to something, and concession to Cassandra’s claim to it. But if that was what was going on, then why, of all things, did it have to be the tower?

If Cassandra had just wanted a stronghold, there were so many ways to build one that weren’t a lone-standing tower. Many better ways, too, since the tower she had raised with the Moonstone’s second spell was easily twice as tall as the treeline and more than visible all the way from Castle Corona, transforming the formerly-secret area into a focal point of the Royal Guard’s attention. She had chosen that place, shape, and purpose specifically to hurt Rapunzel, to mess with her already complicated feelings, to get back at her in one more way, even if without getting to see her reaction—and enjoy the pain of it.

The tower, in Cassandra’s mind, was not something of hers, and neither was it something of Rapunzel’s. It was Gothel’s. It was where she had gone after leaving Cassandra behind, and where she had caged Raps for almost two decades. The only good thing Gothel ever did was bring us together, Cassandra recalled Raps telling her sternly at one point—a point when Raps had been trying, still, to call her to heel and leash her back to the castle, a prize hound to be paraded like a sign of what awaited the Princess’ enemies, a treasured possession to be dusted off for fleeting and far between periods of loving adoration with no thought given to her existence in-between.

In what world, Cassandra wondered with icy calm, could abandoning a toddler and abducting an infant instead be considered 'bringing them together'?

She folded the paintings away and looked up at the touch of a hand on her shoulder. Moreen was standing at her side, looking incredibly tired, and more than a little worried.

“It’s late, we need to sleep. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” Cassandra busied herself with tucking the paintings and the new map into the old one’s case, looking away as she did. “Go on ahead, I’ll be there in a moment.”

It wasn’t enough to make Moreen step away. Frankly, it was only enough to make her study Cassandra for a while, and for the worried crease at her forehead to deepen. “You seem upset.”

“It’s fine, I—” Cassandra pinched the corners of her eyes, cutting herself off with a frustrated sigh. What was she even supposed to say? This wasn’t anything that talking could fix, not in what experience with friendly conversations about her feelings she’s had.

But then Moreen was sitting down across from her again, and waiting for what Cassandra would say. Or for whether Cassandra would say anything at all. And if she said it was nothing, she was reasonably sure there would be no more pushing, and if she said something else, she was reasonably sure there would be sympathy, at least, if not outright understanding.

She just didn’t know which she craved more.

“What,” she found herself saying in the end, “do you do, when you love someone very much, but they are cruel to you in-between loving you back?”

“Well, I imagine you leave, if you have the means to at all,” Moreen told her gently, leaning across the table somewhat. “And then you grow out of heartbreak, and you continue with your life less worried for your future, now that you know so deeply that you can and will take care of yourself, even if it’s as difficult and painful as that.”

“What if you’ve been cruel right back at that person, too?”

“Cassandra, there isn’t a blameless side in relationships as poisoned as that.” Moreen looked down at the table with a sigh. “Do you remember Carter? If he had successfully pressured me into marriage—which he likely would, because I couldn’t work the farm alone—I would be biting back at him every chance I got. Just to make him as miserable as he would make me. And I would enjoy it, every time I’d successfully get under his skin. If, heavens forbid, we had children, I don’t doubt he’d torment them as much as he would myself, if only to punish me with their suffering as well as with my own, at which point I would be kicking a ladder out from under him or going to the forest for mezereon to put into his stew. There just isn’t a way to be right when you’re living in a world of wrong.”

“Only to head for another world and hope it’s a better one, huh?” Cassandra asked weakly.

“Any world is better than that. All you have to do is make sure you don’t drag the old one’s poison into the new one right along with yourself.” Moreen hesitated for a moment, a pained look crossing her face, before she continued in a voice quieter still than the already low volume they were speaking at. “My father... wasn’t always a good man. You pointed it out yourself, he used to be a mercenary in the war, but... he wasn’t... as calm as Hanalei, or as principled as Sigrid, or as kind as Sebastian, or as fair as Teagan. Especially when he’s had too much to drink. He left that world behind, like they all have, too, but... they remade themselves in the new one. He didn’t. I’d often feel like he was just pretending to be a farmer no different from the rest of my family, like he was an actor in a circus troupe, playing his part and then stripping the costume away the instant he walked off-stage. And every time I felt like that, I’d tell myself that it’s unkind to think of him so poorly, especially now that he’s gone, because you shouldn’t say bad things about the dead. But, I can’t help but wonder how much of that stash you found for me came from people like us. It was never that my father stopped thinking like a mercenary soldier, like pillaging and looting farmsteads is wrong. It was that he made our farmstead his own as well. In his eyes, we weren’t any different than people he used to get paid for killing, we were just his.”

“That sounds like a tough circumstance to grapple with,” Cassandra offered, uncertain of what else could be said to that.

Moreen gave her a forlorn little smile. “Just make sure you and yours don’t have to grapple with one like it in your future, hm?”

“I’ll try to.” Cassandra looked down, and only then noticed that Moreen was holding her withered hand in one of her own. “Uh, you realize I can’t feel that?”

“I did not realize that, actually.” There was a note of dismay in Moreen’s voice now, even as she simply released Cassandra’s right hand and held the left instead. “I’d noticed you’re constantly favouring it, or that you only sleep with that hand tucked against your chest, or that you seem in pain sometimes, and I know I’ve never seen you take that glove off. But you’ve only ever said that it’s fine when asked about it. So I didn’t want to... push you to that point.”

“What do you mean?”

Moreen gave a little sideways nod. “Well, you say 'it’s okay' when it actually is, and 'it’s fine' when you want the subject dropped.”

Cassandra stared at her, stunned into silence with the simplicity of that statement.

She did do that. Constantly and on purpose. She did make a verbal, noticeable distinction between signalling things were alright and signalling she didn’t want to talk about them. And the woman she had first spoken with less than two months ago had picked up on it without trouble, and without raising a fuss, and simply accepted the pattern and adjusted to it.

Meanwhile, the friends she had fled the company of twice over now—the friends who claimed to love her, and support her in all things, no matter what—had yet to do for her even something as simple as that, any of that.

And that thought felt like rebreaking a poorly-healed bone.

Moreen’s fingers tightened a little around her good hand. “...Does it hurt much?”

Cassandra swallowed around a sudden tightness to her throat. She wanted to say it was fine, and have the subject dropped, so that she wouldn’t have to think about it. She really, really wanted to.

“It hurts so much all the time,” she heard herself say instead, and hated the quaver in her voice. And did nothing about it. Because if she were to make good on the promise she made to herself, about grinding down the chiselled edges of her heart into a shape she couldn’t cut herself on anymore, then she would have to train herself into talking about her feelings when it was safe to do so, rather than keep defaulting to the security of brushing such questions off even if they didn’t come from someone inclined to disregard everything she said while also punishing her for staying silent. “I go to sleep in pain. I wake up in pain. Every day is a slew of decisions between how much I need to do and how much I can do, because if I push myself too hard once, I’m going to regret it for months. You know how cutting bread never works when you’re doing it with your offhand? I had to learn to cut bread with my left. I had to get into the habit of opening bottles and jars by holding them between my knees and pulling the cork with my left. I have to keep watching myself so as to not lift anything heavy with this hand, and use the left instead, or at best hang heavy things over my elbow or carry them pressed up against my chest. I can’t kill mosquitoes by clapping my hands anymore, I have to catch them in my left and squeeze as hard as I can, and it doesn’t always work. It’s hard to handwrite anything of meaningful length. I used to do calligraphy, copy maps, embroider—I can’t anymore, even though I used to be really good at each. And I can’t get this entire forearm into water. It gets so hard to clean my clothes, to bathe; to wash my hair, especially. I keep dropping things if I don’t concentrate on holding them. I don’t have a safe way to climb anymore. It’s been almost two years, and I still catch myself on trying to do things with my right if I don’t pay attention. I’ve spent so much time and worked so hard to retrain myself into fighting left-handed, and I’m still nowhere near as good as I used to be with my right, before this happened—” Cassandra pulled her good hand from Moreen’s, and pinched the corners of her eyes again, trying to stop herself from outright crying in the middle of a stranger’s house. “And do you know what the worst part is, this was completely avoidable, if only anyone had just listened to me the one time.”

“I’m so sorry this happened to you,” Moreen said gently, placing her hand on Cassandra’s right arm now, above the elbow, where Cassandra still had feeling. “It isn’t fair that it did, and I hope you know it’s not your fault that you’ve struggled ever since. I hope you know that having to deal with so much pain and difficulty doesn’t lessen you in any way.”

And at that, Cassandra had to bite her lip, even as she nodded and cleared her throat, trying to get at least her voice under control before she spoke again.

“I need to take a walk. Don’t wait for me.”

“Alright,” Moreen relented easily, and leaned back. “Don’t stay out too long?”

“I won’t, it’s very cold,” Cassandra tossed over her shoulder, halfway through shrugging her cloak on already.

She managed not to cry in the middle of a stranger’s house. But it didn’t take her five minutes out the door to lean against the wall and completely come apart, withered arm wrapped tightly around her chest and good hand clamped over her mouth to muffle any wayward noise as she cried herself out right outside of a stranger’s house. Though the snowstorm had long since abated, the wind still chilled to the bone; the tears stung with bitter cold against her cheeks, and shortly, she could feel the mist from her breath freezing over her eyelashes, turning the world even blurrier than it already was and affording a distorted, opalescent halo to every star, every hint of the waning moon shining from behind a scant cloud cover.

Whether to be given no acknowledgement of her injury and the difficulties it caused her, or to receive actual sympathy and words of encouragement, Cassandra thought faintly when she finally pulled herself together again, she couldn’t decide which of these hurt more.

Then she looked up at the sound of a hoot! coming from the farmhouse’s thatching, and made a frustrated gesture towards it. “There, I cried about it. Happy now?”

Hoot, Owl said resolutely as he swooped down onto her shoulder.

Cassandra exhaled slowly, and sniffled, and lifted both wrists to her face to wipe the tears away and crumble the frost from her lashes. “Yeah, I do feel better now. Tired, but better.”

And she did, even though crying still felt like a pointless indulgence in weakness. But she didn’t always have to put on a show, especially when she wasn’t around other people. And Owl had seen her at much lower points than just crying—there was little she’d still be ashamed to do in front of him.

“I kind of hate this,” she grumbled, “but at least now I’m not gonna have to be bottling all of that up for weeks.”

Hoot, Owl praised.

“And I am not going to do this in front of other people anytime soon.”

Hoot, Owl reassured.

“Trust me, I’d refuse to even if I had to.” Cassandra gave her eyes one last pass with her knuckles, and caught herself on clenching her teeth against a shiver to stop them from chattering. “Ugh. How do people live here? It’s colder than under Zhan Tiri’s blizzard in Corona.”

She walked back indoors, where Owl nudged her cheek with his beak goodnight before taking off to perch on a rafter. Everyone else was either in the process of turning in, or asleep already—the farmers huddling for warmth in the low attic, Moreen on Cassandra’s bedroll in front of the hearth. As soon as Cassandra took her usual place at Moreen’s back, however, Moreen turned to face her and held her more closely than they normally did.

With her withered arm cradled to her chest and her good arm lifted away to allow the motion, Cassandra took a deeper breath to brace herself before speaking. “You know I don’t feel that way about you, right?”

The last thing she expected was for Moreen to laugh quietly. “I know. Frankly, I don’t quite feel that way about you, either. I am incredibly grateful to you—and with good reason—but I know better than to confuse that with love. Very sweet of you to worry, though.” She shifted slightly, making herself comfortable, and tucked her head under Cassandra’s chin. “Let’s just enjoy this for what it is, rather than grieve for what it can’t be.”

Cassandra thought that over. Then put her good hand at the back of Moreen’s head, for the first time, and allowed for no gap between them. “Okay.”

It felt good to be held, after all, even if for just a few nights more. And it didn’t have to be about more than that.

The eighth day of travel didn’t bring another blizzard with it, and Cassandra thought she could see a hint of fortifications in the distance, over the plains and low hills now covered in an unblemished shroud of snow. And, among the furrows on each side of the pitted road, an errant snowbank in the shape of a person, once or twice.

She steered Moreen away from the frozen corpses, now as much as she had over the previous week—stripped of all garb but their smallclothes and of what meagre equipment they could have had, but still retaining the red scarves of the Scarlet Brigade, if covering their faces now rather than tied around their necks or used in lieu of belts. Even if the mercenaries exiled from the defunct silver mine had been provided with a shovel, or had stolen one from a farmhouse along the way, digging in the frozen soil would constitute an effort the survivors could not afford, and Cassandra blamed them none for leaving their dead behind as they fell. She counted six, thus far—and wasn’t sure whether to hope for finding thirty more, or no more.

At the sound of an impact, followed immediately with Fidella’s disgruntled huff and Moreen’s startled yelp from the saddle, Cassandra looked up sharply from where she was walking. “What happened?”

Snort, Fidella said, irritated.

“Another one? Oh, girl.” Cassandra sighed. “Do you want me to take that bootie off, or try to make you a second?”

Snort, Fidella decided.

“Okay, one moment.” Cassandra extended her arms to Moreen. “Dismount for a moment, will you?”

“Is everything okay?” Moreen asked as she gracelessly slid from the saddle, with Cassandra catching her before it could turn into an actual fall.

“She just lost another shoe.” Cassandra turned to the mare and stood beside her. “Okay, give me your leg. Not too much snow bunched up in your hooves yet?”

Snort, Fidella grumbled, even as Cassandra untied the improvised hoof boot from one of her front legs.

“I really hate this road, too.” Cassandra released the mare’s leg from between her knees. “So now you’re missing shoes on this one and?”

Fidella dug her other front leg’s hoof against a flagstone.

“Okay, well, at least it’s not two on one side or diagonally.”

Snort, Fidella complained.

Cassandra took the mare’s chin in both hands and kissed her forehead. “I promise, I’ll get you to a farrier if I have to stop eating.”

“Um,” Moreen said uncertainly from the side. “I really don’t think you should stop eating.”

“It’s fine, I’d try to pawn something off before it got to that.” Probably her old map, as it wasn’t going to do her much good anymore, Cassandra thought as she turned to Fidella again. “Do you think you can still carry one person like this?”

Fidella tossed her head with a confident little whinny.

“Atta girl.” Cassandra waved Moreen over. “Come on up, I’ll boost you.”

“You’ve been walking for half a day now, shouldn’t it be your turn?”

Cassandra raised her eyebrows. “Do you think I’ve not noticed that you sleep like a log every night and have trouble picking yourself up every morning? Mount up. I can handle a few more hours of walking.”

Moreen sighed, but didn’t argue. “Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

They continued on in silence for a while after that before Moreen broke it again.

“How do you do that?”

Cassandra glanced up at her. “Do what?”

“Talk to Fidella and Owl like that? They seem to understand you, as much as you do them.”

“I’ve known them for most of my life,” Cassandra said with a one-shouldered shrug, mindful of Owl’s foothold on the other as he snoozed in daylight. “We just kind of... learned each other, over time.”

Moreen studied her for a moment. “Can you understand animals you aren’t friends with, too?”

“More or less,” Cassandra admitted.

“How do you even... walk through a forest like this? With all the birds and whatnot?”

Cassandra sighed. “Mostly I just tune the birds out, unless it’s an alarm call. It’s not always easy to see other people in the woods, but every bird within earshot has a vantage point, so it’s better to rely on them to spot people, really. Stags during mating season are a little more obnoxious, but nothing you can’t get used to. Foxes vocalize in so many different ways that it’s almost entertaining. And watching beavers build a dam or badgers clean out a den, well, sometimes I wish people worked together half as well as they do.”

“Does it get harder for you to hunt? If you can understand the animals you chase?”

“I mean, I kill people, too,” Cassandra said dryly.

Moreen huffed a bit of laughter. “That’s very true.”

On the tenth day of travel, they began passing other people on the road to the city—its bulk clearly visible in the distance now—a hunter carrying a spear across their shoulders like a water-bearer’s stick, several ducks hung off the haft; a work gang of street sweepers armed with sturdy brooms and flat wooden shovels, cleaning the now much better-maintained road of snow; a dozen mounted guards in Equisian colours, patrolling the vicinity. And while the soldiers stared with suspicion at the sight of Cassandra, dressed in freshly tailored furs and with a weapon in clear sight, walking beside a powerfully built mare ridden by a significantly more poor-looking farmer’s daughter who was watching the sheer size of the city looming ahead with wide eyes and a daunted look on her face, they didn’t diverge from their course, didn’t even stop by to give the two of them any trouble. That night, there wasn’t a farmhouse in sight to wait away the winter chill in, only a much-frequented rest stop along the side of the road. With a coal basket kept burning overnight, and both Moreen and Cassandra huddled up to Fidella’s sides overnight as several strangers took the spot across from them, they woke up stiff but still alive.

The following morning saw them trekking past a five-foot-tall stone wall raised along the road, a wall that encircled what looked to be a slew of abandoned, but habitable buildings separated by little streets and patches that could have been meant for growing flowers or growing food. Visible through the gate, the remains of a heavy wooden door now shattered and rotted through where it still stood in its place, was a snow-covered statue in the centre of the courtyard: a lone and vaguely human-like figure either life-sized, or only a little taller than that, placed atop an unadorned low plinth. There were no tracks in the snow, whether heading into the walled-off area or exiting it.

“What is this place?” Moreen asked as they passed by the enclosure’s gate. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s been living there, but why would no one head inside against a cold like this?”

“I think I have an idea.” Cassandra walked up to the gate, taller than the walls around it, and jumped up a few times to reach the stone arch overtop and toss some snow off of the crest sculpted there. Sure enough, the shield was divided per pale, with a seated wolfhound in the dexter and a flowering stem of common yarrow between a pair of unfurled feathered wings in the sinister. “Yeah, it’s a Hospital Order lazaretto. Kotoan cities tend to build a small, fenced-off... settlement, almost... like this, a little ways outside of their gates. If a visitor coming into the city displays symptoms of a contagious illness, they’re made to stay in here for a few weeks to see if they’re really sick and get better if so, before they’re allowed to enter the city proper. It’s a means of preventing the outbreak of plagues or containing their spread. Doesn’t look like it’s seen use under Equisian rule, though.”

Moreen was quiet for a moment. “Do you think people aren’t going inside, even for shelter against this weather, because they’re scared of getting sick from... whatever may still be left inside?”

“That would be my guess. And it’s probably been looted so many times over, by whoever wasn't scared of catching some old plague, that there’s just bare walls and torn-up floorboards in there.” Cassandra pulled Fidella along, continuing on towards the city. She thought back to what Eliza had told her once, back in Silberstadt’s little clinic, about Equis having destroyed every Kotoan institution within Riddersbrug that it could find after conquering the city again.

One would think that getting rid of public houses of healing would be an unpopular move, but it evidently hadn’t been enough to cause any meaningful display of rebellion.

Shortly before the winter’s early nightfall, they made it to the southern city gate of Riddersbrug: a massive stone gatehouse seated in the middle of a crenellated wall, heavy ballistae and mangonels peeking through the fortifications here and there. Up above, Cassandra could spy the reflections of sunlight against the helmets of patrols, the smoke and firelight rising from more coal baskets placed between the soldiers’ stations; down on the ground, the gate stood flanked with two colossal statues, each with a sword raised to form an arch above it. The figure on the right was of a man, his face hidden behind the visor of a helm profiled into the shape of a wolfhound’s head, as was traditional for knights of the Tribunal Order; the one on the left was of a woman, her face obscured by her sword-arm in turn, the scabbard shifted closer to the small of her back than usual and the carpentry square, claw hammer, and small handsaw at her right hip identifying her as a knight of the Hospital Order. Below the meeting point of their swords, the gate bristled with the teeth of a heavy portcullis, raised at the moment; wherever they could have sported the crests of their respective orders, the tabards over their breastplates, the pedestals beneath their feet, all of such imagery was defaced and erased, the sculpted stone pockmarked with chisel marks and sheared off in lengths of missing material. Cassandra looked up at the knight hospitaller as she and Fidella walked past, both their heads woefully short of cresting the topmost edge of armoured stone boots. The bottom half of the statue’s face had been torn off in an uneven slope of broken rock, too, but the harder-to-reach area above her cheekbones remained relatively untouched, leaving hard eyes and a determined frown to stare down her witch-knight counterpart as if in a challenge and an oath all at once.

While there wasn’t much traffic through the gate at this hour, there were a few more people heading into the city, either in small groups or separately. The faint hope Cassandra had that it would help disguise their arrival was quickly proven futile, with a guard waving them over.

“Hail! Who are you, and what is your business in Riddersbrug?”

“My name is Cassandra,” she said, and gestured to Moreen, who was still astride Fidella. “I’m escorting miss Tyson here to winter in the city.”

“Can you help me down? Thank you—” Moreen turned to the guard as soon as Cassandra helped her dismount. “I’m Moreen Tyson, my family has a farm a day out of Silberstadt. We... fell on hard times... so I’m hoping I can find work here, make ends meet. Is there a- a guildhouse of sorts, any craft that deals with working yarn?”

“We have guildhouses of the weavers’, spinners’, knitters’, and tailors’ guilds each,” the guard told her with a raised eyebrow. “Take your pick, miss. Turn right into the second big street from here, and keep walking until you start seeing big, fancy houses—the guildhouses are based in the old villas, for the most part.”

“We also need to find a few more places. Lodging, for example,” Cassandra spoke up again. “Any place with a stable that you’d recommend?”

The guard looked between them thoughtfully, then pointed behind himself with a thumb. “The Forester’s Catch should treat you alright, if you stay close enough together for the rougher types to clock that you’re miss Tyson’s escort. It’s just past the gate, big low building with a boar head sign. You’ll be looking for sellsword work once you see the miss off, I take it?”

“I would like to, yes.”

“Job board’s closed at the moment. Either try your luck on the northern riverbank, or check in for work at the garrison, the Guard is in need of capable mercenaries for temporary contracts. And you—” he gave Cassandra a thorough up-and-down, though not an uncomfortable one, judging her for skill rather than for her looks. “—you certainly look capable enough. The pay is higher for those who come with a steed already, too.”

“I’ll think it over,” Cassandra allowed.

“You do that. What else do you need to find?”

“A pawnbroker,” Moreen said immediately. “Hopefully one that doesn’t take too much advantage?”

The guard laughed a little at that. “You’ll want the Anchor, Boot, and Cleaver. The owners are used to dealing with ragpickers, so they might actually have some decency left in their hearts. Deep, deep down. Though, is this your first time in the city? Keep your valuables close on your person, and don’t put everything in one place, so that you don’t lose everything if you get unlucky with a pickpocket.”

“One last place of pressing importance is a farrier. Where can I find one?” Cassandra asked.

“I’ve never needed a farrier myself,” the guard admitted with a thoughtful frown. “But if you head down the Fireworks quarter, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding one. Go straight towards the river from here until you hit a square with a big fountain—though, the water is shut off this time of year—then turn left and just follow the hammers.”

Cassandra nodded at that. “Thanks for all your help, sir.”

“No worries. Welcome to Riddersbrug. Don’t cause any trouble, and none will find you here.”

“Thank you,” Moreen called out over her shoulder as they continued on, then turned to Cassandra. “He was so nice! I was worried that the guards here would be like the ones who came into Silberstadt not long ago.”

“I was as well,” Cassandra admitted easily. Maybe it really was about how close to the border Silberstadt was right now. Or maybe Teagan had been right, about how there were many more different people in the city than there were in the declining ex-mining town. She pointed to an oval wooden sign with a carved image of a boar’s severed head, hanging above a door not too far away. “That should be the place he mentioned.”

The guard’s comment about sticking close together made sense as soon as they walked through the door. The dining floor reeked of spilled alcohol and stale sweat, the regulars were clad in what tended closer to rough hides rather than Cassandra’s smartly tailored fur-trimmed leathers, their shaggy beards towards entirely bushy enough to make it difficult to tell where the hair ended and the clothes began as they sat silently or murmured to each other over glasses of strong spirits and bowls of hard-to-identify meats garnished with pickled cucumbers or cabbage. The walls were lined with trophies—here a deer skull with an impressive rack, there a badger pelt stretched out like a tapestry—and with framed technical drawings of hunting traps, from starling snares to large steel-jawed bear traps. At the countertop, a tired-looking man in his forties was rubbing a stained tankard with an even more stained rag; it took him a moment to look up at Cassandra and Moreen as they walked in, and beckon them closer.

Faced with a choice between venison goulash, hare chunks, and roast mallard, with Cassandra’s advice they settled for the duck, and managed to negotiate a night’s stay in the stable along with Fidella when it turned out that their remaining money, even when pooled together, was not going to be enough for both the meal and a room overnight. And over the course of the meal, Cassandra would catch some of the locals on staring at her with a thoughtful look in their eyes. Or more properly, staring at her clothes—wondering how much they would sell for, how difficult it would be to fight her for the cloak and the vest and the trousers. Without engaging any of them or breaking the conversation, Cassandra took her left glove off and started idly cleaning her fingernails with a dagger’s point, sending most of the rough-and-tumble types to focus on their food again. No one tried to take their chances against her in the evening—and the one unfortunate would-be thief who tried overnight scampered away before she could see their face, when Owl’s alerting hoot woke Cassandra up and sent her to her feet with a sword in hand.

After the remainder of the night went uneventfully, she and Moreen split the feeble remains of Cassandra’s rations between each other: not enough to truly sate growing hunger, but enough to function for a while without risking unconsciousness. The city’s higher prices made the pawnbroker their first and immediate priority, and Moreen was the one who tapped Cassandra’s shoulder and pointed at a storefront’s sign: a boat’s anchor with a boot hanging off one of its hooks by the cuff and a meat cleaver slammed into the boot itself over the toes, all wood-carved with flair. Pushing the door open sent a jingle of metal chimes through the shop—stacked with all manner of goods, clothes and tools and furniture and dishes and baubles—and Cassandra’s habit of checking her corners caused her to lock eyes with an extraordinarily non-descript person standing in the corner, clad in heavy boots, bulky trousers with a layer of chainmail sewn on, a thick gambeson, a pair of gloves fit for a hawker, and a helmet with two openings for the eyes and an attached curtain of cloth spilling down almost to the shoulders, entirely covering the bodyguard’s face. After a few heartbeats of a staring contest, they nodded at Cassandra, whoever they were. So she nodded back before she turned away to look towards the sound of footsteps rapidly approaching from the depth of the store, only to see a squat, sharp-eyed woman smiling at them both.

“Welcome to the ABC. Buying or selling?”

“Selling,” Moreen said quickly, going through her pockets to produce the small pile of her father’s looted jewellery and lay it on the countertop.

The appraiser whistled sharply, even as she opened a drawer to pull out a headband with a mounted set of magnifying glasses. “Good morning, miss, we’re gonna be here a while. Take a seat, make yourself comfortable.”

And true to her word, she did take nearly two hours going through the stack piece by piece, carefully examining each in turn and chatting amiably all the while. Cassandra stayed silent throughout, and only spoke up to drive the price a little higher, arguing that the gemstone in the massive ring that had caught her own attention weeks ago was a ruby, not a garnet, and that the only flaw across it was a small scratch easy to erase by carving a symbol or a crest into the gem. With the final amount of eight hundred and forty gold finally agreed upon, which Cassandra felt was fair and Moreen was evidently nothing short of stunned with, the appraiser saw them off with a grin and a happy little wave, and Cassandra inclined her head in response before closing the door behind Moreen and herself.

“You alright?”

“I’ve never seen so much coin in one place,” Moreen confessed in a faint tone, “much less had it be mine.”

“Well, keep it safe and ration it out. Everything is a lot more expensive here than in Silberstadt.”

“I’m starting to realize that it must be.” Moreen sniffed at the air at the same time as Cassandra caught a whiff of burning charcoal on the breeze. “But I can worry about that after I get us something to eat.”

“I’m not gonna turn that down,” Cassandra admitted easily.

Even in the cold, there were little food stalls set out in the streets, here and there. One in particular, with a shallow bed of burning coals set into a small hand cart, was selling bite-sized bits on wooden skewers, toasted over the embers: little onion bulbs and cloves of garlic interspersed with chunks of meat or potato wedges, balls of dough covered in sticky sweet syrup or a tangy, salty sauce. With three skewers each, Cassandra and Moreen kept on walking, Fidella in tow and Owl perched atop the saddle, following the directions they’d asked of a passerby towards the street with guildhouses. And along the way, Cassandra looked across the streets and buildings as she ate.

Hard as they felt underfoot, it was still a relief to finally tread across well-walked cobbles again, rather than have to endlessly pull her boots out of the mud or watch for potholes on the road. Kotoan design, she knew from feeling the street’s surface worked into a slightly convex shape, just enough for rainwater and any spillage to run to the sides and into the drainage holes covered with heavy locked grates, rather than pool in the middle. The sewer system beneath, another point of extreme relief when compared to the shallow gutters if anything at all of everywhere she’d gone thus far after departing Castle Corona, had to be a veritable second layer of streets beneath the surface, likely with a system of dams and pumping stations capable of diverting a small portion of the river water into the canalworks beneath and flushing the waste out when needed, and letting out into the river again beyond the city rather than all along its banks. The homes and storefronts lining the streets tended towards a mixture of Kotoan styles, as well, yet with more Equisian-styled buildings raised of visibly newer material popping up here and there—no doubt a consequence of some past siege or another, an effort to rebuild taking the opportunity to remodel while at it. And that tendency was only more visible once they entered the old villa district, with its houses higher and boasting garden areas rather than simple flower patches or earthenware planters and pots of less wealthy neighbourhoods. True to the word of the guard who hailed them at the gate, the entrances to the grounds of many of these villas sported signs of a guild’s trade crafted in elaborate ways or from more expensive materials: a tailor’s scissors, a vintner’s tastevin, a glassblower’s pipe.

“That one’s really pretty,” Moreen pointed at one of the guildhouses. “Is that just paint, or is the elevation sculpted like this?”

“Bit of both,” Cassandra said as she looked over. “The flat ochre parts are painted in this colour, but the white swirls are carved limestone. It’s a central Kotoan style. I imagine you’d see it a lot in the capital and its surrounding region, at least in the wealthier parts.”

And it wasn’t too shabby of a take on the style at large, she had to admit, with the ornamentation understated into a tasteful amount. Especially next to the severe lines and high, narrow windows of its neighbour, a distinctly Equisian building surrounded with a fence stacked as if it were a fortified wall, an arch overtop the gate carved into the figures of two fighting stags, the roof gutters letting out at each corner through the sculpted faces and rolled-out tongues of gargoyles: their snouts hooked like the beak of a shrike, yet with flared nostrils like those of a snarling wolf and with very prominent fangs between their open jaws, each one’s large eyes squinted hard in an unsettling grimace twisting their malformed faces, each crowned with a set of spiralling, ram-like horns curled out to the sides above their sloped shoulders.

“Oh! That one ahead might be where we need to go, what do you think? ...Cassandra?”

She startled, even though her name wasn’t being called in a deceptively sweet sing-song anymore, and swivelled her head towards the sound on a reflex. “Sorry, you were saying?”

“Are you okay?” Moreen asked, a sudden disquiet and open worry on her face, and Cassandra realized she must have looked shaken.

“Yeah, I’m– I—” Cassandra gestured at the gray building with an empty skewer. “The gargoyles threw me off. They’re not, uh... a popular architectural motif in Corona.”

Moreen looked, and her face slowly pulled into a wince. “Who makes things like these?”

“I think it’s just the stonecarvers’ guild flexing how much they can do.” Cassandra turned away from the gargoyles and stroked a hand down Fidella’s neck, as much for something to do as for her own comfort. The mare gave her a searching look, but nothing more. “Sorry I zoned out, what were you going to say?”

Moreen pointed her down the street again, towards a mercifully more Kotoan-styled villa with the symbol of two knitting needles crossed through a ball of yarn worked into its iron gate. Sure enough, the building housed the city’s chapter of knitters’ guild, they found shortly after knocking on its door; Cassandra stood aside while an elderly woman in clothes a little finer than was common and a mousy-looking man with ink stains on his fingers examined Moreen’s knitted shawl and asked her a flurry of questions that she answered without a hitch, terms more technical than Cassandra was familiar with for mostly having been forced to focus on sewing, repairing, and embroidery through her years in the Coronian court. When handed an unfinished swatch of yarn and asked to continue the pattern, Moreen actually breathed a little more easily, Cassandra noticed—something she knew how to do, for a change, finally finding its way into her hands—and not too long afterwards, the interview shifted to negotiating pay rates and matters of lodging, as Moreen sheepishly brought up that she did not have a place to stay. Finally, the elderly guildmistress looked over to Cassandra.

“And you, miss?”

Cassandra held her withered hand up. “I’m just a hired escort.”

“I see.” The guildmistress turned back to Moreen. “Well then, miss Tyson, when are you ready to begin?”

“Um, right now? Right after I say goodbye to my friend there.”

The guildmistress inclined her head with a permissive gesture, and Moreen walked out with Cassandra into the guildhouse’s courtyard, where Fidella and Owl were waiting.

“That’s that, then,” Cassandra said in the brief silence.

“I suppose so.” Moreen wrung her hands briefly. Then, with no warning, she had both arms around Cassandra’s neck in a hug that said everything that words would fall short of. “Thank you so much. So much. I owe you– everything, really. Thank you for helping, for keeping me safe. I wouldn’t have lived through the winter without you.”

“It was good to spend time with you,” Cassandra murmured as she hugged back, hard. “Look after yourself, alright? And make some friends.”

Moreen laughed a little before pulling back. “You don’t have to tell me. Listen– I know I said, when we first met, that I didn’t know if I’d have anything to pay you with, but after this morning I do—”

“No, no. No need. I’m about to go find work, myself—”

“If not for yourself, then to get new shoes for Fidella,” Moreen said pointedly as she brought out some coin.

Cassandra sighed, but with a smile. “And how can I say no to that?”

“You can’t.” Moreen watched her, eyes a little too glossy, but valiantly kept herself from crying. “Will I ever see you again?”

“Probably,” Cassandra said earnestly. “I’ll be around for a while. But I don’t plan to stay for good here, either.”

“No, I didn’t think you would.” Moreen smiled at her. “All the best, and be safe, Cassandra.”

“I’ll do what I can. Bye.”

“Bye bye.”

And with that, Cassandra took Fidella’s reins and led her back out into the street, heading towards the nearest guard that wasn’t astride a horse themselves to ask for directions to the Fireworks quarter. Soon enough, she found the square with the large fountain—scuffed stone scored with bird droppings and algae, a dozen leaping catfish with water spouts set into their open mouths perched across the fountain’s rim and all facing the central statue of a trio of musicians standing back to back: a grinning woman with a mane of wavy hair cascading down her shoulders as she strummed a lute, a man with a flatter nose and dreadlocks bunched up at the back of his neck sawing at a fiddle, and a child with features from both of them banging on a small drum with a look of mischievous glee. Even as she couldn’t help a chuckle at that expression, Cassandra noticed a few small wreaths of pine and holly laid against the fountain’s edge, before the lute player: a stark green against the late fall’s and early winter’s drab grey, though looking as if they’d been laying there for about a week now. She looked again as she walked past, and finally spotted an imperfection in the sculpted stone: a narrow stripe roughly carved behind the lute player’s head, through her hair. Quite as if something supposed to be there originally had been torn out. Something like a plate of brass set to frame her head in a nimbus of golden light. Another saint, then.

At least the Equisian administration left the rest of the fountain alone, Cassandra thought as she continued on, rather than tear it down entirely or deface it like it had with the knight statues at the gate.

Before too long, she could spot thin plumes of smoke rising into the sky, and hear the ring of hammers. The Fireworks quarter turned out to be populated by far more than simply smiths: kilns meant for pottery and for burning lime rose here and there, soot-smeared labourers and stout draft ponies hauled loads of charcoal and ores this way and that, coopers toasted barrels and kegs in front of their workshops, even a few bakeries endured at the district’s edge. None of the buildings were raised of wood, Cassandra noticed—every wall in sight was stone or brickwork, every roof covered in tiles of clay rather than thatching—and spaced farther apart than elsewhere she had seen in the city. Every few hundred yards stood a water cistern now likely filled with broken ice, each surrounded with a stack of empty buckets, a few pickaxes, and a small group idly playing cards or watching the workers around it; guard patrols were on foot, rather than mounted, and visibly paying more attention to the hearths and furnaces rather than those who worked them or passersby.

She spent a moment staring at a bladesmith’s display, then watching an armoursmith shaking out a shirt of mail as if it were nothing more than a woollen jumper, before she caught sight of a shop sign worked into the shape of a horseshoe. It read, the Cob’s Cordwainer, and Cassandra laughed a little despite herself as she pulled Fidella up to it. One of the farriers—two men and a girl in her early teens, likely an apprentice—looked up and immediately rose from a squat stool to greet her. After asking their prices, she decided on a full set of new horseshoes, rather than replace only the missing pair. The last dregs of Moreen’s coin she’d have left afterwards should buy her another meal, or maybe two extremely modest ones.

“I take it you deal with ponies more often than with horses?” she asked one of the farriers as the other set to work.

“Yeah, draft ponies. Used a lot for plough work out of the city, for transport within and towpaths up the river. The Guard doesn’t contract us out all that often, but it happens if they’re hard-pressed.” The farrier scratched at the stubble under his chin as he paused for a moment. “We did shoe a destrier recently. Big boy. Really big.”

“Bigger than her?” Cassandra nodded towards Fidella, who was waiting patiently at her side.

“Bigger,” the farrier said easily. “Hand, hand and a half taller. Gelded, though, I thought destriers were usually stallions.”

“They are.”

“Hm.” The farrier shrugged the conundrum away. “Him, and a far lighter little lady, a good riding breed for sure. Beautiful, really—coat like a gold coin, mane and tail flaxen. One of the best things about living somewhere with a noticeable sellsword presence is how many different horses you get to see.”

“There’s a lot of mercenaries around here, then?”

“Oh yes. And not just the Scarlet Brigade, what with their little fortress somewhere on this side of the river. Freelancers of every stripe, alone and in groups, are just swarming towards the war like flies to dog shit.” The farrier cut himself off with a wince, looking at Cassandra’s very sellsword-like garb. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

With Fidella re-shoed and thoroughly satisfied with the farriers’ craftsmanship, Cassandra climbed into the saddle for the first time in over a week, sighing with relief at the prospect of being able to sit down and still get somewhere at the same time. At the district’s edge, she counted the remains of her coin and went into a bakery; upon hearing that she had eleven gold left to her name, the baker pointed her at a street seller trading in fist-sized wheels of sheep cheese, to supplement their bread with, and tossed in a gingerbread cookie for luck. Slightly more confident that she wasn’t going to starve today, and now well and truly flat broke, Cassandra turned Fidella back towards the southern city gate and its garrison.

The guard who’d greeted her and Moreen a day prior didn’t seem certain whether the northern bank’s contract board was open to business. Even if it was, Cassandra had yet to see the river, and had been told before that each bank was large enough to be a city in its own right—which meant that she couldn’t afford the trip across at the moment.

And that, in turn, meant that it was time to play lackey to an unallied kingdom’s Royal Guard, Cassandra accepted with a scowl.

One of the sentries posted outside of the garrison’s courtyard raised a hand at her as soon as he realized that Cassandra was going towards them. “Sorry, miss, only those in the employ of the Royal Equisian Guard are allowed beyond this point.”

“I’m here about that, actually.” Cassandra dismounted and took Fidella by the reins, if only to be polite. “I’m told the Guard is hiring for short contracts?”

The sentry exchanged looks with his friend standing on the other side. “Get the watchmaster.”

“Which one’s handling contractors right now, anyway?”

“I think they tossed that to Arroyo.”

“Ah, figures.” The second guard hurried inside, across the busy courtyard. Minutes later, he came with another in tow, though with a stripe at the sleeve that denoted a higher rank.

Also, the officer was a woman.

Cassandra stared for a moment, taken completely by surprise. And the Equisian officer stared at her, as well—with a bit of pleasant surprise at the sight of Fidella and the state of Cassandra’s gear, and something else entirely, a sharper spark that only lit her eyes up for a moment. Recognition.

“You here about a contract, I take it?”

“Uh, yes.” Cassandra finally remembered her tongue.

“And with a fine mount already, good. Take her inside and come with me, we’ll talk details in my office.”

Cassandra did as she was told, signalling Owl to stay with Fidella as they waited in the garrison’s courtyard, and followed the officer indoors. Guards and unarmoured, but uniformed clerks streamed past them, hurrying this way and that, most of them nodding in passing at the watchmaster leading her through. Shortly, the officer pushed a door open, and led Cassandra into a small room, cramped with a paper-stacked desk, two chairs, an almost rudimentary city plan on one wall, and a narrow window in another.

“Sit. I’ll get the documents out.”

Cassandra sat, watching the officer pull a scribing kit from the desk’s drawer and leaf through one of the piles of paper, held in place with a large glass paperweight shaped like a sleeping griffincat. Curly hair, a very dark brown clasped back in a severe ponytail, and equally dark brown eyes; bronze skin, darker than Cassandra had seen from the farmers in the region, tanned from work in the field as they were. Likely of Kotoan descent, then. “Watchmaster Arroyo, I take it?”

The officer winced, almost imperceptibly, but glanced to the favour on Cassandra’s arm and seemed to give a moment of thought to her response before speaking. “It’s del Arroyo, if you please. Watchmaster Renée Jacinta del Arroyo.”

Definitely of Kotoan descent, Cassandra thought as she inclined her head. “Watchmaster del Arroyo, then.”

The Kotoan officer on the Equisian guard nodded back at her in thanks. “Rare for a Coronian to look for employment with us.”

“I have no money and only food enough for today,” Cassandra replied flatly.

Renée laughed briefly. “That’ll do it. The job is scouting and escort duty, and would put you under contract for four weeks sans a day, now. There was a fire recently, leaving almost an entire district burnt down; we have logger teams hauling timber for rebuilding the ruins, but the Scarlet Brigade has been harrying those teams rather fiercely—taking both the timber and the loggers, and issuing no ransom demands. It’s possible that they want materials and labour for expanding their own stronghold nearby, as they’ve taken in about two dozen stragglers from down south, not long ago.”

“I was there for that, actually,” Cassandra said with a frown. “They numbered three dozen square when they set out from near Silberstadt. Though, I did spot a few bodies along the way to the city.”

Renée nodded slowly. “More casualties and likely a few deserters, then. The pay is daily, doled out on return with the loggers. Since you’re a mounted contractor, forty gold per day; hazard pay is another twenty if you get into a skirmish with the Reds, and another ten on top of that if they bring out war wagons or artillery. Show up at dawn, move out, spend the whole day out, clock back in for the gold. Sound fair?”

“I’ll do it,” Cassandra said simply.

“Excellent. Do you know how to use a signal horn?”

“I do, but I don’t have one of my own.”

“You wouldn’t be using your own, anyway, we’ll issue you one of the Guard’s.” Renée tempered a quill in a few quick motions and started filling out a contract's template, no doubt made with a printing press. “Be aware, though, that breaking a contract with the Royal Guard is punishable by a fine up to five hundred gold or three weeks in the dungeon. Including taking a different job while under contract for the Royal Guard.”

“Reasonable.”

Renée grinned over the parchment. “What would I not give for more sellswords being like you. Do you have a last name?”

“I don’t,” Cassandra admitted. “I’ve just been using 'of Corona' whenever one was required.”

“Take my word for it, sign this just with your first name.”

Cassandra took the quill to do so, but paused. “I don’t remember giving you my first name, either.”

“You didn’t,” Renée said with a little smile. “But I’ve heard of you. A friend wrote ahead. He does courier runs between Espinheiro and here, every now and then.”

“Oh, that one.” Cassandra signed the contract. “Do I start today?”

Renée nodded. “Since it’s early, and you say you’re out of money, you can. We’ll get you a signal horn and a bandoleer with a scroll case for your contract, which you’ll be required to wear while you’re working, then just head out the gate and turn west soon as we’re done. Shouldn’t be too hard to find the loggers; show this to the foreman, and he’ll make use of you right quick.”

“Understood.”

“Well,” Renée rose from her chair and shook Cassandra’s hand, a glint of humour in her eyes now. “Welcome into service to the Crown, temporary though it may be.”

And that, Cassandra thought as she rode out of the city and followed the clear tracks of wagons and horses and three dozen pairs of feet, sounded almost as absurd as it was ominous when spoken to a Coronian knight-errant by an officer of the Equisian military who, she was just about certain, was another Kotoan spy.

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.

Chapter Text

“You look exhausted,” Rapunzel remarked as she caught Faith on stifling the third yawn in a row. “You’re working too hard.”

“It’s always frantic before New Year’s Eve, even worse than the Goodwill Festival,” her lady-in-waiting admitted in a miserable tone. “This is just the first time that I’m part of the works when Cassandra isn’t. Last year at this time, I was still making my way back home from the– the teapot situation.”

At that, Rapunzel went quiet for a moment, but caught herself before the silence could drag on long enough for Faith to start thinking she’d overstepped something. “Cass must have been a lot of help, huh?”

“She had everything on lock. What decorations were put up the year prior and the year before that, where they were being stored, how much could be reused and how much would have to be reworked or repurposed, day-to-day progress in preparations throughout and then progress in dismantling it all, repairs, and storing it back for next year. It was no secret that she hated it,” Faith admitted easily, “but she was very good at it. And now with Cassandra gone, we’re– well, we’re having to ask Old Lady Crowley, and that strains... everyone who isn’t Old Lady Crowley. But especially the new girls.”

Rapunzel winced. “Should I talk to her about not giving the rest of you such a hard time?”

“No, no,” Faith said with feeling, immediately dropping the lacework into her lap to raise both hands in a defensive gesture. “Thank you, but please don’t, that would just make her snappier for far longer a time and utterly vicious in an unfalteringly polite tone throughout. It’s only going to be as hectic for about two more weeks. We can withstand it.”

“Well, she shouldn’t get to be terrible to you for two more weeks,” Rapunzel grumbled under her breath.

Faith laughed a little at that. “She’s not being terrible on purpose, princess. It’s very easy to tell when Old Lady Crowley is being terrible on purpose. This is her normal—it’s just how she is. It also makes sure that no one ever wants to talk to her outside of work-related matters, and I think that suits both her and everyone else in the castle just fine.”

“I’m not about to go about trying to change Old Lady Crowley, of all people, but how can she stand not having any friends—not even a single person to just, get along with—much less actually enjoy living like this?”

“Well, I can think of one person Old Lady Crowley got along with,” Faith said, and when faced with an inquisitive look, tilted her head to the side slightly as if surprised that the hint hadn’t been enough. “Cassandra. They’d communicate in the same tone, and with the same vague irritation concerning the rest of existence, but neither of them ever came away offended. Actually, I think sometimes Old Lady Crowley was a little less... tetchy, if I may... after an exchange with Cassandra. Ethel doesn’t mind her so much, or at least not anymore, but Joanne and myself and a few other girls, every time we had to ask something from Old Lady Crowley, we’d go to Cassandra instead and beg her into asking for us—it would irritate her beyond belief, yes, but she always did it for us anyway.”

“But Old Lady Crowley was trying to throw out Cassandra’s things,” Rapunzel recalled with a frown. “All of her things, not too long after we came home without her.”

“If I may be so bold, princess,” Faith said carefully, and only continued after Rapunzel gave her an encouraging little noise. “You were not the only one to feel betrayed when you came home with news of Cassandra’s, um... decisions. And that was before the eclipse and the days immediately prior.”

Rapunzel sat with that for a long moment, silently.

Cass had lived in the castle since she was four. There was a fair amount of guards whose careers went back that long or longer. It stood to reason, really, that some of the other staff’s would as well—Old Lady Crowley was certainly old enough for it. So was Ethel. So was Friedborg. So was the chef. So was the herald. So would be more than a few other people that Rapunzel couldn’t list off the top of her head. And even those who were employed afterwards would easily come to see Cass as a permanent fixture of castle life, all the way back from day one, whether a child or a teenager or the young woman that she now was.

It hadn’t occurred to Rapunzel, before right now, that people other than the Captain and herself could have taken it hard when Cass was declared a renegade and then a traitor in absentia. Or that Old Lady Crowley’s earnest attempt to get rid of everything Cass had ever owned and neglected to take with herself could have been an act of anger, an attempt to get back at her, and at a personal level to boot.

And that was before the eclipse and the days immediately prior, indeed.

Rapunzel looked at her lady-in-waiting again. “Did you know that Cass used a magic cloak to look like you, so she could infiltrate the castle without being noticed, right before the eclipse?”

Faith’s hands stilled for a moment on the lace that she was sewing onto the cuffs of a doublet. “I was not aware of that, no. But it does, um... explain a thing or two.”

“Like what?”

“Like the time she enclosed me in a cage of that black rock,” Faith admitted with a sigh.

“I’m sorry, Cass did what?”

“She was very civil about it! Even at the time, I could tell that she was trying not to scare me! I didn’t know why she would even bother with me, back then, but if you say she came into the castle looking like me, then she must have been trying to make sure her cover wouldn’t be blown by inconsistencies about where... I... have been, or by people seeing two of me in the same place.” Faith expertly tucked the thread into the stitches and trimmed off the excess length, and set to re-threading the needle without pausing. “I’ve not even noticed anything was amiss until you told me, either, which means she must have been taking care not to make a mess of my life while she was impersonating me. And afterwards, when the rebuilding efforts were underway, she apologized rather thoroughly and made a point to find a moment for it when there were other people around us, so that I’d feel safer for it—so that there was someone I could call out for help to if I felt frightened or like she was going to hurt me again.”

“Did you?”

Faith shook her head no. “I was afraid when she came up to me, I'll admit that, but not for very much longer after that first moment. I’ve never seen Cassandra quite as... subdued, as then. She didn’t seem like she had it in her to be a danger to anyone but herself. Frankly, she didn’t seem very happy to be alive at all. I was a little worried about her, that she would raise a hand on herself, or seek out something incredibly dangerous to fight in hopes that it would kill her. Again.”

“Oh,” Rapunzel said faintly, and looked to the set of four wanted posters tucked into the corner of her desk. Wanted posters of men who have killed dozens, if not more, and often with exceedingly brutal means; men whose deaths merited fortunes in bounty money and official missives of thanks from allied monarchs, and in one case, a personal visit from such a monarch’s heiress.

“So I’m glad you’re staying in contact with her, princess. It’s good to hear that she’s doing a little better these days.”

“She hasn’t written in a while, but she did say she was going to move, and that’s bound to take her some time,” Rapunzel admitted, trying to convince her own unease that it was probably nothing. “I didn’t know you were friends with Cass, too.”

Faith laughed at that, if without a hint of mockery. “I’m not sure if I would describe myself as such. I don’t really know Cassandra very well, especially outside of the work we used to share. She didn’t seem interested in forming any close relationships—at least not until you, princess—and she was perfectly content to stand apart from the rest of us. Maybe she was hoping to be admitted into the Guard this entire time, and didn’t want to form attachments only to have to leave them behind once she got her wish; maybe she was just happy enough with a wide array of casual relationships. I think the closest I ever came to feeling as if Cassandra liked me was when she spoke, acted, and planned ahead in ways that expressed she knew she could rely on me with certain things. Again, work-related, but still. It was a bit of a... a rare honour, I would say, at the risk of sounding too formal.”

“Didn’t happen every day, huh?”

“Oh, certainly not. And she was notoriously difficult to get birthday gifts for—the worst on the staff, perhaps. Everyone knows Old Lady Crowley loves her flower garden, even if the joke is that she’s never loved anything else in her entire life, ancient as she is. The only thing Cassandra had ever wanted was to be admitted into the Guard, and it’s not like the rest of us could get her that.”

Rapunzel felt her entire being grind to a halt at that, the quill in her hand forgotten and blotting ink upon the page, a realization hitting her like a bucketful of freezing water flung in her face. She didn’t even know when Cassandra’s birthday was.

She didn’t know, because she’d never thought to ask.

“How would you go about picking something for her, then?” she heard herself asking regardless, a reflex to keep the conversation going—to keep it on track, so that it wouldn’t careen into talking about how that revelation made her feel.

“Well, generally when someone on the staff celebrates a birthday or an anniversary, or gets married, everyone else pitches in with a small amount of gold,” Faith said easily. “Sometimes a little more substantial if it’s a retirement gift or a wedding one, and it’s from all of us. So with Cassandra, we’d usually keep an eye out for something unique through the entire year, and if we still didn’t have any ideas, we’d just default to baking her something that’s hard to get every day. Which was doubly difficult, because for some reason Cassandra doesn’t like sweet food and enjoys bitter. I think most recently it was a little blackcurrant cake glazed with dark chocolate. The year before that, something of a hazelnut crumble, but not like the one Uncle Monty– uh, mister Montgomery, has for sale from time to time. I can’t well remember before that, but I know that some years ago, Stan tipped us off about a beautiful edition of Ingvarrdian stories and poetry. She seemed happy with those.”

“I think I saw a book like that among her things, when I was putting them back into her room,” Rapunzel said softly. The most worn and well-loved of Cassandra’s books, maybe, with the spine cracked through enough to always open on the same page, and here and there a few verses or a stanza circled with a pencil’s faintest touch. “It looked like she was reading it a lot.”

Faith smiled at that. “I’m glad we got it right at least one of those years, then.”

Rapunzel let the conversation rest for a longer moment afterwards, chin in one hand as she stared at her unfinished assignment for class without really seeing what she had notes about so far. She knew by now that she hadn’t been a good friend to Cass. She knew by now that she had never listened, not even—or perhaps particularly—when she was the one pushing for a conversation to happen in the first place. She knew by now that she had made it unsafe for Cass to be honest about how she felt, like Cass had pointed out in her last letter; and much to her dismay, Rapunzel had noticed the same pattern in her relationships with other people she knew as long as she knew Cass, and started earnestly purging it from her behaviour.

But it wasn’t until right now that she considered the terrifying thought that, in truth, maybe she had never known Cassandra at all.

It was news that Cass could speak Old Lady Crowley’s language. It was news that Cass used to be happy enough with more shallow relationships than what Rapunzel and other people she surrounded herself with would think of as a friendship. It was news that Cass would express fondness of someone by relying on them. And it wouldn’t be to a real friend, bad or otherwise.

At least she was marginally aware of Cass liking her desserts bitter, she thought miserably.

With a sigh, Rapunzel laid her quill aside and corked her inkwell. “I’m getting nowhere. I need to clear my head. Do you want to stay here and take a nap while I go on a walk in the gardens?”

Faith looked up at her uncertainly. “I should really keep working. Or accompany you.”

“Listen, if even I can tell that you’re tired, you must be on the brink of collapsing. And you said it’s going to be like this for about two weeks longer? You’re going to hurt yourself if you don’t take enough breaks to sustain the effort.”

Faith glanced between the garment she was sewing and Rapunzel, and drew a breath as if to say something, but in the end only looked back down, clearly unable to decide.

“No one will know,” Rapunzel said patiently. “I can lock the door, and I’ll be back in about an hour. It’s not long enough to put too much of a hitch on getting things done, but enough to recover your strength a little.”

“Alright,” Faith relented, and gratefully laid the sewing aside. “Thank you, princess.”

Rapunzel patted her shoulder. “You know where the blankets are.”

She stalled long enough to watch Faith pulling out a blanket and settling down on a chaise lounge, before she closed the door and turned the key. And rested her forehead against the door, sighing.

Squeak, Pascal asked from his usual perch on her shoulder, concerned.

“No, this has nothing to do with the assignment for class,” Rapunzel admitted quietly. Then pushed off the door, and wiped both hands over her face in a tired gesture. “Do you think you’ll be warm enough in that to go outside with me? Just for a little.”

Squeak, Pascal said confidently, brushing one hand over the little jumper she’d made for him, as if to dust off the P done in differently coloured yarn at his chest.

Rapunzel leaned her cheek against him in thanks. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”

And it did bring some relief, to put herself into motion, even motion as mindless as just placing one foot in front of the other. Unfortunately, it did nothing to help with the unease and guilt that a single off-handed conversation piled up on her shoulders. And right next to those that were already there, as well.

Squeak, Pascal hedged.

“No, I don’t feel very okay. But I don’t know how to go about fixing that, either. Not yet, at least,” Rapunzel said under her breath, only loud enough for him to hear. Then sighed again. “I hope Adira gets back from escorting that repair crew into the tunnels soon. I don’t want to worry you, but I think I’m starting to dislike myself. And I don’t like that about myself, either.”

Squeak, Pascal asked, concerned now.

“Well, because– look at how I’ve been treating people I love. You, Cass, Eugene—I never listened to any of you. Or I only listened when it benefited me. I never paid attention to when you were sad or angry or hurt, especially when I was the one who caused it—and when I was, I’d shift the blame for it on all of you. Even though you’ve all been there for me when I was the one who felt bad. All I’ve ever done was take from each of you. That’s not love. That’s terrible. Cass especially, I forced her to apologize every time she was trying not to let me hurt her, up until she left, twice, but you two as well—how many times did I dismiss something you wanted or felt strongly about, just because I couldn’t be asked to consider being wrong or to deal with something that didn’t directly affect me already? And then I only said sorry so you would like me again, but I didn’t change my behaviour one bit? I just—” Rapunzel put her face in her hands and forced herself to take a deeper breath against a deep-seated panic rising through her chest and an urge to cry, scream, or both, tightening at her throat like a noose. “I’m afraid I’m going to drive both of you away, too. No one could even blame you! I’m a terrible person. I deserve to be left alone. And you, you’ve known me the longest and I’ve been like that to you the longest, how can you still love me?”

Squeak, Pascal said tenderly, detailing how he’s also known other sides of her the longest, and how those made her worth being around even before she had concentrated on becoming a better person and better friend—and how good it was to watch her begin holding herself accountable and growing up.

Rapunzel exhaled slowly into her palms. “Thank you. I think I’m too caught up in feeling miserable about myself right now to believe that, but thank you for saying it, and I’ll remind myself you said that once I calm down.”

Squeak, Pascal asked, glancing at the sky.

“What, something that’ll immediately make me feel better?” Rapunzel wiped at her cheeks and lifted her hands away from her face, before she looked up as well. “Oh! Owl!”

Hoot, came a response muffled by wind and distance, as Owl diverted from his perimeter flight around the castle and headed straight towards her.

“Welcome back! How was the travel, did you have to fly much farther?” Rapunzel asked as she held out an arm for him to perch on.

Hoot, Owl complained about the frosts, and neglected to comment about the distance.

“And... how is Cass doing?”

Owl shrugged his wings to indicate the scroll case on his back, giving her a look so patient as to almost be long-suffering.

“Right, of course, sorry.” Rapunzel unstrapped the backpack from around his chest and waited for Owl to settle on her other shoulder, opposite of Pascal. “Let’s go inside. We’ll find you something to eat.”

Hoot, Owl acquiesced easily.

Maybe she hadn’t been a good friend at all—maybe she had barely been a friend in the first place, even a bad one—but somehow, through it all, Pascal still loved her. So did Eugene. And so did Cass, Rapunzel thought to herself with overwhelming relief that she didn’t feel she deserved, as evidenced by the scroll case in her hands free of any streaks or stains that the previous one had returned smeared with.

Squeak, Pascal said warmly, leaning forward to see across Rapunzel’s neck.

Hoot, Owl returned the sentiment.

Soon enough, he was tearing into a small bowl of choice cuts, if after Rapunzel took both the meat and him out of the kitchen for the uncomfortable, queasy looks on the faces of some of the cooks there. And not nearly quickly enough, Rapunzel was opening the scroll case, glancing through the sheets of paper held within to find the one with lines of tight, arduous handwriting, and her heart hammered faster when she realized that Cassandra’s letter was twice the length of the last one.

It was also scribed with ink of two different colours: one the black commonly used in Castle Corona, for about two-thirds through, and then switching mid-sentence into a very deep blue that Cass must have gotten after her supply ran out. The paper itself was stained in several different ways, as well—an incomplete circle from liquid gathered at the base of a mug or tankard; a small spillage that turned several words somewhat harder to read but still not entirely illegible; a few flecks and a larger stain of black ink at the paper’s edge, thankfully far enough away from the words themselves not to erase them. And Cassandra’s handwriting was not as terribly strained and exhausted as last time, either. It certainly didn’t point to her hand getting any better, but neither did it indicate something had happened to her again, at least. She was pacing herself with writing, Rapunzel thought with a burst of hope as bright and scorching as a chemical flame. She was figuring it out.

And with one last deep breath to calm herself down, to keep herself from skimming the letter just for the excitement of holding it in her hands, Rapunzel started reading.

Well, now I know why everything I took out of that sorcerer’s pockets gave me the creeps.

He had some kind of crystal on him. I don’t know what it does, but I know it’s magic. And the longer I stare at the patterns carved in it, the less I can remember of what they are. So here’s another puzzle for you.

Pittsford’s bounty is going to be smaller—I fought their outlaw as part of a group of four, so I asked to have the money split evenly. Once that one-quarter, the whole of Ingvarr’s, and the whole of Bayangor’s reward is there, tax it and give the rest to my dad. It’s not like I’ll have any use of it, out here.

Riccardo isn’t my friend. We did one thing together and went our separate ways. I’ll try to find him again to hand that missive off.

The farm wasn’t much actual farm work. We had to dig a grave, clean out dead livestock, and sell a few cartloads of clutter in town. Boring work, but needed. The hardest part was handling the smell—there’s only so much you can block out with a smoke-soaked scarf. I helped that farmer get to the city afterwards, and saw her off once she found work. Should be safe on her own now, I think.

Thanks for the map, that’s really going to be useful. The other two pieces, I don’t hate at all. I don’t understand what you were trying to say with the tower one, though, you’ll have to elaborate on that for me. The backpack you made for Owl is way better than before, too, and it doesn’t need to be any different now.

As for what it’s like here, it really shows that there’s been a war happening on-and-off for decades. Lots of fields have turned into meadows where the farmers were killed, driven out, or conscripted. Roads are in terrible condition, since neither side holds the region long enough to repair them for themselves but not the enemy. Almost every vantage point has ruined watchtowers on top. Half the bandits around are using weapons looted from old battlefields to raid whatever farmsteads still stand, half are just normal people staying together for safety. An Equis-built town’s most respected people are ex-mercenaries who got tired of fighting and the remains of a Kotoan engineering team trying to make life bearable, while the guards do nothing. A city built by Koto but ruled by Equis right now has been putting the Inquisition’s hospitals and schools out of commission and defacing every Kotoan statue it can't demolish, trying to suppress what it can. People rarely care who’s in charge, and just want to be left alone. Weather is harsh, though. Remember the blizzard we had in Corona? Nights are already colder than that, and the locals don’t seem worried at all, so I think the coldest month is yet to come. I’ve had enough for a warmer change of clothes, earlier, but I still have to get winter boots. Should have enough set aside for that sometime next week, if everything goes well.

I’ve not been to the mountains yet, but I had to climb atop a lone-standing mesa in the middle of the plains a few times. To get that herb, the first time. It was growing in-between about a dozen winged cat skeletons. People here call them griffincats. I met a few people who do magic, besides. Two were alright—one kind, one irritating but responsible and with a good heart—and two were terrible, Casimir included. Him and the other one, I did have to fight.

Not everything is easy on me, either. I’m being careful, but some days are harder than others, and I had to hire myself out for the Equisian Guard to make ends meet. The job’s innocent enough, escort and scouting for some workers and defence in case of a bandit attack, but it’s still annoying. They have women on the Guard here, though—ground troops as well as their commanders. It’s nice to see, even if it hurts a little, too.

But I’m okay, yeah. And my arm is fine.

—Cass.

Rapunzel lowered the letter, and tried to process, and only ended up reading it a second time over. Then a third. Then looked away from it again, rubbing at her eyes.

Cass writing about having fought an incredibly dangerous man alongside three other people and asking to have her reward split evenly among the team, or about having recovered Kotoan treasures and an inquisitor knight’s equipment together with someone she didn’t spend any more time with than she needed, or about having looked after a farmer until deciding said farmer would be okay on their own now, sounded exactly the same as what Faith had said about Cassandra’s tendency to maintain civil relations with a multitude of casual acquaintances rather than try for a few deeper friendships. And come to think of it, the same shone forth from Cass’ previous letters—about bringing healing herbs to a clinic, about helping with repairs, about dispatching several murderers. And about how she found it uncomfortable that the people of where she was had started to like her for all that, or as little as that.

It was so obvious, and so easy to see, and yet Rapunzel still needed to have it pointed out.

She looked at the longest paragraph again. Eugene had said, of the same area, that there was a lot of farmland, a lot of outlaws and sellswords, a lot of rain, and very little to steal there. The geographical album she had taken from the castle’s library had shown her a few maps, and mentioned a lasting conflict and a defunct silver mine. Cass had written about almost none of that—instead, she had written about decline and devastation and struggle, and Rapunzel couldn’t help but wonder whether she herself would have seen anything of that if she were looking at the land with her own eyes rather than through Cassandra’s. How differently did they see the world? How much did Cass notice immediately, and thought it obvious, that wouldn’t have even occurred to Rapunzel?

And how much was Cass struggling herself, Rapunzel wondered with a frown as she pulled the remaining papers out of the scroll case. Two of them were drawings, she found with a bit of elated surprise—pencils on paper, and with the artist’s illegible signature worked into some element or another in the corners. The first was a panorama of low hills and plains chequered with fields as far as eye could see and cut with the darkness of a forest here and there, the edge of a crenellated city wall framing the bottom edge of the piece and the wide ribbon of a river winding away to the horizon. The other was a study of a fountain with a ray of sunlight falling diagonally across the whole piece, refracting in thin jets of water spouted from the mouths of a dozen stone-carved catfish, water that arced around a statue of three musicians: a child with a drum, a man with a fiddle, and a grinning woman with a lute in her hands and a solid plate of brass inset behind her head, thin acid-etched lines radiating outwards to crown her in a blaze of light. Storefronts and cobbles of a small square resting between streets broad and narrow spilled out in every direction around the fountain, but cleverly drawn in fuzzier lines as if pulled out of focus, to avoid diverting the viewer’s attention from the central piece. Or from the lovingly detailed flowers and single-candle glass lamps set beside the fountain’s edge, at the woman’s feet.

Cass had been forced to take up work with the Equisian military to pay for daily expenses and to save up enough for buying herself new boots, Rapunzel thought softly, but still made it a priority to buy new ink to write her with and two drawings to send to her, first.

She glanced down the corridor, towards where the makeshift vault room was. The bounty money from Ingvarr and Bayangor alone would be enough for Cass to live out the rest of her life in comfort. In a tasteful level of luxury, even. And what she said to do with all that treasure was to give it away to her father, with an off-handed comment about how she wouldn’t have any use for it herself, while she was struggling to buy herself new boots.

With a sigh, Rapunzel admitted silently that there wasn’t a way to get even a fraction of that wealth out to where Cass was. Equis didn’t share in the pan-Seven Kingdoms postal service, so it was impossible to simply mail her some coin; an envoy sent out with a delivery of such would take weeks upon weeks to get to where Cass was right now, with no guarantee of whether she’d still be there upon their arrival—or indeed, no guarantee whether they would arrive at all, what with the repeated mention of rampant brigandry in the region by both Eugene and Cassandra. The only solution that wasn’t completely off the wall would be to toss some valuables into Owl’s backpack when she sent him back to Cass.

And although that was Rapunzel’s first thought—to just fix things like that and call it a day—she stared at the impulse to do that until it shrunk down on itself, self-conscious, and slinked away. She had been forcing her solutions to everything they encountered on Cass for as long as they’ve known each other. She had destroyed Cassandra’s right hand by forcing her own solution on Cass, rather than let her try something different, something that risked only Cass herself, something that was less likely to bring the entirety of the Great Tree down around all their heads. And she had promised to stop and do better. So this time, she was going to ask first, and wait for an answer, and listen to what Cass had to say when it came.

Mildly satisfied with that decision, Rapunzel pulled the last sheet of paper out of the scroll case—the only one that was folded, and in an odd fashion to boot, almost as if Cass had been trying to keep the contents from smudging against each other—and found it covered with inexpert, very rudimentary drawings. One of a diamond-like shape two inches high and half an inch wide, as if an object had been pressed against the paper to have its contours lined out against its edges, and with straight lines that attempted to convey four triangular facets on the visible side. Next to that, an uneven spiral transitioning into a straight length after a few coils, like a shepherd’s crosier, with another little diamond shape hanging in the middle of the spiral without touching it at all. And around that, eight charcoal rubbings—the reason the paper had been folded, no doubt, to avoid getting that charcoal on everything else—each numbered, and each of what must have been that crystal’s facets, Rapunzel realized.

Another puzzle indeed, she thought as she was overcome with a tremendous urge to throw her arms around Cassandra and hug her until neither of them could breathe. Would that she could. Would that there weren’t hundreds and hundreds of miles between them. But she couldn’t, and there were, so the next best thing Rapunzel could do was rock on the balls of her feet excitedly as she stepped towards a window and raised the paper to the light, so that she could examine the rubbings more closely.

There were footsteps approaching from the other end of the corridor—heavy, likely a guardsman on patrol, if only a singular pair of feet. They usually patrolled in pairs. Although, recently there’s been exceptions to that rule more and more frequently, Rapunzel had noticed.

“Oh, good afternoon, princess!”

“Hello, Stan,” Rapunzel said without looking up, recognizing his voice.

The guard walked past her on his patrol route. Then there was a pause in the heavy footsteps, and the sound of him quickly backtracking. “I’m sorry, is that Cassandra’s owl?”

Hoot, Owl greeted, his tone favourable.

“It is you! Who’s a good boy? You’re such a good boy.”

Rapunzel looked up from the rubbings with a smile, and watched Stan carefully petting Owl with a gauntleted finger—until Owl leaned away, and Stan lowered his hand immediately.

“Had enough? Okay, I won’t be touching you anymore.” He looked to Rapunzel again. “Did Cass write? How is she doing?”

“She seems happy out there,” Rapunzel said earnestly. “Or happier, at least. It sounds like she’s doing good work, and getting along with people. She did mention it’s hard out there sometimes and that it’s getting very cold this time of year, but also that she’s handling it, and she didn’t say anything about getting hurt or lied to again.”

Stan beamed at the news. “That’s our Cass. Oh, I can’t wait to tell the guys.”

Rapunzel gave him a slightly longer look, folding the letter away for now. “Stan, can I talk to you about her for a little?”

“I mean, certainly, but the Captain will have a go at me if I stall too long or diverge from the patrol route,” the guard said. His tone was inviting, though, a hint to what had to be circumvented before the answer could be yes.

“What if I just tagged along while you were patrolling?” Rapunzel asked slowly.

“Well, there’s not much I could do about it if you decided to that, is there?” Stan said happily, prompting her to grin, and waved her over. “Besides, it’ll be nice to have company, Pete’s been reassigned for a while with some other guys to work on that island project.”

“What island project?”

“Well, the jail one. There’s a few islands in the international waters between Koto and Corona, and His Majesty and the Kotoan ambassador have recently agreed on picking one to build a joint prison colony on. Probably to replace the barges, what with that Caine woman and the leader of the Saporian insurrection commandeering theirs, and now that ex-count son of a b—” Stan caught himself with an apologetic wince. “—blackguard. It’ll take time to build everything and get it going, for sure, but no one’s going to escape from that jail once it’s ready. There won’t be anywhere to run to. Just miles of seawater in every direction.”

Rapunzel considered that, a terrible feeling knotting its weight through her gut.

“But you said you wanted to ask about Cass?”

“Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that you want her to be doing okay, but...” Rapunzel looked up at him. “I thought you’d hate her for attacking the city?”

“No, princess. Or maybe some of the younger guys do,” Stan admitted with a wince. “And I know a lot of people in the city do. But all of us old career men on the Guard, we’ve known her since... well, it feels like it was just yesterday that Dennis gave her a little toy sword and she took it with herself everywhere, and the Captain went off at him for hours when he found out, but didn’t take it away from her in the end. She was about as tall as my knee, and six years old, and had to run a little every few steps to keep pace with the unit on a drill, and the hardest part was to keep a straight face and eyes forward, and now she’s all grown up and important people from allied kingdoms are sending treasure to thank her for everything she did and letters to tell us how amazing she is. And if they asked us, we’d say: we know, we’ve always known, she’s the best of us, always has been. So when you came back without her, we were just... well, mostly we thought that she’d just gone undercover without telling anyone again, like with that Saporian mothe– miscreant. To protect the kingdom, and you, from something as sly as it was dangerous. So when she only came in to deliver an ultimatum or outright attack you—well, it was Cass, our Cass, our girl—what happened to her? Where have we failed her so badly? I’ve always been proud to do my job and happy to serve the kingdom, but that was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do for Corona: to treat Cass like an enemy. We’ve all breathed more easily when she finally remembered her heart. And I guess things did turn out, in the end, like she was a double agent and just feigning it all to neutralize a bigger threat.”

“She was doing all of that on purpose,” Rapunzel said quietly. “It wasn’t just an act.”

“I know, but she made up for it in every way that matters. And in every way that she could. It was just a few months of repair work, anyway, she didn’t do anything too terrible to be forgiven. Or at least not to Corona, I haven’t asked the Dark Kingdom’s lords and lady. That blue eyes stuff, that... had to be rough on them.”

“Were you mad at the Captain, when he stepped down so that he wouldn’t have to fight Cass?”

“No, princess, but I understand the guys who were,” Stan said evenly. “Sure, the Captain is the one who adopted her, but she’s all of our girl. And the Captain was the only one with the freedom to do that. If the rest of us who helped raise her did the same thing, too, she would’ve taken the castle without a fight.”

Rapunzel thought that over. Then thought back to what Cassandra had written about seeing women on the Royal Guard in Equis, ranked high and low—that it was good to see, but also painful at the same time.

Come to think of it, the only woman she’d ever seen in the Royal Coronian Guard’s uniform has been Cass, and even then it was only a temporary arrangement for when there were not enough actual guards, when Cass was allowed to fill in for one of them.

She looked at Stan again. “Cass always wanted to be a guard, huh?”

“Yeah. I guess it comes with drilling and weapon practice for playtimes, and stories of arrests and sting operations for fairy tales before bedtime. I’m sure there are things better suited for kids, but this was the only thing we knew how to do, and she did seem to love it.”

“Why was she never allowed into the Guard?” Rapunzel asked carefully. “It’s not like she wasn’t good enough for it.”

“No. No, it wasn’t about that at all.” Stan sighed, the fond smile at the memories of little Cassandra already gone. “I guess it’s more or less obvious, what with that count that His Majesty had recently stripped of his station, that things weren’t, uh... things weren’t looking well while you were gone, princess.”

Rapunzel nodded at that, silently.

“Whoever attacked Castle Corona, I would fight, and if it came to that, I would die to protect the King and Queen. That’s what we all signed up for, that’s what we’d all do—if we fought Cass, no matter how much we didn’t want to, we’d have no trouble fighting whatever foreigner mercenaries or private army to get thrown at us,” Stan said simply. “But if you’re on the Guard for as long as I have, princess... I’m no savant, not by any means, but I’m not a village idiot, either. We’re not very good at our job. Crime has been a problem forever, and we can’t even reduce it, much less solve it. You were kept a day’s walk from the capital for almost two full decades, and it took a thief who tripped on a rock to find you. We couldn’t even figure out the tunnels underneath our own castle—it took Lord Hector to start mapping them, beyond what Cass had discovered and memorized on her own. On paper, we’re supposed to be a police force, but... I don’t think it’s ever actually been our job. It’s been to stay ready for an attack from nobles who wanted to seize the crown, and to keep the royal family safe even at the cost of our lives. And if that isn’t wrong, then of course the Captain wouldn’t want his daughter to get signed up for that.”

“That’s terrible,” Rapunzel said quietly. “It’s not even fair to the rest of you, if he knew all that and didn’t mind employing you guys just so you’d be ready to die, but did everything he could to keep his family away from doing the same thing.”

Stan chuckled at that. “It’s not as bad as it sounds, princess. It wasn’t easy to watch Cass getting told no over and over again, or pushing herself harder and harder before she asked again, but it might have been awkward if she ever did get admitted into the Guard. Don’t get me wrong, she’s our girl and basically one of the guys, but... she’s still a girl. I don’t think she’d find the Guard a very welcoming place at all.”

“But wouldn’t it have been a step, to make it more welcoming, and show other women that maybe they could sign up too? If Cass is a girl who’s one of the guys, couldn’t she have given a– a missing link of sorts, a point of transition into having both guys and girls on the Guard?”

“It could, for sure. But for that to happen, the Captain would’ve had to admit that Cass was one of us in heart no matter if she was a member of the Guard on paper, and the Guard itself would have to start changing. Not just to be a space where ladies could work next to the guys without it being awkward, but probably into an actual police force, too. I’m not sure if anyone knows how to do that. I hope Eugene comes up with something before I retire. If anyone can, it’s probably him.”

“So, Cass couldn’t be on the Guard when I was gone, because the Guard was preparing for a war,” Rapunzel said quietly. “But what about afterwards? Because, if that’s the reason, then it would’ve been safe to let her join afterwards, when any fighting for the crown wasn’t a danger anymore.”

“Well, princess, Cass wasn’t allowed into the Guard after you came back because she was picked to be your lady-in-waiting,” Stan told her patiently. “And that’s just about the highest position, and honour, that someone like her could get—becoming just another guard would be a serious downgrade from the personal assistant and confidante of the heiress to the throne. Even if she was never going to be entirely happy as the latter. So thank you for making her a knight-errant. It’s the best of both worlds, and it must suit her so much better than having to deal with the bad parts of being on the Guard ever could, if she seems happy from her letters.”

“I think she does,” Rapunzel admitted, and looked away. “I just... wish sometimes that she could be happy here.”

“A lot of us do.” Stan patted her shoulder in an incredibly awkward manner, evidently unsure where the line was between comfort and too much familiarity. “I miss her, too.”

They kept walking for a moment longer in silence, each alone with their own thoughts of Cassandra, before Rapunzel spoke up again.

“Stan?”

“Yes, princess?”

“What’s a convent?”

“Oh.” The guard sighed. “You’ve only heard that word around Cass?”

“I know it has to be a place, because she was scared of going to one if she ever did something wrong. And that she didn’t want to go. But other than that, I... never thought to ask, it just felt like something that had to be terrible if Cass, of all people, was acting like it would end her entire life.”

“Well, it kind of would,” Stan admitted, wincing now. “See, a convent– it’s not so bad, on its own, when we aren’t talking specifically about Cass. Sometimes, a lady doesn’t want to get married, but her family is too poor to afford letting her not get married. So a convent is like a big home and workshop all in one, someplace that she and other ladies like her can go, and live together, and earn their living with things like making very special beer or cheese or wool or whatnot. Sometimes a convent doubles for a school, or an orphanage, or even a hospital. There isn’t a lot of them in Corona, but it’s good that there are some in the first place, better that than making someone spend her entire life with a bas– a bad man.”

“So convents are only for women?” Rapunzel asked with a frown.

“Coronian ones, yes. In other kingdoms, they can be for men or for women, from what I’ve heard, and they can work on very different rules than ours even if they perform mostly the same function. Kotoan ones, especially.”

“So... why would Cass have to go to one?”

“Well, you know that Cass was adopted, right?”

Rapunzel nodded, swallowing back an acidic tang at the memory of the circumstances of it.

“The Captain brought her to live in the castle, because that’s where he’s living and working. It was only natural to let her start working here, too, when she was old enough. But if Cass had ever done something that would make His Majesty decide to fire her and send her away from the court... well, the Captain isn’t the kind of man who makes lifelong friendships, he doesn’t have any siblings, and he never married, either.”

“So Cass would have no one else to stay with,” Rapunzel said slowly. “She’d just end up on the street overnight.”

“Exactly. A convent would put a roof over her head, at least, let her sleep in a bed rather than under a bridge. But all Cass ever wanted was to be a guard. She was always doing everything to be a guard. And none of it would matter anymore, anywhere but in the castle. Getting sent away at all would end her entire life, the convent was just... I don’t know. A face to put to that fear, I guess.” Stan sighed heavily again. “Also, I would bet three months’ wage in an instant on that she’d hate it there, never get along with the others, and run away within two weeks.”

“What do you think she would do, afterwards?”

“I don’t know, princess, and I’m very happy we’ll never find out. She’s a knight-errant now! She can do just about anything she wants.”

“And... how long did Cass know that she had to behave or it’s the convent for her?”

“Oh, she grew up knowing that. Part of why she was always such a serious girl. She’d still be serious otherwise, I think, but maybe not to this point. It’s so hard to tell what she’s thinking sometimes. And I’ve known her since she was—” Stan levelled a hand next to his knee. “—about this big.”

How terrible that must have been for a law of the universe to grow up with, Rapunzel thought silently, to know that a single step out of line could cost her the only home that Cassandra could remember having. How comparable to the ones she herself had grown up with, like the one that a single step out of the tower could cost her life and limb, or that a single instance of less than perfect obedience and timidity could cost her the love of the only other human being in the world.

She walked with Stan for a little longer, up until they went through a corridor adjacent to the one that led to Rapunzel’s room, at which point she thanked him for talking to her and split off to wake Faith up and sit fruitlessly over the assignment for class some more. The day after that, she was forced to admit that there was no progress made, and sought her tutor out to apologize for the delay and ask for an extension—which was granted easily, along with some advice on how to focus that was as appreciated as it was useless—and instead sat with the charcoal rubbings that Cass had sent, a magnifying glass, a stack of grid paper, and her most precise quill nibs. Instead, she spent her every free moment over several days on copying the rubbings into a scale large enough to have the room to really look at them, one curve, one line at a time, and as her head and heart churned with darkness and violence, she set her hands to impassioned, delicate, exact work on the puzzle that Cass had sent.

If only it were the one puzzle that Cass had sent.

The easiest, or perhaps the most poignant, way to tell that Cassandra liked someone was when she relied on that person, Faith had said. And as Rapunzel copied a complex knotwork pattern of brambled vines that wove into the image of a boar with tusks still bristling with thorns, she couldn’t chase away the memory of Cass standing against the backdrop of a bottomless chasm and a gondola in utter disrepair hanging from a thick cable drawn across it, her face hard as she said, Even with my hand I’m still the most agile of all of us, to a girl who had spent her entire life climbing and two ex-thieves whose acrobatic ability was entirely more than average.

Cass had never relied on them, any of them, and tried to do as much as possible on her own instead. And if Cassandra’s way of showing friendship or trust was with reliance, then the absolute lack of such reliance on her friends had to mean that all they have shown Cass of themselves had spelled out that to rely on them would be an act of irresponsibility and negligence, Rapunzel thought as she copied the image of a stylized cloud that wept lines of torrential rain upon the soil, rain that took root where it fell, more knotwork now tangling deep into the earth.

And a threat that hung over Cass for her entire life like a sword suspended from a fraying rope, Stan had said, has been one of stripping away the meaning of all she had done with that life, all she had strived to do, and tossing her out like she was worthless to live someplace that only people with nowhere to go would find themselves in. And as Rapunzel copied the image of a fruiting shrub with roots that seemed to almost leech substance from a skeletal animal corpse whose place of rest they pierced into, she couldn’t chase away the memory of Cass begging her not to tell anyone that it was her who snuck the sole heiress to the throne out of the castle against the King’s wishes, and how it was one of the very few times she had seen desperation and genuine fear on Cassandra’s face. And of how easily she had said that she wouldn’t, and then did anyway, and of Cassandra’s broken, pain-soaked manner when she was working the heaviest, dirtiest tasks the castle had in-between packing her things.

How was Cass supposed to trust or rely on any of them if that was how they’ve been treating her for years on end, Rapunzel thought tiredly as she compared the charcoal rubbings with her cleaned-up, scaled-up copies.

And frowned at them.

And cut apart the sheet of paper with the most recent, cleanest copies, until each facet was sitting separately, and started rearranging their sequence.

And noticed something that Cass, apparently, hadn’t—the shallow little groove at the tip of the top pyramid was a circle, looping perfectly around with eight little rays spider-webbing from it, and the images below it were of transformation and life. The corresponding little groove at the tip of the bottom pyramid did not have rays, in turn, but an arch cutting through half of its facets to form a little crescent inside that circle, and the images above it were of devouring and decay.

By the time a knock came at her door, Rapunzel was halfway through writing a return letter, and she failed to even register the sound until the door was opened despite her lack of response. That, at least, she startled at and turned towards, finding that Eugene had poked his head into the room, and that whatever he was going to say was deemed less important than what he saw on her face.

“Sunshine, are you okay?”

“No!” Rapunzel admitted with a nervous little laugh. “In fact, I’m so far from okay that I can’t see it from here! Please tell me you have news of something achievable that demands my attention.”

“I actually do—the Pittsfordian ambassador is asking to see you. He just dropped off another load of treasure for Cass, but it’s smaller than the previous two. And when I say smaller, I mean it’s about a quarter of each of those.”

“That’s supposed to be like this. I’ll be right down,” Rapunzel said as she put her quill away and corked the inkwell, and pulled Cassandra’s letter out from under a pile of sketches on grid paper. “Tell the Captain to meet me there right after, please?”

“You got it.” Eugene withdrew from the doorway and disappeared down the corridor again.

One last brief, critical look in the mirror to check if she was presentable, and Rapunzel delayed only long enough to clean a faint ink stain she had rubbed across her cheekbone. The ones on her fingers would have to wait, she decided, and padded down the stairs to where people were waiting for her.

A short exchange of pleasantries and another bout of profuse thanks for Cassandra’s conduct, and she saw the ambassador off again, breathing more easily in thanks for the signature Pittsfordian concise manner in which the matter was concluded. She watched the guards depositing the last bout of foreign treasures into the vault room then—entirely in goods rather than gold, she noticed. Piles of pelts: stoat and ermine, beaver and otter, red deer and silver fox. Cedarwood cassettes stacked with malachite figurines of animals and magical creatures, vodniks and griffons and slayerwolves next to bears and does and turtles. A veritable army of toy soldiers, painted with painstaking precision into the colours of a dozen kingdoms, the Coronian sun inlaid in gold leaf against the shields and breastplates of some. An elongated case where masterfully forged weapons were resting against plush velvet: a matched set of a rapier and two parrying daggers, each decorated with gold filigree at the hilt, faceted diamonds inset into each one’s pommel. Another case, this time long enough to be carried by two men, the kind that Rapunzel had seen used for the storage and transport of maps. Heaviest of all, a life-sized statue of an albino fish springing out of the waves in a heraldic pose, carved of alabaster and lapis lazuli with rubies inset into its eyes and a golden crown studded with tiny pink pearls sitting overtop its head. And a veritable gallimaufry of clockwork items, wind-up toys and music boxes and even a tall grandfather clock decorated with intricate carvings of wildflowers and oak leaves around the clock’s face.

Minutes later, she looked away from the treasure as Faith caught up to her, rounding the corner in a run and panting slightly.

“There you are,” Rapunzel said with no small amount of relief.

“I’m terribly sorry, I got held up with work on the—”

“No no, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just glad to see you.” Rapunzel patted Faith’s shoulder in what she hoped would be a reassuring gesture, before turning towards the sound of bootfalls in a hurried march that heralded the Captain, Eugene in tow.

“I’m told you asked after me, your highness?”

“Yes, I did.” Rapunzel gestured at the vault room, its door still open. “Cass says that everything after tax is to go to you, Captain.”

There was a brief, shocked silence from everyone present, including the several guardsmen who were still carrying kegs and crates inside. Then the Captain cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“That’s a declaration we’d need to have on paper—” he broke off as Rapunzel lifted Cassandra’s letter, folded to show him only the paragraph that confirmed her words. And even then, he clenched his jaw in a stubborn expression. “...I will only take it for safekeeping. This is my daughter’s money, not mine.”

“We’ll probably need someone to inventory all of this before it can be taxed, anyway,” Eugene noted as he took an item at random out of the crate that a guard was carrying past him—another toy warrior, this time an Ingvarrdian wearing a wolf pelt with its head forming a hood over her brow, her face grim and marked with an odd sigil of blood-red warpaint, both of her hands on the hilt of a sword almost as tall as she was, its tip rested against the ground at her feet. The guard stopped walking and gave Eugene a nasty look, and he rolled his eyes as he deposited the figurine back in the box, prompting the guard to carry it inside at last. “And since it’s all bounty money scored by a knight-errant, meaning technically a peer of the realm, it falls under the twenty percent tax, right?”

The Captain confirmed that with a nod.

“Twenty percent?” Rapunzel blurted out. “But that’s one-fifth!”

“Yeah,” Eugene said slowly. “That’s why it’s called the royal fifth.”

“I imagine this must have put quite a strain on the royal Pittsfordian treasury,” the Captain commented, while Rapunzel was trying to remember her tongue. “Especially if the remaining three-quarters had to be shelled out in sheer coin, for whoever these companions of Cassandra’s were on that endeavour.”

“If I may,” Faith spoke up quietly, and fidgeted with her hands uncomfortably under the scrutiny of the princess, the royal consort, and the Captain of the Guard, until Rapunzel gave her an encouraging smile and motioned her to continue. “Well, some of these goods are... somewhat perishable. The furs and fabrics, they would do best if worked into garments or such items, and their value was deposited back into the vault in coin or other less fragile goods. The furniture, the tapestries and paintings—all of it is going to need conservation every now and then. If there is someone needed to inventory this vault, and to appraise its contents so they may be properly taxed, it might be prudent to just employ them long-term for stewardship over it and charge them with maintenance of its contents or investing them for further income.”

“That is a very good point,” Rapunzel admitted easily. “Can you think of someone who would be suited for it?”

Faith looked between her and the Captain briefly, a daunted look on her face for having to weigh in on such a matter. “Sylas, maybe? He’s Nigel’s nephew, if I recall, and had finished studies to become a clerk a few years ago.”

“Sylas would be a good choice,” the Captain said simply. “The boy has always had an upright sense of morality, a good head for numbers, and an eye for detail. If I’m to be in charge of Cassandra’s savings while she’s away, handling a periodic report from a steward would not encroach on my everyday duties as much as having to maintain such stewardship myself. Your highness, would you be able to send any documents necessary for formalizing this arrangement to Cassandra so she can review and sign them?”

Rapunzel nodded. “Owl is still resting from the journey here. If the documents aren’t too heavy, I don’t think he’ll have any trouble.”

And in a few days, the documents were ready, as were the rearranged copies of images carved in that dreadful crystal’s facets, and Rapunzel’s return letter was as well. And as she sent Owl back into the cold, well-rested and well-fed that he was, she sighed and closed the window and lingered with her hand against it, and puzzled over the last riddle that Cass had sent: that she herself was okay, and her arm was fine.

Which meant that there was a difference between okay and fine.

If there weren’t, Cass would have written that she was okay, and her arm was too. But she hadn’t, she had drawn a distinction between the two instead, and Rapunzel didn’t know what that meant—and to ask Cass to explain it would mean to admit that she didn’t know, and likely hurt Cass again with the surrender to the truth of her years-long negligence.

There was a difference between okay and fine, and a real friend would know what it was.

Chapter Text

For a feature that the city was built around and named after, the bridges of Riddersbrug certainly did not disappoint, Cassandra had to admit as she rode across the central one.

Entirely wide enough for a dozen and more to move abreast, the massive structure of metal and stone anchored deep under the river’s surface, with arches cresting so high above it that barques and small boats could pass underneath them safely. High balustrades lining the bridge’s sides made sure that stepping too close to the edge didn’t equal a risk of falling into the river below, and provided a support to lean against for an errant elder trudging slowly this way or the other. Every few hundred feet, a sleek steel pillar crested with a hooded oil lamp stood, lamplighters making their way between them twice a day: to light at sunset and extinguish at sunrise. And at each point of the bridge, its bulk stood framed with two statues just like the gatehouse did—if standing only a head taller than herself on horseback, this time—but even as the crests of the Royal Kotoan Inquisition’s orders on their tabards were defaced and destroyed as well, that was the extent of damage to the stone, unlike that done to the knights who framed the gatehouse.

Probably because the bridge statues each incorporated another of these street lanterns, Cassandra mused as she saw the light from afar.

Definitely because of that, Cassandra decided as she stared at the flames from up close, and realized that if there was a source of fuel feeding them at all, it had to be drawn through a canal of sorts bored through the stone. That, or the lanterns were ever-burning, and fuelled only by some kind of magic that made them never snuff out.

The entry onto the bridge that Cassandra was taking stood framed with the statues of two members of the Hospital Order: on the left, a knight with the visor of his helmet open, showing a stubble-covered earnest face as he gazed into the distance to the east. Shifted away from his left hip was a sheathed longsword, and at his right were a bricklayer’s trowel, mallet, and rule; with one hand resting against his waist next to the tools, he was extending the other in front of himself as if to offer assistance, with open flame dancing in his palm. Facing him was a woman in a tabard identical to the one that the knight wore overtop his suit of half-plate, but with no armour of her own to speak of, and with an unused splint and a bone saw on her belt instead of weapons and tools; and rather than regard the knight across from her directly, the physician’s eyes and focused face were tilted downwards, to a chalice that she was measuring the contents of a small flask into, with the lantern flames burning forth within that chalice.

Cassandra followed the knight hospitaller’s gaze. Farther to the east—much, much farther than the eye could see—and up the river was Mont Saint Maurice, she knew. How poignant that one of the Inquisition’s knights would extend a hand to those at his side, yet keep his eyes on the city remade in another inquisitor’s honour, in reverence of his memory.

It took little effort to find the northern riverbank’s contract board: a square building with job postings lining every wall and the minder’s seat in the centre. Two guards were standing at the door, keeping an eye on those who came inside looking for employment, but didn’t interfere with anyone’s browsing, and weren’t paid any mind in return. Business was business as long as everyone stayed civil, Cassandra supposed as she walked up to the minder’s desk.

“You’re new,” the minder remarked at the sight of her, and looked her up and down. “Not shying away from jobs with some fighting on them, I take it? Left wall’s for you.”

“I’ll check there, then, but I’m also looking for someone,” Cassandra said. “Have you seen a Kotoan halberdier recently? He was headed this way, about three months ago.”

The minder gave her a curious look. “Kotoan? Haven’t seen many of those since the border was closed. What’s he look like?”

Cassandra levelled a hand next to her head, a little above her own height. “About this tall. Dark skin, black hair, round goatee, helmet with an aventail and the noseguard looks like a falcon in a dive?”

“Yeah, we had someone like that coming through a few weeks past. Haven’t seen him in a while, though, so he probably found a wolfpack to run with by now. Why, what’s your beef?”

“No beef.” Cassandra thought quickly about what would be a believable lie, one removed enough from the truth of that she had a missive from the Grand Inquisitor of the Tribunal Order to deliver to a mere sellsword, just another face among thousands and thousands like himself. “I owe him some coin, and I want to pay the debt off before he can call it in with something more inconvenient than just a purse of gold.”

“Huh. Smart. I’ll tell him you were looking for him if he comes over again, what’s your name?”

“Cassandra.”

The minder scribbled that down. “Got you. Well, take a look around in the meantime.”

With a nod of thanks, she turned to the wall she was pointed at prior, and started looking through the job postings. A contract for transport escort here, a mercenary company’s recruitment poster there—nothing as brief as to let her return to the Forester’s Catch soon to wait for Owl, she noticed with a frown. Or at least, not at a glance. And she quickly glanced away from the board when she heard someone clear their throat next to her.

“'Scuse me. You’re Cassandra?”

“Yeah. Who’s asking?”

“Name’s Rutger,” the small man clad in ratty clothes, if layered enough to keep him warm, said as he pointed at each of the two at his sides in turn. “This is Patricio, this is Maud. We need a fourth, and combat-ready, for a job in the sewers, and Renée said that you’re alright.”

“Renée?” Cassandra repeated with a frown. “Renée del Arroyo?”

The two behind Rutger exchanged relieved looks at the way she said the watchmaster’s last name, while Rutger himself continued with an empathetic nod. “Yeah, the old scholar’s granddaughter, she’s on the Guard across the river.”

Cassandra looked between the three. Scrawny, and dressed little better than beggars, and with no weapons in sight save for a single all-purpose knife each. Unless they dogpiled her in her sleep, she could probably take them if it came to that. “What’s the job?”

“Missing surveyor. She was supposed to check in yesterday, and in three days the sewers are getting flushed. Someone needs to find her before that time, and people like us know their way around there best, anyway.”

“And why do you need someone combat-ready for an escort on that?” Cassandra asked pointedly.

“Well, you never know what you’re gonna run into down there.”

Cassandra sighed at his evasive manner. “Monsters or people?”

“People.”

“Alright, that’ll narrow it down. How long do you expect this to take?”

“Hard to say, so best start immediately. We’re prepared for one night down below and for the day afterwards. If we can’t find the woman herself, we need to find her gear and keys and writ of passage, and the pay for returning those is three hundred gold between all of us. So, seventy for each of us three and ninety for you sound fair?”

“Yeah, more than.” Cassandra shook his hand to cement the deal. “I have a horse just outside, I need to stable her and get my things in order before we go. Do you know of anywhere nearby I could leave her?”

Rutger shook his head. “I spend more time under the streets than on them. Maud?”

“Lev built a little stable this summer,” the woman said, her voice hoarse from disuse, and waved Cassandra to follow. “It’s just around the corner.”

And so it was: a modestly sized inn, the sign over its door carved into the likeness of a cat with a mane and a tufted tail, its face dunked into an oversized tankard to drink from it, all framed at the top with an arch naming it Drunken Lion’s Den. The attached stable building only had enough room for half a dozen mounts, housing but a single stout pony at present. With a stall paid ahead for three days, just to be on the safe side, Cassandra dislodged a flagstone in the corner and quickly scooped out enough soil to have at least a makeshift hiding place for some of her belongings, then put the most valuable ones—Rapunzel’s letters, the Grand Inquisitor’s missive to Riccardo, clean paper, ink, the set of skinning knives, the spare archery aid—into her wardwork box and shoved it into the hole.

Snort, Fidella commented as she watched over her shoulder.

“I wish Owl was here. I don’t like leaving you behind alone,” Cassandra grumbled as she scattered straw over the hiding spot again, then set to changing her boots. If she was going into a sewer, she was not going into it wearing the ones she had just bought. “Try to make sure no one messes with that if possible, but staying safe is more important if someone threatens you.”

Snort, Fidella affirmed, and put her nose to Cassandra’s face.

Cassandra patted the mare’s neck. “I’ll be careful, and I’ll come back for you as soon as I can.”

With her sword slung over one shoulder, the Kotoan spies’ bag of tricks over the other, and her bow at the ready, she went back to her newfound companions and followed them out again. A five minutes’ walk, and Rutger hailed a guard patrol—one evidently acquaintanced with his and his companions’ function, if not with their names—to unlock a heavy drainage grate for them, so they could descend a set of rungs sunken into the sewer's wall like a ladder leading into the depths.

Ladders. Cassandra sighed to herself quietly. Ladders were going to be a problem.

At least going down was easier, even if it took her noticeably longer than any of the three with her for only using one arm. By the time she stepped down into the ankle-deep liquid lingering at the bottom of the sewer, Patricio had a lantern lit, while Rutger and Maud were trying not to look impatient as they looked between her and each end of the sewer: front and back.

“You’ll get used to the smell soon enough,” Rutger consoled her when Cassandra put a hand over her mouth and nose with a groan. “Just don’t think too hard about what you’re stepping into and you’ll be fine.”

“Most reassuring thing I’ve ever heard,” Cassandra deadpanned in a strained tone, and pulled out a scarf to tie around her face. It wasn’t smoke-soaked anymore, unfortunately, and wouldn’t shield her from the sewer’s stench half as well as it did during the time she’d spent helping get rid of dead livestock at Tyson farm. But at least the last thing she ate had included a generous helping of onion. Whether that was going to turn out a curse or a blessing remained to be seen. “How do you plan to go about finding your missing surveyor?”

“Well, we know roughly which part of the sewers she was supposed to check out. We get there and start combing.”

Which was fair enough, Cassandra supposed, so she went along with the three around her. And they weren't the only ones inside the sewer—though it was far from crowded, there were others dressed quite like them, solitary or in pairs or trios, another lantern’s light piercing through the filth-caked dark at every few intersections. Belatedly, Cassandra remembered the guard she’d spoken to upon first entering the city mentioning ragpickers, and realized that she was in the company of such: huddled figures digging through the city’s refuse, skinning dead dogs and rats and griffincats, gathering scraps of paper and fabric, broken glass and bits of metal, salvaging any material that could be sold by weight for reusing rather than simply disposed of. How very Kotoan of the city’s design, Cassandra thought, to confine such activity to the sewers. Out of sight was out of mind, after all, and if the poorest members of society had no recourse but to beg on the streets or sift through garbage and muck, it freed the city’s administration from coming up with a better system of waste disposal.

At least there was no windchill underground, she supposed.

At least the criminal underground would have fewer opportunities to themselves take up residence in the sewers, like the thieves and thugs who persisted within the city walls of Castle Corona were so prone to, she had to admit with a scowl. Riddersbrug’s sewers would be too populated, too frequently treaded, to offer a refuge away from prying eyes—not with the ragpickers keeping their eyes peeled round the clock just to gather up enough to sell for another meal’s worth of gold. Any illicit activity down here would have to first make sure none would give them up for a night’s stay someplace warm and a good helping of food.

With that thought, she turned to Rutger. “Do the guards give you trouble often, for coming down here and pulling salvage out?”

“Not really, not in the way you must be thinking. And while they keep a good handle on not letting people down on the day the sewers are getting flushed, there isn’t a real way to check if no one’s down here when they pour the river through. So every now and then someone goes missing and washes up where the sewers let out—and they could kill hundreds of us in one go if they ever decided to flush without warning.”

“What a way to live,” Cassandra said with open dismay.

“Would that we had a better one.” Rutger shrugged away the daily horror of his and his ilk’s existence. “Nobody is born a ragpicker, or thinks 'from now on I will make my living elbows-deep in piss and rotting waste' one day, I can promise you that.”

“What were you doing beforehand?”

“I was teaching, if you must know. Turns out that kids love to sign their names, or show off that they can count in their heads rather than on their fingers. But it’s been a long time since we had a school running.”

Patricio pursed his lips into a thin line when Cassandra looked askance at him. “I was a gardener for the Bayards’ villa in the city. Dirt’s dirt, you just have to take more care not to cut yourself on something down here.”

“Stablehand at the lazaretto out the gate,” Maud grumbled for her turn, her voice still raw and scratchy. “The Hospital Order was keeping no less than eight rounceys on hand at all times, for convoys and emergency response.”

How many more labourers and specialized workers who needed little formal education had been displaced by the most recent Equisian capture of the city, Cassandra wondered silently. How many more had lost their livelihoods overnight in the Equisian purge of every Kotoan institution that the new rulership could find, and how many more had been slain among the means and tools of their trade.

“What about you?” Maud asked pointedly. “What were you doing before this?”

“Laundry,” Cassandra said easily. Turnabout was fair play, after all, and omitting some of the things she had done before being named knight-errant did not make her original profession a lie. “Sewing. Embroidery. Keeping someone else’s schedule. Lacing her dresses, drawing her baths.”

“High-end servant, eh? Fancy.”

“Do you know, I think trudging through the muck down here actually suits me better? At least this place—” Cassandra gave a sweeping gesture with her withered arm to indicate the depths of the sewer spreading out before them. “—is honest about being full of garbage and rats.”

That earned her a volley of laughter from all three around her, and a companionable clap on the back from Patricio.

For hours on end, they walked through the sewers, running into no one but more ragpickers and more rats. When night fell up above, their search changed into looking for a drier spot against the sewer’s floor, where it turned out that the sack on Maud’s back was full of charcoal and the odd twin rectangles of metal rods linked with crudely woven rope that Rutger and Patricio were both carrying over a shoulder were low X-shaped chairs, each large enough for two to sit on. With the campsite assembled within minutes, and a meagre evening meal consumed among attempts to make at least somewhat sanitary, Cassandra quickly established a watch order and took first shift, sharing a creaky cord seat with Rutger for his diminutive frame—she glanced at the ragpicker when he leaned against her unabashedly, but didn’t shift away as she watched Patricio and Maud settle against each other in much the same way on the other seat. Backs rested against the sewer’s wall and heads against shoulders, with the embers of the campfire keeping them warm in the windless tunnel; a way of life more dangerous and less palatable to the general public than that of a street sweeper, but less humiliating and hopeless than that of a beggar, Cassandra supposed as she tried not to move but for periodically looking down each end of the sewer, and listened to the rats squeaking away this way or that.

Rats were intelligent. So much so that the varieties cleanly bred for use by street magicians or simply for being kept as pets could be trained to perform simple tricks on command. And where the ones they’ve passed by throughout the day seemed to have just been going about their rat business—finding food, keeping track of dangerous spots and intruders upon their territory, gathering scraps that even the ragpickers would overlook to line their nests with—now they sounded a little more agitated, a little more on alert, than those in the earlier sections of the city’s sewers.

It was hard to tell the time of day underground, but after each of the four of them had stood a double shift for the others while they slept, the campfire’s ashes were discarded into the rest of detritus along the bottom of the sewer, and the portable seats were folded again for transport. And for hours and hours on end, they walked through the sewers again, running into no one but rats—not even more ragpickers, this time, and likely for the significantly more unbearable stench of the sewer’s contents that led Cassandra to believe they were underneath a quarter of the city populated mostly by tanneries and dyer workshops. Frustration was beginning to set in among the group, she could see; whether it would drive them harder or cause them to give up, however, remained to be seen.

They took a break at what they could guess was early afternoon, in silence that hung over the three ragpickers like a leaden stormcloud. And then they kept walking, and searching, for a fair few hours more before Cassandra tapped Rutger’s shoulder with her withered hand.

“Is that a breeze?”

“Yeah. We’re nearing the spot where the sewers let out. If we don’t find that surveyor soon, I’m starting to think we aren’t going to find her at all.”

Cassandra took that in, and looked around. Though the only source of light was still the lantern in Patricio’s hand, she could make out the contours of larger piles of detritus: here an impossibly tangled gillnet with layers upon layers of unrecognizable muck built up all through its weave, there half of a shattered barrel, elsewhere a bloated human corpse. Other than that and the three ragpickers around her, the sewer was almost devoid from any signs of life.

Even of the rats.

“Douse that lamp,” Cassandra hissed in Patricio’s direction as she snapped her archery aid around her withered wrist. “And everyone keep silent.”

The three ragpickers exchanged nervous looks, but didn’t argue, not when she took point and stalked closer to a bend in the tunnel’s run with an arrow nocked. There was a hint of sunlight, if wan, falling against the sewer’s floor; Cassandra leaned out from behind the corner, as slightly as she could, and held her breath at the sight of four figures with tasselled, red scarves tied around their faces, arguing quietly as they tinkered with the massive locked grate at the sewer’s end.

Rutger gave her an inquisitive upwards nod, worry on his face, when Cassandra ducked back into cover. Scarlet Brigade, she mouthed at him, and held up four fingers, and put the arrow in her mouth to pull out a blue-fletched carrier instead and dip its bulbous head into a flask of sandbank serpent venom.

Four against one, four who haven’t spotted her yet, in a terrain with clear sightlines and zero cover but for hiding around corners. If she could get two shots off, and down a pair before the other two charged across to her position, she could probably handle them. And even if she could only manage one shot, the paralyzing venom inside the carrier would ensure she would have someone to ask questions of afterwards—without having to worry about non-lethal hits in a melee against multiple enemies.

If there was ever a time to be thankful for having made friends in Silberstadt.

Cassandra gestured at the ragpickers to back away, then nocked the blue-fletched carrier and leaned out of cover one more time. The Red farthest away from her was standing turned with his side to her, gesturing wildly with one hand and holding a crowbar in the other. Probably the easiest to put out of commission without killing outright, Cassandra decided, aimed the poisoned arrow at the Red’s thigh, and pulled the trigger on her archery aid.

Immediately on impact and the resulting cry of pain, the other mercenaries startled and whipped around to where she was, dropping their tools into the muck and drawing their weapons instead. Before one of them could heft up a shield, Cassandra had a second arrow drawn, and loosed without aiming more precisely than just at the centre of mass; she didn’t pause to watch the Red thrown to his ass, or listen to the arrow shattering against the stonework as it pierced all the way through the Red’s belly at this range, only threw her bow at the nearest ragpicker and whipped her sword out, rounding the corner to meet the remaining two Reds halfway.

It did put her into a harder position, to be sure. But as she parried the third Red’s sword and ducked underneath the fourth’s axe, backing away into a tunnel that was not the one she had come from, at least she kept the pair of mercenaries focused on herself and walking right past the fairly defenceless ragpickers. And she could still keep them both in front of herself easily, though with little room to retaliate between just trying to keep them at bay—at least until Patricio swung his lantern into the back of a Red’s head, causing the mercenary to stagger and howl as he was pelted with broken glass and hot oil, and startling the other one long enough for Cassandra to get past his guard and open up his torso hip-to-shoulder with an upwards slice. The axeman had, in the meantime, recovered enough to swing his weapon at Patricio, who only barely managed to bring the remains of his lantern up quickly enough to block, and Cassandra wasted no time jumping onto the Red’s back to keep him from doing that again. She succeeded, if with a growl of pain when the Red started grabbing at her withered arm in an attempt to toss her off, and sliced his throat open with ease for holding her weapon in her left.

Perks of fencing left-handed in a world where the majority was right-handed, Cassandra thought to herself as she let the mercenary fall face-first into the muck at the sewer’s floor and rose from the body to look at Patricio.

“Are you okay?”

“You owe me a new lantern,” the ragpicker said shakily, the remains of the old one cleaved in twain in his hands.

“Done deal.” Cassandra patted his shoulder, and went past him to check on the Reds she had shot at.

The second one had long since keeled over, flat on his back in the muck and breathing raggedly as he clawed with trembling hands at the entry wound in his belly. With a wince, Cassandra leaned over and finished him off, and only then looked towards the first. Who was wedged into the corner between the wall and the massive outlet grate, clutching at his leg with a grimace of dismay, one that morphed into sheer terror when he looked up at Cassandra and finally saw her face.

“Oh no. Not you again.”

“I take it you came here from Silberstadt, as well,” Cassandra said calmly. “How many more of you are here right now?”

“You killed everyone already! Except me. Please don’t kill me. I’ll tell you anything you want—” the Red cut himself off when Cassandra lowered herself into a crouch in front of him.

“Why are you here?”

“We were picking up a delivery from a drop-off point,” the Red said quickly, his tone strained and his eyes on the bloodied blade of Cassandra’s sword, now rested lightly overtop her knees. “It was supposed to only take an evening, but we got lost at least three times on the way out.”

“How did you get in?”

The Red jerked his head at the grate he was half-leaning against. “This thing lifts up like a portcullis when the river’s pouring through, we grabbed on the inner side and waited for the current to stop.”

“What were you picking up?” Cassandra asked. When the Red drew a breath through his teeth, but hesitated, she rapped her fingertips against the hilt of her sword in an impatient gesture. “What. Were you picking up.”

“That there, that keg, the one covered in tar! Just, for the love of all that is holy, don’t open it, it’s explosives!”

“What sort of explosives?”

“I don’t know! Something alchemical! It bursts into flame when it’s opened, I don’t know how it’s even supposed to make it into the barrel, and it’s very hard to put that fire out!” The mercenary’s voice broke, and Cassandra realized he was about to cry right in front of her. “Please, please take me to jail or leave me here, anything you want, just don’t kill me.”

“We’re looking for a surveyor,” Cassandra told him, ignoring his begging for now. “Have you seen a woman checking what condition the sewer is in?”

“Yeah, we ran into someone like that. Her stuff looked fancy, so we took it? It’s in that bag.”

Cassandra looked over her shoulder and waved Rutger forward, who was standing nearby enough to listen in, still holding her bow to his chest in an almost comically inexpert fashion. With a nod, he started digging through the satchel the Red had pointed at, and Cassandra looked further back, searching for Patricio and Maud—and, predictably, found them stripping the bodies of the other three Reds of anything valuable enough to merit selling, down to and including their clothes.

She turned back to the mercenary she had left alive. “You killed that surveyor, didn’t you?”

“No!” the Red squeaked. “I mean, we were pretty sure that we did, but then she wasn’t there anymore, so we must have fucked that up and she crawled off afterwards?”

“Where?”

“I don’t know! It’s a fucking maze down here!”

“How long ago, then?”

“Two days, maybe two and a half?”

Rutger cleared his throat. “That’s her gear, alright. Banged up, but all there.”

“Right, then.” Cassandra stood up and shook her legs out, then gestured at the Red. “Your city, your rules—what do we do with this guy?”

The ragpicker dragged a finger across his neck, giving her an unimpressed look.

Cassandra sighed. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too.”

She slit the Red’s throat before he had the chance to beg again, and left him to bleed out within minutes as she took her bow back from Rutger and started cleaning her sword. It would’ve been a risk, an unnecessary one and one she had now very easily prevented, to have the Scarlet Brigade in their stronghold on the river’s southern side hear that the person who killed the Silberstadt detachment’s turned chanter of a captain was around again. Particularly if the Reds were making a habit of infiltrating the city, or just brazenly walking in through the main gates whenever things weren’t as tense as at present. But butchering a helpless enemy like that did still leave a bad taste in her mouth.

By the time she was done with her weapons and her discomfort, the three ragpickers had gathered up all of the dead mercenaries’ belongings—all save for the small, tar-covered keg, maybe a few gallons’ worth of whatever alchemical flammable the Scarlet Brigade had wanted. After a brief discussion, the ragpickers heaped the four bodies of dead mercenaries in front of the keg like a grotesque flood bank, and when all of them backed away a distance that felt safe enough, Cassandra hurled the axe that had sliced through Patricio’s lantern into the keg. The resulting crack in the wood was enough for the contents to violently erupt in flame, shattering the keg, pelting the sewer’s walls and ceiling with burning splinters, the liquid spraying all over the bodies and catching some of the refuse on fire. Mercifully, the brackish mixture of rainwater and waste that lingered against the bottom of the sewer didn’t burn as much as it boiled and smouldered with plumes of acrid smoke—and remembering that she had just spent almost an entire month making sure that the workers collecting lumber could do so safely, with the express purpose of rebuilding a section of the city on the southern riverbank after a fire, Cassandra pressed the ragpickers into vacating the premises before the guards could show up to investigate the smoke.

Rats were intelligent, she thought to herself as the four of them ran deeper into the near-lightless sewers and once again heard the rodents squeaking away this way or that in the dark. Entirely intelligent enough to correlate a tar-covered little keg with an unquenchable fire. If the ones they’d camped nearby last night had sounded more on edge than in other sections of the city, there was a chance it was because they’d recognized the smell of that explosive, or simply saw the Reds carrying the keg towards the exit grate. Which meant this was not the first time they’d seen or smelled that.

Bad enough to have a pyromaniac somewhere in a city this large, Cassandra thought sourly. Bad enough to have a pyromaniac on the loose in a city built as a fortified point of river crossing, and the only point of crossing it at all, if the map Raps had traced for her from an atlas was to be believed. It just had to be a pyromaniac with access to an alembic, a few retorts, and a buyer in the form of the Scarlet Brigade.

Eventually, the ragpickers slowed down, and Cassandra deferred to their assessment that they were far enough away from the outlet grate. With Patricio’s lantern destroyed beyond all repair and use, Cassandra pawed at the satchels on her belt until she found the one that held the jar of magic-reactive ink, and lifted it up as a makeshift, extremely dim torch as it lit up against her withered hand. A quick deliberation, and the ragpickers decided to keep looking for their missing surveyor despite having already recovered her gear—banking mostly on the hope that if she had it in her to escape the Scarlet Brigade after being assaulted by them, then maybe she had it in her to survive the days that have passed since, too—and started splitting off into the tunnel intersections to the front, left, and right, using Cassandra and her glowing ink as a point to reconvene at, shouting a name down every branch of the sewers, Zoya, and waiting for the echoes to ring through. It was a futile endeavour, Cassandra thought with resignation, but didn’t have the heart to tell them as much. After all, what harm would it do to try? They were going to get paid for recovering the missing surveyor’s equipment, anyway.

So it came as a surprise nothing short of staggering when she noticed Rutger’s shadow somewhere far to the right go rigid for a moment.

“Guys, I hear something!”

Cassandra lifted a hand to her mouth, but stopped just short of putting two fingers into her mouth to whistle as she remembered the amount of time she’d spent amid refuse and rot, and opted to yell instead as well. “Maud! Patricio! Come back!”

She waited for the other two to run back to the beacon she held, then started following alongside them to where Rutger stood.

“We can hear you!” he was shouting down the same tunnel in the meantime. “Can you call out again?!”

“Here!” a weak response came from the darkness ahead, just barely loud enough for Cassandra to hear as well this time. “I’m here!”

A few minutes of hastily trudging down the sewer, and Cassandra thought she could make out a faint splash ahead. A few more minutes, and at the edge of the ink’s dim blue light, she noticed a shaky hand lifting again from the sewer’s floor, an arm raised at the elbow between bits of a shattered barrel. The surveyor must have crawled inside to hide from the Reds who attacked her, and then found herself too weak to crawl back out.

They rushed over, tearing the barrel’s remains apart to find the woman they were searching for flat on her back in the muck and covered in the sewer’s contents head to toe. Cassandra’s eyes flicked immediately to one of the surveyor’s legs bent at an impossible angle, and to what must have been a head scarf bunched up and shoved into a bloodied tear in her tunic, a stab wound that was maybe the only spot on her garb that wasn’t soiled and soaked through with filth. Beyond that, she was covered with innumerable smaller wounds, bite marks just about the size of rat teeth. And at present, she was also crying, tears slipping down her temples and winding into her mussed hair.

“I thought I was going to die here.”

“You’re not gonna die. We’ve got you.” Rutger dropped onto his knees into the muck beside her, and Cassandra extended the hand she held the glowing ink with to shed more light over the surveyor’s limp form. “How hurt are you?”

“Well, they stabbed me.” The surveyor closed her eyes for a moment, evidently on the brink of consciousness after days on end spent laying there wounded, but managed to open them again. “And I think my leg is broken.”

“We’ll carry you out, don’t worry. Maud—” Rutger handed off his foldable seat, and the other two ragpickers started tying a coil of rope around both of the broad portable chairs, transforming them into a makeshift stretcher. Once that was underway, he turned to the surveyor again. “Just stay awake, alright?”

“Rutger– Scarlet Brigade. There’s Reds in the sewers, they’re the ones who—”

“How many?” Cassandra asked calmly.

The surveyor’s pain-darkened eyes flicked to her for the first time. “Four that I could count.”

“Then we met all of them already, they’re dead.”

“Good.” The surveyor closed her eyes for a moment again, breathing out a sigh of relief. When she opened them again, she seemed to have almost expected Cassandra to disappear in the meantime. “Wh– Who are you?”

It hadn’t occurred to Cassandra until right now how out of place she must have looked among the ragpickers—still dressed in fur-trimmed leathers, if grimy from her time in the sewer alongside them, with multiple weapons in clear sight and holding a small source of magical light. So in the end she just said, “Hired help.”

“She’s alright, she kept us safe. Scholar del Arroyo’s girl vouched for her,” Rutger added.

Cassandra turned as a tap came against her shoulder, and found Maud handing her one end of the makeshift stretcher. “Here, hold this.”

Rutger looked up at her, and at Maud coming over to his side, before he turned to the surveyor again. “Zoya, we’re gonna have to put a splint around your leg, and then pick you up and put you on a stretcher. It’s going to hurt, but we’re getting you out of here, alright? You’re going to be okay.”

“Okay,” the surveyor said weakly.

The makeshift splint turned out to be two empty scabbards looted from the Reds that Cassandra had killed, Patricio holding the naked swords under his arm now. And as Rutger and Maud set to placing it around the surveyor’s broken shin, the woman went rigid on the ground with a piercing shriek of pain, then abruptly limp again as she passed out. Taking advantage of that, the ragpickers moved her onto the hastily constructed stretcher first, and only then started patting her face and calling her name, a few seconds passing before the surveyor came to with a tortured little wail. With Patricio and Rutger lifting each end of the stretcher, Maud ran ahead to find the nearest set of rungs and grate up to a street above; and Cassandra, holding the group’s only source of light, decided to match her pace to that of the ragpickers and take the injured surveyor’s hand into her left one, hoping to offer at least a sliver of comfort in the nightmarish circumstance that had almost ended the woman’s life. And it seemed to be appreciated, even if the hand in Cassandra’s own alternated between limp and gripping weakly in return, the surveyor slipping in and out of consciousness or simply too exhausted to keep her fingers clasped and her eyes open. And soon enough, Cassandra heard the sound of metal rattled against stone, and looked ahead to see that Maud had climbed up a set of rungs and was slamming one of her forearms into the heavy grate above.

“Hey, up there! We need help! We have a wounded friend with us!”

With a sliver of dim, evening light falling into the sewer now as the grate was opened and pulled aside, Cassandra tucked the jar of ink away. As Patricio climbed up onto the street as well, she moved to hold the stretcher up with her left hand and in the crook of her right elbow, where the withered area ended. Shortly, a coil of rope was thrown down into the sewer, and tied under the surveyor’s arms to lift her outside; with Patricio, Maud, and two guards pulling the wounded woman out, Cassandra turned to Rutger, only for him to gesture her to the rungs first as he set to disassembling the stretcher. So she inclined her head, and bit back a sigh, and started climbing.

Trying to ascend a ladder one-armed was infuriatingly difficult, Cassandra decided after the third time she had to snap her good hand onto a higher rung quickly enough to prevent herself from falling. Wedging her right elbow between another rung and the wall did little to stabilize her position, and served almost only to make her elbow hurt. Even when her head and shoulders crested the edge of the drainage hole, and she braced her withered forearm against the cobblestones, she wasn’t able to truly push up enough to lift herself out of the sewer—and she found herself equal parts grateful for the assist and humiliated with it when Patricio and Maud grabbed at her cloak and bicep and hauled, pulling her up and onto the cobblestones.

“Thanks.”

“Did you hurt your arm down there?” Maud asked with a frown, evidently trying to remember when that could have happened.

“No,” Cassandra grumbled as she rose to her feet. “It just doesn’t work right.”

“Why, what happened?”

“It just doesn’t work right, okay?”

“Okay, heavens.” Maud turned away to pull Rutger up onto the street, in turn. “A soldier with a horse took Zoya up to the garrison already, said they’ll have the Guard’s physician look at her.”

“Perks of having an official writ from the city,” Rutger commented as he tried to dust himself off, with little to no effect.

There was a brief silence among the ragpickers.

“Fuck,” Patricio said calmly.

“We still have her documents and gear, don’t we?” Rutger sighed as Maud lifted up the satchel that contained the aforementioned. “Well, let’s get going then, make sure they don’t throw her back out right at the door. And that we get paid for finding her.”

The wind, Cassandra found along the way there, was equal parts piercing cold and refreshing after almost two days spent in the sewers—though she did suppose the ragpickers would likely disagree, judging from how they shivered against it, trying to bundle themselves up into their patchwork, shredded, too-thin coats to keep warm. Once they arrived at the garrison, the watch outside its gate did not let them inside, and sent for another watchmaster instead; matters of handing off the surveyor’s equipment and receiving payment were handled at what must have been record speed, no doubt thanks to how the four of them reeked, clothes stained or soaked with waste and rot, boots leaving filthy prints against the cobblestones. As soon as they stepped away from the garrison’s gate again, Rutger waved the group into a dark alley and quickly divided the money into the agreed amounts, seventy gold per ragpicker and ninety for Cassandra, in everyone’s presence, before the three of them folded into a team huddle—and pulled Cassandra into it, as well.

“Shit, we did good today. Good job, everyone. You too, Coronian, I knew there had to be a reason Renée put in a good word for you.”

“I didn’t think we were going to find your friend alive,” Cassandra admitted. “But I’m glad we did.”

“So are we, believe me. And we couldn’t have done it without you. Okay, folks, let’s get clean and bunk down for the night, and sell off the find tomorrow.”

“I don’t know where I am,” Cassandra said tiredly as the ragpickers stepped away from her and each other. “Can any of you tell me which way to the Drunken Lion?”

“I’ll take you there,” Patricio offered. “I know you can handle yourself, but it’s better to walk together than alone after dark.”

“Lead the way, then.” Cassandra lifted a hand goodbye at Rutger and Maud as they went off on their way, and followed Patricio. “Hey, come find me tomorrow. We’ll go get you that new lantern.”

The ragpicker laughed a little. “I’m not gonna turn that down. Don’t feel like you have to, though, I was scared and I just said the only thing left in my head.”

“No, it’s only fair. You saved my skin hitting that Red. That was really brave of you.”

“Well, you know,” Patricio demurred, but did stand a little taller at the praise.

Eventually, they made it to the inn that Cassandra had stabled Fidella at, and came inside together, the ragpicker greeting the innkeeper in a friendly manner. And, to the innkeeper’s credit, he barely frowned at the smell of them.

“You reek. Both of you.”

“I know,” Cassandra said in a strained tone, while Patricio just chuckled. “Please tell me you have a washroom I can use.”

The innkeeper pointed her into the far side of the building. “Through that door there.”

“How’s my horse?”

“Like you left her. Seemed a little nervous this afternoon, though.”

“Let me just check in and I’ll go get clean.” It had been more than a full day, Cassandra supposed. Then she turned to shake Patricio’s hand goodbye. “Around what time tomorrow should I expect you to show up?”

“Well, you’re going to have a tough time getting all that out of your clothes, especially since—” the ragpicker nodded at her withered arm. “So around noon, maybe?”

“I’ll be here.”

Patricio patted her shoulder as she went past him, and addressed the innkeeper again. “Lev, we found Zoya, she’s alive. Only just, but alive.”

“That’s good to know,” the innkeeper breathed out with relief. “Thanks, buddy.”

Cassandra stepped outside and looked up into the sky, catching barely a glimpse of a quarter moon through the clouds, and closed her eyes to count the days back. Had she still been in Silberstadt, Owl would be due to return soon—two to four days from now, and that was counting the time he’d take to rest in Castle Corona. But now, now that she’d moved miles upon miles further away, she couldn’t be sure how much longer it would take him to make his way there, or how much longer he would need to recover before beginning the flight back. How much longer did she have before she should return to the Forester’s Catch, where she’d agreed to wait for him? A week? Two weeks seemed to be pushing it, but would it really count as such when she considered the time of year, the snowstorms Owl could get caught in, and the possibility of having to divert his flight path away from some kind of danger? She sighed, trying to weigh too many variables to even count. A week and a half, she decided in the end. If Owl made it back faster than she thought possible, he wouldn’t have to wait around for her too long; and if he took longer than she expected, for factors she hadn’t considered, then she wouldn’t have to keep idle until running out of gold.

A week and a half could be enough to take one more notice off the contract board, as well. Satisfied with this decision, Cassandra nodded to herself under the wan moonlight, and poked her head into the stable—where Fidella immediately greeted her with a relieved nicker.

Cassandra gave the mare a little wave. “Hey, I’m okay. I stink, though, so I’m going to go wash up. And then I’ll probably need a room, for once, if only to get my clothes dried out.”

Snort, Fidella acquiesced easily.

“Anyone give you trouble while I was gone?”

Snort, Fidella said negatively.

“And everything’s in order?”

The mare confirmed with a little whinny.

“Good. I’ll see you in the morning.” Cassandra withdrew from the stable, and went to the washroom pointed out to her beforehand, warning the innkeeper along the way that she would take it up for a longer while, and receiving in return a fervent plea to do so.

She stripped down to her smallclothes, save for the reinforced glove on her withered arm, and set to washing what she could first. The shoes were soaked through with filth so thoroughly that any attempt to earnestly clean them would make the glued parts come undone, anyway, so Cassandra set them aside to get rid of and resigned herself to making it barefoot across the inn and into the stable, where her winter boots awaited. The trousers were soiled halfway up the shins, and splattered upwards, but salvageable; the vest had mostly just soaked up the stench, as had both of the gloves, what with Cassandra’s usual regard especially to the right one, to avoid putting her withered arm in any more unnecessary risk of further injury or infection. The cloak, however, was almost as filthy as the shoes, from leaning against the sewer’s walls and bundling herself up in overnight and splashes from running through the waste. And by the time she felt that her garb was going to be presentable again, her left arm was nearly numb from the effort of scrubbing everything clean one-handed.

Draining the impossibly grimy water came first, then a wait for more water to get warmed up, and only then, finally, a long-awaited bath. Cassandra tied a towel around her right elbow, using her good hand and her teeth, hoping for it to soak up any errant water that could get into the gauntlet, then braced her withered arm at the edge of the basin and with a sigh of relief, dunked her head underwater. This was the closest she could come to feeling clean, these days: with her good arm already heavy and numb with exertion, and her hair too long for upkeep to be easy anymore, there was only so much scrubbing she could do. And that was before trying to bend that good arm in ways it was never supposed to bend, as she tried to clean the left side of her body.

And with an embargo on Kotoan trade, terrycloth rags would be nigh impossible to come by, she thought miserably as she tried to come up with ideas on how to make bathing easier in the future. Short of soaking one of those and soaping it up and wiping with it, all she could think of was to start cleaning herself in a way that originated in southern Bayangor, which would be to oil herself and scrape that off along with the grime by using a blunt, sickle-shaped instrument.

Or have another person help her bathe, which was out of the question. Not only did she have no one around that she’d trust with herself to that degree, the option of hiring someone for it wasn’t really an actual option, Cassandra thought as she breached the surface to breathe and tilted her head down, water trickling down her hair, to look at the starburst of thick, raised, gray-black scars at the left side of her chest, slightly deforming the curve of a breast and centred around an oval indent in her skin where the Moonstone used to sit. Too many questions. Too recognizable. Too likely to make whoever she could pay to undress in front of back away in shock or disgust, or to fill their eyes with pity.

She made do alone for months upon months upon months, Cassandra recalled, a hollow feeling swelling up somewhere beneath those scars. She could make do for the rest of her life.

It wasn’t like she had much of a choice, anyway.

When her left arm was so tired that she could barely lift it anymore, Cassandra got out of the water, far from as clean as she would like to be. A warm evening meal and a warm room for the night still left her with a bit of profit made from the sewer run, and she crawled under the unfamiliar, scratchy blankets, relieved to sleep in a bed for the first time in longer than she cared to remember. By the time she woke up, her clothes were dry—if smelling of woodsmoke again, from drying out against a hearth—and so was her hair, so she tied it back with the blue ribbon again, grinding her teeth against the length it had grown. The second month’s frost had better be worth it, Cassandra thought as she fought the urge to hold that fucking ponytail still and just shank it at the back of her neck, never mind how uneven the result would be.

But as the sun’s position across the sky told her quickly, she’d overslept quite a bit, and didn’t have much time to spare for checking in with Fidella and eating a late breakfast before Patricio showed up. The early half of the afternoon, Cassandra spent on going between a few workshops with the ragpicker, and eventually buying him a new lantern—a noticeably more ornamental one than previously, wildflowers and blooming vines embossed on each side, to Patricio’s visible delight—and in return received a promise that he, too, would make sure to look for a Kotoan halberdier with a falcon-nosed helmet and tell him that Cassandra was asking after him if he saw him at all. The second half of the day, Cassandra spent in the Drunken Lion’s stable, sitting with Fidella and doing some minor repairs on her equipment and garb, sharpening her sword until a nick on the blade was smoothed out and mending a small scratch across the side of her vest before it could turn into a full tear. The day after that, she spent the morning speaking with the proprietor—Lev, she tried to remember—asking after local customs and points of interest and such matters, and decided that she deserved to take a day to just do nothing but sightsee. There was a whole foreign city around her, after all, and she hadn’t paid it any mind so far, not beyond what she needed to take care of within its walls.

From what little she had seen of the southern riverbank before, the northern one seemed both poorer and more opulent in comparison; the villas were far more scarce, but also far larger, the grounds as well as the buildings. One she went past seemed like a private residence, its artisanal steel fence backed by wooden panels that screened even the gardens from view, only allowing a glimpse through the gate—and a glimpse was enough to catch sight of uniformly armed and armoured patrols treading the gravel paths, patrols that were very distinctly not the city guard.

Another’s courtyard still boasted a Kotoan-styled statue in the centre. Or rather, what was left of one: a headless knight of stone still holding a banner’s bronze flagpole in one hand, but with the banner itself reduced to a wispy scrap of cloth, long since scorched and too rotten through, too stained to make out the colours. A spiked collar cinched the statue’s shattered neck, and massive shackles were snapped around its wrists and ankles, all linked with lengths of heavy chain. Where a sword would have been sheathed at its side, now it laid chiselled off and snapped in half at its feet; where a disc of acid-etched brass would have been framing its head, as with the pencil illustration of the fountain with the lutist saint and her family, now it laid at the bottom of a tiny frog pond dug at the base of the plinth, covered with patina and mud. The missing head itself was scattered through the pond, as well, no less than a dozen pieces in various stages of overgrowth by algae. From the statue’s free hand, raised up to the sky in a gesture that must have been intended as one of exultation, hung a garland of what at first glance seemed like oddly-shaped wind chimes, and Cassandra pulled Fidella to a halt so she could get a better look—and scowled as she realized that they were in fact scores of little oval medallions that Kotoan soldiers and military personnel were so fond of wearing, each embossed with the likeness of the wearer’s saint of choice, a good luck charm and mark of profession and pledge of allegiance to the Crown all in one, now worked into a trophy rack to mock both their owners and the desecrated statue made to display them. Thick, bramble-covered shrubs of blackthorn were growing on each side of the statue, diligently pruned down but for where they began winding and twisting up the saint’s armoured legs, as if to emphasize their defeat even further, as if it hadn’t been emphasized enough already. And to complete the picture, the plinth itself was littered with naked, sun-bleached bones—mostly skulls of horses and dogs, piled up to knee-height, doubtlessly sourced from the mounts and hounds of witch-knights to have perished in the endless battles for the city—and at the saint’s chest, where the crest of the Tribunal Order would have normally been chiselled off and erased, this time it remained, but only underneath an unsettling, asymmetrical sigil painted with some sort of oddly iridescent pigment.

It took Cassandra a longer moment to understand why the sight filled her with rage and loathing as powerful as it did. But when she looked at the banner-bearing saint again, and thought of what the statue must have looked like in its prime, she was struck with how similar that was to someone she had seen once before—a girl who died before she could braid her hair off with a ribbon that her mother had gifted her, a banner-bearer who died before she could be knighted, a sixteen-year-old who died to defend a stick with a scrap of cloth hanging from it. The manor must have used to belong to the Bayard noble line, and Colette must have seen the statue in its courtyard at least once, at a young and impressionable age, impressionable enough to take the sight of it to her open grave.

Without dismounting, without knocking on the gate, Cassandra drew her sword, only for long enough to salute the defeated, disgraced husk of a knight, and bowed her head sharply before all it represented, all it used to mean.

Snort, Fidella said pointedly, her eyes flicking between several guard patrols who were suddenly paying rapt attention.

“Let them stare,” Cassandra grumbled as she nudged her steed forward again, a dark swirl of churning, furious hatred settling somewhere at the bottom of her soul, somewhere too deep to be dislodged by anything short of bloody retribution.

Another of the villas seemed to house a museum of sorts, its courtyard entirely cobbled and empty save for a life-sized bronze installation of a war wagon pulled by a pair of massive draft horses, each one’s coat blanketed with chainmail and forehead with a plated chanfron, figures of crossbowmen leaning out of the wagon to shoot at invisible enemies, and warriors with axes or spears frozen mid-pace in a run beside it as well, using the wagon’s armoured sides for cover as it moved. A permanent exhibition dedicated to the history of siege weapons used in the region, Cassandra guessed, and visited to have the assumption confirmed—next to pieces recovered from old battlefields, timbers and engineering tools and stone projectiles and rust-eaten ballista bolts, there were downscaled models of what each construction used to look like when freshly finished and ready for use. Siege towers surrounded by tiny puppets of soldiers and knights. Trebuchets loaded with pebbles for ammunition. An oil cauldron, its sides covered with black paint to imitate soot for good measure and its crew shielding their tiny faces with their arms, as if from the heat. In the largest room, a diorama laid out across several tables pushed together and covered with a gently arching dome of clear glass: Riddersbrug’s own walls and gatehouse, knight statues and all, stacked full of archer figurines and ballistae and mangonels, bits of gravel scattered across the field to indicate the range of the latter, and on the field itself a regimented Kotoan force advancing behind portable shields, here and there a ladder crew enabling the attacking soldiers to climb onto the battlements, and a small group pushing a roofed wagon that held a battering ram carved with loving detail—there was even a very distinctive figure of a wolf-headed knight in full plate, charging across the field with a heavy lance, two hounds protecting his massive steed’s sides.

There was nothing to indicate the use of gunpowder in the region, Cassandra mused as she concluded her tour and exited the building again. Perhaps it was prohibitively expensive. Perhaps it was restricted to the Royal Guard's use only in less volatile regions, to prevent it from falling into the hands of bandits, partisans, or smugglers, to speak none of the regular Kotoan army. Or perhaps Equis banked on its sorcerers to serve as artillery—the Great Tree used to be located very near to the Equisian border, after all. If a section of the border that was, thankfully, very far from away here. Out of all the places in the world, the Tree’s remains were not one Cassandra would ever feel like revisiting again.

And no gunpowder didn’t equal no explosives, she reminded herself, as evidenced by the keg that the Scarlet Brigade had nearly succeeded in retrieving. Warfare was not an art of simpletons, and did not eschew the use of more than simple strength of arms and wits—and while Cassandra felt that the maxim of all is fair in love and war was more suited to mercenary companies and simple swords-for-hire than to armies fielded by magnates and monarchs, that did not mean all of those monarchs felt the same way. If any.

Between the manors, there were fewer places of business than on the southern riverbank, and the streets seemed to be lined mostly with abodes and at-home workshops. Griffincats huddled for warmth in spots shielded from the winter’s wind or basked in patches of sunlight, crows and gulls competed for scraps and chased after each other’s catch, people went about their business: pulling fishing nets and crab traps out of the river’s freezing water, running errands, selling materials and baubles and street food. And as she had on her first full day in the city, Cassandra found herself with a few skewers of chicken bits and vegetables roasted over burning coals. Unlike back then, she actually sat down on a bench to eat—and soon became the object of scrutiny of a few crows, one actually bold enough to hop down to the ground barely two steps away from her, staring at her food.

With a sigh, Cassandra regarded the bird. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen a halberdier around here?”

Krrraaaa, the crow said.

“Seriously?” Cassandra asked dryly. Then she pulled a chunk of roasted chicken off the skewer and tossed it to the crow, and waited for the bird to gobble the bribe up. “How about now, huh?”

Krrraaaa, the crow recalled, its tone significantly more favourable now.

“Hm. Well, at least that’s not too long ago.” Cassandra paused as she watched two more crows swoop down to land beside the first one. “Hey, now. I’m hungry, too.”

All that accomplished was making three more crows join.

Cassandra sighed again, and showed them her last full skewer. “Only if you guys do me a favour too, is that clear?”

The first crow tilted its head at her curiously.

“If you see an Owl, point him my way, alright?”

A half-dozen krrraaas rang out in accord.

Of all the wars in the region, Cassandra thought with exasperation, the last one she had expected to be taking a side in was one between crows, gulls, and griffincats—and yet, there she was, throwing her lot in with the crows and stamping her boot at a gull who got too close to startle it away.

By the time she headed back to the Drunken Lion’s Den, it was late evening; and as Cassandra rode across the square that the contract board was located beside, she noticed someone setting up garlands of little flags and curtains of glass beads in the windows of one of the adjacent buildings, a building of red brick with a weathered paper lantern hanging above the door, a door that was carved with the name of Skylight Brewery. New Year’s Eve was tomorrow, Cassandra recalled, and considered for a moment. Maybe she’d poke her head in, just for a little.

And the little turned out to be a lot, when she greeted the proprietor and watched his eyes light up at the sound of her accent, and heard him answer with the same tang to his words, central Coronian and blending the slang from the island city’s markets with that from the surrounding mainland farms. And as he remarked sorrowfully on the condition of his establishment’s namesake lantern, Cassandra just chuckled and told him to bring her paper, scissors, and glue.

She hadn’t made a paper lantern earlier this year. By the time the Princess’ birthday came around, the repair works to undo the devastation she’d wrought on Castle Corona have only just begun to gain momentum, with the true scope of damage done to cellars, foundations, and load-bearing walls of every other building on the island slowly coming into a staggering focus. The labourers and the volunteers alike only ever glared at her or tossed her some belligerent comment or another, none of which she could well respond to. Raps was busy devoting herself to making sure that her forgiveness of Cassandra’s conduct was visible, in her usual blindly cheerful way, far too busy to notice or even consider that it was making Cassandra feel as if she were a prisoner of war touted up like a trophy during a victory parade that never mercifully ended. A slimy, nauseating feeling churned through her gut and choked at her throat every time she was faced with the misguided understanding of everyone whose own experiences could never compare or grant any insight into the ordeal of being slowly ground into the castle’s hand-polished floors with months upon months upon years of off-handed neglect and dismissal, and every time she was faced with the gratitude for having her back—back in the mongrels’ kennel, back to wearing a collar, back to performing any trick that the houndmistress fancied at the softest command—from everyone who never cared to notice how a collar pulled that tight was slowly choking off Cassandra’s lifeblood, how she had, over time, resigned herself to the repeatedly proven truth that she would not be listened to if she was being honest and instead began saying whatever would end the conversation most quickly, whatever she could guess at as being expected of her. Between all of that, Cassandra had woken herself up early on the day of the festival, packed up a book, some food, and an oil lamp, and disappeared down one of the castle’s secret passages dating back to Herz der Sonne’s time that she’d never shared with anyone. At seven o’clock, she was halfway to the mainland already, and once she reached it, she stayed there until she felt enough time had passed after sunset for celebrations throughout the city to be over. Long, long over. And while Raps had been inconsolable over her absence, no matter how temporary, even at the time Cassandra had enjoyed a rare smidgen of relief for telling herself that it was Raps’ problem, not hers. And sixteen days afterwards, on the dot, Cassandra had made her first good decision since just about the same time last year—the same decision as then—and left again.

She hadn’t made a paper lantern the year prior, either, for having just claimed the Moonstone. Oh, she was aware of the date—a single act of defiance could never be enough to shake off a lifetime spent in the Lost Princess’ shadow, a shadow as deep in her presence as it had been in her absence—and since she couldn’t forget the date, she had enjoyed a considerable amount of glee in disregarding its significance, at least, in knowing what she was supposed to do and doing none of it, and instead continued her achingly slow crawl towards mastery over what she had taken from right in front of Raps' face, right along with herself.

She hadn’t made a paper lantern the year before that, too, as she was rather preoccupied taking command of the Royal Guard with zero warning, and shoring them up into a force together enough to launch a counterattack on a teenager’s room in a farming village.

But every year prior to that, ever since she was just short of turning five, she would make a paper lantern in the height of summer, and nudge it into the sky along with the rest of the castle staff and the rest of Corona’s capital city, even if her dad had insisted to be the one lighting hers as well as his own until she was old enough to handle matches. And with how simple the construction of these lanterns was, not even her withered hand could hinder her enough for it to translate into uneven creases or shoddy gluing of separate pieces, she just had to remember to do the parts that required precision with her left. And maybe it took her twice as much time as it normally would, but if the ecstatic look on the brewer’s face hadn’t been worth it, then his declaration that Cassandra’s drinks were on the house for the rest of the year definitely was. Even if the year happened to be ending this evening.

And over the afternoon, more people had slowly begun showing up, Coronian immigrants and stranded merchants and wintering sellswords, with at least two of the latter familiar from the southern bank Guard’s contract to protect logger teams that ended a few days prior, all gathering up to see the year off and welcome the new one. A custom that neither Koto nor Equis seemed to share, Cassandra noted, but shrugged away as a harmless cultural quirk—after all, Corona didn’t celebrate the feast days of Kotoan saints, either. Shortly past sundown, a few guests arrived in the brewery with a fiddle, a shawm, and some variety of guitar, and maybe it was that Cassandra had spent most of the day sipping very, very good ale, but when some of the clientele started singing, she joined in too, and only barely noticed that some of the others were falling silent to listen to her instead. Maybe she had never been ladylike enough for Castle Corona—maybe her hair was too short and her manner too brusque and her interests too unrefined and her mere presence in the castle too alike that of a changeling slipped into the Princess’ crib by some demon-spawned witch—but at least she had a good voice, and was a classically trained singer, if only as a feeble attempt at a counterweight to everything that made people frown at her, a bid for anything she could argue with against a claim that she did not belong in the court, the castle, the city, or the whole kingdom itself, for that matter. And two or three songs in, her voice was warmed up enough to really hit the notes like they should ring out, and no one else was singing unless to back her up, and once she finished there were enough whistles and applause to prompt her into an exaggerated bow before she sat back down and asked the brewer for her next refill to be a half-pint rather than a full one. She didn’t spend much time sitting down, anyway, not when the musicians switched into playing a jaunty dancing tune, and a good three-quarters of the brewery’s guests took advantage of it—and when one of the people Cassandra had only first met today beckoned to her to join as well, a wide grin on an unfamiliar face, she rolled her eyes at herself and leapt into the pattern like she would leap into the fray, a space clearing out for her without a hitch as someone else backed out for needing a break. Clap, spin, swap partners, repeat, a simple group dance with room for many; a stark contrast to court dances where the emphasis was put on a pair and the inherent romance of it or whatever, dances that Cassandra was good at but only through endless, and endlessly humiliating, hours and hours on end of practice, dances where she could not find the comfort necessary for grace unless she was leading, so a role that was never supposed to be hers unless it was to teach someone else how to be led, someone above her station, someone she was assigned to serve in this and every other way. Now, however, the dance was more focused on a community than a single other person, and each of them was a piece of the whole, each free to dance every part in turn.

Some community they were, Cassandra thought with only a slight bite to the amusement, people she had never met or barely spoken to prior, and people she would likely never meet again, each of them a stranger in a foreign land and clinging to faint reminders of home: a lantern, an accent, a pint’s taste. But for tonight, it was enough. And tonight, they were all making merry about the same thing—and on the back of how no one else besides them did, for one night it was enough to make them each other’s people.

Maybe there was something to be enjoyed about a festival, she acquiesced silently as she clapped her hands again and locked arms with another person to spin each other around and then release. Maybe it was because she didn’t have to be the one who prepared it beforehand and cleaned up afterwards.

On the first day of the new year, she overslept again, but couldn’t even be mad at herself for it. However, it was time to find herself something to do again, what with her evening off having turned into an evening and two full days. Still not long enough to hamper her too badly with finding herself one more assignment off the contract board, she hoped as she chewed on smoked sausage and pickled cabbage at the Drunken Lion’s countertop, and nursed a pint of cold water this time.

She spotted Rutger as he came into the inn to exchange a meagre handful of coin for some provisions, and raised a hand in a return greeting when the ragpicker waved at her. Further than that, she paid him no mind—not until she noticed that he was speaking with another person and pointing at her, and that said person was now walking up to Cassandra.

A woman, and the bookish sort, it seemed—dressed infinitely better than the ragpicker, but still far from wealthy and preferring function over form, at a glance. Short, almost a head shorter than Cassandra herself, with gaunt cheeks and dark-circled eyes and ink stains settled deep at the edge of her fingernails, signs of spending long hours over tomes and technical drawings with no regard to hunger or passage of time. A few scroll tubes hung from her belt, where a weapon would usually be, and she carried a small leather bag slung across her chest, nervously fidgeting with its belt now as she stepped up.

“Have you seen a stevedore by the name of Daryll Dawson, by any chance? Poor sod got himself carried off by a monster.”

Cassandra stopped chewing at that. “...I don’t think I have, sorry.”

“Heavens rest his soul,” the woman said with a heavy sigh, eyes downcast for a moment, before she looked at Cassandra again in an almost pleading manner. “But, that still leaves me in need of a new porter, and recovering my pack from wherever that... that thing took him to. I reckon someone like you could be interested?”

Cassandra leaned out to look at the tavern’s entrance, but Rutger was long gone by now. She turned back to the woman in front of her. “Why were you asking a ragpicker for recommendations rather than just post up a notice at the contract board?”

“Well, look at me,” the woman said in a tight voice. “Do I look like a great warrior to you?”

“You look like a scribe,” Cassandra admitted.

“Exactly! I don’t know anyone who takes up notices from the contract board, and who would I have to call on for help if they beat me up and took my belongings outside of the city? And, well, if the little people say you’re okay, then there’s that much more of a chance you’ll do right by me, as well.”

Cassandra gave a little sideways nod, having to admit that the logic tracked. “Well, I was going to look for work anyway, might as well help you. What’s your name?”

“Oh. I’m so sorry, you must think me an uncivilized lout by now,” the scribe looked down with a wince. “Sybil. I’m a journeyman copyist and historian out of Velden, but the roads have been so unsafe that I’ve spent... some years, now, here in Riddersbrug. And... most of my instruments are gone right now, heavens only know in what condition. Daryll was carrying my pack when the thing attacked, and I– I ran, what else was I supposed to do, chip its teeth with my bones?”

“Do you know which direction that creature took your employee in?” Cassandra asked calmly.

The scribe nodded vigorously. “I can point the way, easily. And I’ve been hearing some of the folks there mention odd tracks in the snow, missing people, mangled carcasses of wild game. Someone might have seen if it’s been drinking from the river, too.”

“And what is it, exactly, that you want to hire me for?”

“Well, first of all I need my instruments back quite desperately,” Sybil said in a pleading tone. “I’m not going to tell you to fight that monster, I just need you to bring back my pack. And afterwards, I still need to do what I myself was hired for, which is hike to the ruins of an old watchtower nearby and investigate the architectural method and what it’s been that brought it down? I don’t want to bore you with the details, but, if you would be inclined to accompany me there and escort me back to the city, too. I can pay you.”

Cassandra nodded. “Do you know if there’s anywhere to leave a horse overnight along the way?”

“Yes, I was about to say—there’s a roadside inn of sorts near to where a path to the ruins splits off; I would wait for you there until you retrieve my instruments? We could meet up there and go towards the ruins then? If you're well enough to travel today, that is.”

"Why wouldn't I be?" Cassandra asked with a frown.

"Well, you're Coronian, and it's the first day of the year. I figured you might be hungover."

Cassandra laughed at that. “Just a slight headache, nothing to write home about. Let me just finish eating and we can go.”

First steps out the northern city gate of Riddersbrug, she mused as she pulled the scribe onto Fidella’s back behind herself and nudged the mare into a trot out of the city. Might as well make them in the company of the third Kotoan spy she’d met within its walls.

Chapter Text

Odd tracks in the snow, Sybil had said. 'Odd' didn’t begin to cover it, Cassandra thought as she stared at a mismatched set of such, a chain leading towards and then away from the skeletal remains of an elk that’s been dead for the better part of two days now.

The indents of front limbs looked much like handprints—if left by someone with grotesquely oversized hands and oddly-spaced fingers, and each of those fingers ending in a thick claw—while those of the hind limbs were a confusing mishmash of hoof and paw and dewclaw, something that Cassandra would normally assume was left by at least four different creatures stepping into one another’s tracks as to get through the snow more easily. And to top all that off, a winding, serpentine line wove behind the tracks, thick and deep enough to suggest a considerable weight, as if a whip of braided leather had been dragged through the snow. Or a long, heavy tail.

Cassandra looked up through the leafless branches. The first hints of dawn were beginning to ignite the eastern horizon, yet the Morning Star was still burning brightly—as was the moon, a contrast to the pale colour it would turn against the sky during daylight.

She let her eyes linger for a moment against that moon, just past another fullness, before she looked back down to the ground and its myriad shades of black and gray in the receding night. For the past few days, Cassandra had spent most of her time outdoors and alone, looking for any signs of the creature’s presence and trying to ascertain the area it would roam within range of its den. And there did have to be a den, not just for the season and weather, but for how every time there were signs of struggle and sprays of blood and tufts of torn-out fur left in the snow, the impossible tracks then turned away, deeper for the creature carrying its catch now, and invariably headed into the same section of the woods. Unless the prey was an elk or a larger buck. Those, it seemed, were too heavy for the creature to drag home, and would be gnawed on until it had eaten its fill, then abandoned until the next day or left for the scavengers to finish.

Whatever it was, it seemed to be a daylight hunter, and a surplus killer to boot. Or at least, Cassandra hoped that it was a sign of surplus killing to, over the course of the same night, run into the remains of a badger den dug open like a beehive, a half-eaten deer, and a gored teenager who seemed to be the all that was left of a hunting party, the only one left behind for being smaller than the others.

“It was so big,” the boy mumbled at her, as soon as Cassandra dropped to her knees beside him, and saw from the amount of snow stained with blood and entrails that nothing short of the Sundrop itself would make a difference anymore. “It took Ma, and Wilson, and Boris too.”

“Big like a bear?” Cassandra asked.

“Big like a horse. But longer than that. Long like a lizard, but big like a horse at the withers.”

“Did you see what it looks like?”

“Like nothing that’s real,” the teenager told her weakly. “Like something that’s trying to be a wolf and an ox and something else, too, at the same time. But it has a lot of horns. And arms like a person. And a tail like a hammer.”

Cassandra took that in, and glanced at the trampled, blood-soaked snow between the trees. “What happened here?”

“It took Boris in its mouth, and stuck Wilson on the horns, and grabbed Ma with its hands.” The boy closed his eyes for a longer moment, breathing out. “It has hands like a person. Why would it have hands like a person?”

“I don’t know,” Cassandra told him, gently as she could. “What’s your name?”

“Louis. Have you seen where my Ma’s gone?”

“I haven’t, but I’ll look for her,” Cassandra offered. Noticing a thin cord around the teenager’s neck, she reached for it, and pulled out a small oval medallion of embossed steel from under his clothes. The image was of a witch-knight in profile, but without the signature helmet, and with a drawn bow in his hands rather than a sword or lance; and at his side, a wolfhound sat holding a mallard in its muzzle, more like a retriever dog than a war hound. She turned the medallion over, looking for a name, and found one on the reverse. “May Saint Sébastien commend you to the heavens.”

“I didn’t do a good job,” the boy told her tiredly. “Have you seen my Ma?”

“I haven’t.” Cassandra laid the medallion against his chest, and took his hand instead. “But I’ll look for her.”

Minutes later, she was alone in the clearing again, so she stood up and went back to tracking. Long like a lizard, but tall like a horse, with a tail like a hammer and apparently capable of hefting three adults at a time, she thought as she trailed her fingertips through a weight-deepened grotesque handprint in the snow—a single one now, likely for the creature carrying a dead hunter in the other forelimb.

Cassandra pulled her left glove off for a moment, licked a finger and lifted it up to check the direction of the wind. The sun would come up soon, and with it the creature; and if she were to approach the section of the woods where it made its den, she should do it walking into the wind, to reduce the risk of it catching her scent. And that meant the time to start walking was now.

Her first warning was that the early morning’s birds fell silent, and she dropped herself to the ground behind a large juniper as soon as she noticed. A few minutes later, her second warning came, a crunch of snow under heavy footfalls—far, far heavier than her own. Keeping herself very still, Cassandra risked a glance between the thin branches, and found that the dying kid’s description was surprisingly accurate.

With its spine bending side-to-side as it walked, quite like a lizard’s, the creature stood almost as tall as Fidella at the withers, but its body was significantly longer than the mare’s. A head crested with three pairs of horns—one at the forehead and facing forward like those of an aurochs, one at the sides of the head and curled backwards to ram rather than pierce like those of a snow sheep, and one at the chin almost like the tusks of a boar—but otherwise wolf-like, for the most part, held one pair of side-facing eyes and a front-facing vertical row of three more down the forehead and the bridge of its nose, as well as one pair of upright lupine ears overtop the head and a second more like those of a cow at the sides. Following that was a broad set of shoulders and forelimbs that looked like the arms of a person forced to walk on all fours, but made sinewy and elongated to level the shoulders with the hips, and with the clawed fingers spaced broader apart than should be possible, the thumb and little finger almost in line. Its body was covered in a thick coat of matted fur, burrs and snapped-off twigs sticking through the tangles. If there was anything reasonable about the hind limbs, it was that they didn’t seem capable of letting the creature rear up; where the front-most toes should be, there was a cloven hoof, but with the sides shifted away from the centre in an almost triangular shape, leaving space for a large pawpad, and that was before each foot ended with a back-facing talon, like on a bird of prey. And finally, the tail dragging through the snow behind the creature seemed as long as it would be on a panther of comparable size, and as nimble as on a panther—or a snake—but tipped with a massive protrusion of horn, almost a stinger, but much heavier than that. Almost like the head of a mace or hammer. Frankly, most like that of a horseman’s pick, Cassandra thought as she stayed motionless behind the bush with a clump of snow in her mouth, so as to not let even the mist of her breath betray her presence, and watched the creature walk past her and away with its winding, trot-like gait, towards where a small frozen stream ran to feed into the river further south.

With eyes positioned like that—and that many—the creature would have a near-spherical field of vision, Cassandra knew as she kept herself still until losing sight of it, even through the frost seeping into her bones so much more quickly for pressing her entire body into the snow. When she stood up, it was only to slink behind a tree, straining her eyes in the pre-dawn pallid light until she caught sight of the chimerical silhouette in the distance. For a moment, it seemed to stop and turn sideways to the direction it’s been walking in, and slammed its tail down on something; distantly, there was a sound of shattered ice, and the creature bent down to drink from the stream now unfettered from the winter’s grasp. A few minutes passed before it lifted its head up again, sniffing into the wind as its ears flicked in three different directions all at once, and slowly ambled across the stream in search of something to kill.

Cassandra exhaled slowly, and pulled her cloak more closely around herself as a violent shiver tore through her body, cold and stress and superstitious fear all coming loose. This patch of the woods, or more appropriately this entire side of the river, would not be safe for as long as that creature paced out its length searching for food. Already, there were dead hunters in the area, and heavens only knew how quickly wild game would be thinned and migrate away with a surplus killing predator like that nearby—and there was no telling how quickly the creature would turn on farmers and livestock instead.

But she was alone. And there would be no one to take care of Fidella in her place. And she had promised Owl that she’d be careful.

With a sigh, Cassandra turned away from where the creature had gone, and began a light run backtracking its trail in hopes of finding the den. She was here to find a pack, not a short burst of glory and a violent death. And if she was well enough to fight after whatever was going to happen in that watchtower Sybil had mentioned, maybe she’d go up to the contract board and ask if there was a hunting party being formed against a dangerous creature that’s been menacing the area—or just straight up post a notice for forming one herself, especially considering that she had seen said creature once already.

She slowed down to a quick march again before she could start sweating, unsure of how long she’d have to spend trudging through the cold. There was nothing in sight that could indicate a den large enough to accommodate something of the creature’s size—no holes in the snow-covered ground, no nooks in the few larger formations of stone she could see between the trees—and yet the trail wound on, clearly leading her back somewhere, somewhere that the creature was prone to seeking shelter from the elements at night. About half an hour in, she spotted a shape too regular, too purposeful, to be another pile of boulders between the trees, and diverged from her tracking to take a look.

It was a tar kiln—and still packed despite the fire having burnt out long ago, the charcoal cold and the tar spills covered with a thin layer of snow instead of being collected, no footprints nearby but for her own. Frowning now, Cassandra quickly picked a tree with a low-hanging branch and jumped up to grab onto it, pulling herself up with a huff of exertion on her left arm only, hooking the right elbow over the branch as soon as she was able. While not much of a vantage point, it was still better than just standing on the ground, and she spied a small clearing ahead, taken up with a darker shape that was once again too regular for a natural formation of stone.

Cassandra lowered herself from the branch again and let herself fall to her feet, then looked between the clearing ahead and the creature’s tracks in the snow. Deciding to abandon the tracks for now, she headed for the structure instead, with a feeble hope of finding survivors and a mounting certainty that she would only find more signs of the creature’s presence.

And the structure turned out to be a lone-standing cabin, moss growing through the sharply sloped thatch, a low single-room hut made only lower for being partially underground to conserve heat. There were no windows to look for light in, and a simple hole in the roof did the job of a chimney, but even so the building did not look lived in. Not with the door ajar and hanging off one hinge. Not with the creature’s tracks, old and new, trampled all around the hut and invariably leading through that door, this way and that.

Cassandra walked out from beneath the trees and pulled the door open, stepping through a small bank of snow that the wind had carried inside and into a slaughterhouse. The hearth was cold, its ashes long-since scattered all over and mingled with half-clotted, half-frozen blood smeared in drag marks across the uneven clay floor. Bodies of wild game and at least a half dozen people littered the entire room but for the low attic at one end of the building, not unlike the one Cassandra had seen in the Tysons’ farmhouse—yet unlike there, this one was torn down so violently that she started reconsidering her previous assumption of the creature’s inability to stand up on its hind legs. What sparse furniture the hut may have had was torn apart and smashed into splinters, blankets and tablecloths and broken boards tangled through a staggeringly large heap of bones licked clean; not a pile, exactly, but a broad flat area, one that Cassandra slowly realized must have been bedding. More easily identifiable scraps of fur and cloth and leather littered the room, and often retained blood stains or garlands of gore, lungs turned to pink mush against the snow, intestine dragging behind a still clothed pair of legs, a disembodied and still-booted foot that had been very clearly chewed on, and Cassandra thought of the people she knew were already missing—a tar worker, a hired porter, three hunters: two men and a woman.

What she had not expected to find were the remains of a horse, and she stood before the mangled carcass for a longer moment, confused. Most wild game of comparable size were too large for the creature to heft and carry home, she had noticed earlier. The locals were more prone to using draft ponies than horses, she’d been told at a farrier’s workshop, and this was more likely to have been a riding horse than a plough one. Not only that, but there weren’t any signs of tack and harness—not on the gnawed-on corpse, not elsewhere throughout the hut. Cassandra picked at the blood-clumped remains of a mane. Black, it seemed, somewhere under all the grime.

As she stood up again, a glint of light reflecting against metal caught her eye, and she looked there in hopes of finding another medallion stamped with a saint’s likeness on whatever remained of a dead huntress. What she found instead, however, was a brass buckle hanging off a scrap of a sheepskin coat; nothing much, inexpensive and therefore very common wear in the region. Really, nothing that merited the amount of time Cassandra spent holding it in her hands.

Except for the fact that the scrap was not torn by monstrous teeth, and not bloodstained. It had been pulled apart at the seams.

She looked around quickly, spying a few more sections of destroyed garb that hadn’t been shredded along with the wearer’s body. A pair of trousers. A pair of boots. Finally, a snapped leather belt, and around its buckle a simple wrap that still held a small scabbard in place—a scabbard that, in turn, still held an ornate dagger, its pommel carved into the shape of a badger’s head.

Cassandra sighed as she looked between that and the slaughtered black mare. It hasn’t even been two weeks since they last saw each other.

She laid the rags and the dagger down again, and searched for nothing more than a pack—and found one with the unfortunate porter’s arm and part of his torso still slung through a shoulder strap. There seemed to be no interest taken in the pack itself, the bedroll and coil of rope tied to its sides, or its contents—only in the porter as a food item—so Cassandra opened the knapsack’s waxed leather flap to rummage through. A few more scroll tubes, a large and well-stocked scribing kit, and a padded cassette of differently coloured inks were all to be expected, as was a larger, flat, velvet-lined case that held more delicate instruments: two pairs of differently sized compasses, no less than eight quill nibs, a few magnifying glasses, a small pair of callipers, a set of rulers, a few pencils, even a pencil sharpener with a clear glass container for the sheared-off scraps of graphite and wood. What wasn’t immediately explainable, however, was another case filled with lockpicks, a few pairs of narrow-bladed scissors, a small file, a pair of pliers, and a small square mirror mounted on a hooked metal handle, as if for checking around corners without leaning out. Or another stacked full of glass, with one row of corked vials, a second and third of tiny jars marked with labels that Cassandra couldn’t read but recognized as chemical symbols, and underneath those a small mortar, a pestle to match, and a stirring rod. Or a third that held a few sticks of sealing wax, four different seals, two tiny boxes full of silver and gold leaf in turn, and a row of small tools with narrow, flat edges, perfectly viable for sculpting hot wax into the shape of a fake seal.

If Cassandra hadn’t already expected Sybil to be another Kotoan spy, she would certainly start now, she thought to herself dryly as she packed the chemical kit and the forgery kit back into their places, closed up the knapsack, and slung it over one shoulder. It was also a perfectly good reason for why she had asked for Cassandra’s aid directly, rather than risk her tools and her identity with a random sellsword taking notices from the contract board.

At least the agents of the Kotoan Crown operating in Riddersbrug had formed a believable chain of word-of-mouth with their personas. A low-ranking officer on the southern bank’s Guard and a ragpicker who knew her through her grandfather; a stranded scribe who knew the ragpicker in turn, likely from using paper made from the scraps gathered in the city’s sewers. They didn’t stand out among other people that Cassandra had seen in the city, she mused, not for how mixed between Koto and Equis this entire border territory was, and not among so many others hailing from so many different kingdoms and nations, sellswords and workers and members of the Scarlet Brigade.

The trek back took her the better part of the early afternoon, especially after she made her way back to the dead teenager and slung his stiff body over the other shoulder. By the time Cassandra arrived to the 'roadside inn' of a larger, wealthier farmstead where the owner was willing to rent stable space and accept coin in return for a meal and a tiny room overnight, she was panting and her smallclothes were soaked through with sweat. Her grim load and even more grim news of the dead in the forest were received with sorrow, but with thanks as well, and Cassandra walked away as the head of the family began instructing one of his sons or farmhands to run between the neighbours to spread the news and the warning about the creature in the woods.

Sybil was sitting at a table in the far end of the building’s common room, puzzling over one of her scrolls—scribed with symbols or letters that Cassandra couldn’t even recognize, much less read—but looked up eagerly at the sight of her and the knapsack on her shoulder. “I see you were successful, thank heavens.”

“I’m going to have a few questions for you once we’re away from prying ears,” Cassandra told her quietly, even as she handed the pack over.

“Yes, I thought you might.” Sybil’s tone was level and her face unsurprised as she pawed through the knapsack, checking if her belongings were all there and in what condition. “Have you seen that... being, by any chance?”

“It’s an Ingvarrdian chanter gone wrong,” Cassandra said flatly.

“Ah. But of course. As if matters were not grim enough already.” Sybil sighed. “Friend of yours?”

“Not exactly. We’ve worked together for the past month, but I only spoke to her a handful of times, and I don’t even know her name.” Cassandra hung her cloak over the back of a chair and started undoing the fastenings of her fur-lined vest. “Whatever’s left of her seems to be active during daylight and bunk down for the night. Also, this trip took quite a bit out of me, so I’m going to go catch up on sleep now. We can leave for your watchtower in the evening, if it’s near enough for us to make it before nightfall.”

“It is, and I find your plan sound,” the spy told her easily, her tone and veneer still soft, but her eyes hard and holding no trace of the timid scribe from before. “Rest up. I’ll come wake you shortly before sundown.”

With a nod, Cassandra withdrew into the privacy of the broom closet of a side room the two of them had rented for the time being, and peeled her tunic off to finally rid herself of the sweat-soaked undergarment beneath that. The tunic itself was partially wet as well, she noticed with a grimace, even as she soaked a rag with some water and wiped with it at her torso, arms, and as much of her back as she could reach, for the lack of opportunity to actually clean herself in the earnest. Even that little helped, and after drying herself off, Cassandra put on a fresh change of smallclothes, unbuckled her boots, and opted for the room’s single bed rather than her bedroll still set out on the floor, where she would sleep while Sybil was taking up the narrow mattress.

Monsters were only real when they used to be people, she thought back to what Sigrid had said several times over. Then to the dead kid she had just dragged back for a burial, who named the creature in the woods as looking like nothing that’s real.

How would one even go about bringing down something that large, and through its impossibility, that unpredictable, Cassandra thought tiredly. The blue-fletched carrier arrows could help deliver a toxin, but she sincerely doubted whether an application of poison suitable for killing a person would even do anything against the sheer bulk of that—anything beyond the nasty wounds that the fragmenting arrowheads would cause on impact. She knew that it could heft three people, but not four, and not an elk or larger deer; she knew it had a very, very wide field of vision; she knew it kept returning to the tar worker’s hut where it made its lair. And that was where her knowledge ended. She didn’t know how fast or how nimble it could be, whether it could climb, whether it was venomous, whether arrows and spears would even penetrate that matted hide. Whatever group she could join or assemble to hunt it, some members would die even if the others were successful. And success was far from guaranteed in the first place.

Her withered fingers twitched sharply, sending a flare of pain through the whole forearm. With a grimace, Cassandra cradled it to her chest, the hand tucked between her shoulder and the corner of her jaw as she laid on her right side. She was running out of painkillers. Whatever Sybil was going to pay her, she would have to spend at an apothecary, after however long it would take her to find one in the first place.

She didn’t expect to actually fall asleep for all the pain and the unpleasant thoughts, but she had started her day before the sun did, and she had spent half of it thus far hauling a whole another person’s dead weight. Through restless, incoherent dreams that she could not hold onto, the touch of a hand gently shaking her shoulder came as a relief, and Cassandra cracked her eyes open to stare at the dim room in confusion for a few seconds before turning her head to see Sybil standing over her patiently. A modest meal later, and they set out despite the farmsteaders’ open worry, with Sybil pointing out the remains of a watchtower in the distance: an asymmetrical dark silhouette perched overtop a hill to the northwest, clearly visible against the swiftly fading sunlight.

“So,” Sybil prompted in a conversational tone, once they’ve walked about halfway there and the daylight was long gone. “Questions, then?”

“Yeah. First off, I assume you may need to reintroduce yourself?”

The spy at Cassandra’s side gave her a look that was somewhere between indulgent and exasperated. “You may still call me Sybil. Agent of the Crown, which you may not refer to me as. You must be aware that the pair operating in Silberstadt wrote ahead of you? Which, speaking of, my thanks for saving a subordinate’s life. Twice over, I hear.”

“It’s fine. It was easy to mask as sellsword work mixed with random acts of kindness, and I didn’t do the second time alone,” Cassandra grumbled, bundling her cloak up more closely around herself. “And I’m sure Ramon didn’t sing my praises, either.”

Sybil snorted at that. “It was an even mix of irritation and praise. But you had the luck of getting scoped out by Renée first, here in Riddersbrug, and she is very often a reliable judge of character. Hence Rutger’s interest in you prior; hence your presence at my side right now.”

“Explain something to me,” Cassandra said calmly. “How come Ramon stayed put in Silberstadt this entire time, but his message about me arrived in Riddersbrug faster than I did?”

“Trade secret, I’m afraid,” the Kotoan spy told her with a hint of amusement. “Next question.”

“I saw a chemical kit in your porter’s backpack. You know that there’s some alchemist inside the city providing the Scarlet Brigade with extremely flammable materials, right?”

“I do indeed, and we’re investigating. Rutger did mention you’ve helped interrupt the most recent delivery. Top work.”

Cassandra narrowed her eyes at the off-handed praise. “Do you think that maybe it’s time to brief me on what we’re actually getting ourselves into right now?”

“If you have no more questions?”

“No more immediate ones, no.”

Sybil nodded at that, her manner once again matter-of-fact and with a clipped, official quality that immediately made Cassandra think back to Tara—the same dispassionate look in both their eyes, or eye in the case of the spy she’d helped drag back from death’s door. “We need to retrieve an item stashed in that watchtower by a roaming agent in the past week. The catch, and the reason for why you’re here, is that a small pack of outlaws moved into the ruins in the meantime. While the agent in question made a clean getaway, and I’m not sure whether these outlaws are aware of the item’s significance or even existence, it will not do to take that chance and wait until they move on.”

“And we’re here to kill them and pick up your stash,” Cassandra guessed, her tone flat.

“Not precisely, not if we can avoid it. Slaughtering the lot will draw attention, which is the leading cause of death in my line of work. So ideally, I want us to get around them silently, retrieve the stash, and withdraw without being noticed. It’s a tall order, I realize that, and we may have no choice but to cut a few of them down. But the fewer kills we make here, the better. I trust you’re disciplined enough to make that happen, knight-errant.”

Cassandra grimaced at that. “Who do you take me for? It isn’t me who got twisted into a man-eating monster around here.”

“I apologize if I offended you, but hiring a regular sellsword around here only to tell them later not to kill something is usually met with mockery or outright violence. Another reason for why you were my best recourse. Or the only one.” Sybil lifted an open hand, and made a small disgruntled noise when a lazily drifting snowflake landed in her palm. “I see I’ve underestimated the speed with which it would start snowing. We’re on a timetable, it seems.”

“So it does,” Cassandra grumbled, pulling her hood further down her face. “At least it’ll cover our tracks later.”

“That was precisely the idea, yes.”

“And do you know the exact spot where this stash of yours is hidden, or are we going to have to search?”

“We’ll have to search, but I doubt it’ll take very long. I will know which floor tile to look underneath once we secure the chamber it’s located in.”

“Floor tile,” Cassandra repeated dryly. “I am not using my sword to lever up a floor tile. And I haven’t seen a crowbar on that pack of yours, or anything that could be used in a similar fashion.”

With a long-suffering look on her face, Sybil reached into her coat, and pulled out a mattock from the back of her belt.

“That’ll work,” Cassandra withdrew her objections immediately.

They spent the rest of the walk in silence, trekking into the wind and the light snowfall carried on it. Soon enough, Cassandra could see a brighter spot in the ruined watchtower’s silhouette, a hint of firelight bright against the surrounding snow; and it did seem to have been intentionally piled up in a few places, the outlaws supplementing the crumbled walls and patching the blown-out windows with a snow fort of sorts, studded with small shards of rubble and smeared with campfire ashes to mimic the texture of stone or just reduce the reflection of light. It would do little to help them if their base was raided by the city guard or a more regimented bandit outfit, but a tiny little bit of added protection was still better than absolutely none. And if nothing else, then at least piling up the snow gave them something to do, Cassandra supposed, and do together—something to vary the monotony with, something to keep busy with for everyone’s sake, an exercise in trying to make use of anything at hand to better the group’s lot rather than just sit down and despair or argue.

Still, the question remained of what the outlaws were going to live off of, Cassandra knew. Gathering firewood to keep warm, melting snow for drinking water, and hunting for food was all well and good, but there was a monster in the forest that would soon make two of the three a suicidal endeavour, if it hadn’t already. Even if the group wasn’t inclined towards violence, they would soon have little choice but to default to overnight raids on the surrounding farmsteads just to keep themselves alive.

Without a word, Sybil signalled her to keep low to the ground as they began ascending a side path that led up the hill and into the watchtower’s ruins, hiding behind snowbanks and any errant vegetation that still poked out through the snow. A shadow moving against the firelight quickly caught Cassandra’s eye, and she put her good hand on the spy’s shoulder before nodding towards an outlaw pacing this way and that as they kept watch; with only a small sigh, Sybil tugged her to the side, circling around and away from the sentry.

They had to repeat that manoeuvre two more times, first when they spotted another outlaw on watch, then when the sentries changed at the end of the hour. The brief conversation between a pair of outlaws during that sentry change did give Sybil and Cassandra enough of a chance to sneak closer, close enough that the campsite inside the ruins was in direct sight, but it was as close as they could get without being noticed. One step, one move further ahead, and the fresh sentry would raise an alarm, instead of just pacing this way and that in an effort to keep warm, huffing into his hands.

Cassandra leaned her head out for a few seconds as the sentry walked the several steps of a patrol route away from them, and ducked back into cover to strap her archery aid around her withered wrist. “I can probably shoot him down from here.”

“No need to risk it, not against this wind,” Sybil whispered back calmly, even as she put a hand into her sleeve and pulled out a long, narrow-bladed dagger. “I’ll take it from here.”

Cassandra gave the spy a questioning look, but received no follow-up explanation, only held her breath with a quiet hiss as she watched Sybil slowly, slowly crawl half a pace farther ahead and momentarily lean out over the ledge for a better look as well—then duck back down, and fold her hands, the dagger’s blade between her palms, and bow her head and close her eyes as her lips moved soundlessly in a recitation of some sort. A prayer, Cassandra realized after a moment, equal parts incensed and dumbfounded. Was there really no better time and place to be praying?

Soon as she had the time to think that, she noticed that Sybil’s shadow among the night was deeper than her own. Deeper than it should be, really. And definitely more mobile than it should be, crawling off the snowy ground and over the spy’s motionless form as Sybil kept reciting the prayer with a focused look on her face, darkening the contours and refracting the planes of her body, a cloak and a living thing both at once. And when Sybil opened her eyes again, they were twin pools of spectral blue, just slightly luminous, the same colour as a ghost’s intangible memory of what they used to look like—and as soon as she opened her eyes again, she was done praying, and twirled the stiletto in her fingers with ominously practiced ease until the hilt landed square in her palm. She surged forward, like a sprinter breaking into a run, but no human form vaulted overtop the ledge, only a darker swirl among the darkness, one that coalesced back into the spy’s diminutive form straight behind the outlaw’s back. And in the same single, fluid motion, Sybil placed one open hand under the sentry’s chin to shove his chin upwards and slit his throat with the other, and wrestled the outlaw into stillness as he seized up and scrabbled frantically at her arms, any feeble noise he could have made carried away on the wind, mere seconds passing before he went limp. Dragging his weight to the side and letting him rest against the wall was also a matter of seconds, and with that done, Sybil’s lips moved in a soundless phrase again, if shorter this time—and as she took a step backwards, her body faded into a surge of shadows once more, coalescing again in the same spot at Cassandra’s side that she had just vacated. Then she blinked the blue from her eyes, and sniffed against the cold, and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe each side of her dagger’s narrow blade into, her manner as serenely calm as just prior.

“Did it slip your mind to mention you’re an executioner?!” Cassandra hissed at her.

“Did nothing slip yours, Favoured of the Crown?” Sybil shot back in a pointed whisper as she sheathed the stiletto in her sleeve again. “The way is clear, let us advance before it is no longer so.”

And there was absolutely nothing Cassandra could say to that, so she just followed the spy up the ledge and into the outermost, shattered wall of the watchtower. Slinking behind the still-intact stonework and beneath the gaps where whole chunks of it were missing, they made their way through the circular corridor and around the outlaws’ campfire, and held their breath each as they silently leapt across the outpour of light where a door frame stood open and only filled up about to the waist with a wall of packed snow between them and that camp. Once they were relatively safe in the dark again, Sybil glanced into the corridor’s depths, and the set of her jaw hardened as she found the way forward blocked with a pile of rubble and broken rafters; and instead of attempting to scale that, she waved Cassandra behind herself and up the remains of a narrow spiral staircase. What was left of the first floor was now roofing much of the corridor they had just gone through at ground level, and they defaulted to a crawl rather than a walk—both to stay hidden and to distribute each of their weight onto a larger area, in hopes that it would be enough to prevent the ruin from collapsing underneath them.

“Hold up,” Cassandra whispered, and when that seemed to have gone unheard, she grabbed at one of Sybil’s ankles and tugged lightly. Once she had the spy’s attention, she crawled up to her, and nodded at the somewhat bird’s-eye view of the ruin. “Can you see the room we need, from here?”

“We need the armoury,” Sybil breathed back at her. “Once there, count seven floor tiles from the entrance, then three to the left. That’s where the stash is located.”

Cassandra lifted herself up onto her elbows, straining her eyes to see across the ruins. An armoury would not be a very large room, but one with a significant length of walls to put weapon racks against. And if the ghosts of Kotoan watchmen who encroached upon her dreams once before were any indication, there would not be any armour stands there, since it was armour rather than a uniform that was worn every day and in every waking hour. Any room with stands or chests meant for storing it overnight would be quarters.

An armoury would also not be resting against the outermost wall, as a precaution against someone breaching it with explosives or tunnelling into the room. And it would likely only have one entrance.

And the only intact room that checked all these boxes was directly behind the large one where the outlaws made their camp, Cassandra realized, and gritted her teeth as she looked at the bundled up figures huddled around the fire. Six, without counting the pair of sentries—one in their place, one already dead—ranging from just about her age to almost twice that, at a glance. Some seemed to hail from the area, some from faraway lands, by the looks of them; one had the round face and dark hair of a Galcrestian, another trimmed their beard in an outdated Kotoan fashion, three more were wearing tasselled scarves that would be very familiar if not for the fact that their once-red hue has been thoroughly stained into a black or deep gray. Among those three, one didn’t have a proper winter coat, and kept trying to wrap himself into a short, thin, somewhat flimsy little half-cloak, more suited to late summer in lands hundreds of miles southward. A very familiar flimsy little half-cloak. And in his hands, there was an equally familiar tin box that he was putting a paper packet into, one like those that Cassandra had seen used and used herself for the storage of food seasonings, and all she could do was sigh quietly.

“Oh, for the love of...”

“Problems?” Sybil murmured, her tone the same as right before dispatching the outlaw on watch.

Cassandra slowly pointed a finger at Tiachren. “That kid, the one in the half-cloak? Please do everything you can to avoid killing him.”

The spy narrowed her eyes at her. “Why him, specifically?”

Cassandra smothered an exasperated rise to her voice. “I’ve gone to some trouble not to kill him once before, and I would hate to have that effort go to waste, alright? When I met him, he was running with the Scarlet Brigade; I told him to do something better with his life, and he’s evidently tried to listen. If we have to get past him on the way out, let me handle it, rather than get rid of him like you did with the sentry. He’s just a boy.”

“He’s almost a man,” Sybil said calmly.

“Do you want me to beg you for a stranger’s life?” Cassandra hissed under her breath.

A brief look of disgust crossed Sybil’s face, and she shook her head before looking away. “I’ll see what I can do. For now, that looks like the room we need to go. There is no way out but through their camp or by climbing over what’s left of the eastern inner wall, and I am told you have some trouble climbing. Do you think you’ll be able to make it?”

Cassandra squinted at the same room that she’d spotted herself earlier, and didn’t answer for a long moment. If she could climb over what was left of that wall, they would end up in the portion of the corridor they were circumventing right now, which would lead them out of the ruins in the same spot they had entered through—and without having to cross the patch of light that poured out of the campsite again. If she could climb over that wall.

Frankly, she probably could, it was just a matter of how badly she was going to regret it afterwards.

“I’m going to need some assistance,” she whispered back in the end. “But if you help me scale it with a rope, I should be able to make it.”

“Good, then that is what we will do. Let me make my way across and follow once I’m in the armoury.”

“Got it.”

With a one last nod, Sybil crawled ahead over the first floor’s remains. Once above the armoury, she leaned out just slightly to check if the outlaws were looking in her direction, then dropped down into the room below without a sound. Seeing that, Cassandra started crawling across as well, and along the way, considered her boots. Her halfway-up-the-shin, steel-toed, buckled boots that were infinitely heavier than the spy’s flat shoes. Unless she landed in a snowbank, she was going to make noise, and landing in a snowbank would leave very deep tracks.

Immediate certain danger, or possible danger in the future, Cassandra thought sourly as she made sure the bandits weren’t looking and leapt off the first floor to land in a pile of snow accumulated in the armoury. She managed to stifle a yelp of pain into a slightly wheezing breath as her legs protested against the length of the drop; but at least, there was no way imaginable to twist an ankle in boots that high and that stiff.

Once she recovered, she kicked the snow into some semblance of trying to cover her tracks and slinked over to where Sybil was—mattock out and its adze-like end wedged into the gap between the floor tiles of thick stone, the spy red-faced with exertion now as she tried to pull and achieved nothing. Cassandra put her left hand on the tool’s handle and braced her right elbow against the left, and put a foot on the other end of the mattock’s head, and gave a nod to signal she was ready.

“On three,” Sybil breathed, her voice barely a sound at all so close to the outlaw camp. “Two, three—”

They heaved, and lifted the slab of stone some four inches off the ground. Sybil’s grip on the mattock eased away as the spy checked if Cassandra could hold it up herself, then reached underneath the tile and quickly pulled something out. A strongbox, it turned out, no larger than half a loaf of bread. With a nod, Sybil set the box in her lap for a moment to help Cassandra set the floor tile down, then gestured her to turn around and stuffed the box into the knapsack on Cassandra’s back, tied it closed, and wasted no time taking the coil of rope and effortlessly climbing over the eastern wall’s remains with one end of it in hand.

Cassandra sighed to herself quietly. What wouldn’t she give to be able to do that herself, like she used to.

But she couldn’t, so instead she did the next best thing, which was to tie the other end of the rope around her waist and tug on it—and once it went taut, Sybil trying to provide some assistance, Cassandra pulled herself up with her left hand and then hooked her right elbow through the rope, and took another arm’s length of it into her left hand, and kept pulling herself up through the climb in short, awkward bursts of uneven movement. Ungraceful and jerky and experimental as it was, it was still movement, and eventually Cassandra made it onto the other side, where they put the rope back into its place and headed towards the exit from the ruins.

“Wait, hold up. You take this,” Cassandra shrugged the knapsack off and shoved it into Sybil’s arms.

“You do realize there’s a reason I would hire a porter,” the spy whispered back at her pointedly.

“I’m sure—” Cassandra hefted the dead outlaw sentry and slung him across her shoulders like a doe. “—but I can’t carry both at the same time. I know where the local terror comes to the water. If I dump the body near to that spot, there’s a chance it’ll get disposed of, and no one is going to blink at a random sellsword getting eaten.”

For the first time, there was a thin smile on Sybil’s lips. “Clever. Do it.”

And with that, they went back into the cold, the snowfall now far from gently drifting snowflakes, but mercifully not a blizzard just yet. Slowly, Cassandra realized that they were in grave danger just from the weather and the hour, even if Sybil had a compass in her hand and pointed the way back to the farmhouse with certainty. And she had just declared she would do another run before the sun came up, besides simply making it all the way back.

“We might need to find shelter,” she told the spy at her side.

“We’re halfway there,” Sybil said, sounding winded.

“Do you want to make it the other half, too? Because we might have to choose between making it tomorrow or not at all.”

With a huff, the spy reached into her coat with frost-stiffened fingers and pulled out a tiny bottle of crystal cut glass, took a long sip, and handed the flask to Cassandra. “Empty it.”

“What is that?”

“Anointment of the virtue of fortitude. In a foreigner’s terms, I suppose you would call it a potion, but it is more of a bottled answer to a lengthy and complicated prayer rather than a simple alchemical concoction. And if you’re not going to drink it, then give it back, it takes a Knight Grand Cross of the Tribunal Order to bless more and there isn’t a single one of those within hundreds of miles. Not a living one, at least.” Sybil brushed the accumulating snow from the front of her coat, a bit of new vigour already seeping into her voice and her stride. “We must make headway and we must make it now, but I acknowledge we might need all the help we can get in order to live through it.”

“I’m not sworn to your King directly, and I don’t pray to your saints or your angels,” Cassandra told the Kotoan trudging through the snow beside her. “Do you think it’s even going to work on me?”

Sybil lifted both hands in an irritated shrug. “Bottoms up, Favoured, and we’ll find out.”

Cassandra glared. “To your health, then.”

She knocked back the rest and coughed immediately as it seared down her throat, worse than any distilled spirit she’d ever had. Unlike any of those distilled spirits, too, the aftertaste was more than just a taste—it was a slightly dizzying array of sensations, the bitterness of fragrant smoke on her tongue, the murmur of a distant voice reciting within an unknown cadence, the smoothness of oil combined with the lightness of rosewater. And lingering even after those tore through the forefront of her mind only to evaporate, there was that liquid fire now pouring into her chest and spreading across it, unpleasant even as it did seem to burn away the exhaustion and the cold. She shook her head slightly, and blinked the tears from her eyes only to find herself on her ass in the snow, the dead outlaw knocked off her shoulders, and Sybil kneeling in front of her with hands on Cassandra’s shoulders and worry on her face.

“Can you hear me?”

Cassandra tried to confirm, but it only came out as another cough, so she just nodded instead.

“Are you alright?”

“It’s fine, I’ve had worse,” Cassandra wheezed, and coughed again before she wiped at her eyes with her knuckles and groaned, her voice slowly returning to normal. “It burns, and I don’t just mean like whiskey, but I think it’s working. I don’t remember sitting down, though.”

“Your legs gave out the moment you swallowed. I’ve been trying to get you to respond to me for the past two minutes,” Sybil told her, still alarmed, if slightly less now. “Can you stand?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Cassandra picked herself up, testing the newfound burst of strength searing all through her body.

That is, all through her body, except for her right arm from the elbow down. Of course.

She wound her good hand into the outlaw sentry’s vest and threw his corpse over one shoulder with ease, then looked to Sybil again. “Well, let’s get going before this wears off, huh?”

The spy shook her head a little, the last of receding worry on her face mixed with incredulity now. “Maybe it’s a good thing you only drank half of that. How bad is this burning sensation you feel?”

“I’ll take it if it gets me through the night,” Cassandra said flatly.

Sybil inclined her head, pocketing the empty flask away. “It will. Let’s continue on, then.”

By the time they made it back to the farmhouse, the painful, scorching afterburn pulsing in time with Cassandra’s heartbeat faded back into a manageable intensity, and the inexplicable second wind lingered strongly enough that she decided to go through with her initial plan of disposing of the dead outlaw via the local terror’s drinking spot. The sky was beginning to grow gray behind the snowfall, and once again, Cassandra found herself staring at a corpse in the pre-dawn light. And finally realized that while the outlaw’s throat was sliced open very thoroughly, there was no blood poured onto his vest, no stains save for around the immediate area of the cut. She frowned at that, but didn’t linger, unwilling to meet the creature whose territory she had crossed into again—not in this state, possibly not at all—and ran back to the farmhouse, burning through the last bit of that added strength. As soon as she came indoors, she was wrapped in a thick blanket and seated in front of the hearth, with a steaming mug shoved in her hands and a reprimand about going outdoors overnight in the middle of winter that she only half-listened to as she turned to the second cone of furs and woollen fabric, Sybil’s face and hands poking from within.

“I thought you’d be asleep by now.”

“Well, I wanted to wait for you,” Sybil said with a gentle look on her face, and Cassandra stared at her for a moment of confounded silence before she realized that the spy had simply switched back into her scribe persona already. “But I do plan to bed down shortly, yes. As soon as I drink this.”

Cassandra sipped from her own mug, and couldn’t hold back a wince. Cheap tea, which was fine, cut with a very liberal application of raspberry syrup so thick that she was almost surprised it wasn’t congealing at the bottom. At least it was going to help with drawing the cold out of her bones, she thought with resignation, and forced herself to drink again.

“Let’s rest first and ride back into the city later in the day.”

“Heavens, please.” Sybil rubbed at her eyes in an exhausted gesture. “I work sitting at a pulpit day and night, I’m not built for escapades like this. I thought we were going to die. And now that we didn’t, I’m going to hug the first bookshelf and kiss the first scroll I can find.”

“Sybil?”

“Mm?”

“I want hazard pay.”

The spy burst out laughing, the sound staggeringly genuine for as little as it lasted. “I think I can arrange that.”

They laid down to sleep soon after, Cassandra ceding the bed to Sybil once again and curling up around her withered arm on the bedroll. After nearly a week of substantial, concentrated effort, culminating in the night that had just ended and everything that took place over its course, she’d expected to drift off nearly as soon as she laid herself down. And it wasn’t exactly that she did not. Only that when she did, it was to find herself in a freefall down a bottomless pit built of the scorching, searing pain still burning down her every intact blood vessel, every nerve; a column of golden light so screamingly bright as to almost turn white, a sensation that should be one of warmth but that has been blown out of proportion into the rank of a heavenly scourge, clashing against one of comparable magnitude but shattered in half with contradiction, a keening howl of yearning and need cracked against an ice-cold conflagration of cosmic rage that made Cassandra’s own blaze of righteous fury look like a dying ember, sparks and wisps of lightning frothing at the fissure line against that pillar of fire, and the fissure only ever deepening against that onslaught of heat and light until it crested into the physical realm with a sudden eruption of blinding agony at something so close to the core of her existence breaking—and even after, only more of the heat and light and fire and now there was nothing to contest it with, nothing to put between its incomprehensible magnitude and Cassandra as she burned to a cinder for the eternity she spent locked in the torment of its scrutiny, until she was shattered into that torment’s other side with a lungful of breath she hadn’t drawn and her eyes cracking open as she bolted upright in the bedroll, shaking and grasping at the starburst of grey-black scars raised over her beating heart and her breath coming in ragged, panicked wheezes.

And it took her a moment to blink in incomprehension at the wooden walls around her and a bed where someone else was sleeping and thin rays of daylight filtering through the shuttered window. And once she did, the realization that she was awake blasted her in the chest so strongly that she thumped backwards into the bedroll again, trembling hands rising to cover her face for a moment of respite without sunlight, before she curled up and just allowed the tension to seep out of her body in shivers so strong as to make her teeth chatter.

First the time she got shot from an elixir handcannon, now an unholy amalgam of the Moonstone chipping right in her chest and of her life being squashed back into existence after mere minutes of blissful nothing on the ground. If that was what her dreams were going to look like nowadays, maybe she should try going without any sleep at all.

She looked over her shoulder at the sound of a restless little noise, and found Sybil still dead asleep, flat on her back and with her mouth open, lips moving in words only barely clear enough to make out.

“Quart of wheat for a day’s wage, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wage...”

“Not much of a business model,” Cassandra said quietly, unsure as yet whether the spy, too, was having a nightmare she’d need to be shaken awake from.

A small frown passed through Sybil’s face, and she rolled onto her side towards the sound of Cassandra’s voice, one arm now tucked under her chin and the other hanging off the bed as she mumbled, “Don’t hurt the oil and the wine.”

Cassandra waited, but the only follow-up that came was a soft snore. She sat up again regardless, and took a long moment to collect herself, forehead rested on her knees and hair gathered up in her good hand, kept off her face until she could breathe right again, until her mind was clear enough to hear herself think. Then she snuck out of the room and ducked outside for a moment, greeting the farmhouse’s inhabitants along the way and shooting down their teasing remarks about sleeping in with a dry reminder that she had gone to sleep after they’ve risen for the day.

The snowfall was spent, and the sky clear—an hour, hour and a half past noon already, Cassandra realized with a frown. She went back to the room they were renting and opened the window shutters. When no reaction followed, she put a hand on Sybil’s shoulder and shook her carefully. Still nothing. With a sigh, Cassandra resigned herself to getting stabbed for startling an agent of Kotoan Crown out of her sleep, and shook the spy’s shoulder again, more firmly this time.

“Sybil, wake up.”

That finally earned her an unhappy little whine. And mercifully, no stab wounds.

“Sybil. It’s getting late. We need to get going.”

“I’m fucking exhausted, Cassandra,” the spy grumbled, rubbing sleep out of her eyes, and gave her a feeble glare that immediately turned to a look of concern. “Ah. I see I’m in good company on that front. Didn’t get much out of your sleep, either?”

“You could say that.”

Sybil sat up, and studied her for a longer moment. “Do you think it’s to do with the... afterburn... of what I gave you to drink?”

“Not directly, no. That’s gone by now, anyway. It just—” Cassandra sighed. “It reminded me of something else.”

“I understand,” the spy said simply, and pressed no more.

Soon enough, they were ready to ride back to the city, Cassandra having prepared Fidella for the trip and Sybil handling matters of courtesy and payment with the head of the family living at the farmstead. Soon enough, Cassandra was keeping an eye on the woods, and trying to ignore the borderline uncomfortable way in which Sybil was clinging to her, the spy’s hands grabbing the front edges of Cassandra’s cloak in two loose fistfuls. At least she knew where the hands of a royally-mandated executioner were, she thought to herself with irritation, but paused when she heard a slower, deeper exhale, and finally realized that Sybil was just snoozing against her back.

With a roll of her eyes, Cassandra shifted her shoulders. “Hey.”

A slightly sharper intake of breath, and another disgruntled little noise. “What?”

“Keep awake, you’re going to throw us both from the saddle.”

The spy grumbled under her breath before answering. “You want me to stay awake? Then speak with me. It matters little what about.”

“Did you know that you talk in your sleep?” Cassandra asked dryly.

She felt Sybil sigh into the back of her shoulder. “I’ve been told as much, yes, but also that it’s mostly gibberish. Did you make out anything substantial?”

“Not really. Just something about a famine.”

“Hm. I am hoping we’ll be able to avoid one in the region, that much is true.” The spy pressed her forehead into Cassandra’s back more firmly, yawning. “I appreciate you being so forthright, though. Next question.”

“Last night,” Cassandra said, something she’d actually hoped to have the opportunity to ask about. “Where did the blood go?”

“I’m sorry, I’m afraid you’ll have to expand on that thought for me.”

“You slit a man’s throat last night. Not only did you not get a speck of his blood on yourself, the snow around where that happened was pristine, too, and his garb wasn’t stained either. So where did the blood go?”

“Ah.” Sybil gave a little chuckle. “With enough practice, you can slit someone’s throat in such a way that the blood pours inwards rather than spatter outwards. So to answer your question, the blood went into his lungs and stomach, for the most part.”

Cassandra went silent at that, contemplating the fact that she was playing escort for someone capable of drowning her enemies in their own blood quicker than they would, in fact, bleed out. And that she was making a point of purposefully keeping that person awake against her wishes.

Sybil tugged lightly on Cassandra’s cloak. “Well? I’m dozing off again.”

“What’s in that box we went to all this trouble for?”

“I fail to see how that is any business of yours,” Sybil said gently.

With a sigh, Cassandra took one of Sybil’s hands at the wrist, and patted it over Raps’ favour tied around her left arm. “You know what this is, yeah? And you’ve called me Favoured enough times to know that Tara and Ramon named me a friend to Koto, rather than just a Seven Kingdom ally. If you allow it to be my business, even if only barely, you can make further use of me.”

“Mm.” Sybil put her cheek between Cassandra’s shoulder blades, the tone of her voice considering. “True enough that you’ve given a decent amount of aid to those in my line of work so far.”

“If you don’t want me, or would rather keep me at an arm’s length for safety reasons, that’s okay too. Just remember that when you need someone discreet, you can put me to work as a hired sword or a courier,” Cassandra said calmly.

“I will certainly keep that in mind. Do you have favourite places to lodge at within the city?”

“The Drunken Lion’s Den on the northern riverbank. The Forester’s Catch on the southern.”

She felt Sybil nod against her back. “Sound choices, and once again, I appreciate you being so forthright about where you sleep. The Mussel Ford on the southern bank serves very good dishes of clam, crayfish, and eel at reasonable prices, if you’re inclined towards food reaped from the river.” Then the spy yawned again, and stretched as much as she could. “Pull your steed off the road, if you please, and we’ll go about cracking that box open.”

Cassandra did, steering Fidella to the side, and stretched out a waterproof blanket over the snow before signalling the mare to lie down. The less visible they were out here in the open, the better—both for the delicate nature of Sybil’s trade and for the magic-warped apex predator roaming the area. While she took a look around, making sure they were reasonably safe for the moment, Sybil had pulled out the little strongbox once again and was carefully examining it in the light of day.

The first thing that stood out was the lack of any keyholes.

The second was the lack of any hinges.

Sybil gave a frustrated sigh. “Well, this is less than ideal.”

“May I see?” Cassandra asked as she sat down beside the spy, and only extended a hand for the box once she was given a permissive gesture.

If not for the lack of hinges and keyholes, Cassandra thought quietly as she looked the strongbox over, it would put her in mind of the one that the Mind Trap used to rest within. Certainly, there was the same sensation of protective magic humming through its sides, a tiny little thrum under her good hand’s fingers. No side of it was engraved, though—there was no indication which side was the lid and which the bottom, even—save for a single, angular depression, a rhombus half an inch high and two inches long.

“Hang on,” Cassandra said slowly.

Sybil gave her an inquisitive look, alert and awake, all traces of tiredness gone. “Problems?”

“No, maybe the opposite, I have an idea—” Cassandra handed the strongbox back and walked to Fidella’s other side, where she unlocked her wardwork box to pull out the diamond-shaped yellow crystal. She hurried back to Sybil, set the strongbox down between them, and carefully attempted to fit the crystal into the slot.

Where it clicked into place easily.

There was a faint hiss of escaping air, and a metallic click as the jaws of the strongbox separated enough for the lid to be lifted off. Before it could be, however, Sybil grabbed Cassandra’s left wrist in a warning gesture.

“Where did you get this stone?”

“I pulled it off one of the convicts that Tara sent me after,” Cassandra said candidly. “The Coronian one was a sorcerer, Casimir. I’m told he used to murder people, dismember them, and use the pieces in the crafting of some magical trinkets. He would then distribute those trinkets to petty criminals in exchange for favours to be performed on his behalf. I’ve been wondering for a while why he would head into Equis.”

“I see,” Sybil said slowly. “You’ve trusted me enough not to mind that I was lying for half the time we’ve spent together, and enough to sleep in the same room as myself after learning that I am an executioner. I ask you to trust me again when I say: take your hand off the box very slowly, and wait until I’m done with it.”

Cassandra gave the spy a long look, but did as she was told, and watched Sybil pull out the lockpicking kit and set to inspecting every inch of the gap between the halves of the now-ajar strongbox with the use of the small mirror that Cassandra had seen earlier and a hooked probe of thin wire. Minutes passed, then a quarter hour; Cassandra stood up again, checking if anyone or anything was sneaking up on them, and listened to Sybil’s directionless murmuring as she worked on the box. Finally, a sharper intake of breath came; and then she watched the spy set the mirror aside and instead pull out one of the pairs of narrow-bladed scissors and slide them inside, exhaling with relief only after a successful, decisive click of something being severed. Then, and only then, did Sybil lift away the lid, and Cassandra immediately found out why, as she saw a flat glass capsule glued to the side of the box, with one end of a strong thread tied around the flimsy cork and the other attached to the inside of the lid—thread that was now in two pieces, leaving the capsule still corked and the liquid held within unspilled.

“What is that?”

“That, Cassandra, is a very concentrated acid,” Sybil said with serene calm, and breathed a little more easily. “Whoever just picked the lid up without thinking would have pulled out the cork, and splattered the contents of this strongbox with it. Which would utterly destroy what they were so keen to obtain.”

“Did your roaming agent rig that up?”

“No, I don’t think so. They would have no means of opening the box in the first place. My best guess is that the acid was intended as a nasty surprise for anyone who attempted to plunder the previous owner’s belongings.”

Cassandra took that in, and leaned over to see what those belongings were: a large, folded sheet of velvety parchment, turned delicate with age. One corner held what seemed like a floor plan, another depicted three pillars around a raised circular pedestal. Scattered across were a trio of gargoyles, in poses that ranged from pensive to aggressive, beside a simply rendered human figure evidently added to the three of them for scale—a figure whose head fell short of cresting the line of the most upright gargoyle's shoulders. And in-between, an unrecognizable script spilled forth: lines upon lines, all scribed vertically.

“Can you read this?”

Sybil shook her head. “I cannot, nor do I recognize it, which means it’s either an obscure writing system from very, very, very far away, or a cipher. What do you make of it, Favoured?”

“I want you to make me a copy of it,” Cassandra said. “Keep the box and the crystal, but I want to try and puzzle something out of this... whatever this is, really. Why would a Coronian sorcerer have a key for a strongbox like this? He was carrying it in an open display, as well, with the crystal hovering inside a crosier’s head. It looked like a mark of station. Now it’s like he was actively trying to find the place that’s drawn here, and like the knowledge of where it is or what it does would translate to some measure of... I don’t know, authority or power, among others of his kind.”

With a frown, Sybil inclined her head, if uneasily. “I’ll find you tomorrow at the Drunken Lion with a copy of this and with the gold I promised you. And I trust that I don’t need to warn you of the consequences if you let even the copy fall into the wrong hands, be it by malicious intent or by simple indiscretion.”

“No, you have one of those consequences sheathed in your sleeve. If I manage to get this puzzled out, though, who should I talk to in order to let you know about it? Rutger? Renée del Arroyo? Someone else entirely?”

“Do not breathe in Renée’s direction unless you’re applying for work with the southern bank’s Guard again,” Sybil said sternly. “Her position is precarious enough as it is, and I will not let you throw suspicion on an agent operating in a location as key as the southern garrison. If you find that you absolutely must contact me, do so through Rutger—better yet, contact him through the stablehand or the gardener on his salvage crew, too—or ask the bookseller at the Palace of Parchment for an inexpensive scribe under the pretence of having something copied. In terms of us contacting you, that will only happen through the people you already know: Rutger, myself, or in times of extreme urgency, Renée. Should someone else attempt to rope you into work claiming they’re an agent of the Crown, that is how you will know they are a fraud, and you have my blessing to dispose of them, assume that your identity is known to whatever enemies you’ve made here, and escape as fast as your steed can carry you.”

“Understood.”

“Well, then.” Sybil tucked the old parchment away, separately from the magical strongbox and the crystal key. “Let us ride on, and we’ll conclude our business on the morrow.”

They crossed into the city shortly before nightfall, with Cassandra sneezing a few times along the way and catching herself on feeling woozy, the first signs of a cold she must have caught during their trek through the snowstorm. She lodged herself and Fidella back into the Drunken Lion’s Den, and rented a room for the slight fever she had—and thanked herself for that choice in the morning, for feeling as if her sinuses have been sandpapered alongside the fever now in full swing. Asking Lev for someone to run her an errand to whatever apothecary the northern bank had did trim her reserve of gold, but it also meant that she had both some medicine for right now and a tripled amount of painkillers for her withered arm, and without having to go outside herself. In the afternoon, Sybil showed up as promised and in her infinitely timid persona of a scribe, to hand off a fresh copy of the document they’d retrieved and a purse of three hundred and seventy-five gold as payment for Cassandra’s assistance, hazard pay included. It was going to last her long enough, Cassandra knew, and banned herself from going outside for several more days, until she felt better.

And on the day when she did finally feel well enough to go across the river again, she’d barely had the time to mount up outside of the Drunken Lion when she noticed that people on the streets were stopping by to stare at something even despite the cold, and nudged Fidella in the direction they were pointing out to each other—only to see two Ingvarrdians, both women and both with a sorceress’ dagger square at the front of the belt, one with short red hair kept out of her face with an elaborately embroidered headband and the other wearing an entire bear pelt that’s been fashioned into a hooded, sleeveless coat. Each carried one end of a long pole that a familiar, erratic, monstrous silhouette with six horns, five eyes, and four ears hung from like a felled deer, and the pair headed towards the building that held the contract board where they set their catch down on the cobbles, the redhead going indoors and coming back out with the board’s minder, talking animatedly and pointing at the creature, the bear-clad one silent and keeping watch on the carcass and the passersby. Her eyes lingered briefly on Cassandra, who held the stare without flinching, only inclined her head. The bear-clad Ingvarrdian bowed back, if slightly, and turned away as the redhead called her name, weighing in on the discussion with a so-so gesture of one hand rather than with a word, and Cassandra clicked her tongue at Fidella to keep moving towards the nearest bridge, to go back to the Forester’s Catch and wait for Owl there, as she had promised.

A few months ago, another proof of that she was far from unique and easily replaceable would’ve poured scorching fury through her veins, Cassandra mused. A year ago, it would’ve come with much, much keener pain and as much, much less of a surprise. Now she just felt relieved that there were other people willing to risk life and limb on principle—that a hard fight, if the chunk of wood shattered out of the round shield on the bear-clad one’s back and the claw marks rent in the redhead’s vest were any indication, was not enough to discourage some people from making the right choices—that she didn’t have to do everything, for the many people who couldn’t, on her own and alone.

There was a boy who was dead, and there was a boy who was not. And as Cassandra rode across the bridge held in the eternal stone vigil of a physician and a knight hospitaller, she hoped that Tiachren would keep making good choices, too.

Chapter Text

“This is exactly what I needed,” Cassandra said with relief, turning the letter album she had commissioned in her hands. Every page was made of thick, absorbent paperboard, entirely stiff enough to serve as backing for a leather pocket on each side. The pockets themselves were finished with overlapping flaps to further direct any water away from the contents, and the entire tome-like album came with a case of waxed leather to boot. Even if exposed to direct rainfall for a while, or if her saddlebags got soaked through for a short time, it was genuinely going to be enough to keep Raps’ letters and paintings safe. “Thank you. I’ve never seen bookbinding work as thorough about waterproofing as this.”

“Well, one does try,” the bookseller working at the Palace of Parchment demurred with a smile. “I’m glad you’re happy with your order.”

“I am. I’ll be sure to come back here when I need paper and ink.” Cassandra tucked the album under her arm for now. “But while I’m here... I’ve gone across the river and back since we last spoke—would you be willing to explain something to me, I wonder?”

“If I am able to, certainly, but that will depend on the matter in question.”

“I saw a statue of a Tribunal knight that’s been beheaded and put in chains,” Cassandra hedged.

The bookseller sighed with a pained grimace. “Saint Jeanne, yes. The Equisian usurpation has left the city scarred in many ways, brutish as this administration has been, but its treatment of her has been one of the most pointlessly barbaric displays of, as they say, 'showing us who’s boss'.”

“Why did they go so hard on her?” Cassandra asked with a frown. “I’ve noticed that the knights at each gate had their faces and the crests of their orders chiselled off, but the healers framing one of the bridges are almost untouched, and all that was done to the fountain with musicians was taking out the nimbus from behind the lute player’s head. That knight has been shamed in every way they must have thought possible.”

“Quite so. You see, miss, Saint Jeanne was the patron saint of choice of the local nobility that’s been eradicated... oh, almost twenty years ago now, heavens rest their souls. The manor whose courtyard her statue stands in used to belong to that aristocratic line, as well, though it’s long been converted into a meeting hall for the shameful excuse of a city council we’ve had since. The desecration has been so complete, in her case, because the Equisian miscreants who currently hold positions of power here in the city have singled her out as a symbol of the old rulers; to destroy her image was to emphasize how thoroughly they’ve conquered this land, and a further demonstration of their superiority over all they have slain in its defence.” The bookseller shook his head, a look of controlled yet intense hatred on his face now. “My only regret is that I can use little but inks and pencils to stand against their arrogance and tyranny; my only hope is to live long enough to see them ousted and sent grovelling back from whence they came.”

“The shackles they’ve put on the statue and the damage done to it are one thing, but I saw there was some kind of symbol painted over the Tribunal Order’s crest on her breastplate? What is that about?”

“That would be the work of the local savant, as he demands to be called,” the bookseller spat the offending word with an unprecedented amount of vitriol, even as he actually raised his hands to frame it in air quotes. “Back when things were like they should be, the Royal Inquisition was maintaining numerous academies, hospitals, and law practices under its own mandate. The Equisian occupation has long since seen each and every last one of them closed—often with violent means, of course—and all they have offered in the way of replacement is this single man and his scant handful of pupils. The compensation he demands for his services is nothing short of exorbitant to the little people, that is, those who would need such services the most: advanced medicine, schooling, advice or judgement in quarrels with those who enjoy positions of greater comfort and power within the city and the kingdom at large. The delegation of all these functions to a single man has had another effect as well, and that was to discourage even those with the means to seek his help from doing so. I am told the wait lines for an appointment to see him are no shorter than three months—and that is without considering how not every matter is simple enough to be resolved within a day.”

“And I assume that people who perform some official function or another are admitted without having to wait,” Cassandra said flatly.

“You would assume correctly.”

“If not a 'savant', then what would you call this man?”

“I would call him a professional amateur,” the bookseller said in a scathing tone. “He dabbles in fields from law through astronomy to botany, and as much in academia as in sorcerous and alchemical endeavours, yet fails to crest what would account for as little as apprenticeship in any college or workshop under the Polymath Order’s banner; he styles himself a scholar, yet names no field of expertise, and trust a man of my age when I say that there is not enough years in a lifetime to achieve a scholar’s depth of understanding in more than one such field. Two at the most, if they enjoy a considerable overlap. I would call him a hyena, for how he was the first on site to pilfer all that he wanted from every public library and private collection ripped from dead Kotoan hands before they had the time to grow cold. I would call him a court charlatan, if we had a court left in this unfortunate city in the first place, for the Equisian nobility’s penchant to employ such people as advisors on all matters a down-to-earth ruler would fail to understand on their own. And yet he’s barely even worth this last title, for how the simple brain that dwells within his skull seems to reject all manner of things that a true courtier of this persuasion would explain with a few sentences and a deck of cards.”

“So if he pursues some sorcerous and alchemical endeavours, no matter how much an amateur he is,” Cassandra said slowly, “the symbol painted on top of the Tribunal crest etched in your saint’s breastplate is a magical seal of some description.”

“Yes, most likely.”

Cassandra thought for a moment. “Do you happen to be selling any illustrations of what that statue used to look like, before it was debased into its current state?”

And there were a few to choose from, if expensive, but Cassandra had only spent one evening at the Forester’s Catch thus far after getting paid on the northern riverbank, so a piece painted with coloured inks didn’t strain her pocket too badly. The visor of the witch-knight saint’s helmet was open, showing a few strands of short hair that framed a common face, eyes bright and enraptured and looking up to the sky, the arm she extended upwards posed as if she were calling for the heavens themselves to pour into her palm. The banner she held in her other hand was divided per fess, with the top half holding the royal pair of seated wolfhounds facing each other, the bottom half divided again, this time palewise, with the fir tree of House Bayard in the dexter and the Tribunal Order’s upright sword between a pair of unfurled feathered wings in the sinister. Sun rays played against the bronze flagpole that the banner fluttered from, and crowned the saint’s exalted face in a blaze of light reflecting from the acid-etched plate inset behind her head; the plinth was circled with a neatly maintained flower patch, and at her feet a few wreaths were laid, a few candles in their little glass lamps meant for graves and memorials, a few tiny toy flags.

A sight like that would’ve impacted herself in profound ways, too, Cassandra admitted silently, if she had seen it when she was a child. She, too, would’ve likely decided that this was what she wanted to be when she grew up, and dedicated herself to following its example. But she was older than Colette Bayard had ever gotten to be—and she was from Corona, where women did not enjoy careers in positions of power, not unless through marriage to the actual wielder of such power or through a life of crime. Wondering whether growing up in Koto, with its looser norms and more equal expectations laid over men and women and its fearsome enforcement of unthinking loyalty to the Crown, would’ve treated her any better was a pointless exercise and one with no good answers. A nation was not a person, she reminded herself, and as such did not deserve love and could not return any she would give to it freely. Simply changing the nation in question wasn’t going to yield a different outcome.

But all the same, she folded the picture of a banner-bearing lady knight elevated to sainthood together with the brittle, waterlogged papers of Colette’s three illegible reports, and tucked the lot into the front of her new album. Afterwards, and separately from that, came the pair of letters that Raps had sent thus far, as well as the paintings she’d attached. And after that, there was little else to pass the time with as she sat in the stable of the Forester’s Catch with Fidella but to unwrap her withered arm and stare, and wind the sounding cylinder of her old music box again, and listen to the tune and to how it hollowed out her soul as she tried to come up with something to do that would better her hand.

She was probably going to have another nightmare about cosmic powers capable of destroying the world a few times over, focused in their entirety on the singular task of turning her inside out, anyway, Cassandra thought to herself with resignation as she unwound the silken wrap. Staring at her dead arm wasn’t going to make her night any worse than it was already going to be.

In daylight, and in slowly checking if she could close a fist at all without the support of the silk bandages she’d wear around the withered area, she could see a hint of bone down the fissure cracked into the back of the hand, wrist, and part of the forearm—even that bone greyed like something found in the ashes of a burnt-out building. At least the sinews didn’t look like they were fraying. Not yet, at least.

Whether that dry, gaping wound was any deeper than the last time she’d looked at it wasn’t quite clear. The skin that cracked from the salt she’d poured in there, however, was beginning to crumble off in little flakes like a charred sheet of paper, and Cassandra had to physically take her good hand off of that to stop herself from mindlessly pulling and picking at it. In doing so, she laid her left hand over her right bicep, and regretted it very quickly as it offered her no recourse but to face the truth that there was yet another problem:

She was losing muscle tone in the living half of her right arm.

Of course she was losing muscle tone. That had to be expected, after nearly two years of terribly reduced strength and capability and range of movement—after nearly three months of that arm being of almost no use at all, due to further injury. Of course she was losing muscle tone, with how careful she had to be with her dominant hand these days, with how little she could do with it at all. Maybe if she paid more attention to herself and used a bow a little more often, she could slow that atrophy down, but there was little she could think of to halt or reverse it.

She spent the rest of the evening listening to the remains of her old music box and trying to think of how to make herself stronger, as she rewrapped the hand and forearm into a change of clean silk and counted out everything that she knew would stop decayed tissue from turning into full-blown rot. Distilled spirits. Salt. Silver. Birch tar. None were especially advisable for being used on her withered arm, be it for how she was supposed to keep it dry rather than dunk it into a few flasks’ worth of whiskey, for how the salt had simply changed a pre-existing problem into a different one, for how heavy and further restrictive of movement a silver-lined gauntlet would be, and for how tarring her arm would probably hurt even more and help even less than salting it had done. Even to simply change the way she was bandaging the arm, from whatever she could manage alone into a wrap that would stop that crack from widening and keep its edges somewhat together, she would need two hands. Which meant someone trustworthy enough and willing to help her with her arm—someone with opposable thumbs, which neither Owl nor Fidella could boast.

Morning came, after a fairly restless night filled with dreams of scorching light and unfathomable will focused into the tiniest pinprick in the prism of her existence—dreams that were mercifully beginning to fade in intensity, even though she would still wake up from them shaking, drenched in cold sweat, and already tired. As she was coming back from a walk to restock on rations and get herself a snack, she looked up at the sound of a loud krrraaaa only to find one of the city’s crows zeroing in on her position, with a distinctly un-crow-like silhouette in tow. And with that much of an advanced notice, Cassandra had the time to walk into a small dead end between a few buildings crowded together and hold out her left arm before Owl swooped down to her, with the crow landing on a roof gutter nearby.

“It’s good to see you again,” Cassandra said with relief as she put her face to Owl’s for a moment, unstrapping the scroll case backpack from around his back to lift its weight off of him. “How’s the distance, had any trouble flying for that long?”

Hoot, Owl said lovingly, and gently tugged on a lock of her hair with his beak.

Cassandra kissed the top of his head as she tied the scroll case to the side of her belt. “I knew I could count on you.”

Krrraaaa, the crow said pointedly.

“I know, I know, it’s coming.” Cassandra extended her left arm in a straight line and waited for Owl to inch across until he was perched on her shoulder, then took a few smoked mussels out of the hollowed-out bun of a bread bowl she’d bought them in and showed them to the crow. “Good enough?”

Krrraaaa, the crow said happily.

“You do me a favour, I do you a favour.” Cassandra tossed the food onto the cobblestones and exited the alleyway, leaving the crow to eat in peace as she went on her way.

Hoot, Owl commented.

“You could say I’ve been making connections,” Cassandra said dryly. “Now let’s get you some food that wasn’t actually meant for me.”

Hoot, Owl agreed heartily, then fluffed up his feathers with a scrutinizing look at her.

“See, here’s the thing. I ran two more freelance jobs after the Guard contract, and there was trouble each time. The first, it wasn’t a lot and I had the advantage, so I handled it and got through okay. The second, it was more than I could take and live to tell about it, so I went around it instead, and then—you’ll never guess what happened.”

Hoot, Owl encouraged.

“Someone else dealt with it independently.”

Hoot, Owl said, impressed.

“I know, right? It’s almost like I don’t have to do everything myself anymore.” Cassandra tapped a finger to his beak with a chuckle when Owl gave her a long-suffering look. “I haven’t seen Riccardo yet, but I did learn he’s in the area. Hopefully it won’t take much longer to find him.”

Hoot, Owl changed the subject.

Cassandra gave him a glance, confused for a moment. “What about my leg? Oh. Right, I got shot before you left. I’m okay, I had no trouble healing.”

Hoot, Owl pointed out dryly.

“And why, mister, would you be eavesdropping on Raps while she was reading my letter?” Cassandra grumbled at him.

Owl gave her a stern look.

“I didn’t write about getting injured because it would be pointless to do so,” Cassandra told him patiently. “All it would accomplish is worry her, and for what? There’s time enough to heal twice over before you make it both ways between her and me. I can handle myself, and when I can’t, I can find enough help to keep myself safe and recover.”

Hoot, Owl acquiesced, if only reluctantly.

“Listen, we’re being careful with each other. I don’t want her to panic and try forcing her help on me again, and I’m sure she’s not telling me everything either, not when she has the time to revise every response. But that’s okay, and do you know why? Because it means she’s actually putting effort into building something that’ll benefit more people than just herself.” Cassandra paused for a moment, and shook her head. “That feels like a terrible thing to say, but... it isn’t wrong, and maybe that’s even worse. I love her a lot, I really do, but it’s not the only way I feel about her and sometimes it’s not the strongest of them, either. And I’m not about to work my way through those feelings just so she can re-teach me everything I’ve worked so hard to unlearn. It’s her turn to do that. If or when she does, I’ll meet her there. I don’t care if that sounds unfair. I’m tired of doing all the work myself.”

Hoot, Owl said, ruling that the logic tracked.

“I know. Thanks, though.” Cassandra smoothed a withered finger over the favour on arm. “It’s why I haven’t mailed this back home yet.”

Hoot, Owl asked, intrigued now.

“I mean, if Corona at large or Raps in particular ever do something that makes me want to cut all ties—again—that’s how I’ll go about doing it,” Cassandra said calmly. “It’s not something I’d do lightly, and I hope I’ll never have reason to do it at all. But it’s comforting to have an emergency exit like that.”

She made her way back into the stable of the Forester’s Catch, where Owl and Fidella greeted each other with a hoot and a nicker. And as Cassandra was putting away the rations for later, she noticed a stablehand hard at work around three more horses than there were earlier in the morning. Another group of sellswords must have stopped by, she thought idly as she entered the tavern’s dining floor for a tankard of the usual weak ale for herself and a bowl of scraps for Owl, a table off to the side, and an opportunity to eat her smoked mussels and the bread bowl they came in while she was reading.

Once again, the letter was on multiple sheets of gilded stationery, and with a few new drawings packed into the scroll case alongside it. But that was par for the course by now, Cassandra admitted to herself, even as she thought back to the letter album tucked away safely, deep in Fidella’s saddlebags. It got finished just on time.

What was less expected was a few sheets of thicker, but much less ornate paper, filled with rows of orderly writing that had been printed rather than scribed by hand—formal documentation prepared in three copies.

Cassandra looked up at Owl. “How much trouble did you have with carrying all this weight?”

Hoot, Owl dismissed between eating a mallard’s heart and a hare’s liver.

“No problem at all? You’re absolutely sure I don’t have to box her ears for overpacking you?”

Owl didn’t even dignify that with a response.

“Alright, then.” Cassandra wiped her still-gloved fingers by habit, then took the documents to properly go through them. “Been a while since I’ve done any reading in legalese...”

Quickly, it became apparent that the documentation was about appointing someone to keep track of the coin and goods she’d won from three allied kingdoms for executing the barbarian, the minotaur, and the ogre, as well as run periodic maintenance on more fragile elements of the vault storing all that treasure. Her dad must have refused to take it for himself, Cassandra thought with an eyeroll and a smile, as she looked over the papers to make sure that they were three identical copies, more out of habit than any actual suspicion of treachery. Each was signed by her dad, the employee in question—a Sylas Niwwelbrandt, who Cassandra could only remember meeting in passing once or twice, but was reasonably sure that he was closely related to King Frederic’s personal assistant—and Raps herself as the witness, with room left for Cassandra’s own signature.

The ink wasn’t going to match, she thought with a bit of perverse glee as she signed each of the black-printed document’s copies in blue and initialled every page. Then she wiped the rickety table a little cleaner with a corner of her cloak, set the documents aside to dry between herself and the wall, and pulled out the letter in turn.

Cass, please, please, please be very careful.

I don’t know what that stone does, either, but from the charcoals you sent of it? It looks like something that Zhan Tiri would leave behind, or one of her students, and there’s a little sun at one tip and a crescent moon at the other. And if it came from the man who was killing people to make magic trinkets out of their bones, then he must have been trying to figure out some kind of connection between that way of doing magic and the Sundrop and Moonstone’s. Or maybe there’s always been a connection, maybe people like him have patterned their magic after the Sundrop’s power to fix and the Moonstone’s to break, maybe it’s people like him that Demanitus was trying to hide his research from. I know you can take care of yourself and I trust you to be more careful than I’ve ever been, but I just can’t stand the thought that you could get hurt like that again—like what Zhan Tiri did to you, and like what I’ve done.

Okay, now I’m going to put the quill down and stop freaking out, and then I’ll write the rest.

Cassandra stared. So much for Raps making any use of the time she had to revise her responses.

Her handwriting changed a lot since she had first entered Castle Corona—it used to be a little childish, fresh out of the tower, and how else was it supposed to look when she had taught herself how to write and did so with a thin paintbrush rather than a quill, every letter an ornamental swirl at the least amount of illumination she'd enjoy putting into every word and very often two instances of the same letter looking just about as alike as day and night. The tutors she’d been saddled with to at least begin filling in the gaps in her education oriented on that very quickly, first teaching her how to use a quill and ink at all, then putting her through a regimen with copying and calligraphy until she developed an actual, consistent style of handwriting, until she was capable of penning things down in a way that no future court would be able to call a fake or a forgery for how different it was from other instances of her handwriting. At one point, Cassandra recalled with a little smile, Raps had actually been proud of the progress she’d made in that respect, of how stark the comparison was between the little squiggles in the margins of the three books she’d brought with herself into the castle and the practice sheets from earlier in the day.

This first section of the letter was scribed in a frantic scrawl, and with a different nib than the rest of the page—and, Cassandra found upon leafing through the other pages, different than the rest of the letter. Quite as if Raps had freaked out so badly, when she figured the puzzle out, that she just grabbed the first sheet of stationery in sight that wasn’t graph paper, didn’t even clean the quill or change the nib from one meant for illumination to one meant for writing, before she poured the panicked theories out, as black as they must have felt inside her heart.

Well, that answered the hypothetical of how Raps would react if Cassandra ever wrote 'by the way, I got shot' in her own letters.

Anyway! Thank you for sending me another puzzle! Even if it’s scary and very worrying! Thank you for trusting me with something you couldn’t figure out on your own. I’m starting to realize how I’ve never been reliable enough to really call myself your friend, how I’ve shown you time and again that you can’t trust me with anything, not with saying things and definitely not with doing what I said I would or wouldn't. I know I’ve apologized for how I used to treat you before, broadly, but this is something that I only recently came to understand in how deep it ran. And I’m so sorry for failing you so many times, so badly. Thank you for giving me another chance. I’m sorry for what I did with every one of them before right now. I hope that someday it won’t be scary for you anymore to trust me with your thoughts and feelings—someday years and years from now, maybe—but until then, if it ever happens at all, I’m grateful to hear about anything you choose to tell me. Nothing is too small. Nothing is meaningless. Thank you for caring about me enough to keep trying, even despite all the times I’ve disappointed you already.

Which brings me to the next thing, actually. You said you had to deal with a smell so bad that you soaked a scarf in smoke to put over your face, back when you were helping your farmer—I hope it’s not too much to give you something to help with that if you’re ever in a similar situation again? It’s the tiniest bottle I could find, and Owl said it wasn’t too heavy for him along with all the papers, I asked.

At that, Cassandra paused, and turned the scroll case upside down over an open hand, only to catch an ornate little flask of the clearest glass—a vial’s size, really—with a velvet ribbon tied through a pair of amphora-like ears and the stopper to keep it snugly in its place. A stopper that included a tiny pipet.

Perfume, she realized with no small amount of surprise, even as she eased the ribbon off for a moment, lifted the stopper, and took a sniff.

Raps’ favourite perfume, she recognized immediately, a bright and sunny mix of floral scents, as light as her laughter and as intoxicating as the times she’d look at Cassandra with love in her eyes. Far from anything Cassandra would pick for herself, that much was true—to match even her perfume to her past function of a lady-in-waiting, she’d sooner wear heavier notes like ambergris or sandalwood so as to not stand out, and if she were to choose something for herself because she liked it, it would be colder, crisper scents like mint or pine or cedar. But the flowery perfume suited Raps so much that Cassandra could scarcely imagine her wearing anything else, and the times she had smelled it in greatest detail was with her face buried in Rapunzel’s shoulder and both their arms tight around each other, and maybe Cassandra had to blink away tears before she stoppered the flask and wrapped the ribbon tight again.

Maybe it had been almost uncomfortable, how Sybil clung to her while dozing off in the saddle behind her a few days ago, but it was the closest thing Cassandra had gotten to a fucking hug in the past month and a half. Once again, she was touch-starved to the point of a howling need, and the perfume that smelled like being held made her seriously consider looking for Moreen Tyson again under the pretence of catching up, just to exist in another’s arms for a moment.

I can’t stop thinking about how you said you had to take a job you didn’t like just to buy yourself new boots, while there’s a treasure trove here stacked very nearly floor-to-ceiling that belongs to you. Would it be okay to send you a few small things from it next time I write you back? Just so you don’t have to worry so much about money, and have some sort of savings on hand to fall back onto if something happens.

Your dad insists that it’s all your money rather than his, too. He says it would be a better idea to hire someone to oversee it, because he doesn’t have the time to squeeze these responsibilities in next to his duties as the Captain of the Guard, but also that this kind of arrangement has to be made on paper and needs your signature to be official? So that’s what the documents are for. If everything is like it should be, keep one copy and send the other two back, okay? I don’t remember ever meeting that Sylas fellow, but Faith and the Captain seem to know him well enough, and they said he’ll do a good job and won’t try to steal from the vault or anything.

Cassandra cocked her head at that. She hadn’t wondered who would replace her as the princess’ lady-in-waiting for well over a year now. Last time the thought occupied her at all, Zhan Tiri had prompted her to voice it, and a few other frustrations came out alongside it—and all it had led to was another idle little conversation about Rapunzel’s cruelty and dismissal and how offhanded yet absolute her dominion over Cassandra used to be. A conversation that served to further smother any smouldering embers of softer feelings she still had for Raps, soft enough to potentially undermine her resolve in the future, and instead shift the thought’s focus until it became yet another facet in the crystalline mosaic of hatred and fury that she had rearranged the pieces of her broken heart into with Zhan Tiri’s eager help.

But those shards were gaining rounded edges now, tumbled through the sand and waves of a whole unfathomable ocean of opportunities to be who she wanted to be, not what she was told she was supposed or destined or expected to be. And somewhere beside that, like a campfire just beyond the reach of high tide, the embers of those softer feelings were free to smoulder away—and free from having to be a blazing flame. For five and a half months now, Cassandra sat at the world’s edge, walking along its shore and occasionally treading water, and collected small, worthwhile remains of her past as they washed up ashore, next to where she had found herself still breathing with a faceful of sand after the catastrophe that left her with only one desire: to leave it all behind. And tossed through that handful of treasures and reminders worth keeping were others that she’d found since, new ones, ones that didn’t rebuild the way of life she used to lead, but showed her that there were other ways to live instead. That she could exist without twisting herself up until she fit into someone else’s mould. That she could be whoever she decided to be, and gain recognition and assistance and gratitude for it, not despite it.

For five and a half months, she’d been testing the waters. And in the confidence gained through that, Cassandra smiled to herself as she decided that she fancied a swim.

There really is a lot in that vault, do you know that? We had to clear out a room just to make enough space for what the Bayangoran ambassador dropped off, and that was before Ingvarr sent a ship loaded with just as much, and before the Pittsfordian ambassador passed along a bit more as well. I’ve never seen things like some of what’s in that room now—though, I admit that doesn’t say much at all—and just the sheer amount of everything is astounding, not to mention the quality. More than that, while Pittsford and Bayangor just had their ambassadors pass the treasure along to the court, Ingvarr actually sent Solveig to visit again and hand it off herself, and she’s such a lovely person! She thinks so highly of you for besting that criminal the bounty money was for, and she’s so polite, and seems so serious and responsible without making herself judgemental or unpleasant to be around at all, and she gives great hugs. She told me a little about travelling to a few of the Seven Kingdoms and about magic in Ingvarr, and how anyone who knows how to do a little of that magic can be married to two people at the same time. And she said that people from a lot of kingdoms on the continent treat that like something other than it is, and make fun of the custom—I just thought that was so wonderful, I can’t imagine the kind of person it would take to laugh at it.

Then there were a few words, too few to complete a thought in, that have been crossed out and drawn enough ink over to thoroughly erase them. Cassandra shook her head as she knew exactly what Raps had been thinking when she wrote them. It wasn’t the first time that she looked at the demands and confines of a princess’ life and questioned why they should be there—assuming that she noticed them at all—and tried to force her way through or around them, to do what she wanted, and not ask permission beforehand any more than she would ask forgiveness afterwards. Raps was going to marry Eugene, once at least one of them successfully stumbled their way through yet another proposal, and that was that. There was no meaningful way to parrot Ingvarr’s consensual and equal-footing polygamy, not with how entrenched it was within their practice of magic. And to copy the way in which married Kotoan nobility often enjoyed a lover or two on the side, while granting no political or social benefits to such lovers beyond what the noble deigned to discreetly gift them during one tryst or another, would be nothing short of insulting from where Cassandra stood. She had spent entirely more than long enough as a toy already, and didn’t need to enter another dynamic in which her position would by design be inferior and servile and meaningless, not after being a handmaiden for so long, not after being a foundling brat brought to live at the edges of the royal court by the grace of a guardsman’s pity, allowed to stay by the grace of the amount and quality of work she would get done in a bid to justify her existence, and even then only allowed to stay for as long as her conduct was absolutely pristine and her work flawless.

But at least this time, Raps was trying not to come off too strongly, and not to assume answers to the degree of thinking that the question didn’t need to be asked at all. At least this time, she was trying to recognize that some questions should not be asked if she wasn’t prepared to hear a different answer than the one she apparently wished to hear. Wishes were all well and good, Cassandra thought as she looked away from the letter for a moment and cast her gaze about the dining floor of a run-down tavern a few hundred miles away from the court that so rarely even pretended to really be her home. Wishes were all well and good, but sometimes the best thing to do about them was let them remain a daydream, to be enjoyed as something nice to think about before going to sleep, untarnished by the confines of pragmatism, by real concerns and considerations that would dull their lustre immediately upon the first attempt to make them come to life. Wishes were all well and good, Cassandra thought to herself scathingly, but right now the two of them were wishing for very, very different things, and she had martyred herself for Raps’ cause and Raps’ wishes too many times already. And if the time for voicing wishes such as that was to ever come at all, it certainly wasn’t now, when they didn’t even know how to talk to each other.

Mercifully, Raps seemed to be starting to understand that.

I saw the whole crew of their ship sing a spell before they left port again—everyone, Solveig and her huskarl and the ship’s captain and all of his sailors. It didn’t look like magic at all, even though all of them were wearing those little knives in the front of their belts, there wasn’t any light or noise or anything unusual happening around them, they just stood barefoot in the water and sang something in their language that I couldn’t understand and picked some water up in their hands and put their faces in it. Solveig had told me before that it would make sure none of them drown or get seasick until they step onto land again, and I don’t have any reason to think she was lying, but it was so strangely... well, normal, for magic. I wonder why that was. I wish there was someplace I could read about it, like I keep reading about history and culture and philosophy and law. I wish I could just ask, instead of worry about how my dad is going to take it if he ever hears that I’ve been asking. But you know how people in Corona are about magic, and it hasn’t gotten any better since the eclipse.

And I’ve learned another thing on that day, too. See, I was in class when Solveig’s ship came into port, and one of my parents was supposed to go greet her. What happened instead is I got pulled out of class to do that with zero warning, and keep her occupied until dinner, which was the first time she actually saw and spoke with my parents that day. I asked my mom later about what it was that kept them so busy all of a sudden, and it turns out they’ve been dealing with the fact that one of the Coronian nobles, some count off to the east from the capital, has been keeping a big group of foreign mercenaries on hand with his tax money, so that they’d stand at the ready to storm Castle Corona the moment he gave the word. And do you know what the worst part is? Mom wasn’t even surprised. She was just worried that it took three years to figure this out, and that it only came out when I had too many questions about tax records that didn’t quite match up (and I was only asking so many because I’ve had similar calculations covered in class earlier that week), and that this was the first time we’ve figured out someone was making ready to attack the capital if I hadn’t come back. She said it was strange no one was trying to say I wasn’t really my parents’ daughter, but mistaken for the Lost Princess or even pretending to be her on purpose. And I don’t know how to feel about that, other than scared. I didn’t think any of those things were an option. And mom is just concerned that we’ve not seen any of them happen—like she expects that they’ve happened anyway, we just have no idea when and where and between whom, and that’s the part she worries about. Not that it took place, but that we don’t know the details of how it did.

With a sigh, Cassandra had to concede that Queen Arianna had the right idea. The threat of a war of succession was a constant backdrop of life in the Coronian court for almost all of the years Cassandra had spent there, like a dark belt of stormclouds bristling with lightning that loomed on the horizon, never knowing the day or the hour when that lightning would strike down the castle’s roofs and spires. From the mutterings among servants of how the King and Queen couldn’t have another child, through the increasingly tense relations both with peers of the realm and with allies from abroad that she’d overhear while waiting tables and preparing quarters for visiting nobility or dignitaries, to the Royal Guard steadily shifting focus from cracking down on crime to drilling and combat training and operating siege weaponry, not to mention the extensive renovations of the wall that circled the entirety of the capital’s breadbasket when she was still very young—Castle Corona was bracing itself for that coming war, one it would inevitably lose, if not against the forces levied or hired by traitorous nobility, then against the passage of time and the aging of its heirless monarch. And that was without considering the Saporian separatist movement, or domestic criminal kingpins like Lady Caine, or any foreign interference.

That being said, it did give Cassandra a bit of a pause that the count Raps had mentioned was one of an eastern province. Corona’s northeastern border was laid against Equisian territory—or at least, it was at present, with the Kotoan nobility of House Bayard slain to the one and the few larger cities across the land that used to be theirs now occupied by King Trevor’s guardsmen and retainers. More than that, Raps had said it was a count, not a marquess, which meant it wasn’t the ruler of a province laid immediately against that border. And the only 'big group of mercenaries' in the vicinity of that border large enough, and disciplined enough, to really march on Castle Corona would be no little wolfpack of border reavers, but another detachment of the Scarlet Brigade. Possibly more than one.

Curious what the neighbouring marquess would do in that situation, really, seeing as the Reds would have to make use of roads leading across his territory. Or trample his fields as they marched.

I miss you so much, and so often, but most of all in times like these. I know you’d have just the right thing to say to make it all better—not to make it go away, because that’s not possible, but I know you’d be able to make it feel like it’s not impossible to handle. I didn’t realize how much safer I felt just for the fact that you were there, until you weren’t. I try my best to talk to myself like that instead, like you would, like you showed me how to make others feel safer. But even after I manage to calm myself down like so, I still miss you. And I know I’m not the only one—the older guards ask about you every time they see Owl with me, and there are always people on the staff who are relieved to hear you’re doing better.

At that last claim, Cassandra couldn’t help but laugh and shake her head. Classic Raps: conflating polite expressions of interest, no matter how insincere, with actual concern. No one was going to miss her in Castle Corona, not one person but for her dad, Raps herself, and Pascal, maybe—and that was Cassandra being generous with herself already.

Good riddance. It wasn’t as if she missed Castle Corona any, either.

I hope you don’t mind if I come back to these executions you’ve carried out for Ingvarr, Pittsford, Bayangor, and Corona one more time—it’s hard to stop thinking about. I’ve asked the Captain earlier about the sorcerer and the sorcerer-killer, but I haven’t really... I think it didn’t quite land with me, even then, how dangerous they must have been. Now that I’ve seen first-hand how high the bounties on their heads were, though, not to mention that Ingvarr sent the heiress to the throne just to hand that reward off and say thank you, I think about you going after three of the four alone and I feel cold. And I know that if you were here, you’d say that I should see the other guy before I could even ask if they hurt you, but you’re the only guy I care about in these situations, so just—

Crossed out words again, and diligently blotted out, about the shape and length of 'promise me'.

—try to remember that there are people who love you so much. Multiple people. I’m only one of them. You’re missed here, even when we know you’re happier out there than we’ve ever made you, and if something terrible happened to you, we would grieve for you and carry you with us for the rest of our lives. I can’t tell you what to do, and even if I could, I shouldn’t, but please be good to yourself. And if there’s ever anything we can do for you from so far away, just name it, and we’ll do it as best we can.

Cassandra leaned back in her chair, frowning. True enough that she hadn’t been in the best space of mind when she first heard about those four and agreed to go after them. True enough that she was only recently, and very slowly, beginning to feel like it was okay for her to be alive, like she could make something of herself rather than merely try to make up for the unfortunate fact of her existence. But at no point had she consciously sought out death by another’s hands, which was what Raps seemed to be afraid of. Going after those four had been suicidally dangerous, yes—but she wouldn’t have agreed to do it without the supplies and information that the pair of Silberstadt’s Kotoan spies had given her, or without the carrier arrows of Sigrid and Hanalei’s make, or without knowing that she had a safe place to rest and heal in when needed, or without Fidella to help her maintain distance and carry her to safety.

She hadn’t realized she looked quite that bad before leaving Castle Corona. But if she did, then it explained a few things—such as why Adira, of all people, deigned to sit with her and talk.

So it’s doubly a big relief to hear that you’re doing okay. I never doubted you for a second, and look at you: you’re not just making ends meet, you’re a hero! I wish I could really hear you tell all of it, how you must have planned and prepared, how you bested people that whole kingdoms were afraid of. And I’m glad, too, that you’re okay with the messed up things I paint these days, and I’m sorry for not being as clear as I should have been with the tower piece—it’s hard to say anything meaningful about these, because I paint them when I don’t know how to talk about things yet. I’ve been thinking for a while now about how the tower felt like home while I was trapped there, but only for as long as I was; and how yours was supposed to be terrifying, but was an actual home that you’ve built for yourself, someplace to come back to and feel safe in. I guess I just felt like mine was a lie, no matter how much of my life took place there, and yours was... well, real, even if it was a challenge, too, in how and where you raised it. And I don’t want to assume, so tell me off if I’m wrong, but now that I think about it from perspective, I’m starting to think that it was specifically a tower that you made and specifically in that spot because I’ve treated you in ways that made you feel like the only way to really have something of your own was to take it from me first. And if that’s in any way true, then once again and all over again, I’m so sorry for pushing you to a point that desperate.

“Damn it.” Cassandra pinched the corners of her eyes with her withered fingers. Different tavern, different letter, same situation: she was not about to cry in the middle of a crowded dining floor, not before hell froze over.

While it wasn’t the whole of the reason for her decision about where and how to utilize the Moonstone’s second incantation, as a self-contained statement it was entirely true, and even revisiting the memory was quite a strenuous exercise in misery. And it had taken Raps a year square, give or take a week, to realize even that little.

True that the saying went 'better late than never', but sometimes, late was too late, and little was too little, and Cassandra has had to make her way step by step through an endless trek of humiliation and despair in the meantime, as unnoticed as everything she had done prior that was not furious violence and wanton destruction. And while it wasn’t even Rapunzel’s fault that she didn’t know what to look for, it didn’t make her obliviousness any less hurtful—and while it was good that she was making actual, noticeable progress in that regard, being sheepishly gifted a handful of crumbs that she knew were a veritable feast, when compared to what she would have been fed in the past, didn’t put Cassandra in any mood to celebrate.

I cleaned up the charcoals of that crystal for you, and left the original and another final copy for myself—once again, I trust you to be careful, but please, please be careful. Aside from that, I managed to draw you something less messed up than one of those kind of things, this time, and thank you so much for the drawings you sent me—the landscape looks so familiar, and yet every little piece of it is so different. The fountain with the musicians is so beautiful, but you said that Equis has been breaking Kotoan statues? Does it look anything like in the drawing, when you look at it now? And I have so many questions about these griffincats that you’ve mentioned. Just so many questions. Where do the wings anchor at the spine? Are their bones hollow? How do they fly? Where did they come from? Do their feathers have the same patterns as their coats? How long have they been a thing? Are there books about them where you are? Could we talk to them like to regular housecats? How do the birds deal with cats that can not only jump and climb, but fly as well? I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting some. I’ll try to ask if there’s anything about them in the castle’s library, because I’m going to be thinking about them forever now.

I love you. I hope you can believe that.

Rapunzel.

Cassandra folded the letter away, frowning. No matter how unbearable she found the signature Coronian pep and cheer—both in the Lost Princess’ absence, for how it made her feel like no one was treating the looming threat of war seriously, and after her return, when the celebration of that event seemed to never end, not even years afterwards—the dearth of that cheer, save for some vestigial traces that only served to emphasize the sheer lack of it, made for the most hopeless thing she’d ever read. And penned in Raps’ own hand, no less.

She shook her head, and decided she’d write back something encouraging. A sentence or two. Beyond that, Raps was surrounded with people dedicated to making her feel better, and Cassandra had her own worries to focus on and problems to solve.

Maybe a paragraph. A small one.

After making sure that the ink she’d signed and initialled the documents with was dry, she gathered them up along with the letter and the tiny perfume bottle, and put them back into the scroll case for now, to pull out the paintings in turn—and immediately raised her eyebrows at the first one. A room lit with a few lamps here and there, and true to Raps’ word, stacked full of treasure and coin very nearly floor-to-ceiling. And judging from how Cassandra recognized none of the contents, that must have been what the blood money she’d earned a few months back looked like.

Ramon and Tara hadn’t been joking when they said that the bounties were going to constitute a ridiculous amount of money, far beyond any one person’s capacity to carry. Frankly, it looked more like plunder from a small city-state or a wealthy tradesman’s flotilla than a reward for executing several people.

She folded the vault’s painting back, and found the second sheet of paper divided with vertical lines into three sections, each one’s background patterned and coloured like a banner of one of the Seven Kingdoms—one Bayangoran, a cherry blossom in pink on a yellow field; one Ingvarrdian, a leafless and uprooted tree in black on a white field; one Pittsfordian, a griffon marching forward but with its head turned to look over its shoulder, in the colours that an eagle would sport in nature, on a green field. And arranged in front of each banner was a small collection of expensive objects, things that Cassandra guessed must have come from each kingdom’s bounty money and caught Rapunzel’s eye in particular. Before the colours of Bayangor was one half of a giant scallop shell, the size of Cassandra’s entire torso at the least judging from the tiny little coin laid off to the side for scale, the rim fitted with a gold frame and the bottom resting on a heavy stand worked into an extension of that frame, the legs fashioned into three scaly, clawed toes each, transforming the shell into a deep, asymmetrical, and profoundly unique tray. A few small amphorae rested against the edge on the deeper side, surrounding a gilded incense burner shaped like a turtle, with topside ornaments wrought into the likeness of four springing koi fish. On the shell-tray’s flatter and more shallow side, two hand fans of painted silk were laid open, and in-between them was a handful of elaborate hairpins, with faceted gems and dangling rows of pearls inset into their heads. Before the colours of Ingvarr, an open book rested in the centre, propped up to tilt the pages towards the viewer, lines of text on the left one, and an illustration on the right one, a scene that Cassandra immediately recognized: a stout and squat blacksmith, grinning at a warrior at his side who was admiring a sword he had just tested, and the remains of the smith’s anvil cloven neatly in half between them. Around the book, a set of lacquered wooden boxes lined with velvet, each holding one of a set of nautical instruments, an astrolabe and sextant and small telescope and compass, all made of the finest bronze and clearest glass. In the corner beside them, a chequered board was stacked with hnefatafl pieces carved with exquisite detail: fur-clad, snarling spear-wielders at the sides of the board, uniformly armoured swordsmen and shieldmaidens in the centre, surrounding a single taller figure with a coat of ermine and a gold crown, its chin lifted in an arrogant fashion and its face pulled into a slight look of trepidation. At the foot of the collection rested a thick arm ring of silver worked into a braided open loop, its terminals shaped like lion heads with tiny amethysts inset into the eyes. Before the colours of Pittsford, a red deer’s pelt was spread underneath a masterfully constructed lute, of an older type if the neck bent back at a sharp angle was any indication, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and strips of differently coloured wood into a swirly pattern. Beside it rested a small standing clock, its frame carved into the shape of a few mountains and a forest around the clock’s face, with a shallow little bowl of polished silver covered with glass at the base, no doubt meant for placing small personal effects that one would not want to forget before leaving their quarters—such as cufflinks or wedding rings or hairpins—while they focused on getting ready. At the composition’s bottom laid a wide-toothed hair comb made of a single chunk of silver, its handle carved into the shape of a sleeping leopard, one lazily hanging hind leg forming the first thicker tooth and the tail extended as the back of the comb. To its other side were a few toy soldiers, and not just a trio of Coronian guardsmen with crested helmets and a sun inlaid in gold leaf over their breastplates, but a pair of Equisian soldiers as well, a pavissier crouched behind his massive shield and a crossbowman taking aim at his side, and an unarmoured Pittsfordian griffon-rider scout leaning out of the exotic saddle strapped around the beast’s chest, one hand raised to his forehead as if to shield his eyes from wind and light. And in the centre, there was a large medallion of silver and gold, fashioned into the shape of a crescent moon and a blazing sun folded side by side, hanging together from a thick chain beaded with freshwater pearls.

“Huh,” Cassandra said aloud, impressed despite herself as she studied the treasure’s images.

Hoot, Owl asked.

“I guess I’m rich now,” Cassandra said dryly, if keeping her voice down for sitting in the middle of a crowded tavern. “It’s not exactly like I can do anything about it, and I wouldn’t know what to do with half of these things myself, other than sell or gift them to someone who can make use of them.” She considered the documents she had just signed. “...I’m going to have a retainer on my payroll. Taking care of all that in my stead.”

Hoot, Owl told her patiently.

“Well excuse me for having to adjust to the idea that I mean something in the court,” Cassandra grumbled as she tucked both paintings of treasure back into the scroll case along with everything else, and sat with the cleaned up, scaled up images of the dead sorcerer’s crystal at last. “Now let’s see what freaked Raps out so badly.”

Now that she wasn’t looking at the crystal itself, the images carved in its sides were no longer slipping away from her mind the moment she laid eyes on them. And copied onto a sheet of graph paper with confident lines of ink scribed with the best nibs that the money and status of the Crown Princess of Corona could buy, the images were contained within four tall, narrow rhombuses—the facets numbered beside each, one-two, two-three, three-four, four-one, and with little arrows pointing away from the tips to indicate two little sigils drawn in more detail off to the side, an eight-rayed sun carved into the top and a crescent moon carved into the bottom. Next to that were two circles with the crystal’s facets cut into them, a topside view of the eight-sided crystal’s twin pyramids, showing the progression of images on each half from one into another.

It was easy to see why Raps had immediately linked these to the Sundrop and Moonstone, Cassandra had to admit, and not just because of the solar and lunar sigils carved into the tips.

The sun half’s first image was of a bramble patch, a mess of thorny vines and branches that formed a complicated pattern of knots tightened into the shape of a boar—its legs planted firmly on the ground, no longer rooted, and the tusks at its snout still barbed like the vines themselves were. The second was of a figure standing upright, with the head and legs of a boar mounted on a human torso, and with human arms. The third, a swirl of clouds cut with lightning, but shaped like a person with clenched fists and arms raised above their head in a triumphant pose. And the fourth was a cloud again, but only a cloud this time, shedding the lines of heavy rain that seemed to take root where it struck the soil, with more of the same knotwork as in the first one now burrowing deep into the earth.

A complete cycle of transformation, progressing smoothly from one form of life into another, increasing the complexity with every step. A complete cycle that there was no exit from, Cassandra thought with a bit of unease as save what has been lost, bring back what one was mine rang clear in her memory, and she rubbed a hand over her breastbone against an uncomfortable recollection of being thrust back into a somewhat similar state of being alive—a recollection that she couldn’t stop having extremely vivid nightmares about.

The moon half’s first image, in turn, was of a buried, skeletal animal corpse—some unrecognizable bird, it seemed—and of a shrub growing overtop that, its branches heavy with fruit, its roots piercing through the set of bones as if to drain them of any substance or spirit they could still retain. The second was of live birds, this time, picking at the guts of a human figure contorted in agony on the ground, its legs kicking uselessly at the soil and one arm grasping towards the sky in a desperate gesture, a hard-to-misinterpret indicator that it was still alive despite the birds already feasting on its entrails. The third, a human figure again, a fire-eater with one torch burning and one extinguished, the flames in front of their face structured as if they were quite literally devouring the fire rather than spitting out a mouthful of flammable liquid into a torch, like actual performers would do to impress. And the fourth was that shrub again, but grown into a full tree, and engulfed in a blazing wildfire.

If there was a cycle in this half at all, it was of the lowly overcoming the mighty, the simple devouring the complicated. Where the sun half held a cycle of progress as endless as it was inescapable, the moon half concerned itself with breaking that at every stage—the same contrast as heal what has been hurt, change the fates’ design struck against wither and decay, end this destiny, both sung over the same notes.

But even in that stark a difference, both of these cycles unfolded across the same stages. Under the sun, a plant progressed into an animal, animal into human, human into... some abstract expression of natural forces, and that back into a plant again. Above the moon, an animal was being devoured by a plant, a human by an animal, an abstract expression of nature by a human, and a plant by that abstract again. And whether she said that twigs of dry wood fed a campfire or that a campfire devoured twigs of dry wood, the result would still be light and warmth, wouldn’t it?

Cassandra put a hand over her mouth and chin as she considered. Every time there was something to do with Zhan Tiri or one of her three star pupils, there was also something to do with a big plant—every single time but for the blizzard over Castle Corona, which was more than enough for a malice-infused expression of natural forces. Sugracha had attempted to employ the gnarled tree at Janus Point as the focus of a spell powerful enough to yank Zhan Tiri out of her exile into the Lost Realm, and fuel that spell with the souls of any unfortunates she could bewitch the most quickly. Tromus’ spell that he attempted to trap Rapunzel with while Cassandra was busy reliving the worst day of her life, she was later told, had been made manifest in physical ways by the way of copious amounts of glowing brambles—which was one of the motifs featuring prominently here. While Gothel was the eternal odd one out, Cassandra thought scathingly, there was the fact that the girl who had spent eighteen years with only Gothel for company would draw fern leaves in rainbow colours when she was happy, but lengths of chain and jagged lines of vines bristling with thorns when she was scared. And that was before mentioning Zhan Tiri’s own Great Tree.

And even then, there was the other powerful Coronian sorcerer she’d dealt with. The one she had taken that crystal from the corpse of.

One of Casimir’s companions had animal horns grafted onto the sides of his head, rather than still wear them on a headband. One’s entire body had been grown into an impossible size. One had a blind eye that the damage to had been reversed or at least made a non-issue, an eye able to see in wan moonlight just as well as under the sun.

Her withered fingers twitched again, and Cassandra scowled as much from the physical pain as from distaste at her thoughts—leading her nowhere, not just yet, and still not letting her focus on matters more easily solved. Or possible to solve.

However done she was with magic, it very much seemed that magic wasn’t done with her.

~*~

Algebra was a good enough half-measure, Rapunzel thought to herself with resignation as she tried to focus on her practice equations and use them to drag her mind off the terrible thoughts and the festering bit of misery that she couldn’t shake. A good enough glass of water to ask for, as a last wish before being hanged. But she was running out of water to sip—and the noose wasn’t getting any looser. So no matter how useful the homework was, it could not compare to the overwhelming relief Rapunzel felt when she looked up at the sound of a knock coming against the open door of her room, and saw Adira standing in the entrance.

“I’m told that you asked after me?”

“Yes, I did,” Rapunzel said with feeling as she stood up, the equations immediately forgotten across her desk. “It’s good to see you again.”

“I imagine so. We’ve missed a few sessions while I was away.”

“No. I mean, yes, but—” Rapunzel sighed as she looked away briefly, and caught herself fidgeting with her hands as she couldn’t keep still through the unease anymore. “I do need your help as soon as you find the time, but I’m happy to see you regardless of that, not just because you can do something for me. It’s important to me that you know that.”

For a moment, Adira simply studied her in silence. Then her eyes softened, and she inclined her head a little. “It’s nice to know I’ve been missed. Thank you.”

“Still, though, after you’ve taken some time to rest...?”

“I have done so already,” Adira told her calmly. “Your schedule is busier than mine; however soon you’re free, we can begin again.”

Rapunzel looked askance at Faith, who was sitting to the side with folds of fabric in her lap and an embroidery loop in her hands. At the brief pause, the handmaiden looked up, and considered for a moment before she gave a little sideways nod.

“You’ve made a bit of headway in class over these weeks, haven’t you? And I can’t think of anything you’d be needed for today that can’t wait. I’ll make sure you’re covered for until tomorrow.”

Rapunzel let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. “What would I do without you two?”

“Your best, I assume,” Adira said smoothly, looking amused, while Faith just smiled. “Come, then.”

And that permission was everything Rapunzel needed to drop everything and follow the old warrior out of her own room, already feeling a little better just for being in Adira’s company again—just for being in her presence, a fountain of unshakeable certainty and boundless calm, and breathing a little more easily for that mist in the air.

“Would you like to sit this time, or take a walk?” Adira asked, voice level and eyes keen and hands folded behind her back.

“Take a walk first, and then sit, if that’s okay?” Rapunzel hedged. At a nod, she took a turn to head towards the battlements, as was customary for them by now. “How was your trip into the tunnels?”

“A refreshingly easy task,” Adira said simply. “Your repairmen were competent, and careful with themselves. The few accidents that happened at all, I was able to mitigate before they could turn into a setback or a disaster, and no one was seriously injured throughout. I imagine more such assignments will follow, in time, across further lengths of those passages.”

“And did Hector give you any trouble?”

“Surprisingly, none. He’s occupied enough with exploring and charting the tunnels, and destroying any traps that still remain or dens that have been established in the meantime. He didn’t have the energy or the time to waste on antagonizing me. It’s a good change of pace.” Adira gave her a long, careful look. “How did you fare over these weeks?”

Rapunzel managed a pathetic little smile. “Do I look that bad?”

“You look strained,” Adira told her, “and unhappy, and as if you are feeling cornered.”

“That about sums it up,” Rapunzel admitted with a sigh. “I am... not... doing okay. Not by any means, really.”

Adira gave her a little hum, as if to assure her that she was still listening. When the silence stretched on, she looked to the girl at her side. “Talk to me. What happened?”

“Nothing. It’s not really that something happened, like an event that took place and made me feel bad, I’ve just been... realizing things again. And that’s what’s been making me feel this way, I think.”

“Okay, let’s start there, then. What name would you put to these feelings, and where did they come from?”

“I feel uncertain,” Rapunzel said, wringing her hands again, and felt a bit of the stony burden that’s been piling up around her heart crumble off just for saying that out loud. “And I feel scared for being so uncertain. My mom told me that there’s a nobleman who’s been staying ready to attack the capital and make himself king, in case I never came back, and was just waiting for a good opportunity to do it. She said she worries that no one tried to openly say that I’m not really her and dad’s daughter, but a mistake or an impostor.”

“Do you worry that it might be true?” Adira’s tone gentled over the question.

“I didn’t even think that was an option until she said it. And I– I know that she meant it in the political sense, about being the Lost Princess, not about being just me, but—” Rapunzel heard her voice tremble, and paused to take a deeper breath. “I am not Gothel’s. Everything good that I’ve done with my life has been despite her, not because of her. And if I’m not my parents’, then... whose am I? I was born with golden hair, because of the Sundrop, and because of the Sundrop everything else that happened afterwards, happened in the first place. It’s not like that’s a reliable way to tell.”

Adira considered for a moment, a thoughtful look on her face. “Did you not mention that you’ve always had a lock of brown hair, from when it’s been cut in the crib?”

Rapunzel nodded. “Mom is still keeping that inside a locket. And it’s brown, too. But... there are a lot of people with brown hair. And I know that my birthday matches, and I– I think I remember something from when I was that little, but I can’t tell if it’s really– it could have been a dream, for all I know. And I realize it would be a lot for a coincidence, and I’m not trying to convince myself that I don’t belong here, but it’s also– I don’t know if it’s enough to really prove that I am who we all think I am, either. I know that I’ve met a lot of peers of the realm and foreign allies who have been confused to hear me introduced as the Crown Princess of Corona, because the infant princess had golden hair.”

“Look at me,” Adira said calmly, and once Rapunzel stopped in her tracks to do so, took her chin in one hand to tilt her face to the light. “Without the Sundrop burning through you, you have the Queen’s hair—you always did, your brows and eyelashes have always been brown, even when I first met you—and you have her eyes, but the King’s jawline and cheekbones and shoulders. You are built like he is, in general, heavier and broader than most women who don’t live off the fruits of their labour that I’ve seen in Corona, especially when you eat your fill—which you don’t quite look like you’ve been doing recently. You have the King’s temperament, as well: you are both, and in the same way, very slow to anger yet utterly unquenchable in that anger once it is reached. I can’t truthfully judge whether your curiosity is a trait you’ve inherited from the Queen, as well, with how exacerbated yours has been through having no ways to sate it for so many years, and how she had curbed hers for the needs of her station. However, I do not think anyone could genuinely doubt that you are the King and Queen’s birth child. You look like both of them, and act like both of them, and anyone who claims otherwise would do so simply for reasons that are, as you’ve said, political.”

“Thank you,” Rapunzel said, overwhelmed with relief, if in a bit of a mumble for still having the old warrior’s hand at her face. “I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that until I did.”

Adira nodded at that, and released Rapunzel’s chin to fold her hands behind her back again, but the slight look of concern on her face deepened rather than abate. “Your cheeks were a little rounder than this last time we spoke, though. I hope you haven’t been seeking out punishment by denying yourself food?”

“No. Not on purpose, at least,” Rapunzel amended as they started walking again. “I keep the same meal times as everyone else in the castle, but I guess I haven’t been eating as much at these times, and in-between, as I normally would have. And sometimes I’m so tired, not in the physical sense but just of– of being the way I am, that I go to sleep hungry rather than eat something light before bed, because I don’t feel like I...”

“Yes?”

“Deserve it,” Rapunzel said quietly, looking away. “It’s another way I’ve been feeling recently. I don’t think I... like myself very much, not anymore. I’m a terrible person who treats everyone she loves in terrible ways. Why should I have nice things? Or the company of those I love? Everything I know how to do just makes me hurt them and drive them away. I feel like it’s just a matter of time before everyone else leaves me, too. And that’s terrifying, but it’s what I deserve for—”

“Okay, enough. There is no need for you to spiral down that path any further. Can you tell me where these feelings came from so strongly?”

“Aside from everything I’ve ever done?” Rapunzel asked tiredly. At a patient, yet insistent look, she gave a weak shrug. “I guess I’m just continuing to notice how bad a friend I’ve been to the most important people in my entire life. Not that it’s been a particularly long time, because my life began three and a half years ago, and before that I spent eighteen locked up in a room, climbing the walls and painting them over and over, and doing crafts to pass the time, and staring out a window, and there was one chameleon and one other person in the entire world and that person was the worst I have ever met or heard about, how was I supposed to know any better, of course I was a terrible friend when that’s the only relationship I’ve ever had beforehand! Of course I didn’t know any better! There was no one to teach me otherwise! How was I supposed to learn?! And that’s one more way I’ve been feeling recently, I am—!” Rapunzel put both hands at her face for a moment before dragging them down in a sharp motion. “So! Frustrated! I’m twenty-one, and taking classes at the level of a twelve-year-old! I don’t know things so basic that people don’t even consider it’s possible to not know them, and things so obvious that no one knows how to explain them! I hate being talked to like I’m a child, but how else can I expect people to talk to me, when I’ve had to ask questions like what is a fever? How does money work? Where do some birds go over winter? Why is seawater unsafe to drink? I didn’t know what the word 'menstrual' means for years after I started menstruating, I just read it in a book about botany, in the entry about the guelder rose shrub, that its bark relieves menstrual cramps, and that’s without even going into how it’s a miracle that I taught myself how to read in the first place!”

“One moment. You didn’t know what a period is, while you were having yours already?”

“No! Gothel just scared me that it’s something bad, the one time I asked, and kept making fun of me when I was having a hard one! I thought maybe it had something to do with the moon, because the lunar cycle and that one take around the same amount of time, but then I couldn’t think about anything that being thirteen years and five months old would have to do with the moon, so then I tried to see if there was anything unusual about the position of the stars—I used to chart stars when I was bored, did I ever tell you that, and that was before I even heard the word 'telescope'—and of course there wasn’t, the only thing I really noticed at the time was that one star wasn’t moving no matter the month or year, and I thought, 'it must be so much easier to find which way is north on a cloudless night if you know where that star is', so I called it the North Star, and then I left the tower and it turned out it’s what that star is actually called, and also that stars have names at all and that constellations are a thing that exists—” Rapunzel shook her head, cutting herself off on the tangent. “I used to count days between stopping to bleed and starting again, instead of between starting every month, because the thing that mattered was how long I had for wearing the dress I didn’t want to ruin. I got in so much trouble for wrecking a tablecloth that one time, but I didn’t actually wreck it on accident, I did it on purpose—and then lied about it—so that Gothel would want it replaced. And when she did, well, it meant that I had enough fabric from the old one to sew together in layers like a harmonica to make myself a few pads, so that I wouldn’t bleed through my clothes every fourth week or so. What I actually found out on accident was that blood washes out better in cold water than in warm.” Rapunzel paused again, and took a deeper breath in an attempt to calm herself down. “I am not stupid. I just don’t know a lot of things, because the woman who raised me was a jailer, not a mother, and it was easier for her to keep me inside if I didn’t know anything, because it meant I would have to rely on her with the most basic of things. And I know that I’m acting like a child with other people, and it’s because I didn’t have any people around when I was an actual child, but it doesn’t help just to know that, it doesn’t do anything! And I’ve been feeling like this, just... stuck oscillating between scared and miserable about myself and so, so frustrated, for a few weeks now, I think—”

“Ah,” Adira said quietly, the sound of comprehension dawning in a blaze.

“—and I am so TIRED of it, but I don’t know how to stop, every time I try to get out of one of these I just fall head-first into the next one.” Rapunzel breathed deeply again, and smoothed both hands over her hair. “I’m sorry I yelled. I didn’t mean to do raise my voice at you, everything just came out in a rush.”

“It’s what we’re having these conversations for,” Adira reminded. “I need to ask you an uncomfortable question.”

Rapunzel managed a weak smile. “What, unlike all the other questions that you usually ask?”

“I’m being serious.”

“Sorry.”

“What is the difference between the way you’ve been feeling recently,” Adira asked in a gentle, yet firm tone, “and the way you used to feel when you were in the tower?”

Rapunzel turned to look at her, startled, any further thoughts and the churning mess of ongoing unease blasted out of focus with the question. And in the empty, silent stillness left in its wake, the answer was finally facing her in all its stark clarity, and all Rapunzel could do as it stared her down was to laugh a furious little chuckle, a sound that she could not stop herself from making.

“The difference—the only difference—is that I’m letting myself feel these things now. That I’m not forcing myself into fake cheer instead. Even the way I’ve been talking myself down in my head sounds like Gothel was talking to me, the mockery and belittling and– oh, I hate this.” Rapunzel put a hand over her mouth, lips pulled back from her teeth in what was more of a snarl than a grin, and shook through another burst of enraged laughter before she lifted a finger. “I don’t find any of this funny. I’m incredibly angry, and this is a stress response.”

“I understand,” Adira said calmly.

“Why would I feel like this? It’s been years and everything is different, what is wrong with me.”

“That you feel like this is not a failing on your part. When we spend a long time in circumstances that put us through a lot of hardship or pain, we cope however we can, in what ways we have available. And when our circumstances change for the better, simply the fact of that change isn’t enough to make our minds unlearn the ways in which we have kept ourselves safe, as you’ve experienced for yourself by now,” Adira told her patiently. “If we are faced with something that triggers these reflexes again, even years later and with our circumstances changed profoundly, we may find ourselves reacting in ways we’ve had no recourse but to learn all those years ago—acting, and feeling, as if we’re once again in a situation like the one we’ve learned such behaviours in. This is called a flashback, and I think you’ve been experiencing an emotional one for some time now.”

“So it’s—” Rapunzel rubbed at her eyes, wiping away tears that choked at her throat already. “It’s just a thing that happens? It’s not something I did wrong.”

“It’s just a thing that happens,” Adira confirmed. “So my initial question remains, what is it that happened to make you feel this way?”

“I don’t know!” Rapunzel clenched her teeth when she heard her voice break. “This is– this really is the pits. How am I supposed to get out of a tower that’s built up inside of me?”

“Brick by brick,” Adira told her gently. “And you’ve already pushed out enough of those to be able to see over what remains of the walls, have you not?”

Rapunzel breathed out slowly. “How do you always know what to say?”

“It’s a talent,” Adira admitted with her usual little smile.

Rapunzel laughed a little at that, the sound shaky with tears but genuine, one that let her feel the ground anchored more firmly under her feet again. “Can we sit with this, please?”

“Yes, of course we can. Come.” Adira studied her for a moment while Rapunzel was wiping the first tears from her face. “What are your favourite classes to take?”

“Mathematics,” Rapunzel said immediately, without having to think about it. “Then history. I like how just counting things makes me feel like they make sense, and there’s no one who can be hurt or uncomfortable if I get the numbers wrong. And I get them right more and more often, recently. Sometimes the rules are hard to remember or understand, but they are there to be learned in the first place. It’s relaxing. And like a puzzle that never ends. It’s always there when I need to push myself into focus on something so that I can stop feeling scared at things I can’t even name. And history is so interesting, too, at first when I started history classes I just thought it was amazing because it was like stories, only real ones that actually happened. But now sometimes I just have to take a moment and think about how everyone I’m learning about now were real people, with hopes and dreams and fears and everything just like me. I wonder what it must have felt like, to live the lives they did and make the decisions they did. I wonder if they ever thought that people would sit in class and learn about them. And I keep finding that some of the things those people lived through or decided are still having consequences today. Finding these echoes of the past in the present is like a whole another puzzle, too.”

"Is there an example you would give?"

"Well, the way that the Seven Kingdoms alliance was made in the first place, off the top of my head. There was a lot more involved in that, but what I've learned about most recently is that each of the seven banned a traditional practice that its new allies found abhorrent. And with good reason, because they mostly were... abhorrent. Bayangor banned eugenics, but I want to think that's been based less in actual fact and more in horrible stories about one of the southern Bayangoran city-states—that if a child was born with a deformity of some sort, the  council of elders would throw that child off a cliff. I can't even imagine anyone following a council that would do this. And I know that Ingvarr banned slavery. 'Thrall' used to be a legitimate social class in its traditional society, but ever since the alliance happened, the Ingvarrdian monarch has always been the first to punish any recurrence of enslavement and always punished it very, very severely."

"What did Corona ban?"

"Witch burnings." Rapunzel paused for a moment and took stock, and surprisingly, found herself no longer on the verge of tears. “...Did you ask what I'm learning about just to get me thinking about something that wouldn’t make me cry?”

“Not only for that. I was also curious about your studies, since they seem to occupy much of your time and demand much of your effort,” Adira replied calmly. “Are there any classes that you find harder than others?”

“Literature study gets confusing sometimes,” Rapunzel admitted. “I do get allegory, and metaphors, and poetic commentary on one thing by writing about another thing, but sometimes it feels like people were just trying to find the most convoluted ways possible to say something simple. It makes me wish they would just... say what they meant, instead.”

Adira gave a rare laugh at that. “Such perpetual honesty would make for a world wonderful and terrible indeed.”

They found an unused room quickly enough, and then there was a burning stick of incense, and a meadow with a moonlit pool as intimately familiar as someplace that did not exist could ever be, and a time for Rapunzel to breathe deeply and feel her way down into the deep. A time to backtrack through her discomfort and self-loathing and persistent upset, guided with questions and unhurried attention—and breathe through the unpleasant emotions as she went, rather than let them occupy her focus, drag her attention away from looking for what it was to have caused them. And then, there she was in the dark, with only a quickly mounting sense of foreboding to tell her that she was on the verge of understanding.

And then there was understanding, as terrible as that feeling had warned her.

“I can’t climb anymore,” Rapunzel said quietly, and watched the act of saying that out loud flood through the channels threaded through the entire mountain of her state over the past weeks, setting it ablaze like a river of magma pouring down the mountainside after an eruption. “I’ve been like this because I feel trapped again, I can’t get off the ground and I’ll never be able to again, I haven’t left the city for months and I’ve barely gone out of the castle in that time—” she sagged, hands over her face, a whole new burst of fear slamming shut around her chest like a fanged maw. “I can’t let my home become another tower. I can’t. I thought I could just do what’s expected of me, and be a princess and then queen, but it’s only been half a year and I can’t take it anymore.”

“Then this is something you must speak to your parents about,” Adira told her, patient as always, but insistent. “Share this unease with them, and reiterate that your need to go outside is not a caprice, but a need, one made only more important than it already was by the years you’ve spent in that tower.”

“Dad will just send a battalion of guards after me,” Rapunzel grumbled in a miserable tone. “It’s what happened once before. It turned a walk down the street into a military parade.”

“If his concern is for your safety, then perhaps you could mention dangers that you’ve fought your way through while you were travelling towards the Moonstone,” Adira suggested. “If he knows that you’re in the company of people who have, in the past, successfully protected you and themselves from certain threats, then he may become more inclined to rely on these people to protect you again.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“Then we’ll have this conversation again,” Adira told her calmly, and Rapunzel found herself looking up at her with a bit of hope. “I believe it would do you good to spend this kind of downtime with your friends, especially ones that are living outside the city, since I understand that you haven’t seen them for all these months? And while I would not call the King’s concerns for your well-being unfounded, there are more ways than a military escort to keep you safer than you might otherwise be. It will not do to leave this matter as it is—after all, your concerns for your own well-being, if in spirit and mind rather than in the sense of protection from bodily harm, are not unfounded either.”

Rapunzel smiled slowly. “My mom always says that when there’s a problem, it’s for being solved, not worried about endlessly.”

“Maybe you should begin with her, then.” The old warrior at Rapunzel’s side gave her a wry little smile. “As heiress to the throne, you must begin classes in strategy and tactics at some point, do you not?”

~*~

Bare minutes into Cassandra’s study of the sheet with the crystal’s facets, Owl gave her a hoot of alert. She looked up to find a stranger walking towards her: an inch or two shorter than herself, with green eyes and black hair cropped close to the sides of his head, clean-shaven but for a slight case of five-o’clock-shadow and the long sideburns framing his cheeks. His clothes were a shade of gray just this side of black too sun-bleached to qualify for the name anymore, a thick woollen coat that he carried thrown across an arm indoors, trousers of quilted fabric, and a leather jacket covered with neat rows of soot-blackened studs. No, not studs. Rivets. A brigandine, then. At his belt hung a modestly sized sword with a broad blade, a rounded point, and an S-shaped guard, as well as a spike-like dagger suited for stabbing into the gaps between elements of plate armour, and a quiver of bolts; a crossbow slung over his shoulder on a length of strong cord completed the picture, and Cassandra found herself staring back at him with an equal amount of curiosity as the one that he was giving her, as he gestured at the free chair at her table.

“Is this seat taken?”

Cassandra shook her head. “I’m not expecting anyone.”

Rather than pull the chair away to another table, he sat down with her, unfazed at the way she folded away the drawings she’d been studying. “You look a lot like me. Sword-for-hire caught between jobs?”

“That’s the line of work I find myself in recently, yes,” Cassandra allowed.

“My officer is recruiting,” the man told her simply. “We lost three people last run. Right now it’s me, her, and an exiled warrior from northern Bayangor, but she sent me to ask you over while she’s talking to another guy. And she scoped out two more people on the other side of the river earlier today, they should be here soon.”

“A ronin?” Cassandra asked, surprised. “You have an actual samurai with you, this far away from the Bayangoran border?”

“Well, yeah, if his manners and gear are any way to tell. Good man, though, we’ve been working together for a while now. Capable, too.”

“Did you get a look at who this officer of yours is talking to at the moment?”

“Ah, some devil-may-care Kotoan footman. His kind is normally reliable enough, from what I’ve seen.”

Cassandra sat up straight at that. “And the officer herself, who’s she?”

“Kotoan, too,” the mercenary said with a shrug. “She finds us a lot of good jobs, but doesn’t tie us down to only work for one person or faction—sometimes we run jobs for the Guard, sometimes for private contractors, sometimes for people we don’t even know who only get in touch with her through a chain of middlemen. We can go after tougher scores as a group, so the pay is better than for a lone freelancer, and it’s safer too. She’s good at keeping people together. And if something goes as wrong as it just did for our friends, she won’t cut her losses and call it a day. We’re only in the city for as long as it takes to find enough people to even the odds before we take the bastards down to size.”

“What did go wrong, anyway?”

“Scarlet Brigade,” the mercenary told her dryly.

Cassandra inclined her head. “Well, I have no love for the Reds.”

“Great. We’re in the market for killing some. Come talk to her, yeah? You look like you’d be a lot of help, and you stand to gain on working with us, too.”

“I guess it doesn’t hurt to talk,” Cassandra agreed, and tapped her left shoulder for Owl to perch on. “What’s your officer’s name?”

“Delphine. She never gave a last name, now that I think about it.”

Cassandra paused for a moment. She’d heard that name once before—among advice of who to look for if she wanted to render further services to the agents of Kotoan Crown while she was in the region, and keep herself on the safe side of looking for mercenary wolfpacks to run with at the same time. Joining up with a team led by another Kotoan spy, just masquerading as a random sellsword, would somewhat contradict her agreement with Sybil to stay on-call for any further tasks that other agents operating in Riddersbrug could need her help with—but it would also make her throw off suspicion far more easily, if she was just another hireling like dozens upon dozens around her, only joining up into a band rather than continue taking jobs from seemingly random people before she could pick anything off the contract board.

Then she made a non-committal noise, so as to not let the silence drag on, and stood up. “Not everybody is called anything more complicated than just a first name. Which, I still haven’t asked yours.”

“Shlomo.” The mercenary shook her hand. “Yours?”

“Cassandra. And one last thing.”

“Yeah?”

“I can tell you’re from Corona, too, but I can’t place your accent,” Cassandra said. Indeed, he sounded like he was from a dozen regions all at once, the tang and stress he’d put on certain words a nebulous mix from halfway across the kingdom, some central Coronian and some just that side of Rochester or Quintonia or Vardaros or even further away from the capital. “You’re not Saporian, are you?”

“No, but I sympathize,” Shlomo told her with a raised eyebrow. “We’ve not had a kingdom of our own for a long time, either.”

Cassandra gave him a scrutinizing look, but when no elaboration came, she shrugged the comment away. “That’s fair, I guess.”

Shlomo nodded at that, and waved her to follow. “Our table’s just this way.”

Indeed, there was a man with northern Bayangoran features and a suit of lamellar armour at the table that Shlomo was leading her to, as was a woman in her early forties, it seemed—and a Kotoan man just slightly taller than herself, with bronze skin, black hair mussed a little from wearing a falcon-nosed helmet, and a halberd leaning against the wall behind his chair.

“I knew it,” Cassandra said at the sight of him, grinning.

The halberdier looked her way at that, and his face immediately lit up as he rose to greet her. “Cassandra!”

“Riccardo, you look good.” Cassandra shook his extended hand.

“And you look like you got punched in the face,” Riccardo said pointedly.

Cassandra laughed as she brushed a finger against the bridge of her nose—broken and set since they’ve parted ways. “Because I did!”

“I take it you two know each other?” the woman spoke up calmly, gesturing between them.

“We’ve worked together once before,” Cassandra offered as she pulled herself a chair.

“Mutual employer tried to pit us against each other,” Riccardo supplied with delight. “So we killed him and split the profit.”

The woman barked a short burst of laughter at that, then turned to Cassandra. “You’re hired.”

“That’s it?” Cassandra asked her dryly. “That’s everything you needed to know?”

“You’re the one who dragged in the corpses of Hogni Galdrsbani, that cannibal pankratist, and one of the most feared Coronian sorcerers, aren’t you? That speaks for itself, I just wanted to know how well you play with others. If Riccardo and you are friends already, then I don’t have to worry about whether you’ll be able to keep yourselves together without me.”

“I’m sorry, you did what now?” Riccardo muttered across the table with a shocked look on his face.

Cassandra gave him a weak shrug, and turned to the woman again. “You’re Delphine, then?”

“Correct.” The woman stretched her legs under the table before sitting up with her elbows on top of it. Her eyes were harder than flint and quicker than a viper’s tongue as they flicked across the tavern’s dining floor, and she wore her dark brown hair in an asymmetrical fashion: sheared close to the skin on one side of her head, almost reaching her shoulder on the other. Her face was cut so sharply as if it had been chiselled from stone, but with a slightly upturned nose and full lips that she seemed prone to worrying with her teeth when deep in thought, the laugh lines on her face as pronounced as the crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes and the vertical furrow between her eyebrows that betrayed a tendency to frown—a set of features that would be considered beautiful on another person, but on her was emphasized in a way that made her look like a goshawk. More than that, she carried herself in a way that highlighted her shoulders rather than her chest, covered with a vest of brown leather that the sleeves and edges of a hauberk peeked out from under; two swords were laid across her lap, and she put a hand over them as she shifted to sit cross-legged in her chair, even that scant a movement executed with grace, but the sort that would sooner invite comparisons to a soldier in parade march than to a dancer. Frankly, if she bound her chest and walked in a stride that wouldn’t rock her hips, she’d easily pass for a man, and Cassandra found herself more entranced by that than by anything that the Coronian court’s dresses, flowers, lace, and baubles had ever done. “You’ve met Shlomo already, and this is Tetsuji.”

Cassandra delayed sitting down for a moment to give the Bayangoran a stiff, straight-backed bow—one he immediately stood up to return, a bit of delighted surprise in his eyes, before he reached to shake her hand in a continental fashion as well.

“I don’t see a mon on you, sir, but I look forward to working together all the same.”

“Clan Matsuzaki,” Tetsuji supplied easily, a small smile on his face now. “You would find a sunrise dawning over the fiefdom’s pine and plum groves most beautiful, I believe.”

“I hope I may live to see it someday,” Cassandra offered.

“It gladdens me to meet a companion with such excellent manners,” the samurai told her as he sat back down.

Riccardo sipped his ale loudly with an unimpressed look on his face, while Delphine and Shlomo ignored the comment entirely. Cassandra inclined her head at Tetsuji in acknowledgement of the compliment—and with the conversation concluded like so, he went back to doing what he could to eat his bowl of goulash with a pair of chopsticks. Her first thought about the man was that his face was inexpressive, but that was proven a lie already, and Cassandra corrected the impression into that he was good at keeping himself studiously neutral unless interacted with directly. Dark hair pulled back into a high ponytail tied off with several passes of an unadorned white ribbon, with the hair overtop his head noticeably shorter than at the sides and back of his head—likely grown out after he no longer had to shave it in a court fashion—and dark eyes, both either black or a brown just this side of black, difficult as it was to tell in this light. Clean-shaven but for a faint bit of stubble around his mouth and at his chin: a condition that he clearly found irksome, judging from the slight twist to his lips as he ran a thumb against it. His armour was very distinctly made in a northern Bayangoran style, as were the spear and the asymmetrical longbow and the shorter sword at his side, but to Cassandra’s surprise the longer, signature sword of the Bayangoran samurai was missing and replaced with a simple, if very fine, bastard sword of continental make. The original weapon must have broken at some point in the past.

“We’re waiting for two more people. We’ll talk details once they show up, so I don’t have to repeat myself a bunch of times,” Delphine said. Moments later, she leaned out to see behind another person crossing the tavern floor, and raised her arm to hail someone. “Ah, and here they come.”

Cassandra turned to look, as well, and just in time to see the vaguely familiar silhouette of an Ingvarrdian built like a keep tower and wearing a hooded, sleeveless coat made from an entire bear pelt, the upper jaw and rounded ears perched overtop her head, as she bowed herself to fit through the door along with the damaged round shield on her back. Standing over a head above the crowd—how tall did that make her, six foot and more than?—she spotted Delphine waving at her immediately, and tapped the shoulder of a much smaller redhead at her side to point out the group’s table. With the bear pelt and the sheer bulk of her, she moved through the crowd like an icebreaker ship, and they quickly made their way close enough for Cassandra to notice that the bear’s lower jaw had been divided at the chin like a snake’s, and a row of metal eyelets was inset down each side of a slit in the fur of its throat, with a cord of brown leather serving as a lace to allow for closing the pelt against the Ingvarrdian’s neck like a coat’s collar or for loosening to throw the hood off. Her arms were bare, save for an arm ring of braided leather circling each thick bicep and a pair of gloves that had come from the bear’s front limbs, no doubt, finished with the claws overtop every finger. Her boots matched the gloves, as well, if made a little sturdier for being reinforced with materials more suited for shoemaking, and her trousers looked like they had seen better days, a very, very long time ago. Along with the damaged shield, she carried a lidded wicker basket finished with a single shoulder strap, evidently functioning like a backpack; there was a well-used bearded axe in the belt loop at her right hip, a spear in her free hand, and a friendly look in her eyes, warm light brown like a tourmaline held up against a candle.

“Hey,” the redhead said with a nod at Delphine, and looked across the others at the table. “This the team you mentioned?”

“Just about, yeah.” Delphine whistled at one of the servers before turning to the pair of Ingvarrdians again. “Let’s get food squared and talk.”

With those matters taken care of, Delphine introduced everyone else at the table, the Ingvarrdians exchanging nods and handshakes with those who extended one.

“I’m Kaja. This is Liv,” the redhead said, pointing a thumb at her companion, who gave the others a little wave as she smiled, bright and curious. “Liv doesn’t talk very much. Or at all, most of the time, for that matter. But she has very good hearing and she can understand you perfectly well, so don’t talk shit unless you’re willing to start shit.” That earned her an elbow in the ribs, and she looked at Liv indignantly. “What? I’m saying it like it is!”

Liv just rolled her eyes with a sigh, even as she tucked her gloves into her belt and tilted her head back to unlace the pelt at her throat, and threw the hood off to scratch a hand through her hair—pulled into a simple shoulder-length braid of honey blonde, almost dark enough to dip into a golden brown in the low light.

“Both chanters, I see?” Delphine asked with a gesture at the ornate daggers in the front of both their belts. “How many trials each?”

“Two,” Kaja said, while Liv held up three fingers.

“And how many spells do you know, each?”

At that, Kaja grimaced. “Two again, and I only ever had to use the seasickness one.”

Liv shook her head with an indulgent smile, earning herself an elbow in the ribs in turn. Then she lifted both hands, nine fingers extended.

“Okay,” Delphine nodded at them both, then addressed Liv directly. “Does your trouble with speaking translate into trouble with using magic?”

Liv shook her head again, a confident look on her face now.

“And how many of your spells, would you say, are going to have a combat use?”

After considering for a moment, Liv showed her two fingers. Then gave a little sideways nod and a so-so gesture with her free hand, and straightened a third finger.

“Two, and depending on the situation, maybe a third?” Delphine clarified. At another confirming nod, she leaned back in her chair, seemingly satisfied. “Good. You two have been a team for a while, I take it? How long?”

“Three months?” Kaja asked, looking at Liv, who held up four fingers at her. Kaja turned back to Delphine. “Four months. We met on the continent, not in the homeland, but it’s been easy to work together since day one.”

“And you yourself focus on being a warrior more concerned with bashing skulls in than with battlefield magic, I assume?”

Kaja gave a wolfish grin at that. “You’d assume right.”

And a single look at her was enough to ascertain as much, Cassandra admitted silently. A broad headband embroidered into the pattern of a few constellations made sure that her hair—a bright red shade and slightly wavy, trimmed at the line of her jaw—wouldn’t be grabbed onto or fall in her face during a fight. Though the only piece of immediately visible armour that she wore was a pair of slightly scuffed metal bracers on her forearms, there was an axe and a sword on her belt, both of very fine make and kept in excellent condition. Across one shoulder, she carried a quiver full of goose-fletched arrows and a bow case, both of matching make, cut from beige leather and embroidered with brightly coloured threads into the images of tufts of grass, flat-capped mushrooms, blueberry bushes festooned with fruit, frogs and field mice and a single grass snake coiling away through the picture on each flat expanse of leather. The claw rends in her vest have been stitched together by now, but that and the rest of her garb was very clearly matched for speed and a wide range of movement rather than for adding any protection—much like her weapons, a dual-wielding setup rather than a weapon and a shield like what her companion carried. While the axe and sword both rested at her right hip, at her left was a deep satchel, threaded into her belt at the top and strapped around her leg at the bottom, just above the knee, enough to keep some basic belongings and a few days’ worth of food on hand, but also enough to keep herself ready to fight on a moment’s notice without having to shrug out of a knapsack first. She didn’t have any scars on display, but one look into her youth-drunk, kohl-lined, pale gray eyes was enough to know that it was only a matter of time; that she would find herself a fight she’d exit wounded just enough for it to scar over, and sooner rather than later.

“You certainly keep yourself on the lighter side of armoured up. Berserker?” Delphine asked.

“No, I don’t have rabies,” Kaja said flatly, prompting Liv to snort with laughter. “I’m not that far off from a berserker’s efficiency or behaviour in combat, but I’m easier for my allies to handle, and I don’t flag like one after the killing’s over.”

“Better and better,” Delphine told her with a smile, and turned to the others at the table. “Anyone else have something they want to know?”

“Can you sign?” Cassandra asked, looking at Liv.

Liv shook her head no, a shade of regret passing through her eyes, and made a vague gesture with one hand. Before anyone could ask for clarification, Kaja leaned over to get a better look at her, and turned to Cassandra as well to translate the return question into a verbal form.

“Can you teach?”

Cassandra glanced down to her withered arm for a moment. She’d insisted to learn when it became an inescapable truth that she would be a handmaiden before she could be a guard—if she could ever be a guard—so as to leave others with one less way to pass secret signals among themselves that she wouldn’t be able to decipher. “I can understand sign language, but I don’t think I have the range of movement to speak it anymore.”

Liv gave her a shrug and a nod of acceptance, visibly trying not to look disappointed.

“Anyone else? No? Alright, then.” Delphine gave the half-dozen seated around her table a gauging look each. “I think we’ll be able to handle what we’re gonna have to handle. Riccardo, I saw you brought your pack with you; Cassandra, how long will you need to gather your belongings?”

“I’m lodging here,” Cassandra said with a shrug. “Five minutes in the stable, and I’m ready to go.”

“You have a horse, then?” Delphine waited for her to nod. “Fantastic, that’s one less trip we’ll have to make. You girls, how long do you need to get your stuff?”

The Ingvarrdians exchanged a look that was equal parts amusement and pity, an unspoken get a load of these southerners, before Liv folded her arms across her chest as she shook her head in exasperation and Kaja rested a hand on her hip, just above the satchel strapped to her left leg.

“We’re wearing everything we own.”

“Even better. Four horses across the board, then. How many of you new kids can ride?”

Cassandra raised a hand, and watched Riccardo doing the same—if with an incredibly unhappy look on his face—and Kaja scowling.

“I can ride a little. Wouldn’t recommend giving me a horse of my own, but I can keep myself atop one if someone else is steering the thing.”

Delphine nodded, then gestured between Riccardo and Cassandra. “If you two worked together, then ride together. Shlomo, take Duke and Liv. Kaja, you ride behind me.”

“Got it,” the redhead said easily, while Shlomo nodded without a word.

“Here’s the deal,” Delphine said simply, leaning over the table now. “Shlomo, Tetsuji, and I just lost three friends in a scuffle with the Reds—some twenty-eight, thirty hours ago—a girl from Corona, a Kotoan man-at-arms, and a Pittsfordian highlander. We want payback. If any of them are still alive, great, but I expect to find corpses, and I want to make corpses of anyone and everyone who’s had a hand in killing them. One hundred gold each, paid on completion, and I will shell that out of my own pocket; and however this run turns out, I’m still going to need people to replace the ones we lost. I’ll treat this like a probation, and you new kids should treat it like a sample to see if you’re interested in this kind of work. If we mix well, let’s keep together; if we don’t, let’s part ways with no hard feelings. Thoughts, questions?”

“Sounds fair to me,” Riccardo said.

Cassandra nodded at him. “Same here.”

“What do you think?” Kaja asked Liv, who put an open hand over a fist and loudly cracked her knuckles with a serene look on her face. “Liv’s into it, and I don’t mind. Just remember that we’re a package deal—where one of us goes, both of us are going.”

“The only problem I have with that is when one of you dies, I’m still going to want the other to stay alive,” Delphine said dryly.

At that, Liv grinned openly, and Kaja barked a laugh. “I think we’re gonna get along just fine.”

And as soon as the group was done eating, they led four horses out of the Forester’s stable, mounting up in pairs: Cassandra on Fidella and pulling Riccardo into the saddle behind herself, Delphine and Kaja on a massive black destrier even taller at the withers than Fidella, Shlomo and Liv on a more typically sized dappled gray stallion—the Coronian’s diminutive height and sinewy build making up for the Ingvarrdian’s height and bulk—and Tetsuji alone on a slender palomino mare, ambling lightly along the three heavier horses as they passed through the southern gate of Riddersbrug and into the snow-covered plain beyond. And as they rode on in a trot, following Delphine’s lead, Riccardo patted an open hand over Cassandra’s collarbone in an affectionate gesture.

“You know, I didn’t really expect to see you again. I’m glad you’re here, though.”

“Eh, I like to keep my promises,” Cassandra said lightly, leaning back into the halberdier a little. “What we were doing last, by the way? Went off without a hitch.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I got a return letter, everything’s okay. There was one for you, as well.”

“What’s it say?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t opened it,” Cassandra said dryly. “I’ll dig it out for you when we make camp, huh?”

“Yeah, it can wait until then.” A smile was evident in Riccardo’s tone, even though she couldn’t see his face. “Hey. I know I haven’t really asked before, but uh, how’s your right arm?”

“Worse, actually,” Cassandra admitted with a sigh. She knew the halberdier had noticed, back when they were gathering firewood among the detritus of Wolf’s Head Hollow and when she was writing the missive to the King of Koto that they’d both signed and tucked into the witch-knight’s armour, but she hadn’t said anything, and he didn’t press any further than she didn’t go. “I’m basically left-handed now, just... worse at everything than if I had been born left-handed.”

“Well, look at Delphine up ahead.”

Cassandra craned her neck to do so, and only now noticed that one of their new officer’s swords was at her right hip, the other slung across her back with the hilt over the left shoulder—exactly like Cassandra carried hers. “...She’s left-handed too, isn’t she?”

“I mean, I only met her last evening, but it sure looks like she is,” Riccardo said. “I’ve served under a lot of army lancepesades and small-time mercenary leaders like her. I’m pretty sure she won’t give you a hard time if you ask her to practice fencing left-handed with you, she’ll just be happy that you want to get better than you already are.”

Cassandra thought that over, and felt herself smile. “I’ll try that. Thanks.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. Going to join her team long-term, then?”

“I think so,” Cassandra said candidly. “I think I’m ready to try. What about you?”

“I mean, she and the Bayangoran certainly mean business, the Coronian looks like he’s been with a condotierri company or a Red detachment beforehand, and I heard about the giant monster thing these Ingvarrdians carried dead into town two days ago. This is a really tough line-up we’ve got here. If none of these people turn out to be all bark with no bite, we might actually go real far with them.”

“Yeah.” Cassandra turned her head to look at the knight-flanked gate and city walls of Riddersbrug behind them, the first city that an advancing Kotoan army would have to capture before reconquering the province in the name of its King. “Yeah, I kind of expect that we will.”

Chapter Text

“It looks like they split up,” Shlomo said as he brushed some snow off his coat. “Left behind a skeleton crew to hold the place and sent a strong cavalry patrol towards the river, judging by the tracks. I counted seven horses in the base; not sure how many Reds, but it doesn’t seem cramped in there by any means, so I figure it’s no more than ten. I didn’t get close enough to eavesdrop, but I don’t think their sentry saw me.”

“Good man.” Delphine patted his shoulder, then turned to the rest of the group and started drawing a rudimentary floor plan on the snow-covered ground. “The place used to be a roadside rest stop between Riddersbrug and a smaller settlement, back when the settlement still existed. The Reds and the Guard have been taking turns using it as a forward base of sorts ever since. The fences are stonework, about eight feet tall; the gate is less of a gate and more of a portable barricade made out of branches stuck together with nails, rope, and a prayer; this is the stable shack, with room enough for two wagons; and the quarters space is here, it’s a small cave that’s been worked a little to make it liveable for short periods of time. Now, the group that wrecked us numbered about two dozen strong. If they split up like this, then I say we wipe out those in the base, wait for that patrol to get back and set up a few surprises for them, then use the walls to pen them in and wipe out as well.”

Cassandra nodded among murmurs of assent from the others. Seven against twenty-four was suicidal odds in a fair fight, but seven raiding a camp of ten was almost reasonable—and while seven setting a trap for fourteen was still incredibly risky, it probably approached doable on account of not being a fair fight.

Delphine looked at Shlomo again. “How many sentries?”

“Just the one that I’ve seen, and I did a bit of a crawl around.”

“Just one? Either they’re real sure of themselves here, or real busy.” Delphine turned to root through her massive steed’s saddlebags for a moment, only to take out a broad, scarf-like chainmail collar and place it around her neck and shoulders. “I’ll take out the sentry. Soon as that’s done, we go half and half. Riccardo, Cassandra, and Shlomo: the first three Reds that you see, shoot down, then hold the gate until I give you an all-clear—I want no Reds getting out of here tonight. Tetsuji, Kaja, and Liv: on me, and follow into melee. Once we sweep the buildings, too, we come back for our horses and get to work on trapping the place. Thoughts, questions?”

Riccardo raised a hand. “I get paid extra for engineering duty.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Delphine said calmly, and gave one last tug on the standard of mail to adjust it around her neck before pulling on a barbute helmet as well. With Tetsuji putting on a half-mask carved into the likeness of a grotesquely snarling mouth and a helmet adorned with stylized gold-plated antlers, Shlomo tossing some snow off the rim of his kettle helm, and Riccardo already fully armoured, she frowned through the T-shaped visor at the other half of her team. “...Do none of you girls have helmets?”

Cassandra shook her head, while Liv tapped a finger against the bear pelt’s hood tugged low over her brow.

“Don’t need one,” Kaja said with a shrug.

Delphine sighed deeply, more than a little exasperated. “Well, I know what we’re shopping for, first thing back in the city.”

And although the face Kaja made at that comment made sure she was going to argue it at some point, there was no time for doing so immediately. Not with Shlomo and Riccardo loading their crossbows, and Cassandra taking that as her cue to string her bow and snap her archery aid around her withered wrist. Not with the group stalking through the snow towards the little base. Not with Delphine splitting off ahead for a moment. Cassandra squinted through the night at the top of the eight-foot-tall wall, where a darker silhouette of the Scarlet Brigade’s sentry was perched, barely visible against the swiftly waning moon. Within minutes, the sentry collapsed suddenly among wisps of shadow, and a different silhouette rose perfectly in his place, waiting for a moment to see if anyone noticed.

Had she harboured any doubt about whether this Delphine was the same one that the pair of Silberstadt’s agents of Kotoan Crown had named to her, Cassandra thought as she watched the spy-mercenary leader discreetly beckon the group to continue their advance, this would’ve convinced her that she had the right person.

When they came up to the wooden barricade, as ramshackle as Delphine’s description of it was, Liv gave a quiet little whistle through her teeth at the rest of the group and waved them away, setting her shield and spear aside for a moment to look for handholds in the haphazardly stacked branches. Before anyone had the time to hiss at her whether she was insane, or whether she wanted the help she would need to move that much weight, the Ingvarrdian stacked like a brick wall hefted the barricade with a little wheeze and silently set it back down a foot further to the right. Not quite enough to be immediately noticeable from within the compound; more than enough for Cassandra to have a clear shot through the gap as she nocked an arrow and waited for the crossbowmen, and for Shlomo to lower himself to one knee and steady his crossbow on the other, and for Riccardo to heft up his own crossbow above Shlomo’s head.

There was a central campfire in the courtyard now opened before them, with a half-dozen Reds in sight. One was curled up on a tree stump of a stool, knees drawn up to his chest and a steaming mug in his hands, right next to a solid plate of brass hanging from a short chain—an alarm gong, no doubt. Another was repairing a jack-of-plate in the firelight, needle and thread in his hands and a small rectangle of metal in his mouth. Two more were peeling carrots, and apparently holding a contest of who could get the longest strip, while another diced the vegetables into a burbling pot set overtop the fire. And a sixth poked at the campfire’s embers with a forked stick, overturning potatoes buried in the hot ash.

“I’ll take the one beside the bell,” Cassandra whispered, and drew her bow.

“Armour-mender for me,” Shlomo said quietly.

“Then I’ll get the cook,” Riccardo murmured as well. “Loose on three. One, two, three—”

They shot, and didn’t wait to see how many Reds hit the ground, throwing themselves to the sides instead to make room for Tetsuji, Kaja, and Liv to charge through the narrow gate. In the frantic scramble for their weapons, only one of the Reds in the courtyard remembered to run for the alarm bell—and didn’t make it halfway there, not with Delphine leaping off the perimeter wall to land with both feet and a sword-blade planted in his back. One of the carrot-peelers kicked the kettle over, with Liv taking most of it onto her shield, a muffled growl of pain tearing past her teeth as the boiling liquid splattered at her legs beneath the rim; and before the Red had the time to do anything else, he had Kaja on him, a weapon in each hand and an ear-to-ear grin on her face and a delighted chuckle rising in her throat.

But the Reds holed up in one of the buildings were now pouring out to assist their swiftly losing compatriots in the courtyard, and pushing the attacking group back. And although Tetsuji cut another down in one swing and Kaja barked a louder burst of elated laughter as she leapt at more, Liv’s already damaged shield cracked in half under a few more blows, and Delphine staggered onto her back foot as a Red’s sword caught her across the chest—

“Can you guys hold the gate alone?” Cassandra tossed at the two beside her.

“Yes, go!” Riccardo snapped before she was finished speaking.

So she leapt into motion, and only barely in time to parry a blade meant for Liv, as the Ingvarrdian was still trying to free her left arm from the tangled, shattered remains of her shield. The Red in front of them lunged to the side, intent on only facing one of them at a time, and Cassandra didn’t need more than a few seconds to exploit a weakness in his guard to carve through his sword-arm and then finish him off. Before she had the time to breathe, the ground shook under an intimately familiar rumble—hoofbeats—and Cassandra threw herself backwards without thinking, narrowly avoiding being trampled as one of the last Reds alive burst from the stable shack astride a chestnut stallion, headed straight for the makeshift gate. A glint of steel, a surge of movement; Riccardo charged to meet him, halberd in hand, and swung it up to catch the rider across the chest and yank him off the saddle. With a choked-gasp, the Red hit the ground, and seized up with a sharper cry as Riccardo easily finished him off. The horse reared up with a deafening whinny, and the halberdier quickly backed away into a steadier stance, evidently prepared to use his weapon’s topspike like a footman’s pike instead, and Shlomo aimed his crossbow from where he still stood at the gate, and Cassandra wasted no time running between the two of them and the chestnut with both hands raised.

“Whoa, whoa! Steady, boy! Steady!”

The horse whinnied at her again, tossing his head.

“Steady!” Cassandra barked, and waited for the horse to snort loudly at her as he paced in place for a moment longer, but didn’t rear up again. “That’s better! Do you remember me? You and your previous rider worked the same job that I did for a month?”

The chestnut eyed her warily, ears still on a swivel, but did eventually make a little noise of recognition.

“That’s right, the tree-cutting. You’re safe now, alright? No one’s going to hurt you.” Cassandra turned her hands to extend them to the horse in an inviting gesture. “It’s going to be okay. Come here.”

A nervous swish of a tail was her only immediate response.

“Come on,” Cassandra encouraged, and smiled when the chestnut took a step forward and finally nosed at her hands, letting her pet him. “That’s a good boy. What’s your name?”

The chestnut gave her a snort.

Cassandra blinked. “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that?”

Another snort, and a hoof stamped against the soil.

“Ryzhik?” Cassandra repeated carefully. On a confirming noise, she inclined her head sideways. “Okay, I have no idea what that means.”

She looked away from the horse as she heard a bit of breathless, incredulous laughter behind her, and turned to see Riccardo with a disbelieving grin on his face.

“Holy shit, should’ve known to leave this to you.”

“Don’t even start,” Cassandra grumbled at him.

“Where’s your bird, anyway? Haven’t seen him for a few hours.”

“Flying perimeter, where else?”

“No, of course. Where else.” Riccardo shifted his halberd against a shoulder, into a comfortable marching position. “Well, damn. Smooth fight.”

“Smooth enough,” Cassandra agreed, and looked across the courtyard. Each member of the group was on their feet, while the ground was strewn with nine red-scarved corpses. The scouting assessment was holding up, Cassandra noted, relieved at the prospect of possibly being able to trust someone else’s eyes than Owl’s and her own on such matters.

Delphine walked up then, patting Cassandra on the shoulder in passing, the gesture firm rather than patronizing. “Good job with the horse. Snap judgement on leaving the gate, but a good call.”

“Thanks. Didn’t I see you get hit?”

“Oh no, I’m gonna bruise,” Delphine said dryly, pulling the remains of the leather vest off her hauberk, showing that the chainmail had been splinted over the chest. She walked past then, heading towards the others. “Liv, how’s your legs?”

“Ugh,” the Ingvarrdian grumbled, halfway through peeling her boots off, the skin where she’d been splattered with boiling hot soup reddened and tender.

“Think you’ll be walking alright through this?”

Liv nodded confidently. “Mhm.”

“Good, see to these burns then.” Delphine turned away from her. “Tetsuji, how are you doing?”

“A trifling wound,” the samurai answered calmly. Under Delphine’s pointed stare, he inclined his head. “But a wound nonetheless, and I would appreciate a modicum of assistance.”

“Kaja, give him a hand.”

“Got it,” the redhead called back easily, and walked over, still with a spring in her step and the last vestiges of euphoria lingering about her eyes.

Delphine gave her a gauging look. “'Not that far off from a berserker', huh? Just manic laughter instead of rage.”

Kaja chuckled again at that, but the sound immediately turned into a groan, and the grin into a wince. “Fuck, don’t make me laugh, my face hurts.”

“Good thing it’s just your face, girl. Tetsuji, after you get yourself squared away, both of you go back for our horses.” Delphine waited for him to nod, then turned to the others again. “Riccardo, Shlomo, stay on the gate. Cassandra, with me.”

They walked into the stable first, leading the chestnut stallion back in along the way, and started combing the building—checking every stall, every higher shelf hung between the rafters, stomping on the floorboards to see if there were hiding spots dug out underneath that a cowardly Red could use. The search turned up nothing, save for the horses stabled in the building: Ryzhik and six more, true to Shlomo’s scouting report. Horses of all-purpose breeds and builds, Cassandra noticed, some of them with tack and harness meant for riding laid out nearby and some of them geared up as pack animals. Four had been branded at the hindquarters—each with a different brand, no less—and three hadn’t, making it impossible to know where they came from.

“Hm. No one hiding out here, looks like,” Delphine spoke up as they concluded the sweep.

“Looks like, yeah.” Cassandra turned to the Kotoan spy. “I’m going to need to talk to you after we make camp for the night. In private.”

“Fine by me, let’s just secure the place first.” Delphine waved her along as they walked out of the stable shack and into the living quarters carved into the mountainous hillside. “I see you’ve had some practice checking buildings for more than just valuables?”

“Little bit. Investigation, mostly. Picked up some basics assisting the Royal Guard on a few occasions.”

“Really? I thought they didn’t allow women into the Guard in Corona,” Delphine said in a conversational tone. “Backwards as fuck for one of the Seven Kingdoms, if you ask me.”

Cassandra ground her teeth at the memory. “They don’t. Unless they’re hard-pressed enough to stoop down to taking your help, or critically low on men at the time. And even that kind of temporary thing can only happen if you’ve already proven, and multiple times, that you’re more competent than half of those men put together.”

“Yeah, that just about figures,” Delphine admitted with a chuckle. The amusement didn’t last, though, and she frowned as they reached a fork in the corridor. “Go left, I’ll go right.”

Cassandra nodded, and they split up, each that much more careful now for walking alone. Fortunately, she didn’t hear anything that would signal a fight from Delphine’s end of the cavern—and didn’t find any signs of life in her own. Quite the opposite, in fact, as the smell of corpses only recently beginning to decay hit her nose, and she rounded the last little wooden divider wall to find one body laid out with honours, a tasselled red scarf covering its face, as well as several more that had been simply tossed aside, crumpled together into a shapeless heap of bone splinters and gore, and all of it deathly still.

That is, until one of those corpses rolled its head against the ground, turning its pain-darkened eyes on Cassandra to rasp out, “Help.”

“Delphine! There’s someone alive here!” Cassandra shouted over her shoulder, kneeling beside the mutilated tatter of a person before she was done speaking. And though her hands fell immediately to the satchel stacked with medicine that she decided to wear on her person rather than leave behind with Fidella, a closer look at the sheer extent and magnitude of injuries before her left her fumbling for where to even begin—or whether to begin, as the realization grew that whatever aid she could administer would fall woefully short of making a difference, any difference at all.

Before she could decide one way or the other, Delphine burst into the room, and dropped to her knees at the barely-breathing body’s other side, her face freezing into a look of dismay.

“Oh, Nicole...”

“Hi,” the dying sellsword mumbled through broken teeth. “Didn’t think you were coming back.”

“We came back. Shlomo and Tetsuji are here, too,” Delphine said gently as she worked one hand underneath the head of what remained of her former teammate. Then gave Cassandra a firm look and pushed her hands away, laden with bandages and medicine as they were already. Instead of allow for those to be utilized, she fished out a small flask herself, and uncorked it with a thumb as she focused again on the mutilated form torn up against the hard ground. “Drink this; it’s very bitter, but it’s going to help with the pain, I promise.”

No label on the flask, Cassandra noticed as she was putting her things away. Dark glass, whether to protect the contents from sunlight or from inquisitive eyes. And judging by the wince that pulled half-flayed skin even further off of flesh and bone, it had to be extremely bitter indeed.

“Did you see what happened to the boys?” Delphine was asking in the meantime.

What little remained of a Coronian sellsword gave a minute nudge of her head—towards the other corpses. “Laurent, he... they didn’t even ask him any questions.”

Delphine ground her teeth at that. “And Falk?”

“Falk tried to keep them angry. Focus them on himself. So that they’d leave me alone.” The mangled tatter of a person closed her eyes on a small sigh. “Didn’t do all that much.”

Cassandra rose to her feet then, and walked over to the dead member of the Scarlet Brigade, leaving Delphine to ask soft questions of one of the three that the group had hurried to avenge or rescue: if she heard the Reds talk about some matter or another, what intel they were trying to torture out of her and the Pittsfordian highlander all but dismembered beside her, anything more that she could remember, anything that she’d want done for her. The Red’s corpse was laid out like a tomb effigy atop a slightly elevated stretcher, in the absence of a coffin, with the stubs of two burnt-out candles at the edge. Atop the body’s chest rested a naked sword, its hilt clasped between the hands; five tassels adorned the Scarlet Brigade’s signature scarf covering the face. Cassandra thought back to what she’d been told of those—that the number of tassels served the same function as rank insignia would in any actual military. The three sellswords that failed to get away must have killed an officer before the rest of the Reds fell on them.

It certainly would explain the excess of cruelty that had been visited upon them in return. More importantly, it brought the total count of Reds on base to ten, exactly true to Shlomo’s scouting assessment.

Fixing her gloves more firmly in place, Cassandra started going through the pockets on the Red officer’s corpse. A small pouch of salt, a lidded box that smelled like cloves and contained a hair comb and a sliver of soap, a handkerchief with a monogram so tattered as to be illegible; finally, a sheet of coarse paper carefully folded into a stiff packet. Upon unfolding it, though, she found no map or letter or journal entry—only a dead butterfly held within, blue and brown and with a thin white rim lining the contours of the wings.

“I’ll find your pendant,” Delphine was saying gently in the meantime. “And whoever I find it on, I’m going to strangle with my bare fucking hands. Who do you want it to go to?”

“Just not a Red,” the dying sellsword mumbled weakly, eyes closed.

“I’ll take care of it. Do you want to see Tetsuji and Shlomo again?”

The mangled tatter of a person torn up against the hard ground blinked up at her, eyes hazy again, but not with pain anymore. “They’re here?”

“Yeah, we all came back for you. Should I call them over?”

After a brief moment of incomprehension, there was a weak nod, and so Delphine stood up and motioned Cassandra to follow. And as soon as they were out of line of sight, she pulled a flat tin of cigarettes and a matchbox from a pouch on her belt, even as she turned to Cassandra and indicated the clutter in her hands.

“Found anything?”

“Some personal effects, and this.” Cassandra held out the paper and the butterfly for Delphine to see. “What was in that flask you gave your friend to drink?”

Delphine winced around the cigarette in her mouth, and puffed out the first bit of smoke before answering. “It’s made from poppy tears. Nice of you to try and help her, but I don’t think Saint Luc himself could do anything for her anymore.”

“Opium?” Cassandra hissed quietly, incredulous. “You fed her tincture of opium?!”

“She was already going to die before the night is out,” Delphine said with a shrug. “At least now she won’t have to suffer through it. Maybe she’ll even have a nice dream before she’s gone. What did you actually want to talk about?”

“It’s a few things,” Cassandra grumbled, still disbelieving but deciding to relent.

“Well?”

Cassandra reached to her neck and pulled out the scratched-up steel medallion she’d been wearing for a few months, and twisted the cog’s spokes to turn it into the Kotoan token of a Favoured of the Crown. And as soon as she showed that to Delphine, the spy beside her choked on smoke, and wheezed for a moment, eyes wide and shocked and taken completely by surprise.

“Fuck– where did– who gave this to you? Who the fuck are you?!”

Cassandra stared back at her. “You mean you don’t already know?”

“I’m a roamer! It’s safer for everyone if there are things that I don’t know!” Delphine hissed at her, and groaned one last time, reaching up to wipe tears from the corners of her eyes. “Heavens’ sake, girl, warn me next time!”

“I’m a knight-errant to the Coronian crown princess, and I happened to throw my lot in with a pair of your colleagues a town over several months past,” Cassandra summarized, speaking quickly and keeping her voice down. “Here in the city, I’ve worked with Sybil, Rutger, and Renée del Arroyo. I told Sybil I would stay on call for when she might have a use for me again, as a courier or a hired sword, but then I happened across you—I thought you sent Shlomo to ask me over because you knew who I am.”

“No, I sent him over because we were around when the bounties on Hogni Galdrsbani and the other three were withdrawn. Due to someone who fits your description having scored them. Fuck.” Delphine shook her head, biting her lower lip for a moment, then took a long pull of smoke and exhaled a plume of it on a sigh before she spoke again. “You know Sybil, great. You kind of went back on what you told Sybil in favour of running around with me, not that great. How did you know who I am?”

Cassandra indicated the token again, before she reverted it to its unassuming form and tucked it back under her clothes. “The two who gave me this told me to look for you, or a Francesco, or a Bonaventura.”

“Fucking heavens.” Delphine dragged a hand down her face. “You know, I should kill you? You already know too much. More than too much, really, I’ve killed for a lot less.”

“Make use of me instead,” Cassandra told her simply.

“No, yeah, Sybil would kill me if I made her explain how we got an allied knight-errant murdered. Shit. Fuck. I realize that very little of this is your fault, but you just dropped a bit of a clusterfuck into my lap. On top of the one I’ve already had on my hands prior.” Delphine covered her face again, and shook with a short burst of incredulous laughter. “Heavens, I need a smoke, and I’m already smoking. What else did you want to tell me?”

“Two more things.” Cassandra waited for the Kotoan spy of her new mercenary captain to nod. “I send my Owl with letters to the princess sometimes. He’s never been spotted, much less caught; and even if he were, I won’t name any names other than hers and my own, or numbers more specific than 'some' or 'a few'. I thought you should know. And I will, sometimes, need to ask you about where we’ll be in five or six weeks’ time, so I can tell him to look for me there when he’s back with a response.”

“Okay. Weird,” Delphine admitted, “but doable. Mind, if you or your bird slip up, I will kill you and Sybil will thank me for it.”

“I’m aware.”

“Good. What’s the last thing?”

Cassandra cleared her throat, her good hand instinctively coming against her withered forearm. “I’m not left-handed originally. Most of my life, I’ve trained with the right hand, until I got injured badly enough that I’ll never be able to use my main hand for... most everything, actually. Certainly not for a sword. But I’ve seen that you’re left-handed, or at least seem to.”

“I am, yeah. You asking to practice during downtime?”

“Yes, please. I’ve done what I could alone, but I didn’t have a sparring partner or a proper training compound since it happened. I’d like to retrain myself into a proper level of skill again.”

“Good woman.” Delphine gave her a hard pat on the shoulder, and pulled her to exit the structure into the base’s courtyard again—as well as into earshot of the others. “If you decide to stick around after this run, we’ll get on it. And since we’re already going to need a trip into the Fireworks quarter, we can pick up some practice swords along the way.”

Cassandra breathed more easily. “Thank you.”

“No worries. Your right hand, though, do you think it’s going to get better with time?”

“No.”

“Okay, we’ll figure out a basic task order that’ll put you to work without making it worse.” Delphine turned to the two who remained of her previous team, as they walked up expectantly. “Falk and Laurent are dead, Nicole is dying. She’ll be gone before the morning, but I made sure she’s not in pain anymore. Go see her again, just brace yourselves, because she’s been tortured.”

“You are still committed to vanquishing the rest of this Scarlet patrol, are you not?” Tetsuji asked calmly, with barely restrained fury simmering beneath the surface.

“You know I am.”

“We can’t even bury them properly,” Shlomo said through gritted teeth. “It’s too cold to dig.”

“We’ll bury them. I have explosives.” Delphine gestured at the cavern’s mouth. “The hill should make for a good enough cairn.”

Shlomo gave her a very mirthless smile. “I knew there was a reason I ran with you.”

“Won’t the Guard have a problem with you blowing up one of their forward bases?” Cassandra asked when Tetsuji and Shlomo headed inside.

Delphine rolled her eyes. “Fuck the Guard, they have tax money to build another base with.”

Cassandra stared at her for a moment. A very long moment. And only eventually remembered that she was on Equisian land, in an unallied territory, and that disrespect of authorities was no longer grounds for immediate distrust and derision—and not only that, but likely grounds for at least a temporary cooperation, if not outright friendship.

By the time she recovered, Delphine had already moved on, pulling Riccardo aside and engaging him in a spirited discussion over how to best use their surroundings and supplies to turn the little base into an ambush for a group of Reds that would most likely outnumber them two-to-one. The group’s four horses had been led into the stable, with Fidella greeting Cassandra again with a little nicker as she entered the building to put away her satchel of medicine. And though she did spare a longer look at Delphine’s massive black destrier, Tetsuji’s slender palomino mare, and the dappled gray stallion that Shlomo and Liv rode earlier in the day, she knew there was work to be done, and didn’t dither for longer than it took to dig out the still-sealed Kotoan missive that Raps had passed to her via Owl some time ago.

Immediately upon walking out into the courtyard, she looked up at the sound of a hoot! and held her arm out just in time for Owl to swoop down to her.

“What news?” she asked him, pointedly ignoring some of her new teammates as she felt them staring again.

Hoot, Owl detailed.

Cassandra raised her eyebrows. “Really? I’m told those ruins are supposed to be of a small settlement?”

Hoot, Owl confirmed.

“And how many of those habitable buildings did you count?”

Hoot, Owl said, but with a shrug of his wings.

“So it’s not being used right now, if there’s no tracks in the area and no firelight in the windows, but it’s still good enough to be another forward base.” Cassandra idly smoothed a finger over the feathers at Owl’s chest, thinking. “There’s a second group of Reds in the area. I’m told they’re at about fourteen strong and mounted, and that they were heading towards the river not long ago. I won’t blame you by any means if you want to come inside overnight, but we could do with an eye kept on them before the sun comes up.”

Hoot, Owl reassured.

“Thanks.” Cassandra boosted him back into the sky. Then walked towards the compound’s gate, where Riccardo was bent over the makeshift barricade. “What are we doing?”

“Well, Delphine has some gunpowder, and she wants to blow up that cave and collapse the ceiling after we’re done tomorrow. Still seems intent on killing the Reds beforehand, though, and probably asking questions of some,” Riccardo said absent-mindedly, a measuring tape in his hands as he knelt by the gate. “She said we should try to lure the Reds inside, then make sure they can’t get out and just rain arrows on them from the high ground until they’re all dead or until something goes wrong, so we’ll need to fit this thing with sharpened stakes to keep the mounted ones from ramming through. You know, we knock this flat and the spikes point indoors, with the bit we already have stabilizing the whole thing. So if you think you can look through the firewood for sticks big enough to work? I’ll figure out how many we need and come over to help you, and maybe ask one of the Ingvarrdians to pitch in as well. The big one, probably. What was her name, Liv?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, that one.” Riccardo paused for a moment to look across the courtyard at the bear-clad mountain of an Ingvarrdian, who was currently shaking one of her legs out with a wince. “How the fuck tall is she, anyway, six-foot-seven or something?”

“That sounds about right,” Cassandra admitted, looking towards Liv for a moment as well. “Bulky, too.”

“I’ll say. You won’t catch me dead trying to arm-wrestle with her, that’s for sure.”

Cassandra couldn’t hold back a chuckle. “Would you ask to arm-wrestle with me?”

“No, but that’s because it would be unfair to ask you to wrestle with the right, and I’m not strong enough with the left for that sort of thing.” Riccardo looked back to the barricade. “Still, it’s gonna be nice having someone we can always ask to do some heavy lifting. You wouldn’t catch me dead trying to pick this entire bullshit up like it’s nothing, either.”

“That’s true. Well, let’s get to work, then. And I still have that letter for you, when you have a moment,” Cassandra tossed over her shoulder as she turned to walk towards the firewood stack.

“Oh right, yeah. Once we’re done here, then?”

“I can work with that.”

To her surprise, the firewood was comprised less of dry twigs and branches and more of thin logs, as if whoever maintained the rest stop at any given time would cut down small trees to keep warm. The good thing about it was that whatever they could sharpen and mount on the gate would indeed turn it into a stakewall dangerous enough to give pause to the Red cavalrymen. The bad thing about it, however, was that trying to sharpen any single one of those with a knife would be a fool’s errand and the work of hours on end—and Cassandra wasn’t practiced enough with her left hand to use the small axe slammed into a stump of a chopping block nearby rather than a knife.

At the very least, she had help coming, she thought with resignation as she started sorting through the wood and pulling adequate lengths of it out of the stack.

Before long, she noticed out of the corner of her eye that Kaja had walked out of the cavern of a living space, and towards the halberdier still measuring and muttering to himself over the makeshift gate.

“Hey. Riccardo, right?”

Riccardo looked up at her. “That’s me. What’s up?”

“Didn’t you say that you worked with the Coronian girl before?”

“Yeah, we spent about a week on a job together. Why?”

“What is up with the talking to animals?”

“Oh, that?” Riccardo said calmly. “That’s normal with her. You get used to it.”

Kaja stared at him in disbelief for a longer moment before slowly leaning back on her heels, the confusion on her face thoroughly unabated.

Riccardo gave her an understanding nod. “Trust me, just don’t worry about it.”

“...Okay?”

Cassandra smothered a snort of laughter from where she was, and pretended not to hear the exchange.

“You have some time on your hands?” Riccardo was asking in the meantime.

“Not exactly, I’m on my way to relieve Delphine on watch.”

“Well, tell your friend to come help out at the woodpile then, will you?”

“Got it.”

Before long, Riccardo joined Cassandra at the stack of firewood, with news that they would need eleven sharp stakes. As they were nearly done picking suitable logs, Liv had walked over as well, making a small inquisitive noise and a gesture at the lengths of wood, a clear if non-verbal question about what it was that they wanted her for with the logs. When Riccardo provided a concise explanation, Liv nodded with an assenting hum, and took the woodcutting axe without being asked to—and with Cassandra and Riccardo holding each next log still for her, she hewed the logs into sharp stakes easily and without pausing for any longer than they needed to set one aside and hold the next up. Securing the stakes onto the barricade came next, and with Riccardo’s directions, Liv set to doing that as well, finding gaps between the branches to slip the blunt ends of the stakes into and tangling more rope into the entire ramshackle construction to make it more sturdy, more uniform. She was tying the same knots as ones commonly seen across the wharfs and docks of Castle Corona, Cassandra noticed as she passed Liv more rope, rather than ones popular with highwaymen or rock-climbers.

And though each time she handed the Ingvarrdian another length of rope, she would get an absent nod of thanks given without looking, one of those times Liv’s fingers brushed against Cassandra’s good hand. Immediately, the Ingvarrdian blinked in surprise, and turned sharply to Cassandra with an odd look on her face.

“What?” Cassandra grumbled, knowing exactly what it was that gave Liv such pause—the same thing that had caught the attention of Sigrid first and Badger next.

Liv patted an open hand over the sorcery dagger in the front of her belt, then pointed that hand at Cassandra and made another inquisitive little noise, a question mark dressed into sound.

“Are you asking if I do magic, too?” Cassandra clarified, and at a confirming nod, scowled. “I don’t, and I’ll thank you not to accuse me of such things again.”

Liv cocked her head, visibly puzzled and for multiple reasons now, but shrugged and went back to work after a moment. Riccardo looked between them, surprised at the exchange, but didn’t ask—and when Cassandra didn’t elaborate, he didn’t press, either.

What a sterling quality in a companion she was going to spend the upcoming months alongside, Cassandra mused silently.

Shortly, the makeshift gate was fully reinforced with spikes, transforming it into an anti-cavalry barricade. With one person on watch outdoors, and one sitting beside the dying sellsword of Delphine’s original group, the other five split up between preparing an evening meal and dragging Red corpses out of immediate sight. And after dropping another swiftly-stiffening body onto the pile, Cassandra handed Riccardo the still-sealed missive she’d been carrying for some months and started stripping the dead Red of his equipment, intent on letting the halberdier read in peace. When she glanced up to Riccardo a moment later, though, it was to find him with a look of extreme confusion on his face as he read on and shaking his head slightly before he extended the papers back to her.

“I’m not sure if I understand what half of this means, can you...?”

“You want me to read this?” Cassandra asked slowly.

Riccardo nodded, a hopeful look on his face. “And translate?”

“Uh, I’ll see what I can do.” Cassandra wiped her gloves against her tunic by habit, then took the gilded stationery.

Multiple sheets thereof, unsurprisingly, the finest vellum illuminated with vibrant inks along the borders and scribed in a well-practiced hand. Not calligraphied, not exactly, but only just short of the precision and ornate detail of that, sacrificing such embellishments in favour of a crisp, decisive style of writing. The sheer confidence of the quill’s strokes against the excellent parchment suggested a hand as used to a weapon’s hilt as it was to a quill pen—and undoubtedly as crisp and decisive with its sword and its sorcery as it was with the pen.

Unto Riccardo Leonori, citizen of Koto, does

Mercedes de Carrasquilo y Iglesias, Grand Inquisitor of the Tribunal Order, send greetings.

Esteemed young sir,

Per the instructions of His Majesty the King, you are to be informed that in recognition of your role in returning royal treasures into the hands of the Crown and the armaments of Sir Étienne Pinsonneault, Knight-Commander of the Tribunal Order, into the Order’s hands you are hereby granted absolution of any and all transgressions you may have committed against the Crown or its people beforehand. A courtesy copy of the relevant decree may be found among the attached documents. Glory to the Crown, as on earth as it is in the heavens.

Further, I wish to extend my personal thanks for your conduct. Many inquisitors have lost their lives in the conflict that rages across the lordless province currently under Equisian occupation, far more than simply the knights and magistrates of my own Order. To recover and lay to rest the remains of one reminds us to retake that land, if only that we may pay the same respects to all others of our fallen siblings-in-arms, and hardens our resolve to do so.

It has also been a subject of much debate in certain circles, how a missive scribed in a Coronian knight-errant’s hand and bearing a common man’s signature alongside her own had arrived into His Majesty’s hands sealed with the mark of Amos Venturi, fifth Seigneur of Capo di Astore. A swift inquiry by the nearest commandery of my Order’s knights yielded an admission that Sir Amos had indeed misplaced a seal ring during travel in the past, with the time to have passed since corresponding to the year of birth stated on your old recruitment documents. Based on these findings and the number of out-of-wedlock heirs and heiresses Sir Amos has already been forced to recognize, I find it easy to believe that you, sir, may be another.

Should you decide to pursue this assumption and confront Sir Amos for confirmation or refutation of it, I must insist you pay a visit to my holdings in the capital before travelling towards Capo di Astore. For that purpose, I am including a formal summons calling for you to stand before myself in person. Displaying such a document before any inquisitor, no matter the Order they belong to, will silence some of their concerns and command their unquestionable aid to speed you on your way; yet even so, I would advise to use such tactics sparingly, seeing as in some circles gossip travels faster than any mortal courier could aspire to, and those in positions of heavens-mandated power can boast no shortage of enemies who would seek to harm us and spite us in any way they find to be within their reach.

I will keep your name within my prayers on the holy days, young sir.

Wishing you well upon your road and hoping for a day when it leads you before me,

Mercedes de Carrasquilo y Iglesias, by the mandate of the Crown and the grace of the heavens, Grand Mistress of the Tribunal Order of the Royal Office of the Inquisition, etc.

Cassandra folded the letter back to start going through the attached documents. Sure enough, there was a decree marked with the Kotoan king’s seal and signature—a royal pardon that said about as much as the Grand Inquisitor’s summary of it, but in three times as many words. Then there was another signed and sealed by the Grand Inquisitor, the formal summons she had written of. And the last was an excerpt copied from a heraldic tome, no doubt, if in black-and-white rather than in full colour—the upper half of the page was taken with a hatched coat of arms, and subtitled with:

CAPO DI ASTORE
SEINGEURAGE
Blazon: sable, a goshawk’s head erased argent, armed or, maintaining a fire-brand argent lighted proper.

Below that sprawled a list of names, dates of births and marriages and deaths, and concise descriptions of what the person looked like, as well as the person’s age at the time of death and the circumstances of it whenever applicable. Beginning with the first man to be named Seigneur of Capo di Astore, it reached barely five generations back—a very short lineage for Kotoan nobility, Cassandra knew—and ended with the current title-holder’s several children, all of whom enjoyed a blank space left where the death dates of their ancestors were.

“Okay,” Cassandra said slowly, and skimmed the letter one more time, then tapped the top of it. “First off, Grand Inquisitor of the Tribunal Order—this is the most concise way you can say her title at all. When I was writing her and the King, I said Her Most Reverend Eminence, her full name, Grand Mistress of the Tribunal Order of Knights of the Royal Office of the Inquisition—she’s head of the entire Tribunal Order like she signed, not just the knights, but I emphasized the knights since we were writing to them about a witch-knight’s gear. She’s introducing herself, but doing absolutely nothing more, and very much not listing her full titles; even where she signed, she did only list the one, if in its official form. It’s an attempt to be polite and not drown out your name by comparison, since you don’t have any.”

“Haven’t even gotten into the letter proper, and here’s already something I wouldn’t catch if you didn’t tell me,” Riccardo admitted, eyebrows raised.

“Then the first paragraph is about you getting a royal pardon—”

“I did get that much.”

“—and there is a document that confirms it among the other papers, so you’re officially not a deserter or oathbreaker anymore, congratulations.”

Riccardo rolled his eyes. “I’m not about to start wearing a saint’s medallion again, I can promise you that.”

“No?”

“No, there’s not exactly a patron of rouge ex-soldiers gone mercenary, you can imagine why.”

“Whose would you be wearing in the army, if I may ask?”

“Saint Thomas if I did get into the siege engineer corps, Saint Barbe if I landed in a cannon crew. In the infantry, one of the patrons of soldiers, there’s like four of them.”

Cassandra looked up at that. “How many saints are there in total, anyway?”

“Thirty-five. Well, one might be more of an urban legend,” Riccardo amended with a thoughtful look on his face. “And the four archangels are something that normal people only deal with for one day in the year. Otherwise, they’re kind of exclusively the inquisitors’ patrons. I’ve heard that some convents carry their mark, too, but that’s not very surprising when the convent plays support for the Inquisition, and they often do.”

“What’s the day?”

“Feast of the Archangels, in autumn. Marks the end of harvest in a lot of places.”

“Huh.” Cassandra looked back to the letter. “Here’s the thing about the pardon, though. It doesn’t say anywhere that you’re expected to return to the army. She calls you a citizen, not with whatever rank you used to hold. No offers of retaining that rank or of promotion, not even an implication of 'come back and do your job now'.”

“Good, because I wouldn’t anyway,” Riccardo said dryly.

“Summons for military service in Koto are sent out per household, right?” Cassandra asked with a frown. “Is there someone in yours that could have been drafted in your place?”

“Not really. Not much of a household to speak of in the first place, it was just me and my mom and a lot of server girls who worked in the same tavern she did. Not technically a family, but tight-knit enough to function as one.” Riccardo considered for a moment, then shrugged. “Unless a customer got her pregnant again and I have a half-sibling I’ve never met, I guess, but that would’ve had to happen after I left home. The kid wouldn’t be old enough for military service yet.”

Cassandra hummed a thoughtful note, but paused before she could say anything more when Riccardo rattled out a frustrated sigh.

“I should have said another half-sibling I’ve never met, shouldn’t I? Venturis. Fuck.” He shook his head. “Capo di Astore isn’t anywhere near where I’m from. How even...?”

“Is your hometown on the way between there and the capital?” Cassandra asked. “Maybe he was passing through on his way to the royal court.”

Riccardo scrunched up his face in thought. “Kind of? There used to be a reasonably large road through, but it’s not been used much ever since I was a kid, because the hospitallers built a better one through safer terrain and it pulled most of the traffic away. I guess that would track, though. If a horse got lame or a carriage was damaged, the retinue would have to pause for at least a few days to get all that fixed, and if his lordship hasn’t gotten his dick wet long enough—”

Cassandra watched the halberdier turn and spit into the snow, a disgusted look on his face. Then she gave a weak shrug. “If it helps, my mother didn’t want me either. My dad is the man who found me and raised me, but I have no idea who she slept with to... well, if I’ve ever met the man, I wouldn’t even know.”

With a sigh, Riccardo looked at her earnestly. “What the fuck is wrong with parents?”

“I couldn’t say.” Cassandra fiddled with the rich stationery in her hands, if only to have an excuse to look away. “But it really does seem like there’s something deeply wrong with a lot of them, huh?”

“Hey. Thanks for telling me.”

“Yeah.” Cassandra cleared her throat, tight with the relief of having spoken of those things out loud—and into the face of implicit understanding, rather than argument or dismissal or pity. Relief powerful enough to mist her eyes for a moment and threaten to crack her voice. “Keep it to yourself, though?”

“That goes without saying.” Riccardo cocked his head at her. “What’s a seigneur, anyway?”

“He ranks lower than a knight,” Cassandra said honestly, grateful for the change in subject. “I would expect Capo di Astore to be a large manor or at best, an extremely small town, based on the title alone. And while the position is hereditary, the children of a seigneur aren’t considered nobility themselves, not until succeeding him in office. And then there’s this.” She pulled the page copied from a heraldic chronicle out to the front, and slid a finger down the list of names until she found and tapped that of the current title-holder. “Sir Amos Venturi, fifth Seigneur of Capo di Astore, whatever– eldest child, Raul Venturi, entered as page into the Tribunal Order of Knights at the age of ten, it doesn’t say his current rank because he’s not dead yet. And see that mark beside the four names after him? All born out of wedlock. And only then a second legitimate heiress. This is such a mess that entering you into all this, too, won’t make it any worse than it already is.”

“You’ll have to expand on that thought for me,” Riccardo said dryly.

“Knights of the Tribunal and Hospital Orders pledge their birthright to the Crown by joining the Inquisition. If this man lets a witch-knight succeed him, Capo di Astore becomes the King’s property again immediately,” Cassandra told him patiently. “If he passes over a legitimate heir in favour of a bastard child, it’s a scandal—and also an indirect insult to the King, given that the heir is a royal inquisitor. If he passes over a legitimate heir and several bastard children he’d already officially recognized as his own, in favour of his only other legitimate heir, not only is it a scandal and an insult, but a farce as well, and absolutely no one in the royal court will ever let him, that heir, or possibly the heir’s own descendants live it down.”

Riccardo listened to her with a slowly broadening grin. “So basically, he’s fucked whichever way he moves, and all because he couldn’t keep it in his pants?”

“Pretty much, yeah. But it also means that if you decide to try getting him to recognize you as his bastard son, too, it won’t make his position any worse than it already is. Really, I can think of very few things that would, at this point. So he might as well, if you’re well-known enough in the court for doing right by the King, so he can try to benefit from your reputation—or if you bring something he wants into his household, like wealth or expertise, in which case he might give you an important and lifelong job in Capo di Astore in return for you declaring that you won’t try to take the inheritance from whoever he picks as his successor in the end.”

Riccardo shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do about that yet. Don’t think I’ll be deciding anytime soon, either. It’s far too cold to even think about travelling to the capital right now, and will be for months. And do you know what, I think we’ve got a good thing going, here. Don’t really feel like dropping everything and riding south just because someone sent me a fancy letter telling me to show up.”

“Well, regardless of what you decide, you should visit the Grand Inquisitor at some point anyway. She’s really insistent about getting to see you. Weirdly so, to be honest, I have no idea why.”

“I have an idea, but I don’t know how much sense it makes, you’re the one who knows how to do courtly shit,” Riccardo said. At an encouraging nod, he shrugged and continued. “Well, Iglesias is the surname given to orphans dropped at a convent’s doorstep. So either she or a parent of hers came from nothing that way. Maybe she wants to do something for another person who did.”

Cassandra put her withered hand at her mouth and chin, and didn’t answer for a long time, thinking. “Maybe. But more than a genuine intention, this kind of thing would make for a rock-solid excuse to hide the actual intention behind. So it’s either this, or something else that we don’t know about, and we haven’t moved a step.”

“Yeah, I guess we won’t know until we see her. Which, I’m hoping that if I do go, you’ll come as well?”

“What, afraid you’d get eaten alive without a translator from courtly to normal?” Cassandra teased, and chuckled as the halberdier lightly punched her shoulder in retaliation. “I’ll come if we don’t get killed before then.”

“Hey now, don’t jinx it like that.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes, and lifted the missive slightly to indicate it. “Anything else in here that you want to ask about?”

“Just the crest, what’s with all the... dots and lines?”

“It’s a system used to represent colours when the print is in monochrome. Tracks with the blazon given below, as well.” Cassandra tapped the coat of arms. “These lines mean the field is black, the blanks over the head and the torch mean those are silver, the dots on the beak mean that’s golden. The torch’s flame is blazoned proper, which means the same colours as you’d see in nature, so it’s probably orange on banners and shields to distinguish from heraldic red and gold.”

“When you say silver,” Riccardo asked slowly.

“White and silver are the same thing in heraldry. Same with yellow and gold.” Cassandra shrugged at the disapproving look on the halberdier’s face. “It’s to make things simpler, and for ease of identifying the crests on banners from afar. Contrasting colours, relatively simple designs.”

“How do you even remember all that?”

“You remember a lot of things when it’s your job to keep track of someone else’s life.” Cassandra handed back the multiple sheets of illuminated vellum, a wry smile on her face. “And whatever you decide to do about all this, you did already start building a reputation, what with the court learning that you exist when you did something for them. At the same time as you helped out a knight-errant of an allied kingdom, too.”

“Yes, and how very knightly of you to be stripping dead mercenaries now.” Riccardo tucked the documents away and threw a few jacks-of-plate dragged off of Red corpses over one shoulder. “Didn’t see any helmet that would fit you among their gear?”

“I think I’d rather get myself a new one.” Cassandra gathered a bunch of axes and sheathed swords under her good arm, and hung a few quivers of arrows and crossbow bolts over her withered forearm.

“That’s fair, yeah.”

Further, getting to wear a helm soon meant one more thing, Cassandra thought to herself with relieved anticipation. It meant an indisputable necessity to finally, finally, cut her hair.

They headed inside with the meagre spoils, rejoining Liv, Delphine, and Shlomo for a meal indoors. With Tetsuji having gotten injured, it made sense for him stand watch early in the evening and sleep through the night, Cassandra knew—and if the massacred sellsword in the back of the cavern was still alive in the first place, she was likely so far gone that it didn’t matter anymore who sat by her side, only that she wasn’t left alone.

“I see times are leaner and leaner for the Reds, as well,” Delphine commented as she prodded the heap of jacks-of-plate with the tip of a boot. “Not a chain shirt in sight? Not even a brigandine? I wonder if they even have an armourer on-base.”

“They might now,” Cassandra said between spoonfuls of stew. “They took in some two dozen people that were left from the Silberstadt detachment, shortly after the first frosts hit.”

Delphine turned to her at that, visibly interested now. “Really? You were there for that?”

“Was part of that, actually,” Cassandra admitted with a shrug.

“What happened?”

“Their captain was a chanter, and he went wrong.” Cassandra ignored Liv’s pained wince at that description, and continued. “Detachment split up into factions, the rival bandit outfits united against them, there was a bit of a gang war in what’s left of the silver mine, then a few ex-mercenaries who had settled in the area banded up again to kill the Red captain and get the remains to surrender. Not much more to it than that. The interesting part was, whoever took command of those stragglers later was able to keep them together enough to march in formation, and to force half-rations and still stay in charge.”

“That is interesting.” Delphine looked like she was about to ask for more details, but turned at the sound of footsteps coming from deeper within the cavern—to Kaja, who was approaching the group with a tight look on her face.

“Hey, Delphine? It’s about your friend. She’s, uh—” Kaja cleared her throat uncomfortably. “She’s crying out for her mother.”

With a sigh, Delphine rose to her feet. “I’ll deal with Nicole. Get some food and rest up, we have a hard fight ahead of us.”

“Yeah.” Kaja sat down next to Liv, who extended an arm to her in an offer of a hug, and immediately leaned against her shoulder for comfort.

Cassandra watched them for a moment, as Liv tapped Kaja’s shoulder and made another vague gesture that Cassandra couldn’t even begin to divine the meaning of, and Kaja started asking clarifying questions in a murmur too quiet to hear, taking the smallest cues as her answer. More than one way to talk, Cassandra supposed, especially when someone else knew the language too.

She stood up as well and walked to the wooden shutter of a door to the room that the group had holed up in, looking into the cavern’s depths for a moment. And from where Delphine’s back was still visible, she thought she did hear a weak voice calling out, once, twice, before the spy knelt down beside the still-breathing remains of what used to be one of the sellswords under her command, and the voice those remains still drew broke on a tearful note.

“Oh– mama, I knew you’d come.”

Delphine ran a hand over the mutilated sellsword’s hair, and in the softest voice Cassandra could ever recall hearing, she lied, “I’m here, sweetheart.”

Cassandra closed the door and headed back to the others. “Shlomo, how long have you ran with Delphine?”

“Better part of a year now,” Shlomo told her with a shrug. “Met them last spring, when some other guy from their previous line-up got injured badly enough that he had to quit and recover. Falk and Nicole were with them already, Laurent joined soon after I did, and a few months after that, they scoped out Tetsuji as well.”

“They who?” Kaja spoke up, confused somewhat.

“Delphine.”

“I thought Delphine was a she?”

“Delphine is a she and a they,” Shlomo told her calmly.

“Oh, okay.”

“So there hasn’t been a situation like this since you’ve met them,” Cassandra pressed again.

Shlomo sighed. “Nothing this bad, no. There were a few times when someone on a longer scouting run got into trouble and the rest of the group dropped what we were being paid to do and bailed the scout instead, and I’m not saying no one ever gets hurt, but finding tortured corpses of our friends is, uh– yeah, that’s new.”

“None of the wolfpacks I ran with in my time would have bothered with attempts at rescue,” Riccardo said over his bowl of stew. “Half the reason I sat down long enough to talk to Delphine. It’s rare enough that it grabbed my attention.”

Shlomo nodded at him. “Larger groups this informal generally don’t give a shit, yeah. The Royal Guard doesn’t as a rule, not about contractors, not in any kingdom I’ve been to so far. Reds might, sometimes, but it depends on the officer in charge of the detachment, and condotierri might, but far from all of them, too. You served in any outfit I’d recognize?”

“Probably not, I’ve mostly done freelance work. Merchant escort here, harassing caravans there, the usual. You?”

“Red detachment just out of Corona when I was young and a little more stupid than I am now,” Shlomo said with a shrug. “Ran away on them three months in. Only other big name I’ve joined up with that I can think of was the Company of Saint Marguerite in Koto, before it disbanded.”

“I knew your gear looked straight out of a condotierri company, but marguerites? Shit.” Riccardo shook his head, impressed. “How long did you last there?”

“Three years and change, plus the year spent in training.”

“Holy fuck.”

“They were doing good work,” Shlomo said simply. “I’ve still got the papers and the slayerwolf tail, I just haven’t worn it openly in a while because of how people—officials, especially—tend to frown at Kotoan marks of station in these parts. Remind me to show you at some point.”

“Do you think you’d go back, if a rally call went out again?”

Shlomo frowned, and thought about it for a while, before he shook his head. “Hard to say. Just for the thrill of it, no. Out of loyalty, no. If they were reassembling against something that really threatened a lot of people? Probably yes, but still dependent heavily on the circumstances, distance, and all that.”

From there, the evening’s conversation continued on without Cassandra’s input, and wound on until it was time to sleep. And later into the night, when it was her turn on watch, she noticed that Delphine’s bedroll was still empty, even though it was Liv that she was relieving as a sentry.

Bundling herself up into the wolf-lined cloak and tugging its hood down as far as it could go without restricting her vision, Cassandra strained her eyes through the night. The moon was low already, a crescent barely a few nights out from a new moon; the stars were dimmed with thin wisps of cloud trailing across the sky like smoke, hopefully too little to herald more snowfall. Her watch passed without event, as she paced the top of the stone wall this way and that, keeping an eye out in every direction. And towards the tail end of it, the only movement she spotted was Delphine exiting the compound and climbing topside towards her.

“Did you sleep at all?” Cassandra greeted the spy, their face pale and their eyes underlined with deep shadows even in the pallid pre-dawn light.

“As much as I needed to.” Delphine huffed into their hands, a cloud of steam seeping from between their cupped fingers.

“How’s your friend?”

“Gone. And about that: you’re from the central region of Corona, right?”

“Yeah, the capital. Why?”

“Nicole was, too. Old Corona, I think she said her hometown was called, I have no idea if it’s just a shorthand for some other name,” Delphine said. “The one thing she never parted with was a pendant shaped like a paper lantern. When we asked, she called it a good luck charm for hoping that one day things would get better, that one day everything would work out after all. Does it mean anything more specific than that?”

Cassandra was silent for a long moment. “I mean, I guess I can see how you could read it that way.”

“But you’re not convinced,” Delphine observed rather than asked.

“The only time things get better is when you roll up your sleeves and fix them,” Cassandra said evenly. “Wishing doesn’t change that.”

Delphine gave a mirthless chuckle. “You and Shlomo are gonna get along just fine.”

“Who’s Saint Marguerite?” Cassandra asked.

“Patron of monster-slayers. What, did he mention that he’s a marguerites veteran?” Delphine waited for Cassandra to nod again, and mirrored the motion, if more thoughtfully. “Yeah, that was a condotierri company that only hired itself out for hunting down things that shouldn’t be. Used her name as a shorthand for what they were doing, too, rather than out of any actual piety. They were expensive as shit, but with good reason—they culled slayerwolves across the central provinces down to nothing, drove out vodniks from across hundreds of miles of fishing waters, and hunted drexis into extinction. And most importantly, they were not the regular army, so they solved the monster problems without creating the new one of the local troops getting mowed down in the process. They were so good at their job, though, that they put themselves out of work eventually.”

“That does still sound like a good thing,” Cassandra pointed out.

“It is. A lot of their officers were offered high positions in the army or in rival companies, some even joined the Hospital Knights. The ground troops and squad leaders like Shlomo make for really good hirelings on their own, and only better in groups than alone.”

Cassandra thought for a moment. “Isn’t it rare, then, to find a veteran of that company looking to get hired for standard mercenary work?”

“It’s not unheard of, but it’s not too common, either. And even if someone claims to be one of the marguerites, first thing you ask for are their papers from the company, second is which campaigns they were in. Slayerwolf tail tassels are easier to imitate than actual skill and experience.” Delphine sniffed against the cold. “I have no doubts about Shlomo, though. His slayerwolf jerky and coal-roasted drake tails are to kill for.”

Whatever Cassandra was going to say next was left forgotten when she heard a hoot! and held her left arm out once again, and once again, Owl landed on her forearm and folded his wings, this time with visible relief.

“This the bird you mentioned?” Delphine asked.

“That’s him.” Cassandra turned her full attention to Owl then. “Anything?”

Hoot, Owl reported.

Cassandra frowned slowly. “No conflict? Just the exchange?”

Hoot, Owl confirmed.

“Strange. How many strong?”

Hoot, Owl replied.

Cassandra looked at Delphine again. “He says the Red patrol that’s heading back here numbers fourteen men. They met up with a group of mounted men-at-arms in fine armour and dark green capes, near a ferry at the riverbank. There wasn’t a fight, just a talk, and then the others gave the Reds some sealed documents and two heavily burdened pack horses, one white and one piebald.”

Delphine stared at her, visibly baffled. “You’ll understand if I want a human person to confirm your owl’s scouting before I make any decisions based on it, right?”

“Sure, we’ve only just met,” Cassandra said with a shrug. Then stroked a withered finger down Owl’s head as she noticed his disapproving glare. “Well, it’s only fair, isn’t it? We don’t know how far we can trust everyone else’s eyes yet, either.”

Hoot, Owl grumbled, unswayed.

“He’s not used to being underappreciated,” Cassandra offered to Delphine by the way of explanation, then turned to Owl again. “How far were they when you broke away?”

Hoot, Owl told her primly, fluffing up his feathers.

Before Cassandra could react, Delphine grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed down, dropping both of them flat onto the stone wall’s top surface. “I don’t think we need him to answer that one.”

They pointed ahead, and sure enough, there was a silhouette of riders in the distance—faint, yet rising, and approaching quickly.

“Go wake the others,” Delphine told her calmly, a sense of urgency behind it now. “We go as planned.”

Hoot, Owl seethed, and flew off to find a perch that would offer him a better foothold.

And the plan was to have Delphine and Kaja, both with red scarves on their faces, opening the gate for the Red patrol while the others hid wherever they could: atop the hillside, along the top of the wall, amid the snowbanks. One of the Red riders called out to Delphine, something that Cassandra couldn’t quite make out from the high ground she had taken—a Red who wore a breastplate of tarnished steel, rather than the self-made and endlessly repaired jacks-of-plate or nothing at all of his companions, and a scarf with seven frost-stiffened tassels clinking gently against that breastplate. Whatever Delphine called back to the Red officer didn’t raise his suspicions, but the empty courtyard did; he frowned sharply, and was drawing a breath to say something when Delphine screamed out:

“Now!”

In a single motion, they and Kaja knocked the gate over, facing the Reds with a row of sharpened spikes. From each of their vantage points, Shlomo, Tetsuji, Riccardo, and Cassandra loosed, three of the Reds falling to the ground before they knew what was happening, one of them with an arrow in the chest and a crossbow bolt in the throat. Horses panicked, another Red falling from the saddle as his mount reared up. A few tried to shoot back, but only struck at cover or overshot entirely, sending their arrows arcing off into the sky. A few others dismounted to run at the gate and destroy or push back the spiked barricade, where Delphine and Kaja tried to hold them off—as well as Liv, spear left aside and the well-used axe in both her hands. She seemed skilled enough with it, Cassandra noticed as she kept one eye at the gate between shooting arrow after arrow at the Reds, and watched the bear-clad Ingvarrdian knocking swords aside with the axe’s sturdy haft, and ducking away from blows she couldn’t parry, and finding a good moment to strike back—and flinching sharply from the resulting spray of blood.

Soon, too soon, the Reds managed to take cover from the four shooting at them from above, hiding behind the sides of their horses and a hastily assembled shield wall. Riccardo and Shlomo raced to join the melee at the gate then, further according to Delphine’s plan—Delphine, who had just laid a Red low with a swipe of their sword overtop the ramshackle barricade. Beside them, Kaja batted away a blade with a backhanded blow of the bracer on her forearm, and hooked the head of her axe into another Red’s shoulder to yank him into the barricade sharply enough to impale him on the spikes, laughing wildly all the while.

From the initial archer volleys and the brutal melee at the gate, only five Reds remained on their feet, rallied tightly around the officer and backing away towards the buildings to get out of Tetsuji and Cassandra’s range. Delphine didn’t offer surrender—nor had Cassandra expected them to—only vaulted over the spike-reinforced gate, even as they signalled the four sellswords at their side to follow, even as they threw down one of their swords and drew the other instead. Cassandra caught Tetsuji’s eye, and signalled him silently to move along the towering hillside and the perimeter wall until they had a clear line of fire again, and he nodded firmly as she began to do the same.

It would’ve been a fair fight at that point, Cassandra mused as she nocked another arrow, and looked through its head to aim. A blood-streaked, cackling Ingvarrdian with a weapon in each hand and the elation of getting to kill someone worn like armour and a heavenly boon both. A flint-eyed veteran of a prestigious mercenary company, crossbow slung across his back and a bloodied sword in his hand. A Kotoan inquisitor on foreign soil, one of the many cogs working tirelessly to shrug those foreign banners from this land’s keeps and gatehouses, a longsword meant for slashing now discarded and replaced with an estoc, right as they stalked towards an enemy who wore half-plate. A heavily armoured halberdier, entirely capable to kill without moving into any swordsman’s range, and with a sword of his own at his side for emergencies. And a silent, towering mountain of a shieldmaiden, if with no shield but for her speed and her ability to kill before a blow landed on her, eyes burning from between the bear pelt’s open jaws. Arrayed against five hapless, cornered, scarcely armoured Reds.

It would’ve been a fair fight. At least numbers-wise. Five against five was even odds, after all.

But, Cassandra thought to herself as she pulled the trigger on her archery aid and heard Tetsuji loosing as well, it was far from a new thing to admit that she liked winning odds better than even odds.

Within seconds, the skirmish was concluded. Within seconds, Shlomo and Liv had finished off the two Reds that Tetsuji and Cassandra just shot, Riccardo pinned one to the ground, and Kaja ran the other through with her blade, and immediately left it in the wound, and leapt to catch her axe’s head around the officer’s wrist, wrenching his weapon aside and his arm up for Delphine’s second sword to impale him clean through the chainmail protecting his armpit, bypassing the breastplate entirely.

“Answer my questions and I won’t make you suffer,” the spy growled into the Scarlet Brigade officer’s face. “Whose men were you meeting with?”

The armoured Red spat a mouthful of blood in their face. “Someone who’s going to fuck your king’s whore daughters, Kotoan filth.”

“Suffer it is,” Delphine said crisply, and twisted the sword in the wound with a sharp turn of their wrists, then shoved the Red officer off the blade, onto the ground, and kicked him in the groin with enough force to make him double over. While he curled up on the blood-streaked snowy ground with a thin keen interspersed with more bursts of wet, hacking cough as blood continued to pour out of the entry and exit wounds and from his mouth, Delphine walked over to the one with Kaja’s sword still stuck in his stomach, and batted his trembling hands away from the weapon as he tried to steady it before the blade did more damage to his entrails. “Same deal. Whose men were you meeting with?”

“Green cloaks,” the Red croaked at them, face pale with blood loss and terror. “Dark green. Moss green. Please– I don’t know.”

“Good enough,” Delphine sighed, and drew a long dagger from their boot to open the arteries at the Red’s throat in an almost off-handed slash.

The Red shuddered on the ground, hands scrabbling at his neck now, but his eyes went glassy and unseeing quickly. Delphine rose from over his corpse, and on the way to the next one, they pulled out Kaja’s sword from the Red’s abdomen and pressed the flat side of the weapon against the Ingvarrdian’s chest in an absent-minded gesture.

“Oh, thanks.” Kaja took her weapon back and started cleaning its blade, entirely unfazed but for the happy look still lingering on her face in the battle’s wake.

Meanwhile, Delphine had walked over to the Red pinned to the ground by Riccardo—a Red who held her hands at shoulder-height, open and empty, in a mute surrender, and whose eyes widened with fear as she saw Delphine walking towards her now.

“I can tell you. I can tell you what you want. Anything you want, if you just leave me alive.”

“Clever girl.” Delphine put a knee into the Red’s chest, forcing air out of her lungs on a pained huff, and reached to twirl their fingers around one of the three tassels on her scarf. “These green cloaks, then, whose men were they?”

“Lord of Mont Saint Maurice,” the Red wheezed, eyes squeezed shut and face contorted with pain. “They came on a ferry, and went back across the river when the deal was done.”

“And what deal would that be?”

“Forward payment to move a hundred strong onto his lands for a contract– to reinforce his own soldiers and the Royal– please, ease off a bit, I can’t breathe.”

“STOP THAT MAN!” Tetsuji roared out of nowhere.

Cassandra whipped around to see that one of the wounded Reds—wounded, but not quite dead yet—strewn across the courtyard had managed to inch his way towards a riding horse while the group was busy watching Delphine’s interrogations. And now, unsteady in the saddle but still keeping himself upright, he spurred his mount into a run-up and a jump over the spiked barricade, and into a breakneck pace heading directly away from the slaughterhouse of a forward base.

She scrambled to her feet to aim better, teeth gritted. The shot was already precarious, and would only grow moreso with distance—

Before Cassandra—or Tetsuji, who was aiming his own bow after the escaping Red as well—could do anything, Liv raced directly after the horse and the rider. Rather than try to catch up, though, a fool’s errand that it would be, she ran for the spear she had left stuck upright in a snowbank just outside the gate, swept it up on her way past, and hurled it with enough force to stagger herself into a few wobbly steps forward as she regained her footing. The escaping Red lurched in the saddle and slowly fell backwards into the snow, impaled right through the chest; with a terrified whinny, the horse continued running, and only faster for no longer carrying a rider’s weight.

Cassandra lowered her bow and slowly eased tension off the bowstring, even as she watched the bear-clad Ingvarrdian begin a trot to retrieve the spear. “Whoa.”

“That was quite impressive,” Tetsuji agreed from his spot atop the wall, not too far from Cassandra’s.

Below them, Delphine continued asking questions of the Red squad leader they held pinned to the ground: details of the contract, the payment, any documents that the patrol’s dead leader would have. The Red answered without a hitch and in detail, and hadn’t even tried to sit up at her compatriot’s escape attempt; and despite the winter morning’s cold, a thin sheen of sweat beaded at her forehead, down the sides of her neck.

“I told you everything you wanted,” she was saying, a keen desperate edge to her voice, when Cassandra turned her attention to the courtyard again. “I told you everything, in exchange for my life. Let me go or leave me be.”

Delphine hummed a considering note, leaning back a bit. Then their eyes fell to the Red’s neck, and they cocked their head before reaching there to pull out a cord made from embroidery threads braided together, no clasp linking its end, only a simple flat knot that was not meant to be untied. A cord that a small pendant hung from, the shape of a paper lantern drawn in thin lines of gold.

“That, girl—” Delphine’s voice gentled into blood-curdling softness. “—that isn’t yours.”

Before the Red had the time to do anything more than look at them in horrified understanding, Delphine put all but their entire weight on the knee they still kept overtop the Red’s ribcage, even as both of their hands found the Red’s neck and squeezed. And as the Red finally began to struggle, fingers clawing at Delphine’s wrists and heels dragging grooves into the blood-streaked snow, Shlomo turned away with a wince and started going through the rest of the bodies littering the courtyard, finishing off any who hadn’t stopped breathing yet. Riccardo backed away a step, but a moment passed yet before he tore his eyes away and gave the courtyard a sweep instead—and did a double-take at Kaja, who was still watching, if with a vaguely uncomfortable look on her face.

“Hey, did you know that you’re bleeding?”

“What?” Kaja looked down at herself, and scowled at where one of the long, stitched-up tears in her vest was slowly soaking through with darker colour. “Oh for fuck’s sake, I must’ve reopened something.”

“Are you in no pain at all?” Riccardo asked incredulously, pulling her aside to take care of the wound.

“Not yet,” Kaja grumbled as she sat down.

Cassandra turned to Tetsuji. “Do you mind staying on watch? I have medicine that will help her.”

“Go,” the samurai told her calmly.

By the time Cassandra retrieved her first aid satchel, Riccardo and Kaja had managed to stem the bleeding and started to put a linen wrap around the jagged, claw-shorn wound. With paste from starlight woundwort leaves slathered over the first layer of bandages, as close to the wound as it could without being placed directly on it, Kaja’s expression brightened a little, and Cassandra hoped she was using the medicine correctly enough for it to take the desired effect.

“Didn’t think these grew this far south,” the Ingvarrdian admitted. “And on terrain this low, too?”

“Found them on a mesa sticking more than a few times my height up from the ground,” Cassandra told her as she held the wound dressing in place with her good hand, while Riccardo tied the ends of the bandage off.

“Huh. I guess that would do it.”

Meanwhile, Delphine rose from over the Red squad leader’s corpse and pointedly dusted their hands off before walking over to the three of them. “How badly are you hurt?”

“No worse than yesterday,” Kaja said with a shrug, and winced painfully as the motion pulled at the reopened wound. “Ow.”

The set of Delphine’s jaw hardened. “No hiding injuries under my command, you understand? You’re benched until you’re well enough to fight again. With the single exception of going on a shopping run to get you a fucking helmet.”

“I don’t need a helmet,” Kaja grumbled.

“You’re going to die when someone throws a rock at you, stupid. Get a helmet, with me paying, or leave,” Delphine snapped at her, then turned to the others across the little base’s courtyard. “Strip the bodies! Pack up all their equipment and valuables! Any paper you find, any paper at all, I want to see! Cassandra, we’re gonna need you with the horses.”

“I’ve got her,” Riccardo muttered to Cassandra, who gave him a nod at that. As she and Delphine walked away, she looked over her shoulder, to where Riccardo was helping Kaja fix up her clothes over the thick layer of bandage. “They have a point, you know, about helmets. You wanna try mine on?”

Though with a frustrated sigh, Kaja did gesture for the halberdier to pass his helmet over, and scowled as it settled over her brow. “It’s heavy.”

“This part isn’t strictly necessary.” Riccardo picked at the aventail. “Just makes your neck harder to cut through.”

“Oh, only that, huh?” Kaja laughed, and Cassandra looked away as Delphine tapped her shoulder.

“You realize that getting a helmet includes you, too.”

“I don’t have a problem with that,” Cassandra told them honestly.

“Thank heavens for small miracles.” Delphine retrieved their longsword from the ground, and cleaned it with a Red’s scarf before sheathing it at their hip. “I know I won’t be able to convince our discount berserker to put on any armour, but I’ll breathe more easily if you start wearing some. Or any. Literally anything, even just a gambeson.”

Cassandra chuckled. “Well, I’ve worn full plate before.”

Delphine blew out a breath, looking skyward in relief. “Thank fucking heavens for slightly bigger miracles. Okay, I don’t think you should go that far, because sometimes we need to move silently or ride two per horse. But think about getting a chain shirt, or a brigandine like Shlomo, or something like the setup Riccardo’s got going. Really, try on any of the jacks we’ve just dragged off these Reds, maybe a few will suit you.”

“I couldn’t do any maintenance or repairs on a jack anyway, not with this hand.” Cassandra gestured with her withered arm for emphasis.

“Maybe you couldn’t, but there are six other people around you now,” Delphine reminded with a raised eyebrow. Cassandra blinked at that, but before she could muster a response, Delphine gave an upwards nod at Liv—who was re-entering the compound with her spear in the crook of one elbow and the nearly-escaped Red’s corpse cradled against one shoulder, still more like another human being than an enemy to be stamped out and eradicated. “Did the horse get away?”

Liv confirmed that with a nod, silently.

Delphine sighed with a sharp frown, troubled at the news, but quickly reached up to give Liv’s free shoulder a hard pat. “Good throw, anyway. Put him with the others, we’re packing the spoils and leaving.”

“Mm.” Liv put a hand on Delphine’s shoulder as they turned to walk away, preventing them from doing so. Once she had their attention, she pointed at the Red squad leader’s corpse—bruised dark at the throat, the ground around the ankles torn up with grooves deep enough to dig up a bit of dirt through the blood-streaked, trampled snow—and cocked her head, the expression on her face through the bear hood’s jaws just short of accusing.

“She wore the only thing one of my dead friends had left of home,” Delphine explained calmly.

“Ah.” Liv relented, and walked away to do as she was told, if with a tired sigh.

Delphine watched her go. “Interesting girl.”

“Will you try to get her to wear a helmet, too?” Cassandra asked dryly.

“I’ll try to talk to her first. She tapped her hood when I asked last night, so it’s possible she knows a spell to turn that pelt into something that’ll function as armour.” Delphine took the bit of one of the Red horses, and gestured for Cassandra to take over so they could dig through the saddlebags. “It certainly wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen a chanter do that. To be honest, when Kaja said that Liv was mute, I’d expected more trouble communicating with her. She’s really quite expressive.”

“I guess she makes do,” Cassandra agreed, looking down to the archery aid still snapped around her withered wrist, over the reinforced gauntlet that hid a layer of silken bandage wrapping the cracked, charred limb.

“Don’t we all.” Delphine left the riding horse alone and walked towards another, with Cassandra in tow, but paused as they saw two heavily burdened pack horses, both in finer tack and harness than the others—one white, one piebald. And in full sight, full earshot of everyone else, Delphine turned to look at Cassandra, and shook their head with a disbelieving grin on their face.

Cassandra crossed her arms as Owl swooped down to perch on her left shoulder. “I told you.”

“You did,” Delphine agreed easily. “You also said, 'mounted men-at-arms in fine armour and green capes', and that there was a ferry involved. If your brand of scouting holds up one more time, I’m gonna have to start taking it into account.”

Hoot, Owl commented his feelings on the matter.

Delphine’s eyes flicked to the bird. “What’d he say this time?”

“You don’t want to know,” Cassandra deadpanned, and looked to where Shlomo was walking up to them.

“Found these on the officer,” he said as he handed a small bundle of sealed papers to Delphine.

“Good.” The spy immediately took the documents and tilted the seal to the light to study it.

Shlomo cleared his throat, and held out a vandalized book. “And this on a pack horse.”

Delphine stared, stiff-jawed, for a long moment before they tucked the sealed papers away and took the book in turn. “That’s a lot less fucking good.”

They flipped through, finding the pages ash-stained and crumpled where they weren’t crudely ripped out, shreds of paper sticking from the book’s spine, the covers scorched at one corner as if from being left too close to a fire. It looked like the Scarlet Brigade had been using the book as kindling, Cassandra thought.

“Well, one thing’s for sure,” Delphine ground out through gritted teeth. “We’re never getting hired by the local savant again.”

“Good riddance,” Shlomo said coldly.

“I’ll say. Fucking Reds, just had to be here, piece of shit cock-sucking sons of—”

“What is that?” Cassandra asked, gesturing at the book.

“It’s what we were supposed to retrieve from the burnt-down village a day over.” Delphine snapped the covers closed; a cloud of dust-fine ash puffed off. “It’s what Laurent, Nicole, and Falk died for.”

And not knowing what to say to that, Cassandra stayed silent.

“What now?” Shlomo asked.

“We’re leaving. The good news is, these—” Delphine gestured at the two pack horses that the men-at-arms of a nearby lord had passed to the Scarlet Brigade. “—are carrying enough for us to pay the savant off and have plenty leftovers to split between the team as spoils, on top of the hundred gold I promised you, plus the Reds’ equipment and the horses without brands are sheer profit. The bad news is, one horse got away, which means the Reds will know something went very wrong, very quickly. We need to be back inside the city walls before then.” They moved the book under their arm, and with a sigh, rubbed their eyes with their free hand, looking just as drained and exhausted for a moment as the recent events and a nearly sleepless night spent at a dying subordinate’s side had every right to make them. “Let’s give Duke a break today. Tell Liv she’ll be riding with me this time, and take any of the Red horses yourself. Is Kaja on her feet?”

“She’s moving a little stiffly, but moving,” Shlomo confirmed.

“I’ll take her,” Cassandra offered. “Riccardo rode Fidella before, they can manage working together again. I’ll take one of the Red horses, too, and Kaja.”

Delphine gave her a grateful nod. “Good woman. Round the horses up and move out, I’ll set the charges.”

And so, the group began to leave, Riccardo stiff and unhappy in Fidella’s saddle and Cassandra pulling Kaja onto Ryzhik’s back behind herself. She noticed that Liv had found herself a new shield, pulled off an Ingvarrdian Red who had fallen to the initial archer volley earlier in the morning, round and with a small iron boss in the centre, an expanse of red-painted rawhide already half-bleached into a sheer white. And as Cassandra watched her, Liv passed a hand over several swords with disinterest, then made a pleased little noise as she pulled out a bearded axe from a saddlebag that one of the loot-burdened pack horses bore, and spent a short moment testing the weapon before she put her old weapon in its place and tucked the axe of her choosing into the loop at her belt.

Before long, Delphine emerged from the little compound again, running as fast as their legs could carry them before vaulting over a larger boulder and clapping both hands over their ears. Seconds after, the hillside before and overtop the base caved in with a roar of split earth and stone, throwing an avalanche of rubble and snow onto the courtyard, burying the quarters and entombing the three sellswords tortured to death along with the twenty-four members of the Scarlet Brigade whose deaths they were avenged with.

“Calm, steady on,” Cassandra called out as she watched some of the horses stamp their hooves nervously, their ears folding back. “That was supposed to happen. Everything is under control.”

Whether her words or her tone, something took effect, and she breathed a little more easily for having avoided a stampede.

“This is the first time I’ve seen something like that,” Kaja remarked from behind her, even as she held onto the front of the saddle rather than onto Cassandra’s waist. “How the fuck are you talking to them like that?”

“It’s a Coronian custom,” Cassandra said flatly.

She felt the Ingvarrdian behind her turn to Shlomo, who was astride a bay gelding nearby and who hissed pointedly, “It is not a Coronian custom.”

“You can lean against me,” Cassandra tossed over her shoulder as she watched Delphine catch up to mount their massive black destrier and extend a hand to Liv so she could climb up behind them. “That cut you’ve been hiding has to hurt.”

“Well, I don’t know you well enough to know how you are about touch, do I?” Kaja grumbled behind her, but did rest her weight against Cassandra’s back, and her forehead against the back of Cassandra’s shoulder.

“This much is okay. You can put your arms around me, too. Is it just the one wound? Because I’ve seen the gone-wrong chanter you and Liv carried into town a few days back, and the way the fingers were spaced on her forelimbs. I’d expect you to be nursing at least three cuts, judging from that.”

Kaja was silent for a moment. “You did, huh?”

“Yeah. You beat me to it by a few days. I was going to see if there was a team getting assembled to hunt her down.”

“Her? So you knew who that used to be?”

Cassandra shrugged. “In passing. I’ve never asked her name. Everyone was just calling her Badger.”

Kaja sighed, a tired sound and a puff of warmth against Cassandra’s back. “Do me a favour, and don’t breathe a word about it where Liv can hear you.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want her to be sad about it all over again,” Kaja said firmly.

“I can work with that.”

“Good.” She felt Kaja shifting slightly against her back, teeth gritted, when Ryzhik tripped on a snow-concealed rock. “And yeah, it’s three cuts. Only the one that I tore back open, though.”

“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?” Cassandra asked patiently.

“Because it wasn’t important. And I didn’t think we’d go with seven against twenty-fucking-four.” Kaja laughed a breathless chuckle, incredulous rather than amused. “I can’t believe we’re all still alive.”

“I’m told that seven is a lucky number in Koto.” Cassandra craned her neck to look at Delphine for a moment—and at Liv towering behind them, visibly uneasy on horseback. Then thought about every time she’d seen the two Ingvarrdians together, and about how they had set out their bedrolls side by side as easily as if it were obvious. “I don’t mean to pry, but are you and Liv an item?”

“No. Since you’re asking, though, keep in mind that I saw her first.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes, hard. “I have no intention of contesting you for her affections. I barely know either of you.”

“Good, more for me.” Kaja stifled a grunt of pain again, stiffening behind Cassandra and briefly pressing her forehead into Cassandra’s shoulder. “Fuck, that was a bad one. I’ve been meaning to ask you something, though.”

“Yeah?” Cassandra encouraged, even though her shoulders drooped as she knew what it was going to be.

“So, it’s not like I can tell, myself,” Kaja began carefully. “But Liv said you have some old and really powerful magic on you. And that you got offended when she asked if you’re a sorceress too.”

Cassandra gave a frustrated sigh. “I’m not. And I’ll thank you to mind your own business.”

“Right. I am, though, Liv’s and mine,” Kaja said flatly. “I may only know two spells, but I do know two spells, and she’s way better than I am. Way better than she should be, really, at only three trials passed. Are we going to have a problem?”

Cassandra bit back an angry retort, and took a deeper breath. “I got scarred with old magic. Badly enough that I can’t use my dominant arm anymore, from fingertips up to the elbow. That is only one of the many, many, many bad experiences I’ve had with magic. I understand that Ingvarrdian sorcery is different than Coronian, and I have met a decent chanter once before, but I’ve also seen two chanters who’d gone wrong and the amount of carnage they caused. It might take me a longer while to trust you. Either of you two. But I’m not trying to be mean to you on purpose. I’m just trying to keep myself safe.”

“I guess that’s fair, then.” The combative edge disappeared from Kaja’s voice again. “Well, you’re not going to see me do magic unless we go on a boat, which I don’t think will happen anytime soon, or unless Liv is dying, and I’d like to avoid that one for the reason of Liv dying. And every spell I’ve seen her do, including one that I know, she casts on herself. Curses like anything that could hurt you are how a chanter turns, and every chanter alive is afraid of that. The only thing even adjacent to magic that we could do to hurt you is stab you with the sorcery knife.”

Cassandra laughed despite herself. Then took a deep breath, and decided to be brave, and took one of Kaja’s arms and put it around her own waist. “We’ve only just met. It’s too early to be making enemies.”

“Now you’re talking sense.” There was a smile in Kaja’s tone, as both of the redhead’s arms moved to hold onto Cassandra, as the group headed back into the safety of Riddersbrug’s city walls.

Chapter Text

“You’re sure?” Riccardo asked carefully.

“Trust me when I say that I’ve been more sure of very few things in my life.” Cassandra put her left hand into water again and dragged the wet fingers through her hair.

“There won’t be tears?”

Cassandra snorted. “Absolutely not, it’s well past time.”

Riccardo eyed her for a moment longer, then looked down at the scissors in his hand. “Well, okay then.”

“You know, you don’t exactly paint the picture of confidence,” Kaja told him flatly. “Sure you don’t want someone else to do that instead?”

Riccardo looked between her and Liv, who was watching idly in-between repainting her new shield entirely into a sheer white, then shook his head. “No offence, but neither of you looks like you know how curly hair works. This isn’t the first time I’m giving someone a trim. It’s just been a while.”

“Suit yourself.” Kaja sat back, leaning against the wall, and adjusted herself with a wince before she found a comfortable position that didn’t pull at the claw rends in her torso.

“How short do you want it?” Riccardo asked when Cassandra sat down and gave him a waiting look.

Cassandra levelled her good hand beside her face, at how she used to wear her hair for most of her life. “To here. A finger shorter, maybe.”

“After it’s dry, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Keep in mind, I’m really out of practice—”

“That’s fine.”

“—so you might want to even out the ends later—”

“Riccardo.” Cassandra’s tone made all traces of warmth leave the room. “Cut it, or I will shank it like it is.”

“Okay, fuck! I’m cutting it!”

She kept herself as motionless as she could, and listened to the scissors’ decisive click against her curls. How much easier to manage than raising a lustrous spike of black rock and trying to shear off excess length with the Shadow Blade by the fistful, and watching the severed locks immediately discolour from brilliant turquoise to the charcoal shade they should have been. How much easier to ask for than when she had dragged herself to the royal barber’s room, after the eclipse, with downcast eyes and a defeated tone, only to be treated to yet another scathing remark that made her turn on her heel before the barber said three more things to her, each no less biting than the insult of a greeting she’d received: to sit down, whether to cut as short as usual, and afterwards, to get out.

For every expression of relief that the fighting was over and that she was back home, there were dozens of little incidents like that—an endless trickle of Corona’s self-righteous wrath and loathing of her, turning every walk through the streets and corridors of what should have been home into a gauntlet of snide remarks and insults and shame. For all of Rapunzel’s jubilant happiness that they were friends again, there was another pointed display of condescending forgiveness, another sign of how she thought that to be friends again meant resetting their relationship to the state it was in mere days before Cassandra had taken the Moonstone. And when she set these meagre, pacifying crumbs side by side with the exorbitant price demanded for them, Cassandra thought bitterly, when she compared her standing in Castle Corona after the eclipse to what she had and was right beforehand, even Zhan Tiri hadn’t treated her that badly.

Liar, enemy, demon, companion, advisor, confidante. It was difficult to decide what had been genuine and what hadn’t, confusing and intertwined as truth and falsehood were in what Zhan Tiri had wanted of Cassandra, with Cassandra. And no matter how tempting it was to condemn all of it as lies, that would not be right, either. That would make a lie out of why Cassandra had clasped the ancient evil’s hand, rather than try yet again to beg her friends into extending theirs to her just the once. That would make a lie out of why Cassandra had taken the Moonstone—the first thing that she saw, claimed, and left with, rather than martyr herself on the altar of someone else’s importance, someone else’s legend in the making and so-called destiny.

And in the smallest of scales, it would make a lie and strip away the meaning of the briefest, quietest moments, too, not just the year-long campaign of preparation and planning and training for war on the day of the eclipse. Like the times when Cassandra would dredge herself up a dim mirror with magic older than kingdoms and nations, and cut her hair with a singularly unique weapon she had taken as a trophy from one of the most dangerous warriors she had ever met—and when she would catch sight of Zhan Tiri silently watching her attempts to give herself a trim with an oddly forlorn gaze, little legs swinging idly back and forth, centuries-old eyes staring out from a child’s round face.

Some of that reminiscence must have shown on her, Cassandra realized as she noticed that Liv was watching her with a concerned expression of her own now. Before she could decide how to react, however, Riccardo broke the silence:

“Are you, uh– are you breathing?”

“Of course I’m breathing,” Cassandra snapped without pause.

“I’m sorry, you’re just so still that I can’t tell!”

“I’m trying not to make this any harder on you than it already is, alright?”

“It’s not hard, don’t be ridiculous,” Riccardo chided, exasperation clear in his voice, as he stepped from behind Cassandra’s right shoulder to behind the left. “How come you let your hair get so long, anyway? If this is how short you like to keep it?”

Cassandra grumbled at that. “I was told it’s going to get even colder in a week or two. So I tried to endure... all this... for warmth.”

“I doubt it’ll be any colder here than it is at home. And I’ve seen that cloak of yours,” Kaja chimed in from where she was still watching. “If the vest and trousers are made the same way, and they sure look like they are, I don’t think you’ll have that much trouble keeping warm. If any.”

Cassandra glanced to where the Ingvarrdian sat leaning against the wall, and caught sight of Liv nodding along to what Kaja had said. “Good.”

“And if you get the helmet padded well enough, it shouldn’t be that much of a change warmth-wise.” Riccardo carefully evened out a cut before stepping away. “How’s this feel?”

Cassandra raised her good hand to her hair, finally as short as it should be, and felt her shoulders relax as she breathed out with boundless relief. Before she knew it, a broad grin was pulling at her face, and a big chunk of the leaden weight knotted up inside her chest was suddenly unravelled and gone, leaving her lighter than she’d carried herself for weeks upon weeks. “I feel human again.”

Riccardo chuckled, and brushed a severed length of her hair off her shoulder. “Just ask again before it gets that bad, alright? And I’ll only get better with more practice.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“Look into a mirror before you thank me. Do you even have a mirror?”

“I don’t.”

Kaja reached into the satchel strapped to her leg. “I do, hang on.”

Mercifully, what she produced after a moment was a foldable compact that protected the reflective surface from scratching, rather than a hand mirror like the one that Cassandra used to treasure along with the incomplete memory preserved within. Easier to set out on a flat surface and free up both hands to reapply kohl, Cassandra supposed as she glanced up to the thin black contours lined around Kaja’s eyes with immaculate precision.

True to Riccardo’s forewarning, her hair was slightly jagged at the ends, but not so much that she couldn’t stand it—or even it out later on, if she wanted to. More than that, Cassandra noticed as she saw her own face for the first time in almost six months, she didn’t look anywhere near as strained and unhealthy as she did in the days that followed the eclipse. The skin around her eyes was no longer almost translucent, the shadows underneath no longer deeper than would be merited by standing watch at some point during the night. The set of her jaw was no longer a tense if unconscious expression of bracing herself, as if for being struck, every minute of every day, and she was no longer tilting her head down to avoid meeting the eyes of others at any cost.

For every difficulty and lack of comforts she had faced on the road, Cassandra had to admit as her reflection stared back at her with a scrutinizing look, both that road and the roadless expanses she’d traversed had still treated her more kindly than the gilded, bejewelled snare of Corona’s royal court and capital city.

And it did noticeably show on the bridge of her nose that had been broken and set in the past, she noted with a little twinge of glee.

She looked down, at the severed locks of her hair that have fallen to the floor, almost as long as the comfortable length she was finally able to wear it at again, then up to Riccardo’s face pulled into an expression of slight trepidation. “It’ll do. I maintain the thanks.”

“Okay, good,” Riccardo breathed out with immediate relief, and chuckled at himself as he put the scissors away. “Heavens, it’s been a while since I cut someone else’s hair, and you’re the kind who’d punch me in the face if you didn’t like it.”

“What was that about asking if I was gonna cry?” Cassandra shot back in a dry tone.

“Well, I never know what to do when someone is crying in front of me! I’d take a punch in the face over that, thank you. Just relieved that neither is happening right now, okay?”

Cassandra cocked her head with a grin. “I mean, if you want me to punch you—”

They were interrupted as the door opened, and Delphine walked through with Shlomo in tow, each carrying a portion of the early morning’s spoils. Riccardo and Liv moved to help them immediately—and when Kaja tried to stand up as well, Liv put one hand on her shoulder and pushed down until the redhead abruptly sat down again with a huff.

“Thanks. Liv, can you go help Tetsuji with the rest?” Delphine asked as they set an armful of saddlebags on the floor in the far end of the room.  “It’s a fair bit of shit we’ve got here, and I don’t want to leave it in the stable overnight.”

Liv nodded, and left the room.

“Did the Guard give you any trouble about the horses?” Cassandra asked as she cleaned up after getting her hair cut.

“No, it’s far from the first time this happens. The ones with brands, we got a small finder’s fee for each, and the Guard is going to try and find their original owners. The ones without brands, they just bought from us.” Delphine gave her a curious look, taking in how the freshly-trimmed hair fell around Cassandra’s face. “Looking sharp. Very handsome. And I kept the chestnut you and Kaja rode in the morning, we’ll definitely need a fresh mount or a pack horse sometimes with all seven of us—and if there’s no longer this many of us tomorrow, we can just sell him too. We’ve still got everything that the Reds were paid with, as well, and it’s mostly gear. So look through there and see if there’s anything you can wear.”

Cassandra blinked at them, needing a moment to process everything that came after being called handsome. “Uh, sure.”

In the meantime, Delphine had already turned to Kaja. “Will you be able to go on a trip to another district tomorrow?”

“I’m not on my deathbed, I can take a walk just fine,” Kaja said sharply, irritated.

“You have a giant wound clawed across the chest. If you’re going to run with me, I’m going to care whether you’re actively bleeding out or not,” Delphine told her. “And speaking of the giant claw wound, I don’t suppose I could convince you to put any metal between your skin and anything else that might want to rip you open?”

“I’m going to let you fit me with a helmet. Don’t push for any more.”

“I’ll take what I can get,” Delphine relented with a sigh. “I saw you block a few hits with those bracers you wear, do you need repairs?”

Though she did not quite smile, the angry expression on Kaja’s face abated as she shook her head. “My cousin made these for me. They’re the last thing any of us owns that’ll ever need repairs.”

“I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but I trust you know how to maintain your own gear.” Delphine turned as Liv and Tetsuji walked into the room, carrying the rest of the spoils. “Okay, kids, it’s payout time. Here’s a hundred gold each like I promised you. I don’t know how much we’ll have left after we sell off all that crap, buy everything we need, and pay the savant off for what my previous group was supposed to do for him, so we’ll divide the rest of the profit tomorrow. I talked to the watchmaster here who’s handling contractors, though, and the next run we do is going to be for the Guard. Liv, I saw you got yourself a new shield and weapon, and Cassandra, I already told you to look through the armour; if anyone else wants to swap some of their gear for what we got off those Reds, feel free, just within reason. I’ll ask you all tomorrow if you’re good to stay a team after we take care of business. Sleep on it, decide what you want to do. Thoughts, questions?”

“I can already tell you that I’m staying,” Riccardo said calmly.

Cassandra nodded. “Me too.”

“Good, but I’ll want to hear it again tomorrow.” Delphine looked to the others. “Anything else?”

“I know the barkeep said this is the biggest room,” Kaja spoke up again, “but there are six beds and seven of us.”

“Don’t worry, I have other plans for the evening.”

Kaja raised her eyebrows. “Such as?”

“I’m going to find someone pretty who will take my money and kiss me until I feel better,” Delphine told her patiently. “I’d still recommend you kids take turns on watch overnight, because the door doesn’t have a lock and we’ve got a lot of shit in here. If there’s nothing else, I’ll see you all in the morning.”

With that, they left, leaving the group to its own devices. Which turned out to be sitting together to play cards, after an evening meal, with the wins and losses deciding the watch order overnight. After a few games, Liv folded to finish repainting her shield, Tetsuji to leaf idly through a pocket-sized book scribed vertically in one of the Bayangoran alphabets, and Cassandra to look through the group’s spoils, while Shlomo, Kaja, and Riccardo started a round of low-stakes poker.

Though even the saddlebags themselves were noticeably newer and of finer make than the Scarlet Brigade’s own, not to mention the contents, Cassandra found little armour between the castle-forged swords and daggers, quivers of goose-fletched arrows and boxes filled with spearheads, and a rare object of greater value yet still with a practical use—a simple silver goblet, an engraved signal horn, a smoking pipe of dark wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl and a few tins of tobacco leaves. There were also several winter cloaks rolled up tightly in one of the bags, as warm as Cassandra’s own at a glance, so she pointed them out to the group, resulting in Tetsuji claiming one and Riccardo another.

The single matched set of breastplate, bevor, and tassets she’d drawn had been made for someone significantly taller than herself, and wouldn’t fit her even if she disregarded what Delphine had said about the team often having to move silently or the need to share a mount among a pair of riders, what with two of the seven not knowing how to ride. Not quite willing yet to resign herself to a jack-of-plate dragged off a dead body—one she’d had a hand in killing, no less—Cassandra opened the last bag, and finally found a mesh of steel rings tightly interlocked together. Three shirts of chainmail. Each short, significantly shorter than Delphine’s splinted hauberk, and with sleeves that barely went past the shoulder. But since Cassandra herself wasn’t of towering stature, she held the chain shirts up against herself, and found that one reached just below her hips. As the others excitedly helped her try it on, she found that the wolf-lined vest she had bought herself before the winter’s frosts gave the chain shirt a passable amount of padding. And while it wasn’t exactly a perfect fit—too wide across the shoulders, too tight across the chest, and in need of a slit at the front and back if Cassandra was to be able to mount Fidella while wearing it—getting an existing chain shirt fixed up for her measurements was still going to take significantly less time and gold than commissioning a whole new one.

She caught Owl’s eye from where he was perched in the rafters, and smiled as he gave her a quiet hoot of relief. Given that she’d spent almost half a year in territories simmering with unrest and bracing for the resurgence of war, it was well past time to start wearing more armour than just her reinforced right glove.

A long, thick belt was another thing she’d need, Cassandra thought as she drank her painkiller before bedtime. Not just the simple thing that kept her trousers in place, either. Something sturdy enough to distribute the chainmail’s weight between her shoulders and her waist. And with something that visible, she could think about getting one as decorative as it would be functional.

And then there was the matter of getting a helmet fitted tomorrow, and deciding what kind. Cassandra thought back to the crested helmets like she had once dreamed of wearing every day, burnished until they gleamed a royal gold in the daylight of Castle Corona. Dreams long since faded and turned sour as she’d seen them for what they were: a desperate plea to negotiate the terms of her servitude, rather than attempt for any freedom, any meaning, to call her own.

Had she ever wanted to be a royal guardswoman in the first place? Or had she just been trying to find the right answers, even back then, answers that would earn her the pride and affection of her father?

She turned onto her side in the bottom half of the bunk bed she shared with Shlomo, facing the wall, withered arm cradled to her chest and the perpetual gnawing pain it caused her waning slowly as the medicine took effect. Best get herself a helmet that wouldn’t make her stand out from the crowd of sellswords and bandits that Riddersbrug teemed with. If she wanted something fancy, she could go there with the belt rather than the helmet. And over the weeks and months to come, as she put more thought into wearing armour again in the first place, she could decide what she wanted the entire setup to look like.

Honestly, the next thing to think about should be some form of greaves, especially if she was going to keep fighting from the saddle. Too many people have tried to yank her off Fidella’s back already. And getting shot in the leg not too long ago wasn’t an experience she was too keen on repeating.

Even as she laid still in the dark, sleep was taking its time—and when she did finally doze off, it was a shallow nap that left her semi-aware of every odd noise in the room. What woke her up overnight was not Riccardo’s hand on her shoulder when it was her turn on watch, but his footsteps as he walked up to her bed to shake her, and she sat up without pause. One last companionable pat to the side of her face, not quite hard enough for it to sting, and Riccardo climbed into a top bunk to sleep through the rest of the night. Cassandra watched him go with a puzzled tilt to her head—both at the gesture and at the fact that the halberdier seemed intent on sleeping in armour.

Then again, Shlomo hadn’t taken his brigandine off for the night, either. Tetsuji seemed to only doff his armour in order to rest his wound. Kaja slept half-upright, propped up against the wall, with one hand atop the head of her axe. And if the vague silhouette from where Liv was curled up in a bed much too small for her was any indication, the bear pelt stayed on overnight, too.

Cassandra overturned the hourglass they were using to time the length of a watch, leaned against the bed post, and listened to five other people around her breathing in their sleep.

It was a lot.

When she was thinking about finding herself some companions to run with, like she had promised Owl and Fidella she would do, she would assume that the resulting team would count three strong in total. Just enough for a solid watch order overnight. Four, at the most. And now there she was, part of a group of seven, even if one of those seven was sleeping elsewhere and in a stranger’s arms tonight. It was more people than the crew following the black rock trail had numbered, barring the few and far between times when Adira joined them for longer than a few hours at a time—which brought the numbers of that group and this one to even keel. More than that, Cassandra had known Rapunzel, Eugene, and Lance for a significant length of time before embarking on that journey, and being communally raised by the Royal Guard with its Captain for a father had prepared her well enough for everything that always seemed to happen around the harbinger of chaos and inexplicability that the Coronian public knew only as Shorty. This time, however, all she had to go on was a single five-day-long job she’d completed months ago with Riccardo, the word of another Kotoan inquisitor spoken in Delphine’s favour, and the events and conversations of the two days they’ve all spent together. If two days rather rich both in events and in conversations.

She barely knew anyone here. And things were already better than two years ago.

Cassandra looked down to her hands, one bare and one encased in several layers of protection. It was going to be two years square, sometime next week, since the Great Tree. Any delusional hopes she may have unconsciously harboured about her withered arm getting any better had themselves withered away by now—her arm was only ever going to get worse, it had, and it doubtlessly would again. What few uses she still had of it mattered little, but at least she was more or less accustomed to using her left arm for almost everything now. At least she had an archery aid that circumvented the worst of her troubles with drawing a bow and aiming a shot. At least she was beginning to keep company that didn’t pry, didn’t look down on her or spurn the expertise she still retained for the fact that she had one good hand rather than two. No more dismissal just on principle. No more pity. No more insinuating that getting maimed for life with another’s carelessness and refusal to listen even once had been her own fault and something she had done to herself.

From people who barely knew her.

With a sigh, Cassandra put her face in both hands, one living and one dead. At her harshest and in her most cynical moments, she used to think that close friendships were overrated if that was what they were supposed to look like. But Riccardo was already acting with fondness of her, and it felt good to talk back to him good-naturedly, to exchange gestures and touches that would’ve been judged too harsh, too aggressive back home, even though she hadn’t meant anything bad by them. Delphine was already declaring a willingness to help her circumvent more of the difficulties that her withered arm caused her, and it was an enormous relief to be promised even that little of an accommodation. Kaja had already butted heads with her, and backed off when she heard Cassandra’s explanation of the reasons behind the brief conflict, and offered an explanation of her own in turn, easing at least a bit of Cassandra’s well-founded animosity towards magic and those who used it. And it was so unspeakably refreshing to be met halfway like that.

She used to think that friendships were overrated, in response to her treatment at the hands of those who surrounded her in Corona and called themselves her friends. Now, she was surrounded by strangers, and being treated in ways that gave her no recourse but face the agonizing truth that her Coronian friends hadn’t treated her like a friend at all. Now, she was surrounded by strangers who were ready to actually befriend her, if she allowed them to.

Cassandra ground her teeth, face still held in her hands.

Who are you?
A friend. Or at least, I’d like to be.

That hadn’t been a friend, either, even despite how much better she’d been treated initially. It was too early to know whether the rag-tag half-dozen sellswords around her, led by an agent of Kotoan Crown to boot, wouldn’t just hurt her and use her all over again. Especially after she had told this Kotoan spy and another one, too, to put her to work rather than dispose of her for safety reasons. And even apart from that, it was ridiculous to assume that she’d just magically make friends with everyone around her. People were different, and sometimes—or most of the time, in Cassandra’s experience—those differences were significant enough to prohibit any relationships as close as what she knew people would usually call a friendship. She’d try to get along with the lot. That much was just common sense. But whether it would ever become anything more remained to be seen, and under a very profound question mark.

She dragged her fingers down her cheeks as she straightened up, and looked towards the rustle of cloth as Kaja slid from a half-sitting position into fully laying down in one of the top bunks. The faint bit of starlight shining through the window fell onto the steel of her weapons, still at her side even while she slept, and onto one of her hands now empty and relaxed as it hung off the edge of the bed, fingers curled loosely and palm open to the ceiling.

Cassandra glanced to the hourglass they’d set out in front of the window. When the sand had poured fully into the bottom half, she stood up and moved across the room to shake Liv’s shoulder—and yanked her hand away when the Ingvarrdian startled awake so abruptly that she was sitting upright before either of them had the time to breathe. Then sagged immediately on a sigh of bone-deep relief when she remembered where she was and saw Cassandra’s familiar-by-now silhouette standing over her.

“Are you okay?” Cassandra whispered, trying to stay quiet enough not to wake the others.

Liv gave her a miserable look and a so-so gesture.

“Bad dreams?” Cassandra guessed.

That earned her a reluctant nod.

“Sometimes I have really bad nightmares, too. Let’s make a deal,” Cassandra reached over to smooth out the bear pelt over Liv’s collarbones. “If I see you having a hard time overnight, I’ll wake you up, and you do the same for me.”

Liv watched her for a moment longer, searching, before a smile softened the uncertainty and she opened her arms to pull Cassandra against her chest. Slowly—giving ample time and opportunity for Cassandra to lean away or push her back or just refuse in another whisper—and yet even as Cassandra processed what was about to happen, she couldn’t find it in herself to fight it, not when the last time she had a hug was over six weeks ago. And with how tall Liv was, it wasn’t an awkward fit, even though Liv was sitting and Cassandra was standing, even as Cassandra put her arms around her new teammate as well, even as she found that the bear pelt was still surprisingly soft despite how constantly it was being used.

Her first errant thought was of how much she had underestimated Liv’s sheer size and bulk by just looking at her. Up close and personal, she found herself feeling incredibly small all of a sudden, almost swaddled between the fur-clad torso half again as broad as her own and the arms each thicker than her neck, the pressure and warmth that encircled her now unexpectedly grounding, as if simply being held like that helped her feel where she ended—as if it was all she had needed to anchor her wayward soul more safely in the body that had already failed to sustain it once before. It was also rapidly becoming very clear that Liv knew exactly how strong she was and that she took constant, deliberate care not to hurt, a measured quality to how firm the hug was, a palpable readiness to ease it at the slightest signal that she was causing discomfort or pain.

Her second thought was that they were probably hugging long enough by now, and she was drawing a breath to voice it when Liv made another sound, a low hum equal parts relieved and content. And rather than pull away, Cassandra paused as she felt the girl in her arms relax, and leaned down to put her face into the soft brown fur off Liv’s shoulder instead.

Another long moment passed before Liv stroked a firm, broad hand between Cassandra’s shoulder blades, and Cassandra decided to take that as her cue that the immediate crisis was over.

“Better?”

She felt Liv nod with feeling, then tap a finger against her back, twice, a return question.

“I think I’m better too.” Cassandra slowly pulled back, and was let go easily. “Thanks.”

Liv smiled at her, significantly less reserved now, and gently pushed Cassandra away with one hand as she gestured towards the empty bed with the other.

“Yes, I’m going back to bed now. Hope you have an easy watch.”

Maybe she was wrong, and just too wary due to past experiences, Cassandra thought as she laid back down and folded her withered arm to her chest. Maybe she was judging the people around her too harshly, and looking at them through the lens of having been pushed and pushed and pushed until she snapped, in the past.

Maybe she was wrong, Cassandra hoped with a quiet desperation as she closed her eyes.

She woke up one more time overnight, when the door creaked open a slight bit and immediately clicked shut again, followed by the thump of retreating footfalls—retreating in a run, to be exact. Turning to look over her shoulder, Cassandra just about made out Tetsuji’s silhouette in the dark as he sheathed a sword and sat back down. At least she no longer had to deal with would-be thieves alone, she thought as she drifted off again.

Morning arrived with no more misadventure, and saw them taking turns with breakfast—Riccardo, Cassandra, and Shlomo went downstairs to the dining floor of the Forester’s Catch first, while Liv stayed with Kaja and Tetsuji as they tended to their injuries and kept an eye on the group’s spoils.

“You’re sure we shouldn’t wait for Delphine to eat with us?” Cassandra asked on the way down.

Shlomo snorted. “You can if you want to starve. I expect them back well before midday, but we have ample time to eat and get the horses ready. Which we should do immediately after we eat, really, seeing how we’ve got five now rather than three.”

“I’ll get it done,” Cassandra offered.

“Great. Don’t touch Tetsuji’s mare. He’s incredibly insistent on being the only one who handles her. So he’ll probably join you as soon as he’s done eating.”

“Okay.”

“So, does Delphine do this often?” Riccardo spoke up in turn. “Just split to find a hooker as soon as we clock back into the city?”

“Every mercenary captain out there has a weird quirk or two,” Shlomo told him, but in a tired tone. “Splitting off for a fuck is a harmless one, at least.”

“Pretty often, then,” Riccardo observed.

“Pretty often, yeah. Not every time, but not far off from that.”

“Do they ever sleep with teammates?” Riccardo lifted his hands in a defensive gesture when Shlomo gave him with a weird look. “I’m not interested, I’m just asking because I’ve seen before that drama over who sleeps with who can tear wolfpacks apart like nobody’s business.”

“No. Never. Not with ex-teammates, either. Sometimes with leaders of other wolfpacks, if we’re forced to work alongside another one, but only if they know each other from before. There won’t be that kind of drama to worry about—at least not from Delphine. Not sure about the girls upstairs.”

“I asked Kaja last night,” Cassandra mentioned as she retrieved a bowl of partridge roast and root vegetables, and a smaller one of raw scraps for Owl. “She said they’re not together.”

Riccardo raised his eyebrows. “No? Could’ve fooled me.”

“Yeah, I think that’s a 'not yet'. So, you haven’t changed your minds yet?” Shlomo asked them both. “Still certain about staying?”

“I don’t see how I’m gonna find a better deal right now, to be honest,” Riccardo said with a shrug. “We took down a Red patrol that outnumbered us three-and-a-half to one. Nobody died. And that was with one person on our side conveniently forgetting to mention she’s been sliced open a few days back. If Delphine can plan into safely handling odds like that, I can’t think of much that would put us in danger with them calling the shots. And then there’s everyone else on this team, I mean—you’re an ex-marguerite, Kaja and Tetsuji fight like demons, and have you seen that spear throw Liv did? Holy shit.” He leaned over to knock his shoulder into Cassandra’s. “You’re awesome, too, but I assume that if we split off, we’d split off together. So I wouldn’t lose your company, at least.”

With a chuckle, Cassandra pushed back at him, not hard enough to actually shove him off-balance. “Maybe you even assume right. Who knows.” She leaned across to look at Shlomo. “I’m certain about staying, too.”

Shlomo smiled at her and sat more comfortably, relieved at each of their declarations. “Good. It’s pretty clear you can both handle yourselves, I’m not sure where we’d have to look for somebody else who’d pull that much weight on a team. True that Delphine has a really good eye for people, but even the wisest can’t pour from an empty dish, if you catch my drift.”

From there, they ate in an easy silence, broken only when Shlomo finally retrieved his food and delayed for a moment longer to murmur something in a language Cassandra didn’t speak or recognize the sound of before he dug in. A blessing or thanksgiving of some sort, she supposed, and didn’t ask—not an uncommon practice, if foreign to herself. She’d certainly seen Moreen Tyson and more than one Kotoan farmer bowing their heads over folded hands before a meal, if in silence. And it certainly wasn’t weirder than feeding raw scraps to a bird of prey during breakfast, either.

After they ate, Cassandra went to the stable, where Owl perched on a comfortable rafter and Fidella greeted her happily. She was almost finished grooming the mare by the time Tetsuji came in as well, acknowledging her with a nod on his way to his own mount’s stall.

“How is your wound healing?” Cassandra asked after a few minutes.

“Cleanly,” Tetsuji told her in a level tone. “While I will still take time to recover, I don’t foresee any complications in the process. I thank you for your concern.”

Cassandra nodded at him in turn.

“You have a very fine steed,” he prompted after a moment. “What is she called?”

“Fidella.”

Tetsuji cocked his head thoughtfully. “Coming from the root for 'faithful', I believe?”

“That’s right. And fitting, too.” Cassandra stroked the mare’s nose as Fidella puffed a warm exhalation at her affectionately. “I’ve rarely seen horses as beautiful as yours, what’s her name?”

“Kogane. Written with the character for 'golden'.” Tetsuji began brushing out the palomino mare’s coat into a lustrous sheen that befitted her name. “She may be no warhorse, but we have yet to fail each other in travels as long as we’ve seen.”

“You are quite far from home,” Cassandra agreed carefully. “What drove you this far inland, if it’s not too indelicate a question?”

“I was exiled, and don’t make a secret of it. In the journeys I’ve embarked on after leaving the clan’s territory, I have been seeking opportunities to bring praise upon the bloodline and crest I represent, and to honour the alliance between the Seven Kingdoms. The area we currently reside in has long been ablaze with contention, as Equis and Koto have warred for control over it. I hope an opportunity will soon present itself to act in Koto’s favour here.”

Cassandra frowned at that. “If those are the values your heart is set upon, then what were you exiled for in the first place?”

“You misunderstand. I am not being punished. The daimyo simply ordered me to become a ronin,” Tetsuji told her in an even tone. “It is not uncommon, you see, for the lords of northern Bayangor to exile their greatest retainers as a test. I believe I have been given such a test, and will settle for nothing less but to pass with flying colours.”

“So you were exiled for nothing,” Cassandra said slowly. “Refused your home’s, your family’s support and commanded to leave without having done anything wrong to merit such treatment? And yet you still act upon loyalty to your clan and your kingdom?”

“Loyalty is easy when your master treats you well,” Tetsuji replied calmly. “Its true measure comes when you are treated poorly, yet still choose the path of usefulness to the clan and the master who bestows such treatment upon you. Those wiser than myself have written that a retainer should be as a self-righting doll—rising each time he is knocked down. I have every intention of proving that I am one such man, and going home once I bring enough honour upon my name that my exile is revoked.”

And to that, Cassandra didn’t say anything, cold as she suddenly felt for being haunted with the spectre of living in too similar ways for too many years, the deathly firm grip of her own past loyalties still shackling her wrists and collaring her neck and dictating the tempo of her feet.

Snort, Fidella said with worry, and Cassandra leaned her cheek against the mare’s for a moment.

“But I did not mean to go on for quite so long,” Tetsuji offered when the silence dragged on. “What brings one such as yourself into these parts? A continental knight-errant is almost as rare a sight here as my countrymen.”

“You say that your status is a test,” Cassandra said quietly. “Mine is an apology.”

Tetsuji gave her a compassionate look. “When matters weigh heavily upon us, it is often good to speak of them. After all, a shared burden is twice as easily borne.”

“I find that more true every day.” Cassandra inclined her head to him, and thought for a moment whether to disregard the indirect invitation, even as she stepped away from Fidella and towards Delphine’s steed—a giant, gelded destrier, easily over a hand taller than Fidella, and sheer black save for white coronet markings above each hoof. “You, sir, are a very large boy.”

The gelding huffed at her, and leaned his nose into Cassandra’s good hand as she extended it, his eyes alight with intelligence.

Tetsuji chuckled. “You stand before Vesper. A kingly steed, to be sure. Delphine has been typically elusive on the matter of his origin or their acquisition of him, but I would be willing to wager they keep a pedigree scroll detailing his origin someplace safe.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen a breed like his before.” Cassandra set to work, still admiring the horse. “Where do they rear you up so big, huh?”

Snort, Vesper said airily.

Cassandra laughed. “Oh, is that right? Okay, since I’ve never taken care of you before, is there anything I should know?”

Snort, Vesper told her.

Cassandra put a hand on the gelding’s side and walked up beside his hindquarters. Sure enough, the tendons on one of his hind legs were visibly bowed, a sign of past injury. “Got it. I’ll be careful.” She looked back to Tetsuji—who, to his credit, didn’t look perplexed with her behaviour in the least. “Duke is the grey stallion, right?”

“Yes. He was Laurent’s horse, and a trophy like the chestnut,” Tetsuji indicated Ryzhik, standing in another stall, with an off-handed gesture. “We’ve had Duke for sixteen days now, if I recall. We slew his previous rider, and given that his previous rider was an Ingvarrdian mercenary leader not unlike Delphine, I think it safe to assume that such was the fate of the rider he had before then, too.”

“So how did you know his name?”

“He was in a Coronian-type bridle when we captured him, quite like your Fidella’s—bitless, and with a little plaque naming him at the chest. Nothing quite as impressive as your handling of the chestnut, I fear.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes, and stood on her tiptoes to reach the top of Vesper’s back with the brush. “I’m sorry about your friends.”

Tetsuji sighed at that. “Thank you. I know they may rest easy now, for being avenged and being buried with every honour we could still afford them. And yet I wish I had asked more of their origins, that I could tell their kin of their passing and assure that they will not be forgotten for as long as I live.”

“Did any of them give their family names? Or told you where they were from?”

“Not to my memory. All Nicole had said to me was that she was a carpenter’s daughter. Laurent was raised in a convent, but never specified which one, and carried the medallion of a saint who patrons the orphaned and the displaced. Falk never spoke of home at all, perhaps due to a criminal’s brand on one arm that he took care to keep concealed.” Tetsuji cleared his throat, and Cassandra looked at him to realize that though the tone of his voice never wavered, there were tears in his eyes. “I will mourn for them and I will miss them greatly, but do not take this to mean that I am in any way opposed to working together with you or the rest of this group’s new members.”

“I didn’t assume you would be.” Cassandra hesitated for a moment. “And, uh– I don’t want to promise you anything, but if I was able to learn the address of any of their families, would you like to know so you could write that letter?”

“That would indeed put me in your debt.”

“Okay. I’ll see what can be done.”

Old Corona was not a large town, not by any means. There would not be throngs of carpenters plying their trade there. If she could get Raps on any sort of census records, Cassandra thought to herself, the combination of the name, the settlement of origin, and the parent’s occupation should narrow it down far enough for some certainty.

She and Tetsuji spoke little afterwards, and after finishing with Vesper and Kogane, they moved on to Ryzhik and Duke. Mindful of the circumstances of how they’ve gotten the chestnut in the first place, Cassandra inspected his hooves a little more closely, and found that he was missing two shoes and a that third was rather loose in its place—likely meaning that the Reds hadn’t shod Ryzhik again after taking him from the logger escort’s Equisian scout. Shortly after the two of them finished with the horses and rejoined the rest of the group, Delphine showed up, chewing on some food wrapped into a bannock and moving with a little bow in their walk and a load of tension drained from their shoulders, and an easier smile about their face. They wasted no time rounding up Cassandra, Kaja, and Shlomo for a trip to the Fireworks quarter, and Liv signalled that she would come as well, while Tetsuji and Riccardo were given a short list of errands to run elsewhere. With the group divided like so, Cassandra offered a hand to Kaja to pull her onto Fidella’s back behind herself, while Delphine, Liv, and Shlomo walked, leading Vesper and Ryzhik burdened with the group’s spoils for sale.

“Thought about what you’re gonna get yourself?” Cassandra asked over her shoulder.

Kaja grumbled quietly behind her. “Not exactly. I don’t know shit about helmets, never worn one before. I just want to be able to see. Riccardo let me try his on, but that bar in front of the face covers like half the field of vision.”

“It’s there to protect the centre of your face. You get used to seeing around it very quickly, but I guess you could find it to be an obstacle if you’ve never worn helmets before,” Cassandra offered.

"Have you? Worn a helmet before, I mean."

“Yeah. Not too often, though.”

“So have you thought about what you want to get?”

“A little. Mostly just something that won’t make me stand out too much.”

“Well, you stand out,” Kaja told her flatly. “Your clothes are tailored in Kotoan fashion, at least the top layer you’re wearing outdoors, the boots look like you just walked out of a steel foundry, you talk like a Coronian, your weapons probably cost as much as the horse, and all of that is before that mark on your sword-arm. Is that gold thread, by the way? As in, literal gold?”

“The mark is not coming off,” Cassandra said calmly.

She felt Kaja laugh quietly behind her. “Like I could tell you to take it off? The knife on my belt isn’t coming off, either, I earned that shit. Point is, it’s a little late to worry about whether you’re standing out. If you want to throw some confusion around where you’re from, you could lean into the cosmopolitan look a little more, but it’s only going to last until you speak.”

Cassandra frowned a little. The chain shirt she was going to get fitted wasn’t made in a very distinctive fashion, just a standard four-in-one link, not quite enough to signal the method’s kingdom of origin. If she was to add yet another land’s signature style into the piecemeal assortment of her garb and equipment, she would probably have to do that with both the belt and the helmet.

“I didn’t think my accent is that strong,” she said instead.

Kaja snorted. “I can’t get over it. Must be the same for you, though, so I didn’t wanna say anything. You been gone from home a long time?”

“Five and a half months now. Why?”

“Damn. Almost half a year, and not a dent in the way you speak.” Kaja shook her head, even as she sounded oddly impressed. “Isn’t Kazandra a southern Bayangoran name, too?”

Cassandra ground her teeth at the sound. “It’s Cassandra. Not whatever you just said.”

“I don’t hear any difference,” Kaja said flatly.

“Forget it,” Cassandra grumbled, and they fell into silence after that.

Once the five of them reached the Fireworks quarter, Delphine and Shlomo began the crawl between every smithy with loose coin to spare, pawning off the looted armour and weapons, judging the display and the quality of craftsmanship in each one along the way. And though getting rid of the spoils that the group took from the Scarlet Brigade the day before turned out to be the endeavour of several hours, it did eventually result in the amount of coin that Cassandra was fairly certain could pay for commissioning the services of a small lance of cavalry. And it did result in Delphine picking the best two armourers they could find—one to leave the chain shirt with, along with Cassandra’s measurements and requests on how to have it fitted, one to commission two helmets from. At that one, Cassandra waited while Kaja, Delphine, and the unfortunate smith tried to reach some sort of compromise, and asked Shlomo’s opinion as well on the matters of head protection that would not make her seem too out of place throughout the city, if not among the group.

“Well, the good news about not standing out from the group is that Tetsuji stands out like a lighthouse on the coast,” Shlomo told her then, a bit of disarmed amusement in his voice. “We all look typical for the area if we’re standing right next to him.”

And at that, Cassandra couldn’t help but snort a laugh at, and so did Liv, who spent most of the trip listening to the others without trying to contribute. Now, though, she tapped Cassandra’s shoulder and pointed at one of the helmets on display: a segmented steel cap with a pair of browbands criss-crossing overtop, a noseguard, a pair of hinged cheek plates, and a curtain of chain forming a partial aventail at the back, its sides linked up with the cheek plates. An older style, to be sure, but still functional and one that certainly did not invoke associations with any of the Seven Kingdoms anymore. After Kaja grudgingly conceded to an open-faced bascinet, Cassandra simply pointed at the segmented helmet and asked for one like that, and had to stifle another laugh at the look of relief on the armourer’s face after having to handle Kaja.

“It’s a helmet,” the Ingvarrdian said through gritted teeth as they walked out of the smithy. “You wanted me to wear a helmet, I’m going to wear a helmet.”

“It’s better than nothing. If not by a whole lot,” Delphine said tiredly, pinching the bridge of their nose. “Cassandra, let’s get these practice swords we talked about, and I’ll leave re-shoeing the chestnut to you. We’re already running late and I still have to go across the river to see the fucking savant before we hit the garrison.”

“Done deal. Do you think I’ll have time for one more shopping trip before we all meet up?” Cassandra asked. “I wanted to visit a pawnbroker as well.”

“If you take less than two hours in total, then sure.”

And after visiting one of the weaponsmiths they’ve sold some of the Scarlet Brigade’s gear to, Cassandra tied a blunt-bladed broadsword to Fidella’s side, just as Delphine did the same with another one secured beside Vesper’s saddle. She was going to actually have a training partner. More than that, a training partner who was left-handed from birth, not since being rendered unable to use the right.

Maybe her right hand was only ever going to get worse, but if they followed up on the purchase with enough time and effort, Cassandra thought with a cautiously lingering hope, there was a rapidly increasing chance that her left hand was going to get better.

With the helmet shopping done and the burden of looted equipment disposed of, Delphine climbed onto Vesper’s back, pulled Shlomo up as well, and nudged the massive destrier into a trot towards the nearest bridge. Finding her way among the endless smithies, Cassandra led Kaja, Liv, Fidella, and Ryzhik towards the farrier she’d visited once before, the sign naming it the Cob’s Cordwainer prompting her into a grin again. And while the farrier didn’t recognize her, he did recognize both of the horses, offering an off-handed comment about having shod the chestnut once before.

“Shame about the man,” he’d said of it, “but at least the horse is in good hands now, if your mare’s condition is any way to tell.”

“People are cheaper here than horses, huh?” Kaja spoke up after the three of them left the farrier’s shop and were heading out of the district.

“Easier to replace and less of a hassle to keep in good condition, that’s for sure.” Cassandra looked this way and that at a street intersection, trying to remember the way towards the pawnbroker she and Moreen had visited once before. “I’m not convinced Delphine thinks so, though, especially not after today with you.”

Kaja rolled her eyes with a grimace. “I’m gonna hate that piece of shit metal hat.”

“You’ll live longer if you wear it.” Cassandra finally spotted the distinctive storefront sign, and pointed at it. “That’s the place.”

“Anchor, Boot, and Cleaver?” Kaja snorted. “What like, the first three of Seven Kingdoms letters? Oh look, you’re gonna find everything in the alphabet under that roof.” She turned to Liv without expecting any comments or answers. “You good to go inside without me? I’m a little peeved, and don’t want to start a fight over nothing. I’ll stay outside with the horses if that’s okay.”

Liv laid a hand against the small of her back, and gave her a nod.

“Okay, good. And remember that we just got paid, yeah? Maybe get yourself something nice?

Liv sighed, if fondly.

“I’m not saying empty your pockets just because, but if you see something you like—” Kaja gave up when Liv rolled her eyes in turn. “Okay, fine! Forget I said anything.”

Cassandra opened the door, and looked to the corner she had seen a bodyguard standing in before. Sure enough, there was the same, extraordinarily non-descript person there—or at least a person wearing the same gear—and Cassandra exchanged a nod with them before turning to the squat, sharp-eyed woman who ran the store as she emerged from the back at the loud jingle of door chimes.

“Afternoon! Buying or selling?”

“Buying, hopefully,” Cassandra said, ignoring the way the appraiser blinked, taken aback, and stared at the sight of Liv as she bowed herself to fit through the door and kept herself hunched over inside, trying to avoid hitting her head on the rafters or ceiling. “I need a leather belt. Something sturdy, and long. The buckle is no concern, but with a metal terminal at the other end if at all possible.”

“Weapon belt, then?” the appraiser guessed, and Cassandra nodded, since the assumption was a close enough one. “Easily done. Give me just a tick.”

While she was pulling drawers open and sorting through a few crates, Cassandra turned to Liv, who was looking at the gallimaufry of contents all across the store with the same look of idle curiosity that she seemed to regard everything in existence with. Eventually, though, her eyes fell on something that caught her attention for a longer moment, and she cocked her head, visibly puzzled.

“What’s up?” Cassandra asked her.

Liv turned to her, as if surprised to be spoken to around strangers, but quickly pointed at a small toy duck standing on the countertop with a little key sticking out of its back.

“It’s a wind-up toy.” Cassandra took in the absolute lack of recognition on Liv’s face. “Wait, you don’t know what that is?”

Liv shook her head, eyebrows raised. Cassandra turned to the appraiser, who kept one eye on them at overhearing the conversation.

“May I?”

“Oh, one moment, this one is a little delicate—” the appraiser walked over and carefully begun winding the little duck herself. “See, there’s a clockwork mechanism inside, and when you turn this key, it moves the mechanism and stores tension in it, like with a spring. Once you let go of the key and set the toy down, the mechanism starts to unwind, gradually releasing the tension, and moves the entire little doohickey. Like so.”

“Huh,” Liv said, nothing short of fascinated as she leaned down to watch the metal duck begin a waddling walk across the countertop.

While she was occupied, the appraiser laid out several thick, broad belts before Cassandra, each rolled up around the buckle. “Here’s what we have at present. I could dig through the back for you, but there isn’t going to be a lot more variety than this.”

“Understandable,” Cassandra reached for the first one at random. “What’s the price range?”

“Depends on the workmanship. These two with the fancy buckles, I could be convinced to part with for three gold, five silver each. These other three each have a design pressed into the leather, and with the steel caps at the ends like you asked, I won’t go below five gold apiece.”

“Hm.” Cassandra set aside a belt with the buckle shaped like a jawless skull. That would make her look like a Coronian pub thug, not a travelling mercenary.

The next one she unrolled had a very simple buckle, in turn, a rough style with the hammer’s strikes still visible, and the metal cap at the other end was embossed with a slightly raised relief of a gnarled oak tree that would be hanging upside down when the belt was worn. Pressed into the brown leather, all the way from that cap to the buckle, was a pattern of impossibly knotted up roots, the thick ones in the front weaving behind the branching-off threads to the sides and back into view. Maybe because of that irregularity, it was unsettling to look at. Like the brambles Raps drew when she was scared. Like the vines that had entangled Hector in the Great Tree.

“This one,” Cassandra said firmly.

“You haven’t even tried it on,” the appraised pointed out.

Rather than waste time with more words, Cassandra circled herself with the belt, and tied the excess length off with a knot around the buckle. It was entirely long enough—and there was plenty of room left for the chain shirt, after it was ready to be worn.

“Alright, decisive customer. Five gold, then.” The appraiser saw her and Liv off with a wave. “Have a good evening, and please come again!”

Life and death and sun and moon, Cassandra thought vaguely to herself as they exited the shop and rejoined Kaja, who had calmed down a little and looked more bored than irritated as she waited for them outside. Roots and bones and metamorphoses, and magic that wasn't done with her, not after a year spent with the progenitor of sorcery across too wide an area, and the achingly human way in which one termed a demon would watch her—especially when she thought Cassandra wasn’t looking.

Monsters were only real when they used to be people, Sigrid had said, simply people that had chosen to abdicate their humanity and twisted themselves up until the outside matched the inside.

Cassandra rubbed idly at the starburst of blackened scars that losing the Moonstone had shorn through the left side of her chest. She had certainly been twisted up inside, at many points of her life, and had only recently begun to release the tension of being treated like a toy and wound up to the point of breaking and just past it, too. And with the hair and eyes a bright, luminous turquoise, the Moonstone spitting freezing-cold sparks and wisps of lightning every time both their fury rang in tune, and the unsheddable carapace of indestructible black rock—the same rock that had torn through the Coronian countryside and through the lands that led to it—were anything to go by, then she had certainly looked the part, too.

Thing was, she didn’t find many of her actions particularly monstrous. Both before taking the Moonstone and while carrying it.

And while it wasn’t the first time the thought had occurred to Cassandra at all, it was the first time that she paused and gave it the attention and acknowledgement it deserved—that if the treatment she’d received from Corona in general and her self-proclaimed friends in particular had pushed her into retaliating with a monstrous rage, then what kind of treatment one would have to receive in order to react with so much to be recorded in history as a demon from another realm?

Cassandra shook her head at herself. The last thing she needed was to empathize with the memory of a dead sorceress, or mourn for how lacking the honesty behind them had been, or regret the sheer multitude of things she hadn’t asked, hadn’t said, hadn’t done. And yet she could not deny, as she stroked her withered thumb over the pattern of tangled roots pressed into her new belt as she carried it in her hand, that it was the same dead sorceress who had shown Cassandra the first, smallest sliver of empathy, even if it hadn’t been a selfless gesture in the end.

By the time she and the Ingvarrdians beside her returned to the Forester’s Catch, Tetsuji and Riccardo were holding a table for the group and playing cards again over the remains of a meal. Half an hour after, Delphine and Shlomo returned as well, with significantly less gold, looks of carefully contained fury on each their faces, and both smelling of cigarette smoke. What remained of the group’s profit after dealing with the city savant was then quickly divided between the group, thirty more gold each and twenty-eight for Delphine as they evened the odd number out. After going through the list of supplies that Riccardo and Tetsuji were supposed to get, and asking each of them again to receive firm confirmations in favour of keeping the group together all around, Delphine finally smiled again and bought the entire table a round to toast the occasion. And after that, they left the horses in the stable, and walked towards the southern bank’s Guard garrison, even as the sun was low in the sky for the winter’s early sunset.

“You came back after all,” one of the guards on watch at the garrison’s gate said as he saw the lot of them approaching.

Delphine returned the nod that accompanied the comment. “Here to see the watchmaster about the contract she mentioned last night.”

“Yeah, I remember you. Come into the courtyard, someone will go get her right quick.”

Minutes later, Cassandra spied a familiar figure in the streaming crowd of guardsmen and uniformed clerks, heading straight for the group.

“There you are. I was starting to think you wouldn’t show up.”

“Stand you up? Me?” Delphine gasped with feigned outrage, one hand pressed to their chest.

“Del, this is the exact opposite of a good time for clowning around.” Watchmaster Renée Jacinta del Arroyo gave the group a once-over, and cocked her head with a look of pleased surprise at the sight of Cassandra lifting a hand at her in a greeting. “Hello again. Like recognizes like, I see.”

“I think I’m in a good place here,” Cassandra offered.

The corners of Renée’s lips twitched upwards at that. “You’re certainly in good hands, I can tell you that much. Follow me. It’ll be cramped with this many of you, but we need to speak details in my office.”

Delphine nodded, and waved the group over to follow as the watchmaster turned on her heel and marched back into the building, leading them all down a few corridors.

“You know that guardswoman?” Kaja murmured to Cassandra along the way.

“I hired myself out for her once before,” Cassandra told her, matching her tone for quietness. “A month of escorting logger teams, ended just before the year broke.”

“Oh, okay.”

And the tiny office was indeed cramped with all eight of them trying to squeeze themselves inside, even as Renée pulled her paper-stacked desk a little further towards the window, trying to make room for them. Once Riccardo managed to close the door behind them, even if he had to stand with his back pressed up against it, Delphine took the only other chair in the room and leaned their elbows against the edge of Renée’s table as they studied her across the scattered documents.

“What’s this emergency job for only the most trusted of contractors, then?”

“It’s really quite embarrassing,” Renée said with a sigh. “We’re having a problem.”

“Well, how permanent a solution are you looking for?”

“Just about that permanent. That’s part of the problem, though.” Renée cleared her throat uncomfortably. “We have equipment disappearing from the armoury, and raiding parties of the Scarlet Brigade in the countryside who are wearing gear inexplicably up to Guard standard every time another batch goes missing.”

For a moment, Delphine stared at her in silence. Then they burst out laughing, head thrown back and tears in their eyes.

“Del,” the watchmaster said tiredly. “Please.”

“I’m sorry, I just—” Delphine choked on another snort of laughter that they tried to muffle this time. “You’re on the brink of war, and someone in your ranks is smuggling weapons out and selling them to the Reds."

“That’s why I said it’s embarrassing,” Renée grumbled as she rubbed her forehead with one hand. “And it’s also why yours is the only outfit I can hire. You’ve been discreet before—I need that discretion again. The other part of the problem is that this job isn’t coming from me, it’s from the Captain.”

“Oh. Well, that isn’t normal,” Delphine observed, the amusement gone and replaced with a frown.

“No, very few things are right now,” Renée shot back dryly.

“Captain of what, precisely?” Shlomo spoke up from the side of the room.

“Captain Wilbur Foss, leader of the Royal Guard on the entire southern riverbank,” Renée told him before turning back to Delphine. “Listen, there isn’t a way to do this contract with a daily wage like normal. If you’re up for dealing with this for the Guard, I’m taking you to see the Captain for a more detailed briefing and negotiations on your price.”

“I bet he has a bigger room,” Delphine quipped, and rose from their chair. “Let’s go.”

Renée blew out a breath, visibly bracing herself as the group filtered out of the cramped little office and into the corridor. After pushing through them as politely as was possible, she led them up two flights of stairs, through what must have been one of the city wall’s towers, and towards a wide door with a bronze knocker.

“Any tips on the etiquette we should exercise inside?” Cassandra asked.

“Don’t talk,” Renée told her firmly, and looked across the others to make sure they knew it applied to them as well. “Let Delphine handle all matters around hiring you. Everything else, leave to me.”

With that, she took the heavy knocker, and slammed it twice into the metal plate it rested against.

“Enter!” a deep voice called out from the inside, slightly muffled through the oaken door.

Renée opened the door and stepped inside, saluting. “I brought the contractors I’ve mentioned, sir.”

“Finally. Bring them in.”

The watchmaster looked over her shoulder and gestured the group inside, and made sure to push the door shut behind them.

Used as she was to her father’s office in Castle Corona, Cassandra had expected an austere room taken up mostly with papers, city plans, and maps of the surrounding area, and maybe an armour stand. Instead, she stepped out from behind Liv to see a broad and richly lit circular chamber that was doubtlessly straight underneath a watchtower’s crown of crenellations, its central piece a large council table that three men and a woman were seated behind. At least she wasn’t wrong about the maps, Cassandra thought as she glanced over the table’s contents—almost a diorama of Riddersbrug’s entire southern bank, with the bridges at one edge and nearly half of the space a detailed topographical depiction of the terrain leading up to the city, the abandoned lazaretto and rest stops along the road immediately recognizable. Set out in one of the room’s far ends stood a pair of printing presses that three clerks streamed around like worker bees, and in another little nook there was a veritable wall of storage shelves taken with boxes and bound files, with another clerk seated at a desk stacked with even more papers than Renée’s, quickly sorting and archiving ever more documents.

Though everyone stared when Delphine’s group entered the room, only the clerks tried to be discreet about it, and only one of the men seated behind the central table rose to meet them halfway across the floor. Based on his epaulettes boasting more tassels, and on that he was the only one with a sash across the breastplate, Cassandra assumed that was the local Captain of the Guard—with close-cropped black hair, cold eyes, and the way he moved exuding a vague sense of foreboding—and that the other three were most likely his lieutenants.

“Certainly a ragged bunch you’ve brought me, Arroyo.”

“They have proven already that they are capable and discreet, sir,” Renée said, sounding calm despite how tense her posture was.

“Captain Foss, I presume,” Delphine greeted in a flat tone that offered very little courtesy.

The man nodded at them curtly. “Have you been told of the case you are to solve?”

“Only that there is a certain, hm... supply chain issue,” Delphine offered with an off-handed gesture. “I’ve yet to hear where my team comes in, how the matter is to be resolved, and most importantly, the payment we are to receive.”

“Discreet indeed,” Captain Foss commented with a raised eyebrow. “Your team comes in where there is a need to investigate that cannot be entrusted to my guardsmen due to a risk of word of the investigation reaching those directly involved in the... issue, as you say. The matter is to be resolved with the death of each person involved, and with your troop returning all supplies you find while resolving the issue into the hands of the Guard, here at the southern garrison. Once these twin objectives are completed, you will be paid six hundred gold. Split it among yourselves as you please.”

“One thousand,” Delphine said calmly, arms crossed over their chest and an unimpressed look on their face.

One of the lieutenants still seated at the council table chortled quietly. The captain worked his jaw in a tense motion.

“You certainly value yourself highly, sellsword.”

“We’re about to do your dirty work for you, and then keep silent about it afterwards,” Delphine told him softly, eyes harder than steel. “One thousand gold between the group is my starting price.”

Captain Foss glared at the others, each in turn, before looking back to the group’s leader and negotiator. “Seven hundred, then, if you value the group so highly.”

“No. Nine hundred.”

“Eight, if you know what’s good for you.”

“I do know.” Delphine made a show of studying their nails. “And that’s not it.”

“You are not turning the Royal Guard into a farmer’s market, to host haggling over every price,” Captain Foss growled at them.

“No? I thought we were well past that?”

“Delphine,” Renée hissed though her teeth.

“Eight hundred and fifty gold,” Captain Foss told them with a sinister ring. “Or I put you all in chains for disrespect of the Guard’s authority.”

Delphine watched him for a moment longer, a pitying look passing through their face, before they inclined their head. “Eight and a half hundred gold, then, paid on completion.”

“You have three weeks,” Captain Foss told them brusquely. “Fail to deliver within this time, and the contract is null and void, as is your payment. Arroyo, see to the formalities, and get these mercenaries out of my office.”

“Yes, sir.” Renée sharply motioned the group to follow her back out. Once the heavy oaken door slammed shut behind them again, she sagged against it with a sigh of relief. “Fuck, Del.”

“How would you say that went?” Delphine asked her quietly.

Renée stifled a nervous laugh. “About as well as I could ever hope it would. Fucking heavens.” She took a deep breath, then another. “Okay. Three weeks from now is until two days after the Feast of the Light. I’m going to pull a favour, and get you a watchman from the northern bank onto the team, you understand?”

“Are you going to be okay if you do that?” Delphine asked with a frown, a sharp look on concern on their face now.

“I’ll just get passed over for promotion. Again.” Renée breathed deeply again, then bowed her head and folded her hands for a moment. “Saint Maurice, grant your resolve to me, that I may learn to follow in your footsteps, let it be so. Fuck. Okay! Let’s get the paperwork done.”

Chapter Text

Though wearing Guard-issue bandoleers with scroll cases holding each of their contracts turned away many a scared or distrustful look, it opened very few doors for them, Cassandra had to admit with frustration on the third day that they had spent mingling with guards, asking for gossip and news, watching the entrances and exits from the garrison, and pretending they had a very different job than the one they were actually trying to. As no progress was made, none at all, in the afternoon Delphine gave the others downtime to sightsee or run any errands they wanted to go on, if with instructions to never split off alone, don’t get into any trouble, and meet back before dark at the inn where the group’s horses were stabled—named Duty’s Respite and boasting a sign in the shape of a scroll of conscription nailed in with a dagger, a favourite of mercenaries contracted out by the Guard and off-duty guards themselves. With Tetsuji mentioning he needed a bookstore, Cassandra offered to take him to the Palace of Parchment, while Liv and Kaja split off to shop elsewhere and Riccardo walked off with Shlomo, the two of them talking about seasonings and balsamic vinegars and dried mushrooms, garlic and horseradish, smoked salt and cranberry sauce. Where Delphine had gone, and in whose company, appeared to have gone unnoticed and unquestioned by all but one of the group—and Cassandra didn’t voice those questions, half-certain as she was that their Kotoan spy of a mercenary captain had gone to see another of the inquisitors operating within the city. Whether it was Sybil, for instructions or a report, or Rutger, for news and another pair of eyes on the case, or Renée, for information that could not have been spoken aloud around the group, or someone else still, remained even less of her business than whether she was right in the first place, Cassandra supposed.

“Is there a specific volume or field of study that you’re looking for?” she asked Tetsuji instead.

“Not quite. I am in need of a blank journal,” Tetsuji said in the level tone that Cassandra was beginning to associate with him. “There are only three pages left in the one I am using at present, and I would loathe having to cut the record of a single day in half, to trail off mid-sentence in one volume and continue in the next.”

Cassandra turned to him at that. “You’re journaling?”

“Yes, though perhaps not quite in the sense you mean. I believe the continental kingdoms may use the term for private musings and recounting of events the author has lived through that are not meant to be read by another?”

“That’s what I’ve seen before, yeah.”

Tetsuji nodded. “Then it is not quite what I do. Every few days, I write of the places I have seen, the actions I have taken there, and my thoughts on each, but I hope to have such a record of my travels to show for myself when I am recalled home, and in time, to add them to the clan’s library.”

“You seem quite certain that your exile will eventually be revoked,” Cassandra said carefully.

“I refuse to entertain a different notion,” Tetsuji told her calmly.

Cassandra gave him a little hum, acknowledging the answer, and allowed silence to fall between them again for not having anything more to say. The letters she sent to Raps would themselves be a record of where she’d gone and what she’d done in her travels, she supposed, short as her descriptions could be. Hopefully Raps’ recent and very clear shame over past mistakes, and her experience with her father having snooped in her own very private journal, would be enough to keep her from compiling the letters they exchanged and adding them to the castle’s library—or worse, publishing them—as some sort of an exhibitionist memorial if Cassandra ever dropped out of contact for too long. Or if she died and the news made it to Castle Corona.

She took a deep lungful of crisp winter air, laced that it was with smoke from burning wood and charcoal and peat as the hearths of Riddersbrug kept its people warm. It was good not to be dead.

Maybe it wasn’t a happiness to be alive. Maybe it wasn’t a life she had done anything meaningful with thus far, anything that would merit a feeling of joy or an event of celebration. Maybe it wasn’t entirely normal to feel this way, Cassandra admitted silently before herself, judging by what she’d seen of others and their open enjoyment of what their lives were like, their visible feeling of belonging in the places and stations they occupied. But compared to what her life used to be, it was an improvement—a long sigh of relief, a quiet contentment to not be dead: not anymore, and not again, not just yet.

Tetsuji placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, effectively cutting that line of thought short. “Grim ruminations reflect on your face. I would hate to watch you lose yourself in regrets or sorrows.”

“Thank you,” Cassandra said quietly. “This is twice now that you’ve encouraged me not to make myself deal with my worries alone. Forgive me if I’m about to sound a little pathetic, but it will take some getting used to—the thought that I have people to come to when I’m troubled—and I’d like to ask you not to take my hesitation to share as a refusal. It’s been a while since I was part of a group resolute to stay together for longer than several days, or weeks at the most.”

“There is no rush. And patience is a virtue I would do well to exercise.” Tetsuji squeezed lightly at her shoulder before withdrawing his hand. “I’m sure that for each of us, some subjects are easily spoken of and some are kept silent until enough time and effort have been expended to build trust necessary for discussing such matters. Which is to say, I have no doubt that you are far from alone in what you’ve said. And for what it is worth, I do not find any of it pathetic. It sounds like you have been done a grave injustice by the company you used to keep, not like a weakness or failing on your part.”

Cassandra cleared her throat, suddenly tight, and blinked a few times as her eyes burned. “I am beginning to understand why your trust in and loyalty to your clan remain so unshakeable, if these are the teachings you’ve been given there to hold onto and cultivate in your heart.”

At that, Tetsuji chuckled a little, a warm sound. “My thanks. It honours me to hear such things spoken.”

Inclining her head to him, Cassandra did what she could to get a grip before they made it to the Palace of Parchment. The bookstore seemed largely unchanged since the last time she had visited, almost a full week ago now; a few pencil pieces have been changed, likely to replace ones sold in the meantime, and the bookseller was leafing through a different tome as he waited for customers. Most, if not all else, seemed the same, down to his polite smile and glint of recognition in his eyes as he looked up and saw Cassandra and Tetsuji entering his shop.

“Good afternoon, miss! And to you, young sir...?”

“Matsuzaki Tetsuji,” the samurai at Cassandra’s side introduced himself with a shallow bow.

“Quentin Dalencourt, at your service. How may I help you?”

“Go first, mine will take a longer while,” Cassandra encouraged, and busied herself with looking across the omnipresent pencils while Tetsuji listed his exact requirements and the bookseller laid out several blank journals before him to choose from. There seemed to be no new pieces with griffincats, she noted with a twinge of disappointment. Maybe she’d ask after older ones, like the one she had seen when she was buying something to send to Raps earlier, with the crow and the dead rat.

Not that particular one, though.

Leaving Tetsuji to examine the blank journals with a slow and exacting scrutiny, the bookseller turned to Cassandra. “And for you, miss?”

“I was wondering if you have any books on griffincats,” Cassandra said. “Entry-level studies, maybe? And if you’d allow for copying a few pages from them, for a price of course.” She took in the way the bookseller sighed heavily, the suddenly gloomy look on his face. “Is something the matter?”

“Not as such, no. You see, miss, there is a scholar of the Polymath Order who used to study griffincats in the area,” the bookseller told her, the sad tinge to his voice making Tetsuji look up as well. “But then the most recent Equisian conquest came. And, as you know, the usurpers set to destroying all of the Inquisition’s work that they could find—all of it, no matter the order or field of study. They burned scholar del Arroyo’s manuscripts to the page. Four decades of documentation and study, gone in an instant—” he clicked his fingers for emphasis. “—just like that. It is no wonder he’s not had the heart to even begin redoing it, especially given his age. From what I know, he is still quite the expert, but no longer pens down any of it.”

Cassandra took that in, silently. Thought back to the few days she had spent with ragpickers, who had reacted to her saying Renée del Arroyo’s name correctly as a code phrase of sorts proving that she was an alright sort, and who had called Renée the old scholar’s granddaughter. She knew for a fact that Renée was a Kotoan inquisitor, too—if not quite a scholar herself—and it would also be a reasonable assumption to say that if even the slightest whiff of betraying the Inquisition could be felt around Renée’s position in the southern garrison, Sybil would be the first to know. And to rectify it with a dagger’s point.

Now she also knew why Renée had accepted that position in the first place, Cassandra thought, suddenly feeling cold as she remembered how Sebastian back in Silberstadt had described the Kotoan method of retribution once before: cut the tongue that gave the order and the hand that carried it out.

And that was before considering the implication of work with contracted mercenaries being something that no one wanted to do, and a duty that had been tossed to Renée because she couldn’t refuse it. Or her more recent comment about being passed over for promotion—presumably multiple times.

“Forgive me for asking,” Tetsuji spoke up with a small frown, “but is there any relation between the master scholar and Watchmaster del Arroyo here on the southern bank’s Royal Equisian Guard?”

The bookseller sighed again, this time with a disgusted, hostile expression. “Indeed there is: the watchmaster is scholar Esteban’s granddaughter. Quite the viper he’d nursed at his own breast. It escapes me how she can look in the mirror after turning her back on her own family and swearing herself into a foreigner tyrant’s Royal Guard.” He shook his head, then turned to Cassandra again and made an effort to smile. “But it’s not such matters you came here to inquire about. I’m afraid I don’t know of an extant, comprehensive body of work studying griffincats in particular, but I believe I could find some introductory information in books dealing with broader subjects. Are there any specifics you’d like to have covered? Or anything I may know about the audience I am to prepare this information for?”

“It’s for a well-read young woman who’s never seen a griffincat or heard of them until I told her they exist,” Cassandra allowed. “She’s a curious sort, and won’t shy away from academic language or from anatomical drawings that don’t suggest violence.”

“That narrows it down,” the bookseller admitted, his smile more genuine now. “I’ll see what I can find, and ask for how much you would like to have copied before we talk about pricing. If you would be so kind as to check back two weeks from now? These things take time, and I must admit to having a pressing matter to settle for quite an irate customer first.”

“Anyone I might know?” Cassandra asked carefully.

“Well, it so happens that the city savant deigned to stoop down far enough to employ my services,” the bookseller said in an unfalteringly polite tone, but with a vicious look on his face, even as he framed the offending title in air quotes again. “He requires a copy of a certain obscure tome, if you’re wondering, one I am half-certain he will be unable to read with any meaningful level of comprehension. But his purposes for such a book are none of my business, nor are his inevitable failures to understand its contents—I am merely to find the book and acquire it on his behalf.”

Cassandra nodded at that. “I wish you luck, then, and I’ll check back two weeks from now.”

“Many thanks, miss.”

Two weeks was going to be too long a wait, she thought silently as she watched Tetsuji choosing a journal and paying before they left the store. She should write Raps before then—really, she should start writing very soon, if she was to divide it between several bursts of effort as to not strain her withered hand too badly. But she did have an excellently-made waterproof album, she conceded before herself, and could just write Raps, retrieve these copies, put them in the album, wait until Owl was back, and send them to Raps next time she’d write her.

“May I admit a petty thought to you?” Tetsuji asked in an almost off-handed manner, almost as if he were thinking out loud rather than posing a question, his tone as calm and level as usual and yet with a suggestion of murderous fury contained just under the surface.

Cassandra gave him a cautious look. “Sure?”

“I am hoping master Dalencourt fails to even locate the book this savant has contracted him to acquire.”

“You’re thinking it’s another copy of the book that your friends died for,” Cassandra said quietly, an observation rather than a question.

“All signs seem to point to the situation being as such, do they not?”

“They do. Any idea what the book was about?”

“It was a treatise on the exploits of another of his ilk, one native to the region as well, if living a few generations past. Or so he had said when Delphine was negotiating that assignment’s payment with him. Whether those exploits were of a sorcerous or alchemical nature, he had not specified.”

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” Cassandra grumbled with a scowl. “I haven’t run into a lot of Equisian sorcery, but it might be better for everyone if he doesn’t get that book after all.”

“I’ve had very few dealings with his kind, but from what I have seen, it seems to me that they fall into three broad categories.” Tetsuji ran a thumb against his jawline, clean-shaven and visibly much more comfortable for it. “One is the court charlatans that Equisian nobility seems so fond of employing: at best, they are self-styled scholars with no grasp of the arcane, and at worst, simple frauds who profess to read portents in the stars or in their card decks. This kind is only as powerful and influential as their lords are naive. One is legitimate practitioners of sorcery, often recognizable by having their palms and wrists tattooed in arcane patterns, and by the murderous intent in their eyes rather than simply a sense of superiority. This kind should be reckoned with, but is by no means invincible. And one falls in-between: professional amateurs who do not know what they are doing, and expend effort on appearing far more competent than they truly are instead of actually deepening their knowledge or honing their skills. This kind, I would say, is the most dangerous for the same reason a swordmaster’s worst enemy is a beginner: there is no telling what one such as that might do. Even still, the first are no harder to defeat than simple commoners—and the second and third are easily bested with the same approach.”

Cassandra felt the corners of her lips curl up, even as she knew her eyes were steel. “Close the distance and hit him hard.”

Tetsuji inclined his head with a thin smile that matched her own. “I have yet to see a sorcerous ward capable of standing up to a sharpened blade.”

They didn’t speak more on the matter as they walked back to the Duty’s Respite to reconvene with the others. There, it turned out they were the first ones back, Cassandra realized as she looked across the dining floor and saw no familiar faces. After they managed to secure a pair of seats at the end of the bench-lined countertop, Cassandra asked Tetsuji to hold the spot for her and went to retrieve Raps’ most recent letter from among her belongings, to read again and start thinking of what to write back—even if she wouldn’t be able to start writing this evening. While the communal sleeping space upstairs did have a window, the moon was new, and there would not be enough light to write overnight even if she squinted hard. And while sitting on the bench with her back to the wall, withered arm laid comfortably over the countertop and turned with her side to the crowd of Equisian guards blowing off steam after a workday wasn’t an environment particularly conductive to focus, re-reading Rapunzel’s letter was still easier to concentrate on among all that din than writing her own.

Shortly after, Riccardo and Shlomo came back, each carrying a small package of ingredients that would make food more enjoyable or lasting, even trail rations or meals made while camping out. She didn’t pay a lot of attention to what the three beside her talked about, only looked up briefly when Riccardo had managed to draw a genuine if short laugh out of Tetsuji, and they left her to her own devices in turn. No one tried to pry, not even remark on the quality of paper in her hands, much less ask about the contents. Cassandra stopped reading, and watched the bewildered look on Riccardo’s face when Tetsuji detailed the making of a stock starter from northern Bayangor, comprised mostly of dried fish ground into a fine dust. When she folded the letter away and mentioned the spicy fruit from Terapi Island, there was a seamless shift in the conversation to include her, with the others remarking they’ve heard of it but hadn’t tried it or recounting other spicy foods and seasonings they were familiar with. It was new, but it felt right, as if something inside her that’s been hanging off one hinge for years on end had finally clicked into place—and Cassandra found a bit of pressure coiled around her chest unwinding. Making it easier to breathe. Making it easier to smile, and easier to engage in the conversation more fully, and easier to tease the others with tales of other things Terapi Island had.

“Come the fuck on. Vodniks, I can buy that vodniks are a widespread folklore thing, or even real, but little leaf people?” Riccardo shook his head. “I draw the line at little leaf people.”

“I’m serious!” Cassandra insisted, even as she laughed while at it, unable to stop herself at the look on his face: minorly offended disbelief mixed with genuine uncertainty whether she was actually being sincere. “Little leaf people who grow the fruit for food and for trade.”

Riccardo threw his hands up in an outraged gesture. “I reject the notion of little leaf people!”

“That’s fair,” Cassandra agreed, and waited for the halberdier to look relieved before she continued, “they were real confident that Owl, Fidella, and a friend’s chameleon were the owners and the people were the pets. So I’m pretty sure they’d be ready to reject the notion of you, too.”

Riccardo’s exasperated groan towards the ceiling and Cassandra’s laughter was the scene that greeted Kaja and Liv as they rejoined the group. As people cleared out from their immediate vicinity upon seeing Liv’s massive silhouette, she was the one to incline her head at them politely, while Kaja unabashedly took advantage of suddenly having room to sit even though the tavern was fairly crowded.

“Is the beer still as miserable as last night?”

“And as the night before that,” Tetsuji confirmed in a sombre tone, prompting Kaja to sigh heavily. “Have you found all you needed?”

“Eh,” Liv said with a shrug as she sat down and shifted her wicker basket of a backpack into her lap.

Kaja waved her hand dismissively before hailing the barkeep for a tankard of the house-special lousy ale. “It’s mostly just been basic stuff. I was running out of soap, my hair comb lost one tooth too many, that kind of thing.” She leaned over the countertop to look at Cassandra, who was still leaning against the wall in the corner. “Hey, horse charmer!”

Cassandra looked up at that, and just in time for Kaja to toss a small but stacked pouch towards her, sliding it across the countertop. Slightly warm to the touch, she noted as she caught it with her good hand.

“Thanks for the medicine,” Kaja said as Cassandra opened the pouch and found it full of honey-glazed roast hazelnuts.

Cassandra blinked at her in confusion. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“No, but I wanted to.” Kaja turned to Tetsuji then, evidently seeing the matter as closed. “How did your trip go? Got everything you wanted, too?”

“Yes, I believe I will be stocked for a while.”

“Nice.” Kaja turned to Liv, who had taken the tankard out of her hand to sip at the cheap ale and made a face at the taste. “It’s shit, right?”

“Ugh,” Liv grumbled, still with a grimace.

“I know, they’ve got to have something else, don’t they?” Kaja raised a hand at the barkeep again and started grilling him on the beverage selection.

Riccardo snickered from beside Cassandra as he watched the conversation unfold. “It’s not that bad, is it? Or have I just been in the region for so long that I’ve forgotten how beer is supposed to taste?”

“I’ve had worse,” Cassandra offered as she put a few hazelnuts in her mouth. The honey wasn’t overwhelming, just a note complementing the slightly burnt earthiness of the nuts, and it did go well with the beer. She pulled the pouch open a little more and set it within reach of the others, an invitation for them to share in. “But I’ve also had better. Many, many times.”

“It is vulgar and crude and barely deserving of the name at all. That is to say, it pairs excellently with the clientele of this sorry place,” Tetsuji said flatly as he gave his tankard a judgemental glare. “I miss the rice beers one could easily acquire at home.”

“How do you brew beer out of rice?” Shlomo asked with a frown, even as he reached for some of the nuts.

“Much in the same way you brew beer out of any other grain, I imagine.” Tetsuji took another sip and shook his head in unsurprised disappointment. “They are far lighter that this pigswill, and far sweeter. Though, that is the difference between so many other foods I have eaten here and those I would be eating at home.”

He was beginning to slur his words slightly, Cassandra noticed as she watched him signal the barkeep for a refill with a deep sigh. “If you don’t even like it, why do you keep drinking it?”

“It does its job, does it not?” Tetsuji said in a ponderous tone. “I do not have to like it in order to admit its effectiveness, and therefore, make use of it. As is true of... very many other things.”

“Okay, buddy.” Riccardo put an arm around his shoulders. Whatever he was shooting for, he clearly hadn’t been prepared for Tetsuji to sigh again and lean against him heavily. “Fuck, someone’s a lightweight, huh?”

“I fail to see how that is a negative quality when all it means is that I have to drink less of this wastewater to reach such a state than you do.”

“You know what, that’s fair.” Riccardo manoeuvred his tankard into easy reach with his other hand, settling into his new role as Tetsuji’s headrest. “Do you even get hungover if two pints are your idea of a bender?”

“I do not do 'benders'. A proper samurai would never allow himself to be addled to the point of losing the capacity to fight on a moment’s notice.” Tetsuji snapped his left hand up, a sharp and sudden gesture that made everyone else look over, to grab Delphine’s wrist before they could tap his shoulder as they snuck up silently behind him. “I thought I had requested that you do not do such things when we are out having drinks.”

“Yeah, but it’s really funny to watch you go from drunken philosophizing halfway through your second beer to a full three-sixty degrees of danger sense with zero warning,” Delphine pointed out without a sliver of shame. “I wanted the new kids to see.”

“Next time, I will cut you,” Tetsuji said flatly.

“You’re welcome to try.” Delphine pulled their wrist from his grip and looked across the group. Their expression softened slightly as they found everyone in better spirits than earlier in the day. “Did Renée turn up yet?”

“I haven’t seen her today,” Cassandra said, as Shlomo shook his head.

“Hm. I guess the night’s still young. Hopefully she won’t make us wait too long.” Delphine laid a hand on Liv’s shoulder and indicated her tankard. “What’ve you got there? Not beer, is it?”

Rather than try to answer, Liv extended the tankard to Delphine—an invitation that was easily taken.

“Cider. Not bad.” Delphine licked their lips, and gave a little sideways nod with a long-suffering look on their face. “Not good, either, but at least it isn’t bad.”

Liv hummed her assent and her resignation, taking the tankard back. Delphine patted her shoulder and turned towards Cassandra, who sat up straight with her face to the countertop, making room for them to sit on the bench as well, between herself and Riccardo.

“Where’s your bird at?”

“Patrolling,” Cassandra said simply. “He doesn’t like to watch me drink.”

Delphine huffed a laugh and shook their head. “This is going to take some getting used to.”

“Speaking of our animals, I’ve never seen a breed like Vesper’s,” Cassandra probed. “Where did he come from?”

“That is a secret of my trade, I’m afraid,” the inquisitor told her smoothly, with a glint of humour in their eyes.

Past that, Cassandra didn’t press, knowing both that she would get no further and that she had just been told more than the others around her could ever know. And instead of trying to ask again, Cassandra studied Delphine’s profile as the spy exchanged a few silver coins for a mug of cider and sat silently with their own thoughts, a frown deepening the furrow between their eyebrows and bottom lip worried between their teeth until they must have tasted blood, and sipped at the cider in an attempt to stop, and bit down on their lip again within seconds. And after a while, Delphine turned to her again, this time with an eyebrow raised.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Cassandra averted her eyes for a moment, realizing that she hadn’t looked away for several minutes straight. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.”

“I don’t mind you staring. A lot of people do, especially since the kingdom we’re in closed borders with the kingdom I’m from,” Delphine said pointedly. “It’s that you’re staring at me like you’re having a life-altering revelation. What’s going on?”

“I guess I just—” Cassandra stumbled for a moment, and wished briefly that she had drank more before having this conversation. “It’s just good to– to see women who look like you. Or like me.”

“Well, I’m not always a woman, but I get the sentiment,” Delphine allowed, the look on their face turning sympathetic now. “Not a lot of trousers on butts like ours in Corona, huh?”

Cassandra shook her head. “Trousers are for men, swords are for men, positions of command or respect are for men, everything I’d ever wanted is for men, doesn’t matter that I’m better at it than the men—I can’t have it, because I’m not a man.”

“Do you want to be a man?” Delphine asked gently.

“No. I like being a woman. It’s just that I like my way of being a woman, not someone else’s, and most of my life I’ve been told that mine is wrong and made to perform another.” Cassandra pinched the corners of her eyes with withered fingers. “It’s a wonder they let me cut my hair this short. Though, it’s probably because it wouldn’t show from under the headpiece anyway.”

“Well, that’s over now. And you won’t ever need to do it again, judging from—” Delphine smoothed the backs of two fingers against Cassandra’s left arm, over the gold-trimmed kerchief tied there, a lady’s favour, a knight-errant’s mark. “You have a free pass to stand apart now. Why not stretch in the room this gives you?”

“Thank you for calling me handsome, a few days back,” Cassandra said tiredly, avoiding Delphine’s eyes now for not feeling strong enough to withstand the understanding and compassion she’d find there, the same that rang through their voice. “I didn’t even realize how much I needed to hear a compliment of my looks that isn’t 'beautiful', not until I heard it.”

“You are handsome. If much too young for me, and besides even that, a subordinate right now.” Delphine put a hand on Cassandra’s back and rubbed lightly between her shoulders. “You could definitely do beautiful, if you set yourself to it—we both could if we wanted to. But between you and me? It’s so fucking stifling.”

Cassandra laughed a little despite herself, and brought a hand up to cover her face. “It really is, isn’t it? Can you even imagine me in a dress?”

When the silence that followed the question started dragging on, she glanced up, and found Delphine with a look of confusion mixed with distress, both extremely intense, and threaded through each other so closely as to be nearly indistinguishable.

“You know what? No. No, I really can’t. Either it’s a picture too wrong to exist under the heavens, or it’s just not there.” Delphine pondered for a moment longer, then shook their head with a grimace, almost as if they had to will the image from their mind. “Do you want to hear how I deal with it when it gets to me? Things like that sense of you’re doing it wrong that other people won’t hesitate to give you?”

“Yes, please.”

“When it’s on days I’m a woman,” Delphine said patiently, “I tell myself it’s impossible for me to not look like a woman, because I am one. I tell myself, I’m a woman, and this is what a woman looks like. And when it’s on days I’m not, well, I’m the one who spent some years figuring this out, not those uncultured fucks giving me the stink-eye. I know myself better than they do. And really, it’d do a lot of them good to find the spine to do that much introspection, they’d walk away as better people. Maybe even as people more like either of us.” They slid an arm around Cassandra’s shoulders and drew her in, enough to plant their face into her hair for a moment. “You’re not alone, alright? It shows on you that you’re happy and comfortable like you are, that this feels right for you, but don’t go thinking there’s no one else who feels the same way. Or that there’s something uniquely wrong with you for being happy this way. If I started naming women like you I’ve known, or women who were interested solely in women like you, we’d be here until All Saints’ Day.”

“Next thing you tell me is going to be that your saints and angels are also women who’d sooner wear a breastplate than a ballgown,” Cassandra teased, her face tucked briefly into the crook of Delphine’s neck.

Delphine chuckled before releasing her. “Our saints and our angels come in every way, shape, and form that people do, because they used to be people, but we sure don’t suffer a shortage of saint women in armour. I know Jeanne is a favourite among girls who work jobs that Corona would probably call manly. And even aside from everyone who’s been exalted into the heavens for us to aspire to? Look at the girls over there.”

Cassandra leaned over the countertop to see, and watched Kaja, ever-ready and more than happy to start a fight, as she was laughing at something Shlomo had just said, loudly and hard enough that she had to carefully wipe at her kohl-lined eyes afterwards, and pulled out her compact mirror for a moment to check if she hadn’t smudged the black contours in the process. Behind her, Liv was stretching with a big yawn, arms raised above her head and both hands plastered squarely to the ceiling, low as it was for her, before she cracked her neck to each side in a lazy motion and started undoing her braid to comb her hair and plait it back up, all sculpted arms and barrel-broad shoulders and careful, nimble fingers as her bear-clawed gloves rested atop the countertop next to her tankard.

Both of them would be as out of place in Castle Corona as she had been, Cassandra had to admit, too confident and too comfortable in their own skin and too unrepentant about not making themselves smaller for another’s sake, and yet not shying away from elements of ladylike behaviour that they’d plucked out of the norm and made their own, as if to spite that norm even further.

Even though Ingvarr, what with its matriarchal and war-oriented society, had reared them both up with a very different norm than that. Especially when compared to Corona’s own overexaggerated standard.

“Would it surprise you if I said I wanted to live in Ingvarr when I was younger?” Cassandra asked slowly, still watching the two at the far end of the group.

Delphine gave her an indulgent look. “About as much as the part where water is wet, Cassandra.”

At that, Cassandra snorted, but didn’t have the time to say anything before Liv gave a sharp little whistle, and once she had the others’ attention, jerked her chin towards the tavern’s door—where Renée del Arroyo had just walked in and started making her way towards the group, with another Equisian guardsman in tow.

“Heavens. Finally.” Delphine rose from the bench as the two guards approached.

“Anything?” Renée asked in lieu of greeting.

Delphine shook their head. “No, not yet.”

Renée accepted that with a nod. “There’s still time. And this is who I told you about.”

“Senior Watchman Mojmir Vrabec,” the guardsman introduced himself. At a glance, he was in his mid-fifties, Cassandra estimated—with an honest, hard-working man’s face and hair thoroughly greyed but for a few dark brown strands, a moustache and neatly-trimmed beard that hid most of a scar slashed halfway across his face, and a steady presence she was used to seeing from some of the oldest men serving on the Guard in Corona.

“Delphine. Officer and negotiator for this wolfpack,” the Kotoan inquisitor of a mercenary captain said as they shook his hand.

Vrabec nodded at that, even as he scrutinized each of the group in turn. “Strong crew. If motley.”

“I’ve briefed him on what’s going on,” Renée told Delphine with a pointed look.

“The situation is downright shameful. It’s not about to get any worse, though, not on my watch,” Vrabec said calmly, then put a hand on Renée’s shoulder with a hard pat. “You’re wasted here on the southern bank. You should at least try to request a transfer.”

“I think I’ve landed myself an okay niche,” Renée rebuffed with a weak attempt at humour.

“Bullshit. You’d have made Ensign years ago, up north with us. Hang what your family says.”

Renée shook her head, no longer pretending to smile. “Mojmir, we are not having this conversation again.”

“Well, at least think about it.”

Delphine cleared their throat, drawing Vrabec’s attention when Renée pressed her lips into a tight line. “Do you have a mount, watchman, or do we have to free up a pack horse for you?”

“I do have a mount, yes. Property of the northern bank’s Royal Guard and stabled here for the night.”

“Good. We should turn in for the night soon, and start before first light tomorrow.”

Vrabec gave them a nod. “Solid plan.”

He sat down with the group, as Shlomo and Kaja made room for him—if with noticeable discomfort on Kaja’s end—and Cassandra strained to overhear the conversation when Delphine took Renée’s elbow and led her a few steps aside, talking quietly.

“—won’t give you any real trouble, just don’t let your wolf cubs do anything too blatantly illegal in front of him,” Renée was saying when Cassandra made her voice out again.

“And you’re sure you’ve got your ass covered in front of your boss?” Delphine insisted.

“Well, I went entirely behind his back, and I actually followed procedure. If obscure and hardly used procedure. He can’t order me to break the rules, not to my face. So at the worst I’ll be on his shit list for a bit longer than normal if you succeed.”

The next couple of sentences were drowned out by uproarious laughter and outraged yelling from a table engrossed in a game of liar’s dice nearby, but judging from the flirtatious tilt to Renée’s head and the grin curling Delphine’s mouth, the conversation careened into far less serious a subject—an impression that was only reinforced when Delphine tapped a finger to the tip of Renée’s nose.

“Not while under contract, darling.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Renée shifted onto her back foot, giving Delphine a look that was all heat and hunger. “Double the reason to get it handled soon as you can, huh?”

“You know it.” Delphine gave her a little wave of their fingers and turned back to the group, leaving Renée to chuckle and shake her head, and leave the tavern. “Okay, kids, it’s time for bed. We’ve got work to do tomorrow.”

While the others delayed only for long enough to finish their drinks or their food, with Vrabec quickly paying for a night’s stay and knocking back a nightcap, Cassandra excused herself and went outside for a moment. A piercing, two-toned whistle echoed out over the streets at this hour, and made the scant passersby wince and look towards her, but all who did turn at the sound seemed to lose interest before Cassandra spied a familiar silhouette and held her arm out, and just in time for Owl to swoop down to her.

“Any news?”

Hoot, Owl said regretfully, and shook his head.

“That’s okay. If you didn’t see anything, there must have not been anything to see.” Cassandra smoothed a finger overtop his head. “It can’t be something that happens every night.”

Hoot, Owl asked, giving her a careful look.

“I’m fine. I think—” Cassandra paused, hesitant to voice the thought. “I know it’s not even been a week yet, but... I think I might be okay here. With these people.”

Hoot, Owl pressed further.

“No, of course I don’t trust them yet, not beyond the basics.” Cassandra lowered her voice, even though there was no one in the immediate vicinity. “I keep thinking that it can’t be this good, that there has to be a catch or a lie somewhere in the deal, but then I keep hoping so badly that there isn’t. What am I doing, Owl?”

Pressing the flat of his beak to her forehead, Owl hooted at her softly.

Cassandra huffed a weak laugh into the shared air between them. “'Trying' sure is a word for it, yeah.”

She went back inside, once Owl had shifted onto her shoulder, and upstairs to the sleeping floor. There were no rooms, only rows of straw beddings laid out on the wooden floor, a sacrifice of privacy for the sake of low prices for a night’s stay. The others were just settling in, and had left room for her between Shlomo and Delphine, putting her on fifth watch as one person stayed awake to make sure the group’s belongings weren’t tampered with overnight in the communal sleeping space. And at the near end of the group, Vrabec was tucking himself into bed with a familiarity that told Cassandra volumes about living conditions in the Equisian Guard’s barracks.

Though sleep came quickly, it came shot through with the same unease and biting caution and desperate want that Cassandra had admitted to Owl earlier, the same that she’d been silently grappling with for days on end. Restless dreams dressed the way she felt into nonsensical events and images, folding in on themselves and shattering into even more fearfully absurd patterns, and Shlomo’s hand on her shoulder shaking her awake could not have come as any more of a relief. Sitting up against the wall, Cassandra listened to the wind howl somewhere beyond the wooden rafters and slate shingles of the roof, and smiled when Owl vacated one of those rafters to sit with her instead.

If there was any sacredness to be found in the world, no matter what Koto said about its angels and saints, then it was encapsulated within watching others sleep peacefully and knowing that they would watch over her in the same way once it was her who slept and one of them who stayed awake, Cassandra thought to herself. On one side of her, Delphine’s hand rested limply on their shoulder as they hid their eyes in the crook of an elbow, even though no firelight was allowed into the loft furnished with wood, fabric, and straw. On the other, Shlomo had just shrugged the covers off as he turned onto his side, and Cassandra reached over to pull the blankets over his back again. Farther away, Tetsuji had laid himself out like a tomb effigy, and farther still, Liv was curled up from behind around Kaja’s significantly smaller silhouette, with Kaja snuggling one of the thick arms to her chest as if it were a plushie.

They didn’t know who Cassandra had been before they all met. More than that, they didn’t care, not beyond how it informed who she was now. None of them would think she used to be a servant, or treat her like one, if Delphine couldn’t even picture her ensnared within a handmaiden’s dress.

She picked at the wolf-lined vest she still wore, for the communal sleeping space’s blankets being flimsy at best. Nowadays, instead of brocades and fine linens, she dressed herself in furs and leathers, and laced nothing when she could buckle it instead, and kept her hair as short as she wanted to, and liked the way people looked at her. And as soon as they were ready, she would wear a chain shirt and a segmented helm, and none of the bewilderment she would see on the faces of those who stared would be caused by how stiffly she held herself, not anymore. And even though she retained court manners as a point of personal pride, she had found recently that she was no longer pinning her gaze to the floor as easily, that bending her back and lowering her head in a bow was becoming an expression of politeness or respect rather than a show of submission.

Owl hooted at her affectionately, and Cassandra kissed the top of his head before reaching over to Delphine to shake them awake for their watch. The inquisitor’s hand landed on the hilt of a dagger at their belt before they blinked awake, and relaxed off of the weapon once they did, once they sat up and stretched their back with a silent wheeze at the stiffness in their muscles—the straw beddings were thin, the blankets offered very little warmth, and the splinted hauberk hadn’t come off for the night.

“Any trouble?” they breathed at Cassandra, fainter than a breeze.

“None,” Cassandra whispered back.

Delphine nodded at her, and laced their hands to turn the palms to the ceiling and stretch their arms above their head as well. And once Cassandra laid down to sleep through the remainder of the night, a faint rustle of straw and fabric was her only warning before Delphine leaned over and tucked the flimsy blanket more snugly around her shoulders, and smoothed it out before settling into a comfortable position, fingertips tapping out an idle little rhythm against their leg. Cassandra swallowed with difficulty, her throat suddenly tight again. Maybe it was going to be okay. Maybe the saying was true enough to hold, even for her, and third time was indeed lucky.

Maybe it was going to be okay, she begged of the future, and her eyes burned as she closed them.

She woke up with Shlomo’s back pressed up against her own, a broad flat expanse of warmth even through the steel-lined leather he wore, and with her withered arm gnawed on with so much pain that she had to take significantly longer than usual with just going through the motions of a morning routine. By the time breakfast was being distributed among the group, Cassandra asked for a half-mug of warm water and a refill of the same for the flat glass bottle she still carried—ever since Badger had gifted her the Skylight Brewery’s beer in it—and measured a dose of painkiller into each, the mug to drink before she ate, the flask for later in the day.

“Are you doing alright?” Shlomo asked her with a concerned frown on his face, one of many expressions of how the group had very clearly noticed that she was holding herself more tightly this morning, withered arm tucked into her vest up to the elbow, how she spoke less and in a more strained, quieter tone.

Cassandra gave him a one-shouldered shrug, trying to indicate her right arm as much as to avoid dislodging Owl’s foothold on the left. “Arm is acting up. I’m in a lot of pain today.”

“Does this happen often?”

“Not every day. It’s just a bad day.” Cassandra looked across the others, and shifted uncomfortably at the uniform worry across everyone’s faces. “I don’t need to stay inside or anything, alright? I’ll be fine once the meds kick in.”

Riccardo put an arm around her back. “Well, if you do need anything...”

“You’ll know. Thank you.”

Mercifully, that sufficed to get the group to back off, and what idle conversation there was over breakfast—thick oatmeal with small apple slices tossed through or scrambled eggs with lard-covered bread—didn’t include any more questions on how much her arm ached, how much difficulty she was going to have to deal with today. While Vrabec sat with them and ate with them, he didn’t speak unless directly spoken to, and Delphine came back from smoking outside with snow in their hair and an assessment that it wasn’t going to stop snowing anytime soon. Cassandra shifted her withered fingers against her ribs experimentally, and couldn’t hold back a wince as a sharper spike of pain lanced through the entire hand. Rainfall was making it hurt more—that much made sense, given a rainy day’s humidity, but snowfall hadn’t made it that bad before. There had to be something she wasn’t accounting for. Or perhaps there was no rhyme or reason to what made her arm less bad and what made it worse, and a bad day was really all there was to it: a random occurrence, one she could never plan for, one she could never predict or avoid.

Grim as that possibility was, she refused to ruminate on it, and instead turned her attention to the group around her. Delphine was chatting with Vrabec about the job, what had been done thus far and what hadn’t, his opinion on this method and that, his thoughts on letting the group split up. Tetsuji’s usual studiously neutral expression gave way to a slight shade of misery as he chewed on the thick bread, and between bites, admitted to Shlomo that he was ready to kill a man for a meal of white rice. Riccardo stared across the dining floor over an unfinished plate, waiting for the others and lost in thought—at least, until Liv clicked her fingers to get his attention, then pointed at his food and made an inquisitive upwards nod.

Riccardo looked at her uncertainly. “I don’t understand?”

“She’s asking if you’re gonna eat that,” Kaja mumbled immediately, with her mouth full.

“No, I’m full. You want it?” Riccardo handed his plate over once Liv eagerly reached out for it. “Maybe we should get you bigger portions, if you’re still hungry.”

“Mh.” Liv shrugged with an unconcerned expression.

“Most days we eat something between the big meals,” Kaja said once she finally swallowed her food. “Ends up being four or five times per day, but you gotta keep the fires burning with something, am I right? It’s not like we can’t earn our keep, either.”

“Is it customary to eat smaller meals but more often, where you’re from?” Cassandra asked.

“Not exactly. There’s just such a demand for competent sellswords around here that we can find entirely more than enough work to pay for eating every time we’re hungry,” Kaja told her with a shrug. “It’s not uncommon for people in rural areas in the homeland to eat twice per day and that’s it.”

“I see.” Cassandra took in the way Liv’s face fell at the mention of home, and decided to change the subject. “You don’t seem to like our temporary friend all that much. Did you have trouble with the law here?”

“Not yet.” Kaja grinned at her briefly, but soon stopped smiling and lowered her voice. “No, I just don’t like that we got saddled with him until the job’s over. What do we need him for? Watching our hands round the clock?”

Cassandra stared at her. “Do you genuinely have no idea why he’s here?”

“If not to keep an eye on us, then no,” Kaja said dryly.

“Think about it. We’re taking care of an embarrassing problem for the southern riverbank’s Guard—a problem that originated within their ranks, and one they can’t solve themselves. The quickest and safest way to ensure this won’t become a scandal when you’ve already hired sellswords to deal with it is to have them handle the smugglers, then accuse them of being the smugglers and hang them. Except that the northern bank’s Guard and the southern one are operating independently of each other, judging from everything I’ve seen and heard in this city. If we have a northern guardsman with us when we apprehend the smugglers, the southern Captain can’t order him to keep his mouth shut and falsify a report so that he can execute us instead of pay us,” Cassandra told her quietly. “He’s here because the watchmaster is protecting us.”

Kaja blinked at her, looking so surprised that it was clear she hadn’t even considered that angle. “How the fuck did you figure this out?”

“My dad is on the Royal Guard in Corona,” Cassandra said with a shrug, choosing to omit that her dad’s place on the Guard was one of leading the Guard. “It gets you to learn to think in a certain way.”

“So I’m starting to see from you,” Kaja agreed easily. “This why you have such a problem with magic, too?”

Cassandra ground her teeth, trying to disregard the pain eating through her withered arm. “I’ve got a lot of reasons to have a problem with magic, and I’m willing to discuss exactly none of them right now.”

“Sure, suit yourself.”