“You look bloody paler than usual.”
“Violet, please,” I grumbled. “Don’t ruin the moment.”
My friend huffed, before proceeding to bump her side into mine. I swayed, regained my balance before I made a fool of myself. Then, I proceeded to bump her back. It accomplished little.
Anias looked back at the two of us with an exasperated expression, though she certainly tried to hide it.
The morning light might have cast a faint glow over us, if only the giant Farstep Circle didn’t cast a much larger shadow. We stood two dozen feet away from it, separated by a small cordon of Karr guards. They were currently going through the motions of going over our paperwork.
They couldn’t refuse, and yet they had to make a show of it anyway. This Farstep Circle was in Violet’s District, after all. Duke Thalos had certainly made a show of deliberating, and yet the outcome had been decided from the moment I had penned my request.
We were moving out of the city quietly. Well, as quietly as one could. None of the crowds around us paid so much as a glance, given our disguises. I wore the same hood I had on that day, when I had taken Cordelia out to see the District. Everyone else wore something similar. Without these, we would have been hounded on all sides. I’d already had to sneak out of my own manor -the crowds outside had never thinned, since that day.
Disguises or not, every man or woman leaving Aelheim was documented and accounted for. I suspected Duke Greenward would know where we were heading to within the day, if he didn’t already know. Given our destination, he might be able to guess what we were going for. Good. I hoped it would make him sweat.
The Farstep Circle flared to life. A pulsing blue washed over me, over our entire procession that officially consisted of me, Violet, Anias, Damian and a few hooded guards. Sere was at my side and visible. It had been some time since she’d left it.
The obsidian arch was imposing. It was more than twenty feet of perfectly smooth black stone, carved with runes I couldn’t read. It framed a wall of shimmer blue light. The light hummed faintly. I’d have expected there to be some kind of sound, at least. There was none at all. That made it eerie.
We were about to Travel -the word for moving great distances with a Farstep Circle. The sensation was described in many texts as being overwhelming, almost nauseating. I braced myself for it now.
Click. Click.
I turned the nausea knob down beforehand. Vaelin hummed somewhere in my mind. It was good to know that the Godblade saw sense in this/
The guards finally waved us through, and our procession slowly stepped forward.
Anias went first. She was currently taking Estovan’s place while he still recovered. She stepped into the blue and vanished. Two of the guards followed and then it was our turn.
“Ready?” I asked.
Violet cracked her knuckles. “How bad can it be?”
We stepped through together and the world compressed. There was a moment of absolute nothing. My body felt disconnected, as if it and my mind were two different places entirely. As if I were just a brain, with no body at all. Something lurched up inside me. My awareness thinned to a narrow point in the nothingness. Then it was over.
I came through cleanly. My feet found stone and my balance held, almost. I took one stumbling step before I righted myself. My Gift had done its work.
Violet staggered sideways, caught herself on a railing that hadn’t been there a second ago, and swore so loudly I wished I’d turned down my hearing too.
Damian came through on one knee. It took him two full seconds before he stood. The couple of trailing guards had fared better. Some of them might have done this before. Anias stood a few paces ahead, perfectly composed. She was adjusting her sleeve.
I took a deep breath, and noticed the air. There was a certain quality the air in Aelheim always had, as if it had gone through the lungs of a dozen people before ever reaching yours. This air didn’t feel like that. The air was warm, fresh and carried something sweet. Flowers? Those had to be flowers. My lungs filled with the scent. Even here, even indoors, the air tasted better.
For a first impression, there could certainly have been worse ones.
The Farstep terminal in Myrrheim was quite a bit different than the one we had just stepped through. There was a proper roof, for one thing. Aelheim’s circles were out in the open air, while these ones were in a building built for the purpose. The building vaguely resembled an airport from my previous life, though of course I had only ever read about those.
Six obsidian arches stood in rows, each one flaring blue as travelers stepped through. Aelheim only had two circles, and those were the only reason it had survived. This place had six, and likely didn’t need a single one. All of those circles flared blue every few minutes, people walking in and out as if it was perfectly normal.
There were crowds everywhere I looked. Merchants with hovering luggage carts, families with children, soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms. Men and women in clothes I had never seen, speaking in accents I could barely follow.
These crowds were all around us. Nobody followed or stared or did much of anything as we walked out. In Aelheim, everybody at least looked when someone Travelled.
There was a front counter at the end of a set of stairs we were supposed to move to. I did. A man in a crisp uniform sat behind it, stamping papers without even looking at them. His eyes were on the crowds too. He must have been people watching.
I had documents, stamped with the seals of House Thalos. He glanced at them. His eyes moved across the page and his expression never changed. That was good. It meant our ‘ruse’, such that it was, had worked.
One of our guards -the one with the mane of long red hair- was the third son of House Stella. A minor Baron house under House Veyne. We had come under the flag of House Stella. House Veyne would have been remarked upon after everything in the papers. Nobody cared much where anyone from House Stella went. It was a rather simple ruse. That was fine. It did not need to hold up to scrutiny for long.
He stamped the paper and slid it back across the counter. “Aelheim huh? Use that gate.” He indicated, already looking past me.
Violet’s jaw tightened. She opened her mouth. I caught her wrist beneath the counter. She closed her mouth. Barely. “Thank you,” I said, and we moved on.
“What the hell was that?” Violet muttered as we walked.
“What did you expect?” I said.
“He didn’t even look at you.”
“That was the point.”
Damian walked on my other side, his hand still near his sword. His eyes hadn’t stopped moving since we’d arrived. I did not have the faintest idea what he was so wary for. “Damian,” I said quietly. “You can relax.”
“I’ll relax when we’re somewhere familiar.”
That would certainly take a while. I didn’t push. It seemed this was his way of making up for recent events, and I wasn’t going to take it from him.
We stepped out of the terminal and into Myrrheim proper. It was impossible not to notice the difference immediately. The most obvious difference was the sheer space.
The road ahead was wide enough that four carriages could have passed abreast and still left room for pedestrians on both sides. After Aelheim’s cramped streets, where a handful of people walking side by side was sometimes a luxury, this felt obscene.
Then, there was the sky. In the Veyne District, the sky was often a strip between tall buildings. There was little space to go around, and so most buildings had started to get taller and taller over the years. That wasn’t the case here.
The buildings here spread rather than stacked atop each other. They were all two or three stories at most, built from pale stone that caught the afternoon light. Many of the nearest ones were restaurants. People sat and ate everywhere I looked.
All of the buildings I saw were lavish, decorated with Magical Implements that seemed to be there for no purpose at all. None of the buildings had so much as chipped paint.
In Aelheim, people made the best of what they had. Even in the nicer parts of our District, you could tell that most buildings were some kind of compromise. I did not get that feeling here.
It took me one glance to feel the difference between home and here. It made me angry.
I thought about Iron Hollow. About walls that cracked and were fixed and then just cracked again. I thought about our own District, where so many of the lights gave off glows so faint they could barely compete with moonlight.
Only one appropriate word came to mind. Obscene. Other choice words floated around in my skull. Ones that Violet had so diligently shoved there. I said none of them as Anias started to lead the way.
The city walls were visible in the distance. They were…low. Even from some distance, I could see that they were nothing compared to the great structure that surrounded Aelhiem. They didn’t need to be. This part of the Kingdom might have been able to do without them entirely.
It seemed that Violet had noticed too. “Bet I can knock a hole in one of those walls myself.”
“Don’t try.” I joked. Then, I paused. “Seriously, don’t.” You never could be sure with her.
Violet grinned. She had said it loud enough that a man passing us turned and gave her a confused look. He glanced at the walls, then back at Violet, as if she’d said something slightly mad.
“What the hell kind of place is this anyway?” she muttered. “Barely even see any weapons besides the guards.”
That was true. Besides the few guards we saw patrolling, nobody had anything more dangerous than a spoon. That made sense. Myrrheim was a city so safe it hardly even needed adventurers, after all.
“A safe one,” Damian said quietly. It was the first thing he’d said in some time.
We started to move, led by Anias. She, out of all us, actually knew where we were supposed to go. Everyone had pulled their hoods down by now, everyone but me.
We walked between overly large streets, surrounded by people whose every word had warmth hidden right beneath. I made sure to keep my hood low. Or I tried to, at least. The thing had a way of riding up when I wasn’t looking.
A woman on the street glanced at me, at my white hair peaking out of the hood. She stared at my red eyes. I pulled the hood low, but it was already a second too late. She paused, nudged the man beside her. Theirs was a whispered exchange I caught only because my Gift was still lightly active.
“Hey hey! Look at her. Her eyes and…that hair. Doesn’t she kinda look like that girl? You know, in the paper.”
The man looked only half-interested. “Dunno. Can’t really see much besides the eyes.”
“Think that’s actually her? Esra Veyne?” There was added emphasis on the word. As if they were talking about some mythical beast rather than a little girl.
The man just shrugged. “Why the hell would she be all the way out here? Come on, speak some sense Marla. Anyway, did you hear about the Solair harvest festival?”
They moved on past us. For a moment, I had been tense. It would have been inconvenient to get found out this early. Besides, it was actually nice to be able to walk around without people gawking and pointing. There had been an uncomfortable amount of that over the last few days, even in my own Manor.
Of course, this was only because nobody actually recognized me yet. For now, I would simply enjoy it.
A few streets later, we passed a café. A man sat outside on a table by himself, reading half folded newspaper. The front page was turned up and I could see the photograph. Just the few splotches I could make out were enough. It was the grainy Scrylens image of a girl and a dragon and a burning blade.
As we passed, a server brought the man a cup. The man nodded. The server set the cup down on the paper. He was using it as a makeshift plate. The coffee cup sat on my face. I kept walking.
The place we were heading to was close to the terminal. It only took perhaps ten minutes of walking to get there, enough that we hadn’t seen the need to flag one of the many carriages I saw. Our rented estate was modest by Myrrheim standards.
By Aelheim standards, it would have been one of the nicest buildings in my District, if a little on the small side. The building was two stories of pale stone. There was a small courtyard with a working fountain. The rooms were clean and well-furnished. The Magical Implements actually worked, all of them, without flickering or making any whining noise some of the most ancient of our lights made.
Anias had chosen it days ago, and she had chosen well.
Violet claimed the largest bedroom by walking into it and throwing her bag on the bed. She had then said that I was sleeping there too, which I had not agreed to, but not said anything against either. There were two beds, so it didn’t matter.
Damian checked every room, every window, and every entrance. He did this without being asked. When he was done, he told the guards where to stand. Though, I doubted they needed the guidance. Perhaps I should have said something when he checked under my bed.
Sere sat on a windowsill and began sketching the view. The city sprawled below us and she was trying to capture all of it from what I could see. Every now and then she would pause, look up, frown at something, and then start sketching faster. I had given her a small dark box, one to hold the Artifact I had given her. It sat on her lap, propping up her notebook.
I watched her for a moment, before reaching out and lightly ruffling her hair. She looked up at me curiously. “You like the view?”
She beamed up at me, before pointing outside. Perhaps that was worth coming here alone.
The evening was perfectly warm. It was neither too hot, nor too cold. I had not lived in Aelheim long, but I knew it was usually at least one of those two things.
I found Damian on a small balcony. He was leaning against the railing, looking out over the city. He gave the impression that he wasn’t actually seeing it. It was something in his posture.
I joined him, leaning against the railing. We stood together for a moment. The sounds of Myrrheim drifted up from below. It was laughter and distant music, mostly. These sounds were not alien to Aelheim, but they were certainly less plentiful.
“Even the ground here is different,” Damian said after a time. He hadn’t looked at me. “It feels softer. You can feel it, if you know what to look for.” I said nothing, letting him talk. “People here don’t look over their shoulders either.” His voice was quiet. “I’ve been watching all day. Nobody checks down every alley. Some of the alleys are bigger than our roads.”
He was staring at the low, distant walls. Perhaps I might be able to see the patrolling guards there from here, if I tried. “I didn’t realize how…rough it was,” he said, “until we got somewhere it wasn’t.”
It felt like he was talking about more than just Aelheim. Perhaps his thoughts still lingered on that day. That day where we had made a grown man beg for his mother. He had been different since then. Perhaps he always would be. I couldn’t fix it. “I’m glad you’re still here,” I said.
Damian was quiet for a time. The city hummed beneath us. Warm air filled my lungs, carrying the scent of something flowering. “Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”
The silence between us was just a little less stiff than it had been in some time.
Anias came back to the Manor an hour later. I had sent her to scout the city, and hadn’t expected her to be back for another two hours. She was always efficient.
She set a folder of documents on the table in the main room and opened it with her Gift. We all sat in the room.
“House Solair controls the southern grain trade,” she began. “They are the only House in the Kingdom with the excess volume to supply what we need. They can send sustained shipments, large enough to break Duke Greenward’s hold on Aelheim’s food supply.”
I sat across from her. Sere sat on my armrest, still doodling. Violet sprawled in a chair nearby, one leg over the armrest.
“Cordelia told me Solair and Greenward have been on poor terms for years,” I said. “It was something about a dispute handled badly. Julian insulted their head of commerce at a summit, apparently. House Solair haven’t forgiven it.”
The memory came with the scent of lilies and Cordelia’s voice, in a reading room just large enough for two.
She had laid out the relationships between just about every great major House in the entire Kingdom, as far as she knew. It had been up to me to memorize and write down as much of it as I could. Duke Julian often spoke to her for a second opinion, and apparently always made it seem like a ‘test’ while he did so.
“Yes, that means there is a chance,” Anias confirmed. “Solair is predisposed against Greenward. They would not be opposed to a deal that undermines him. Especially now that House Greenward is allying itself with House Bulwark, who House Solair also does not like.”
House Bulwark and House Solaire did not much like each other. The last head of House Bulwark had broken a betrothal with a daughter of House Solaire, and that was the kind of insult nobody forgot. It was good that they were on opposite sides of the Kingdom, or they might have crossed swords already.
“Then this should be easy as hell.” Violet said.
“If only that were true.” I said without inflection. “House Solair handles trade on a scale I can barely comprehend. They supply entire provinces. Even foreign Kingdoms. They do not care about us.”
As if to prove the point, a letter floated and opened in front of Violet, suspended by Anias’ Gift. I knew its contents by heart. I was certain I had made Violet read it, though whether or not she actually did was always a mystery.
It was a polite, beautifully worded acknowledgement of House Stella’s request for a meeting. It placed us on a waiting list. The estimated wait was four months. I was told this was an ‘honor’. Anias told me that if I had request under the banner of House Veyne, they might have only made it a single month. Maybe.
“Who the hell do they think they are?!” Violet growled. “We don’t have months!”
“No,” I agreed. “We don’t.”
I looked out the window. Myrrheim spread below us. All of that space and all of that wealth. It wasn’t like I couldn’t force the issue. If I walked freely, Vaelin in hand, I would get my meeting. I might even get my agreement.
An agreement that would chain me to a House I didn’t know, at a price I would no doubt find unacceptable. Perhaps I still would agree to it, for Cordelia. I would find another way first.