I don’t understand the words to this song, but the singer has a lovely voice. The rest of her is lovely too. She’s a tall, buxom Norgardian girl with sky-blue eyes and hay colored hair and skin like new milk.

She’s no Arcadia. But still, not bad.

Our singer sits off to the side of my table in the hall of Jarl Ragna, alongside a young lutanist who looks like he could be her twin brother. Arcadia and I sit shoulder to shoulder with her warriors, our long table facing an equally long fire pit in the middle of the hall. Tonight it’s packed to capacity, and the tables bear a feast for the victorious. I have a full tankard of ale, and a plate piled high with roast boar, fresh baked bread, buttery seasoned potatoes and some other kind of root vegetable I can’t identify but is quite tasty. This is my second plate, and my hosts aren’t stingy. I’ll probably have a third before I get into any serious drinking.

Arcadia, on the other hand, appears to have lost her appetite. She’s thrown on a big cloak of furs and snuggled herself up inside it so that only her eyes and nose are peeking out. The fighting left me famished, as it has a tendency to do, but while I’ve been scarfing down every bite of food in front of me, she’s barely touched her plate.

I bump her with my elbow, give her a worried look, and she answers with a weak attempt at a smile.

“Aren’t you hungry?” I ask, my voice muffled by a cheek full of food.

Those beautiful green of hers eyes shift to me, but then glance down at the food quickly. She just shakes her head. Her hands are both cupping a mug of ale, but all she does is push it back and forth with her fingers to make the liquid swirl inside.

It’d be cuter, if it didn’t make me worry. I lean over and nuzzle her temple, put a kiss there.

“Eat something,” I half whisper, loud enough to be heard over the din of conversation. “For me. To keep up your strength.”

My touch relaxes her for a moment, but only just. She nuzzles against me in return, but then her brows scrunch inward and I hear a soft little whine in her throat. When her eyes open, she pulls away from me and begins to rise from her seat.

“I’m not feeling well,” she says. “I think I’ll retire for now.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No. You need to eat. Your body--”

I catch her wrist. “It’ll be fine.”

She stops, and gazes down into the fire. I can’t guess what she’s thinking about, but it must not be pleasant. After a moment like that she manages a strained smile in my direction.

“Come to bed when you’re done,” she says.

My heart sinks, but I nod, and give her wrist a squeeze before letting her go. I turn and watch her until she rounds the corner to the staircase, then I look back at my meal and find my own appetite waning. It doesn’t make sense. She knew what we had to do. She doesn’t have any love for her countrymen, her family most of all, so why would she be so upset over a such a resounding victory?

The question makes me sit there and stare at my plate, frowning. Perhaps some ale will help. I take up my tankard and turn myself all the way around, resting my back against the edge of the table so I can watch the party. Right in front of me there’s that singer girl and her lutanist, a few people dancing in the open space before them. Just to the side of that, a small group of Ragna’s warriors gather around a cask of ale, talking amongst each other. I don’t speak the language, so I can’t say for sure what they’re discussing, but the way one of them gestures as if swinging a weapon tells me they’re probably regaling each other with stories of the battle.

One of them notices me looking at them, then the rest do too. A burly, black-bearded fellow says something to his neighbor without taking his eyes off me, prompting a laugh from them all. They say something to him, and point at me, as if daring him to do something.

Oh boy.

This man must know I don’t speak Norgardian, because he doesn’t even try to say hello. He just saunters over with an oafish grin on his face, stops not even a pace in front of me. As I smirk up at him he says something, points at me, points back at himself, and then pumps his hips forward and back a few times in a lewdly suggestive kind of way. Behind him, his companions snicker like a bunch of schoolboys.

I have a sip of ale as I pretend to consider his invitation. In the middle of said sip, I reach out with my free hand and grab his groin hard, making him yodel in pain. Slowly, I tip back the tankard some more, taking my time, enjoying the flavor of my drink. I don’t quite have a death grip on his manhood, but close.

He drops to his knees when I release him, and after I’m finished having my drink I turn my smirk on his friends, hold up my finger and thumb pinched together as if to indicate that something is really small, and I shake my head from side to side. They burst into raucous laughter so loud it startles the musicians.

It’s enough to get a chuckle out of me as well as I get up from the table, tankard in hand, and make the rounds. I find Posca teaching Hook how to play a dice game, along with a group of Norgardians who seem pleased to make the acquaintance of the Keteltu. Posca not so much, but I don’t blame them. I’m in time to find Irvin, who sat all the way at the far end of the table, getting up from a hastily eaten meal to excuse himself. Probably to check on Cadie. Gredder is having an animated discussion with a group of Norgardians, speaking in their own language. The way they hang on his words makes me think he’s telling them a story of some kind.

They all say hello, and talk to me for as long as I linger with them, but I can’t sit still long enough to socialize. I’m restless. Arcadia is on my mind, as always. I’m wondering if I should leave her alone or go up there and talk to her.

The craving to be near her begins to win out over everything, but as I’m headed toward the stairs Jarl Ragna sees me, waves me over to the high table. I approach, and greet her with a bow.

“My thanks, Jarl. You honor us with this feast.”

She watches me bow, answers with a polite nod of her head. “The honor is well earned. But Arcadia retires early, I see. Is she alright?”

“I think so,” I say. “I was about to go check on her. What happened might be… Weighing on her conscience, perhaps.”

Ragna purses her lips to keep herself from frowning, but it reaches her eyes anyway. She nods again. “I feared she might feel that way. Do your best to lift her spirits, Rekka. We will need each other if we are to survive what’s to come.”

“I’ll do what I can,” I say, and bow again as she excuses me.

I find myself hustling up the staircase after only a few steps, the sounds of revelry fading to echoes behind me. It’s darker and quieter up ahead, the hallway at the end of the stairs lit by torches spaced far apart from each other. Our room is the last one on the left, and I find the door open, Arcadia curled up on the bed with her fur cloak still on. Next to her sits a scrying bowl she prepared, to try and reach Sigrun.

Her eyes shift my way when I enter, and I shut the door behind me and come over to see if she was successful. But when I sit down on the edge of the bed and peer into the bowl, I don’t see Sigrun. I do, however, see what looks like a clearing in the forest, a ring of trees under the red glow of Ala, her blue sister absent from the sky tonight.

I reach out and lay a hand on Arcadia’s shoulder. “Did you see her?”

She shakes her head no, and I frown and nod. I take the bowl and set it on the night stand by the bed, before getting undressed and lying down to cuddle in with her. Arcadia burrows herself into my embrace, and hides her face in my chest, as I thread my fingers into her hair to scritch it in a way I hope is soothing.

“I’d like it if you talked to me,” I say.

There’s a pause, before I feel her exhale hard against my skin. She turns her face a little, so she can answer.

“What is there to say?”

“Plenty. You could tell me how you feel. What you’re worried about. Anything, whatever’s on your mind.”

Another stretch of silence follows. I can’t tell if she’s trying to work out how she feels, or she simply doesn’t want to talk about it at all. She’s limp with weariness in my arms.

“That isn’t what I wanted to do with magic,” she finally says.

I sigh, and squeeze her tight against me. Now it’s my turn to consider how to say what I need to say. When I figure it out, I slip my finger down under her chin, lifting it so she’ll meet my gaze.

I put a kiss on her. “You did what you had to do,” I say. “This was going to happen, with or without us. What you did saved innocent lives.”

Her eyes meet mine, a forlorn gaze that twists my heart. “I killed people.”

“People who were coming to kill us. And you know what happens when towns are sacked, you told Irvin yourself.”

Her eyelids droop a little, as she frowns and stares up at the ceiling blankly. I suppose saying it is one thing, and doing it is another. War is what I was made for, so it’s just another day to me. But to someone like her…

“I know it seems cruel, but it’s a cruel world,” I say. “It’s the way it’s always been.”

My words make her frown, in a thoughtful kind of way, and for a moment I see something like resolve glimmering in her eyes. Perhaps she means to change the world. It wouldn’t be a surprise. I hope she does. I hope she does, and I survive to see it.

I watch her work her way through whatever she’s thinking about, then her gaze meets mine for a moment before she smiles wearily and closes her eyes.

“I love you,” she whispers.

“I love you too.”

I kiss her again, and she returns it this time. I imagine she has other things on her mind to contend with, and I’m willing to help her. But we’re both more tired than we realized. Arcadia falls asleep in my embrace moments later, and I follow.

I wake to the sound of someone rapping hard on our door. Bright sunlight greets my eyes the instant they open, telling me we’ve slept a good while. I carefully extricate myself from Arcadia’s embrace without waking her, to get up and walk to the door.

I’m rubbing the sleep out of my eyes with a knuckle as I open the door, and find Gredder on the other side. His eyes go wide when he sees me in nothing but my strophium and subligar, and he even blushes a little.

“Ah, you two are wanted in the war room,” he says.

I nod, yawning, and shut the door in his face.

Before I go and wake Arcadia, I wander over to our window to have a look outside. And what I see wakes me up much more effectively than a knock on the door.

Kellheim is surrounded by an uncountable horde of Eceans. Many times what we saw yesterday morning, at least a full Legion if not more. They have catapults with them, and great siege ladders on wooden wheels. I stick my head out the window, look left toward the harbor, and my stomach turns to lead. That armada of Ecean warships we passed at sea a week ago has arrived, creating a complete naval blockade around the town.

A glance back at the army on land gives me the worst jolt of all. I see white uniforms among the ranks of the Eceans. That means First Legion. And Metellus.

I dress in haste, and wake Arcadia as gently as I can afterward. She rouses reluctantly at first, but when I get her to look out the window she comes right to her senses. With grave urgency, we hurry out into the hall, then up the stairs to the war room where Jarl Ragna waits for us.

It’s a scene very similar to the one we walked into the day we arrived here, Ragna and her warriors fretting around the war room table. Except this time they aren’t focusing on the map. There is an unrolled piece of parchment on the table that the Jarl is reading when we enter, and when she sees us she frowns and picks it up.

“You should read this,” she says to Arcadia, handing it to her.

She blinks and nods, taking the paper, and I’m standing right next to her so I peek over and read it as well.

 

Ragna Gunnarsdottir, Jarl of Kellheim

I hope this message finds you in good health and spirits, for I have an offer to extend which benefits us mutually.

This morning, upon arrival in your harbor, a certain Ecean corbita known as The Dove was sighted at port. This vessel happens to belong to a fugitive from Ecean justice and her accomplices.

And further, I understand that you repelled our advance force yesterday with the aid of sorcery. It happens that the fugitive I seek is a user of such unnatural arts, and so I am led to believe this person is aiding your effort to defend Kellheim from us.

The fugitive in question is known as Arcadia the Sorceress.

If you should happen to count her and her friends among your numbers, I offer the following: Surrender Arcadia the Sorceress and her party to our custody, and the town and keep of Kellheim will be spared.

You may find this offer strange, but be assured, the capture of this criminal is of utmost importance to the Empress herself.

I await your reply. And I trust you understand the consequences of disobedience.

Sincerely,

General Metellus Albinus, Commander of the First Legion of the Empire of Ecea

 

 

You guys.

You guys...!!!

Somebody made Amoraketh fanart!!!

Check out this image by my reader, and fellow writer, the super talented and highly way cool Niame. :) 

Rekka and Arcadia doin they thang. ;)

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Thank you Niame! And thank you to everyone for reading!