Leah is exhausted by the end of the two-hour lesson. The first portion was dedicated entirely to inventing an IPA they could both agree on – Zon had had no concept of a phonetic alphabet, though apparently the local writing system was a slightly more phonetic variant of the Volsti or English one. Once that had been established, they began with basic vocabulary, from which they could establish some rules, the most obvious ones being that Olues replaces ‘R’s at the ends of words with nasals, and ‘W’s anywhere in a word with ‘U’s – the latter being subtle to the ear, mostly heard in the sense that it adds an extra half-syllable to the word.

Packing up his notes to leave – whether to return to duty or something else Leah doesn’t know and isn’t confident about asking – Zon seems quite satisfied by their work. Leah hides her mental frustration with a smile, and a repeated internal mantra about needing to learn as much as possible, as quickly as possible. Besides, Zon is one of the better study-buddies she’s had, if a little star-struck at times.

The next day runs about the same; Leah dresses, is served her breakfast, and Seffon arrives shortly afterwards.

“I conferred, and there are two possible spells that will give us the answers we need. One is quick, and the other will take a day or so to mature.”

Leah agrees to both, so long as they don’t run too many risks, and Seffon assures her that non-offensive spells have many fewer side effects than offensive spells. They return up to the tower to begin them both. The latter, he explains, does not require her participation, only a sample.

“Sample?”

“Of blood. Tiny, nothing to worry about.”

Leah tenses a bit at the first mention, but forces herself to relax. She holds out a hand, bracing herself for the discomfort.

Taking her wrist gently, Seffon pricks her skin with a needle – on the back of her arm, where Leah barely feels it. He notices her confused expression, and grins. “Fingers bleed a little bit more, but hurt a lot more,” he explains.

Leah is silently grateful for the consideration, and holds the scrap of fabric he gives her to the cut once he is done. He takes the blood and mixes it with something that has been set to brew over a tiny flame. This he leaves simmering while they proceed with the active engagement one.

He instructs Leah to sit on the stone table again, and he takes out a familiar-smelling liquid.

“I’d never thought much of Bitter Dream before, but your mentioning it made me think. It’s used to bring back forgotten or repressed memories, but it stems from the basic concept that the mind cannot maintain blank spaces. Blank spaces are obvious signs of something having once been there, unless – ” Here he pauses and grins, holding up the bottle of pungent liquid, “ – the mind itself was blank.”

“Meaning?”

“We can adapt the spell, to determine if your mind was ever blank, if the switch was instantaneous, or if there was ever overlap.”

Leah understands the implications instantly, and eagerly agrees.

The disgusting drink is poured into a rodent skull, and she breathes in the fumes. Rather than placing stones in front of her however, he has her hold the skull in her own hands, and sprinkles some sort of crystalline dust over them. The dizziness still happens, and the flash of blue, but Seffon does not burn the skull, instead setting it within the wax of a just-extinguished candle, the smoke from the wick rising, then stilling, then sinking to enter the skull. The rat ghost does not appear, but instead another swirl of colour rises, blue with flecks of brown.

“Isn’t that…” Leah begins.

“Oh, very interesting,” Seffon says, seemingly unintentionally. The smoke hangs in the air around the skull, a tiny haze, then shimmers, then sinks into the wax.

The white candle changes colour. “Oh hell yes,” Leah says, watching the rapid change, and immediately seeing the same thing Seffon does.

“Nau tha’s sometheng,” he murmurs, checking the candle from every angle. The candle shows a portion of blue and brown, descending to the bottom, with a faded band near the base.

“What does it mean?” Leah asks.

“No way to be certain. The spell isn’t supposed to be used like this,” Seffon says. “Usually, the candle will show the past month of a person’s memories, the colour changing along with their soul’s changes. I’ve even heard of it being used to legally prove that a person’s soul was tested, and how they emerged from that test, as a way of proving guilt or innocence of a moral crime.”

“And this candle shows us…what?” Leah gets up to look at it.

“This is a detailed look at one month of your life, and down here, near the bottom – ” He gestures to the band, “ – is when you awoke here. It’s not supposed to fade like that, but from context, I’d say that means you didn’t just drop into this body ready to go. More likely you arrived slowly – and since there is no red, I’d say it’s unlikely both minds ever shared the body at once. Over the course of…” Seffon measures the faded part of the candle by hand, humming. “Maybe half a day?”

“Or half a night,” Leah says.

“I suppose. Does it matter?”

“I fell asleep in my home world, and woke up here. I left that world during the night, most likely.”

Seffon considers. “Could magic in your world have done it? Brought your mind here?”

Leah shakes her head and resumes her seat on the stone table. “There is no magic in my world.”

He gives her an odd look. “Then how do you know of it?”

That stops her short for a long second, as she considers the possibilities. “I mean, there are stories, but they’ve never been proven true. We have science and religion, and from what I’ve seen in this world, magic is something different from those two.”

“How can you have stories if magic has never existed? Maybe it just existed at one point and doesn’t anymore. You mentioned genocides; what if – ”

“No. There would be mention of it, if that had happened. The stories exist in all human cultures because I guess humans just want to believe they can influence the world in ways beyond the physical. It helps them feel like they have control, even if it’s all imagined. The ‘magic’ of my world is mostly either smoke-and-mirrors – that is, tricks meant to deceive or entertain – or it’s a code word for mind-altering drugs.”

“What about non-human cultures?” Seffon asks, and Leah shoots him a sarcastic look that quickly turns to shock, then awe, then confusion, then shock again. He follows this face journey, then realises what it means. “What, your world is only humans? How could you have been here for three weeks and not have – ohh, of course. You were in Valerin.”

Leah closes her hanging jaw. “Please explain. Wait! Wait, no. Does this have to do with what you mentioned before, about not being born with the ability to perform magic?”

“A little bit yes and no,” Seffon says, taking a seat on the other end of the table. “Various races have risen and fallen over the millennia, and currently the world is in a state where two races coexist. One, obviously, is humans, and the other is the Gllythe. Most of them are found in the salt marshes of Bair, but there are a scarce few elsewhere – and yes, they have a much higher than usual rate of ‘born-magic’ users. Inevitably, in the coming centuries, one will die out or be absorbed into the other, but for now they exist as separate groups with occasional overlap.”

“Ah, like humans and Neanderthals, I get it,” Leah says.

Seffon gives her a curious look. “Oh? Please, elaborate.”

“Oh geez, complicated science time. Well, my world has seen multiple species of hominids, but over the course of hundreds of millennia, not in a single millennium. The last non-human hominids, the Neanderthals, died out tens of thousands of years ago, and a new species is unlikely to ever arise, because of genetic intermixing; people travel and intermarry too much, so isolated populations that can evolve along different lines are rare or impossible. Technically, people like me, of European descent, we are descended from an intermixing between humans and Neanderthals, and we still have noticeable Neanderthal traits – nose size, skull shape, that sort of thing.”

Seffon seems to find this fascinating and – for some reason – endearing, if the scale a little daunting. All through Leah’s explanation he listens with interest, struggling only slightly with some of the vocabulary, and even at the end seems mostly up-to-speed.

Leah realises at that moment that they have been sitting together on this stone table, talking animatedly and in a friendly way, for some time. Looking inwards she finds that she trusts Seffon, even considering all the question marks from her time unconscious. At the very least, he does not seem as hesitant as everyone in Valerin was about giving me background information on this world.

Taking the leap, she asks him about other details of his world. “There’s so much fear in Valerin, of Devad and the Enterlan, and I don’t understand where Cheden fits into it,” Leah says, watching his face for signs of closing up. “Does magic play into it? Or the races?”

Seffon leans back and considers. “We are considered ‘contested,’ here. The two local powers have been fighting over our territory for six centuries, with the last official change in administration happening about a hundred years ago – though it is debatable whether that instance counts as a change in administration. It’s complicated, but it does have a little bit to do with magic. Mostly, however, it has to do with economics. If Volst were to regain control of us, now that they also have Welleslass, they would overpower all the neighbouring nations, in terms of populace and economic sanctions. They might even pose a threat to Bair, even considering they don’t use magic.”

“Is magic an all-or-nothing thing, for the other countries?” Leah asks.

“No, it’s…complicated. Devad has only a little magic, here and there; they prefer a physical approach to science and warfare. Cheden strongly limits who is allowed to study magic, and all of their experts are in the military. Volst – nominally – has banned all practice of magic, but individual provinces enforce that law according to their standards; Welleslass used to be part of Bair, so visiting magic users are tolerated, and Valerin turns a blind eye to magic users so long as they never dabble in anything too powerful. Bair is a free-for-all. The northern nations – that’s Algi and Nent – I don’t know as much about them. I know Nent’s religious institutions perform regular miracles that sound an awful lot like some spells I know, but I don’t think lay folk are allowed to study magic. Algi produces some excellent bards – that is, those who abandoned the physical side of magic and instead use words to perform their spells. It limits their repertoire, but their showmanship is unparalleled.”

Leah has been soaking all this up with wide eyes and high energy. At the end of it she blurts out, “Could you teach me some magic?” Blushing, she adds, “If it’s possible. I mean, if you need to be born with the ability, or study for a decade to even start practicing, then never mind, but – ”

Seffon seems shocked to be asked, but breaks out into a grin. “I don’t know what we’d have time for, between these tests and your language lessons, but if you decide to remain our guest then I could see that happening in the future.”

Leah pauses. “Your guest?”

For a moment Seffon hesitates, and Leah fears he’s regretting the word choice, but then he shrugs. “If you were here to assassinate me, or infiltrate us before some great assault, then we’d have seen some indication of it before now. I think you are exactly what you said you were when you first turned yourself in – and I think from the moment I heard that you’d infiltrated our every defence, just to turn yourself in to some poor cadet, I knew you weren’t here under false pretences.”

“Oh god, he was just a cadet?” Leah asks, and they both have a friendly laugh at the situation the kid must have found himself in.

After they settle down, while Seffon is still in an amicable mood, Leah presses her luck further. “Seeing as I’m a guest, now…could I maybe be given some freedoms?”

Seffon hesitates. “I must remind you, the old Leah and her team killed many people from this Hold, and many of the locals will be distrustful of you, or even harbour grudges. It would not be wise for you to go wandering alone.”

Leah accepts this harsh reminder, but still tries to bargain. “Can I at least be allowed to visit Beeswax, and the study?” she asks.

That surprises Seffon. “The study?”

“I came across a study during my initial entry. I want to learn more about this world, but I don’t want to always be bothering people – well, you – with questions.”

Seffon still seems a little unsure, but finally he grins and shakes his head. “I still occasionally see you as the other Leah, the simple and illiterate one.”

Leah frowns. “I’ve wondered about that a lot. From what I’ve read of Leah’s diary, she may have been a woman of few words, but she was quite sharp in her own way.”

He listens with interest. “Did you keep this diary? Is it among your things, I mean?”

“No, I left it in my room in Valerin. I suppose it was likely found and confiscated after my arrest.”

Seffon considers further. “If you think it’s important, I could ask our network of agents if they could look for it.”

“Oh, don’t,” Leah rushes to say. “Don’t risk anyone for it, I just mentioned it because…well, I think people are a little unfair towards her sometimes.”

He accepts this with a gracious nod, then guides her to the study. It is not the same study she passed on her initial trip through the hold, she thinks, but it is similar. Seffon points out shelves of interest – law, history, politics, geography, and culture – and assures her that there ought to be a few volumes written in Volsti among each.

Leah settles into a chair near the history section and pulls out two Volsti books about the region – The Hyburn Gulf, she learns, which encompasses the countries along the coast and river, as well as Cheden in the middle of the Gulf. A square map drawn onto a table nearby gives her a better idea, showing much more than the one in Wellen’s book. North of the Nentish mountains is a narrow strip of barren tundra and ice fields leading into an ocean, while south-west of Devad the forests become impenetrable. To the south-east, and up the Bairish river, the sparse forests give way to grasslands and scrub, almost desert-like at some points, then eventually go back to old-growth forest much further inland. Both maps have north marked a few degrees off the standard – not unlike maps of Montreal, Leah muses, struck with an odd sense of nostalgia.

Zon joins her there for their next language lesson, and this time they equip themselves with a woefully empty translation guide. They help fill in some blank spots, though Leah worries there may be linguistic differences between English and Volsti; certainly any unchanged French loan words seem to not exist, which raises some mind-bending questions about how a messy creole language like English could have evolved in the first place without French influence.

She notices that all instances of ‘dj’ in English – judge, gentle, join, agent – are replaced by ‘Z’s in Olues, and she suddenly realises that Zon’s name is likely actually John. Zon seems delighted to learn his name in Volsti, and insists that she use it for him.

Once they are both exhausted by the linguistic work – and once Leah’s eyes are aching from reading the tiny writing – she asks that he accompany her to the stables, as her guard. He agrees readily, and Leah follows him through the halls and out into the warm spring air. She introduces him to Beeswax, who is docile in Leah’s presence and allows John to pet her.

“I’ve visited her before this,” he admits sheepishly, a hand on the mare’s cream-coloured flank, “Just teu see the famous horse.”

“Famous?” Leah asks, distracted from feeding and accidentally getting nipped by Beeswax, who greedily chases the carrot she drops from her hand in surprise. John politely does not notice.

“Yes; thẽ’s a story, of an early adventure of the five, en Welleslass.” He goes on to describe how apparently while tracking someone, the group got sidetracked saving a flooding village, and Beeswax swam through the river to save a child being swept away. Leah supposedly used her spear like a jousting lance to skewer the back of the toddler’s shirt and then hold him up in the water while the horse swam back to shore, and even though the water was rushing and the child moving past quickly, she did it with such careful aim that she didn’t even nick the child’s skin.

Leah does not know enough about horses to know if going into a river is unusually brave for one, but she enjoys the story nonetheless. She gives Beeswax a few extra pats then leaves to return to her room. John’s company has started to feel so comfortable and friendly that it’s even possible for her to sometimes forget that he is accompanying her as a guard.

Supper is once again brought to her room – a light salad, sliced radishes and mushrooms and parsley, with a vinegar drizzle. She lights a candle to continue reading the book she brought with her, about Devadiss law. There is no index, but there are chapter headings at the beginning, and she skims through sections on religious control, warfare, and finally a small section on civil law.

Devad is indeed one of very few monotheistic cultures of the region, the other monotheistic traditions all being small splinter-sects scattered randomly across the Gulf. Devad does not punish those who worship multiple gods, but they do forbid the construction of any public effigies or altars to these gods.

Devadiss warfare is, as Seffon had mentioned very briefly, scientific. They have many rules about restricting the use of chemical substances in war, and also who is allowed to avoid the draft or not.

Devadiss civil law focuses mainly on rights of divorce, repercussions of abuse, and remarriage; protecting a person’s right to seek divorce, and their right to not be pursued by their ex. Interestingly, divorced individuals in Devad are forbidden from remarrying, and divorce seems to be primarily a means of escape from marriage. On closer read, marriage in Devad seems to be a much closer-binding thing than Leah is used to; there are also laws about how, when one member of a pairing is conscripted, appointed to a post, or commits a crime, the other half takes on all the same duties and punishments, including debts, foreign postings, prison sentences, and military service, unless they invoke something called a blood-pardon which seems to basically mean accepting the death sentence to clear your partner’s name.

All references to couples are gendered, but there is no explicit mention of criminalised homosexuality. At the very end, Leah notices a footnote:

“In the case of a divorced person declaring inversion, remarriage is still prohibited, though legal joining may be substituted to fulfill religious obligations.”

“Awn cute, they have common law pairings,” Leah whispers, grinning. “Inversion…that seems like the sort of old-timey name they’d use for it. Better than deviant, at least.”

She puts the book aside and dwells on things. I suppose that marriage law means that if someone goes to war and dies, their spouse is automatically conscripted to fill their place. Or, if they were being efficient about it, the only soldiers they’d accept would be already married, and both would apply or be conscripted together – a two-for-one deal. God, there must be so many military orphans in Devad. Or maybe the rules about not being eligible for the draft are supposed to prevent that.

Then there’s the monotheism thing. I still haven’t quite figured that out; did their religion develop independently of the rest of the nations? How old are the various religions? What are the various deities? She scoffs at herself. This is just because of Wellen’s “god” comment. I’ve got to learn to say “gods,” try to fit in a little better. Although, if Seffon is from Devad technically, maybe I’m better off sticking to singular-deity swearing.

I’ll keep my ears open, see how people here swear, or even just talk normally. If nothing else, it’ll help me notice ways to blend in and convince them I’m trustworthy.