(( Small change, Captain Vey has been changed to Captain Rein, he was just too close to Vale and it was confusing people ))Mara and Hal moved into headquarters two days later.
It should have been obvious.
That was the part that annoyed Alric most. The fact that headquarters had the extra space, he had gotten it for that, and he had failed to use it properly. It also annoyed him was that the idea had been sitting in front of him for weeks and had waited until Mara was pregnant to step forward and introduce itself as common sense.
Mara and Hal were the head brewers.
Not officially, perhaps. Alric did not know whether this world had documents for that. It probably did, and Vale probably knew where they were filed, which meant they were expensive, and had been invented by someone who disliked joy.
But in every way that mattered, Mara and Hal were the head brewers.
They knew the brewery. They knew the workers, the process, what boilers couldn’t quite be trusted and when they would run out of brewing bags.
They should have been close. He should have kept them close.
Instead, he had been thinking in terms of rooms, barrels, production, guards, ateliers, offices, and all the other things that seemed important right up until a person reminded him that people were not barrels and should not be handled after the storage problem had already become urgent.
Alric stood in the headquarters common room and watched Hal carry in a wooden chest that looked too heavy for a sensible man to carry without complaint.
Hal carried it without complaint.
Mara followed behind him with a smaller bundle tucked under one arm and a folded blanket pressed against her side. She looked better than she had two nights ago. Still tired. Still slightly pale. But steadier.
“This room?” Hal asked, pausing near the stair.
“Not that one. The bigger, lower room beside the rear corridor.” Seren pointed with her list.
Hal looked back at Alric. “That one’s bigger?”
“Yes,” Alric said. “It also has no stairs.”
Hal’s expression changed, just slightly. Then he nodded. “Right.”
The common room had not yet recovered from being an inn, it was now a headquarters, a meeting space, a waiting room, and occasionally a place where people tried to drink tea without receiving three tasks before the cup cooled. One of the maids, recently hired and still learning that headquarters did not have normal days, carried a stack of cloth with the expression of someone who had been told this was organised and had decided not to challenge authority too early.
Mara made a small sound that might have been a laugh. Hal smiled openly, which was not his usual expression and therefore made him look slightly like a man trying on someone else’s face.
Alric pointed toward the corridor, mostly to move things along before Seren found another way to make him feel both correct and foolish at the same time.
Alric watched them go, then turned toward his office because he suddenly had the feeling that if he stayed in the common room much longer, he’d feel bad. Two of his senior staff moving in meant a chest and some bundles, no other furniture.
He had taken three steps before he noticed Seren following him.
“Aren’t you going to settle them?” Alric asked looking in the direction Mara and Hal’s rooms.
Seren shook her head but there was a small smile there, “They need a moment alone in there I imagine. I’ll talk to them later.”
Alric nodded but noticed she was still following him. He opened the door to his office before glancing at her.
“May we talk for a moment?” Seren asked.
“Sure?” Alric said.
Alric moved behind the desk, before sitting down. Seren seemed more formal than normal which seemed to be her habit when she was nervous. He gestured to the chair which she lowered herself into.
Seren did not begin immediately. Alric waited. She adjusted her sleeve keeping her eyes down. Finally she looked up at him.
“On the way back from the palace,” she said picking her words carefully, “you said there were things you might explain one day.”
Alric’s closed his eyes for a moment, before nodding.
“That was the last time you teased my socks I recall?” Alric said trying to lift the mood. It didn’t get a smile out of Seren though. “I’m guessing this is about wanting… the truth I guess?”
Seren watched him.
“I would like to understand,” she said.
Alric leaned back slowly. The chair creaked beneath him.
“Understand what?”
Seren’s expression did not change, but something in her eyes sharpened.
“Your reaction to Mara.”
The room seemed to settle.
“She told me she was pregnant,” he said. “That means congratulations.”
“Only to you,” Seren said. “You know, with my old charge, pregnant maids were always gotten rid of. Even if they were married, they would need permission to fall pregnant or get married.”
He looked back at her. Seren was careful with words. Sometimes too careful. The phrase sat between them, impossible to mistake.
Seren continued before he could answer. “Mister Alric, I have seen you be strange. Everyone has. You do not bow correctly. You argue with priests. You pay people too much. You treat your own people well but then you treat nobles as if they are bad weather. You ask questions that children know better than to ask and then answer problems that experts have never even thought of.”
“So, I’m strange, I’ve embraced that. I prefer the word eccentric now.” Alric said with a shrug.
Seren let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
“Your reaction to Mara’s news was different,” she said. “It was not merely kind. It was not generous. It was not even your usual kind of impossible. It was the furthest thing from normal I have ever seen. You were confused that we were afraid. Truly confused. Not only that, you were angry at me for not also being happy.”
Alric looked at her for a long moment.
Seren’s voice softened, though only slightly. “I want to understand why.”
The office was quiet.
“I wasn’t angry at you, I thought you were being judgemental and cruel. In my mind, that should have been one of the happiest days in Mara’s life. I thought you were taking that away from her.” Alric clarified before letting go of a deep breath.
He could hear movement beyond the door. A footstep in the corridor. Someone speaking low. A faint knock of wood against wood.
Alric leaned forward, putting an elbow on the desk, he rubbed his jaw looking at the ceiling.
“If I tell you,” he said, “you cannot tell anyone.”
Seren nodded once.
“No,” he said. “I mean anyone. Not Vale. Not Mara. Not Hal. Not even Brannick.”
Seren’s brows rose slightly.
“Especially not Brannick,” Alric said. “He would try to help, and somehow things would get worse.”
That got the smallest movement at the corner of her mouth.
“He would be very sincere about it,” she said.
He studied her for a moment. Seren sat straight, hands folded, face composed. It was the same posture she used with merchants, minor nobles, messengers, and anyone who thought a woman taking notes was the least dangerous person in the room.
“I have kept secrets for nobles,” she said. “Some were stupid, most were cruel. Some were dangerous enough that the wrong word would have ruined people who did not even know.” Her gaze held his. “I know how to keep silent.”
Alric nodded slowly while he believed her, that only made it easier. It did not make it easy.
“It’s a strange tale,” he said.
Seren did not move.
“Only Stromni knows. Some of it.”
That seemed to land. He saw it in the small pause before she breathed again. Seren did not look hurt exactly, but she noticed the order of trust and placed it somewhere careful.
“I died,” he said.
Seren went very still.
The words sounded ridiculous now when he told Stromni, they still did. Death should have required more explanation he realized.
“I don’t mean nearly died,” he continued. “I don’t mean I was sick and recovered or wounded and saved. I died. In another world.”
Seren did not interrupt. He appreciated that more than he could say.
“I was born there. Grew up there. Lived there. I had a family. A job. Problems that felt important. I knew things from that world. Ordinary things there. Impossible things here. Then I died.”
He swallowed.
“I met a god briefly, we talked but not for long, then I woke up here. In this body. Adult. Alive. With memories that belonged to a whole life somewhere else.”
Seren’s eyes searched his face.
“You were not a child here?” she said. “You did not grow up in some distant province? You are not simply come from very far away?”
Alric shook his head throughout before giving a tired smile. “I did come from far away. Just farther than people understand.”
He tried to think of words to explain in Seren’s frame of reference.
“I’m going to tell you some strange things, you’ll just need to trust me on it for a moment. So, you know the stars at night? Those stars are like the sun here just unfathomably far away. I came from one, at least, I think, I don’t really know.” Alric explained. He picked his words carefully avoiding ideas like light years and dimensional travel.
Seren looked down at her hands for a moment. Alric continued because stopping would make it harder to begin again.
“My world was different. Not better in every way. Not even close. We had wars, poverty, cruelty, fools in expensive clothes, men who thought power made them wise, and enough paperwork to make Vale feel loved.”
Seren glanced at that.
“But it was different,” he said. “There were no nobles like here. Not in the same way. There were wealthy people. Powerful families, governments but not really kings. Laws were for everyone, mostly. Systems, bad ones, good ones, broken ones, all arguing with each other. People voted in some places. Complained everywhere. Changed laws, broke laws, protested laws, misunderstood laws.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It was, it was also very peaceful, at least where I was.”
“And women?” Seren asked.
He looked at her. That had been the question waiting behind the question he suspected.
Alric leaned forward, both elbows on the desk.
“In my world, women were considered equal to men.”
Seren’s face changed. She seemed somehow more guarded. As if he had set a blade on the table and asked her to admire the shine.
He raised a hand slightly.
“Not always and certainly not everywhere. It wasn’t perfect I’ll admit. Men still abused power. Families still trapped women. Workplaces still cheated them. Laws still failed them. People still had to fight for things that should have been obvious. The point though was that it was trying. That counts for something.”
Seren listened not interrupting.
“That is why Mara’s news hit me the way it did,” he said. “Because to me, a baby is a baby. If the mother wants it, if she is happy, even if she is scared, then congratulations comes first. Work comes later. Planning comes later. Safety comes later. But first, you tell her the world has not ended.”
Seren drew in a slow breath.
“And here,” he said, his voice roughening despite himself, “the first thing she felt was fear. Fear that I would throw her out, that she would lose her place, that being pregnant made her less useful. Less safe and less welcome. And both of you understood that fear so well that my reaction seemed strange.”
He looked at Seren then.
“That is not a normal thing to me. It should not be normal to anyone.”
Seren did not answer. The silence held long enough that Alric thought perhaps he had said too much.
Then she spoke.
“What does equal mean?”
Alric sat back again, thinking.
Seren’s voice was careful. “You say women were considered equal. What does that mean when people are eating, working, marrying, owing, inheriting?”
It was a very Seren question.
“It means,” he said slowly, “that if Mara brewed the beer, Mara was the brewer. Not Hal’s helper. Not someone working until she had children. The brewer. It means if she managed people, she was management. If she owned the building, it was hers. If she earned coin, the coin was hers. If she married Hal, that did not change anything.”
Seren watched him closely.
“It means Lessa could work where she chose and men staring at her would be the problem, not her. Although, you’d have to push hard to get someone in trouble for staring, still though you could run an office. Or the company like ours. Or a court department, hang on, you know it as a magistrate. Anything you had the training and chance to do really.”
Seren shifted backwards slightly. Alric realised too late that he had stepped somewhere tender.
He softened his voice.
“Again, my world failed at it often. But it was trying, I believe that matters.”
“That sounds dangerous,” she said.
Alric nodded and shrugged.
“For men?” She asked leaning forward.
“For everyone,” Alric said. “Most things are dangerous to someone. If it’s one thing the brewery taught me, it’s that.”
Her gaze returned to him. There was a long moment.
Then she asked, “You said a god sent you? Which one?”
Seren’s composure cracked for the first time. Not much. Just enough.
“Creation. The goddess I should clarify, doesn’t seem to be one the church here recognizes.”
The word made the office feel too small. Seren frowned.
“I’ve never heard of creation,” she said.
“I don’t know her name,” Alric replied. “Or I didn’t catch it. I was dead at the time, but I think I would have remembered. She told me she created this world.”
Seren did not smile.
Alric continued carefully. “She was young or looked young. Excited, mostly. She had built this strange little place to meet me, and none of it quite matched. She told me I was dead, then told me I had been chosen to be reborn as if she had been waiting for applause. I don’t think she meant harm. I think she was new to it. She wanted a hero, or thought she did, and I was not very good at being impressed. In the end, she sent me here with a body she had made, more mana than she seemed to think was important, and a power because I asked about brewing.”
“A goddess of creation,” Seren said, more to herself than to him. “Did she give you a task?”
Alric shook his head. “Not really, she mentioned a demon king but I’m not sure it’s important or not.”
“Beer?” Seren asked.
He looked at her. Her face was completely serious.
“That was my idea,” he said, then paused. “Mostly. She gave me a power so that I could try to make beer like my old world.”
Seren closed her eyes briefly. For some reason, that was the part that almost made him laugh.
When she opened them again, she asked, “Did you meet any of the other gods?”
“No.”
“None?”
“None. I only know what I’ve been told since arriving.”
Seren leaned back slightly.
He could see her placing things. Not accepting all of it blindly, perhaps, but arranging it against what she knew. His ignorance. His strange habits. His attitude. His knowledge of tools, drinks, pressure, trade, and things he should not know. His horror at things everyone else quietly endured. He appreciated she didn’t voice those, but he was sure it was what she was thinking.
“I’m surprised you believe me,” he said after a long silence.
Seren was quiet for a moment longer.
Then she said, “If I did not believe you, what would change?”
Alric frowned. Seren looked toward the door, then back to him.
“Nobles tell people what to believe all the time. Priests do too. Hunger does as well. A man with enough power says a thing is true and others survive by behaving as if it is true.” Her voice stayed even. “Or pretending its true at least.”
Alric did not know what to say to that.
“But yes, I believe you.” She gave him a small, almost tired look before she continued. “It explains too much not to.”
He rubbed at his jaw.
Seren counted softly, not on her fingers, but in the movement of her eyes as each piece found its place.
“It explains why you did not understand household servants. Why you treat merchants as if coin is practical but not sacred. Why you ask women what they want and then wait for an answer.”
Alric looked down.
“It explains why you pay people too much and why you aren’t afraid of things like guilds.” she continued.
“I don’t pay people too much.”
“You do.”
He had no answer to that. Seren’s mouth softened slightly.
“It explains why Mara’s fear bothered you,” she said. “Not because it was unkind. Because to you, it felt personal.”
“It did,” he said.
Seren nodded before speaking “Just so you know, it wasn’t personal. I would have had the same fear.”
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Alric felt foolishly exposed. Not because Seren had laughed or doubted him. She had done neither. A ridiculous confession could be survived if it was treated as ridiculous. Seren had accepted it and made it part of the ledger.
“Thank you,” she said.
He looked up.
“For trusting me.”