Two weeks at sea never felt so good.

I wake every morning with Arcadia in my arms. We eat together, and when she sticks her nose into Jhekata’s Compendium I head off to make myself useful to the crew of The Dove. When I’m not learning how to be a sailor, I’m sparring with Hook, listening to one of Gredder’s stories, or playing dice games with Posca and whoever else is foolish enough to gamble with him. Then, when evening draws near, Arcadia comes looking for me with a shy smile on her face, and we retire to bed together. Usually after having each other for dinner. I can say, without even having to think on it, that these are the best days of my life.

There is only one event during the voyage that could be cause for concern, and even then it’s mild. On our tenth day sailing northward, we spot an armada of Ecean warships. There are too many of them to count, but they’re so far away when we encounter them that it’s unlikely they saw us blow by. Even if they did, they wouldn’t have been able to pursue.

Magic. It’s back, and it’s going to change the world.

On the evening of the thirteenth day of our voyage, Posca gathers us all around the table in his cabin. He sets out a decanter of some fine Ecean wine for the occasion, and is already on his second glass by the time we’ve all come in and had a seat. Even Hook comes along, though he’s not built for chairs. He ends up sitting cross-legged on the floor, which still puts him at eye level with us.

Posca leans back in his chair and crosses his legs, in a regal kind of a way, smirking as he swishes his wine around in its glass.

“So. For our Sorceress’s next trick, she’ll explain to us how we’re going convince the folk of Kellheim that we aren’t Ecean spies,” he says, with a sidelong glance at Arcadia. “Last I heard, the Legions were using Esden as a forward base to push their conquest northward. An Ecean ship hasn’t tried to make berth this far up the continent in quite a while.”

In an amusing contrast to Posca, the actual royalty here is seated in a childish fashion. Arcadia rests her cheek against her palm, an elbow propped on the table. "It's easy. We're going to meet my mentor, so she'll have told people to expect us. She's a Norgardian witch."

Gredder listens, his lips pursed. He’s just poured himself a glass of wine, but he hasn’t raised it all the way to his lips yet. “Simple enough,” he says. “If she were able to convey the message, of course. If my memory serves me correctly, you said she had to cut off your last correspondence on account of an Ecean ambush.”

His words make me stiffen slightly. Arcadia hasn’t been fretting as hard over Sigrun’s fate as she was when we set out, but even if she isn’t talking about it, she may still be worried. I glance at her, and am relieved when I see her sitting there looking mildly bored.

Arcadia’s palm squishes her cheek up against her face, and she nods against it. "Yes, but she's anything but sloppy. I'm sure she got the message out. And if not, we'll just tell them ourselves, and wait under their supervision until she arrives. I have a lot of studying to do anyway, even if it takes a week."

Posca lets out a chuckle. “Tell them what, exactly? ‘You see, good Thane, I was once known as the Prince of Ecea. But now I am a traveling Sorceress, and my very good friend is one of your superior officers, so you’d better treat us as honored guests. And of course I have nothing to do with the army marching north to subjugate your people.’’”

A sigh pours out of Arcadia, and she rolls her eyes. "I won’t tell anyone more than they need to know." A grin comes to her face as she stares at Posca. "Even if I did say all that, they'd spend weeks tearing their hair out trying to understand why the Eceans marched their sole heir straight into their custody."

“She has a point,” says Gredder.

“I suppose she does,” says Posca, a note of sarcasm in his voice.

Hook warbles something, and Gredder nods at him. Posca gives Gredder an expectant look, but the old man just grins and shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Even so,” I say, glancing at Arcadia. “It wouldn’t be the worst idea to come up with a cover story of some kind. Just in case.”

She meets my gaze, and her cheeks turn rosy. A grin slowly forms on her face, and she bites her lower lip before looking away from me.

I…

What was I talking about, again?

Right. Yes, the plan. We discuss it for a time, weighing what few options we have. Gredder elects himself spokesman of the group, and suggests we pretend he’s our employer, a disgruntled Ecean merchant on the run from the authorities over a tax dispute. Arcadia would play his niece, Posca his nephew, and Hook and I his personal bodyguards. Posca chafes at the notion of even pretending to be Gredder’s relative, and after bickering about it for a bit, he settles on playing his ‘business partner’ instead.

The final morning of our voyage comes, and it’s a gray, misty one. By the time Arcadia and I emerge from our cabin, Kellheim has come into view on our starboard side, and the image of it is handsome. Its great stone keep sits on a tall hill overlooking the town beneath it. There are two curtain walls with round stone turrets, one surrounding the keep itself, the next one encircling the town below, but the settlement has long since grown outward from that larger wall, rows of quaint homes with peaked roofs assembled loosely around it, stretching off into the grassy countryside.

Posca’s sailors guide us into the harbor, the hull of The Dove disturbing its still, quiet waters. I don’t see many other vessels at port here, mostly longships made for war. Which doesn’t come as much of a surprise. This area is a little too far north to be under direct threat, but the threat steadily approaches. Already we’re causing a scene, people are staring as we pass, pointing, turning to speak to each other with obvious agitation. A little boy picks up a rock from the shore and hurls it at us, and it lands with a plunk in the water several feet short of our prow. His friends laugh at him, and he stomps off, sulking.

I’m leaning against the rail, taking in the view, when Arcadia comes up beside me and leans against my shoulder. I wrap an arm around her and she kisses my bicep, lets out a light, happy sigh.

“We’re getting a warm welcome already,” I say, with a smirk, nodding in the direction of the gawkers.

“I don’t care,” she half whispers, a hint of weariness still in her voice. Then she slips her arms around my waist, squeezes herself against me. “This is home.”

It’s too early in the morning to have a lump in my throat, damnit.

We are joined a few moments later by Gredder, who comes up to watch us make port with a strangely eager smile on his face. I glance over at him and he meets my gaze, flashes me a grin.

“You know, I’m still surprised you wanted to come along with us,” I say.

“It’s simple greed,” he says. “This old con man wants to rack up a few more stories before he expires, that’s all.”

We glide slowly up to the docks, and when we’re close enough for the sailors to begin throwing out our mooring lines, Gredder looks over at us. “Ready to put on a show?” he asks.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I say.

He smirks at that. “Just stand there looking mean. I’ll handle the rest.”

Already we have a welcoming committee, and it doesn’t look overly welcoming. A beak-nosed official in a fur lined cloak stands at the end of our pier, with an escort of a half dozen warriors in mail shirts. Their hands are on their weapons, suspicion in their eyes, as Posca’s crew puts down the gangplank so we can disembark.

I glance at Gredder, and he looks completely calm. I can see him getting into character already, an awkward smile forming on his face as he turns to descend the gangplank to speak with the men who have come to intercept us. I part from Arcadia’s embrace with a kiss, and she waves after me as I join Hook to come down with him and pretend to be his hireling.

I don’t know if Gredder is naturally fluent in the Norgardian language, or if he’s using the Star of Advuri for help, but the fact that he launches into his explanation in their native tongue raises a few eyebrows. I don’t know what he’s saying, but there’s a lot of gesturing and wringing hands and such. He’s a good actor. Behind the Norgardian warriors, a crowd of curious onlookers begins to form. People are looking at Hook and I particularly strangely, but I can’t decide who they find more strange, the K’zar woman or the lizard man.

I’m not sure how to feel about that.

The discussion goes on, and more than once I see our beak-nosed delegate raise his eyebrows at Gredder in the midst of it. It’s difficult to tell if he believes our story or not, his default expression seems to be a dour one. But it ends with him nodding curtly, speaking a few words, and turning around with a swish of his cloak to depart from the docks and return to the city, leaving his warriors behind to watch us. Gredder turns as well, gives Hook and I a nod up the gangplank, and we return to the deck of The Dove.

“So, how did it go?” I ask him, when we’re safely out of earshot.

Gredder gives me a wry smile, and a shrug. “We’ll see. He doesn’t feel comfortable being the one who lets us into their town, I can tell that much. Right now he’s taking our story to the Jarl. She’ll pass judgment on the situation.”

“She?”

He nods. “Unless Ragna is a boy name in Norgard. That’s what he called her.”

And so we wait for word from Jarl Ragna. And wait. And wait. We wait for so long that even the warriors guarding us begin to lounge about the docks, and I would share in their boredom if I didn’t have an undercurrent of worry pulling at me. As I pace around aimlessly on the deck, Arcadia orients herself toward the main sail and closes her eyes, muttering arcane words in a low tone of voice. It sounds like the spell she uses to give us our unnatural speed, only she’s delivering it at a more leisurely pace than usual. Perhaps as a contingency, if the worst should happen.

I sit down cross-legged next to the door of our cabin and watch her. When she’s finally finished, she turns and comes over to where I’m sitting, crawling down to claim my lap as her sovereign territory, the way a cat would. I get a kiss on the cheek, which makes me smile and fold her up in my arms.

It doesn’t get any better than this.

We have a few more minutes of bliss, before I hear the unmistakable sound of iron-shod boots clanking in our direction. I crane around to see what’s happening, spot that fellow Gredder was speaking to returning to the docks through the gatehouse above them. This time he has a much more sizable escort, about twenty men at arms. Not the most encouraging sight.

Arcadia and I trade an anxious glance, before we get to our feet in time for Gredder to return to us. The hook-nosed fellow calls out something in Norgardian just as he does.

“We’re being told to follow him to the keep,” says Gredder.

“Do you think they bought it?” I ask him.

He smirks and shrugs, lifts his hands up at his sides in a non-committal kind of way. “Either that or we’re bound for a dungeon.”

I suppose this isn’t the worst thing that could happen. Even if we wind up in jail cells for the time being, Sigrun will arrive at some point and clear up the misunderstanding. If she does arrive, that is. If she doesn’t, we’ll be in a serious dilemma. One I don’t have a solution for.

Gredder assembles us all, including a mortified Posca, and we march down the gangplank as a group to meet our heavily armed escort. The Norgardian warriors form up around us loosely, their hook-nosed official walking in the lead, as we make our way out of the docks, through the gatehouse of the outer wall, and into the town of Kellheim.

Posca almost trips over a family of ducks crossing the muddy street. He curses under his breath, takes a moment to try and compose himself, but it doesn’t work. He’s white as a sheet, and his hands keep clenching and unclenching.

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” he says. “If we’re to be executed, my ghost will haunt your ghosts.”

Arcadia lifts up a wineskin on her hip and jostles it to make the liquid inside slosh. "No one's getting executed today," she says, grinning at him.

Posca responds with a bewildered look. And so do I. Evidently she finds it cute, because it makes her laugh and slip the wineskin into her belt again.

Nobody else seems to be in the mood for conversation, so my attention drifts to the scenery while we walk along. Every single building lining this street has a peaked roof. Some are tall structures of wood or stone, others so short they’re basically a roof with a door in front. The folk of Kellheim have to make way for us, since our procession takes up most of the street we’re walking upon, and much like the people down at the docks there’s a lot of staring and muttered conversation as we pass. I’m sure it’s mostly bad.

The street begins to slope gently, then sharply, and before long we’re passing through another gatehouse, entering the inner wall. Kellheim Keep looms before us, its front gates open above a short, broad staircase leading up to them. We are led inside, into its high-ceilinged main hall, the seat of the Jarl at the far end of the room beneath a red banner on the wall. The banner bears what I presume is Ragna’s family heraldry, a pair of yellow lions facing each other, each bearing a poleaxe in its forepaws.

But the seat is empty. In fact the hall itself is mostly empty, save a few guards standing at their posts. The beak-nosed fellow turns to face us again, asking Gredder something I don’t completely understand.

Except for my name. And Arcadia’s.

Gredder’s eyebrows shoot up, and he turns to face us with a hint of alarm in his eyes. “Ah, you two are being asked to follow him,” he says.

I feel a little jolt of surprise myself, but when I glance at Arcadia I find her smiling with relief. She steps up to the man, to show him she’s willing to come along, and since I was asked for as well, I do the same.

Even if they didn’t want me, I’d be following her anyway. This just means I don’t have to step over anyone’s body in the process.

We leave the others behind, letting this fellow lead us down a hallway to a long stone staircase that takes us higher up into the keep. And then we find where all the people are. They’re in a great round room with shields decorating the walls, lit by big candelabrums made from antlers, and they’re gathered around a huge oaken table featuring a map of this section of the continent. Standing on the map are a collection of wooden figurines, meant to represent the locations and numbers of the forces of Ecea and Norgard. The blue figures are the Norgardian ones and the red are Ecean, I’m thinking.

Which is bad. Very bad. Even at a glance. Many of the blue figurines have been turned over on their sides, signifying defeat or destruction. The red ones are much, much farther north than I’d hoped they would be. A cluster of them stand right next to Kellheim.

Our hook-nosed friend announces us when we enter, getting the attention of all the fur-and-mail clad warriors in the room. There’s a young woman among them, a tall, skinny thing in a long dark cloak, with a slender face half-hidden by a curtain of flaxen hair. A moment ago she was hunched over the table, but when she hears our names she stands to her full height and walks up to face us. Either her face is usually this solemn, or we’ve intruded on them under less than ideal circumstances. Quite possibly both.

“Sigrun’s friends,” she says, in flawless Ecean. “Welcome to my keep. You’re just in time to help us win an unwinnable battle.”

Wonderful.