Leah leaves with Sewheil to go back to Jeno’s room. Within, Jeno is sitting up in bed, nervously picking at the hem of her sleeve. She looks up at their entry, eyes puffy from tiredness and possibly crying. “It was a spell?”
Leah sits down with her and talks it through, Sewheil offering a healing hand and the occasional Olues comment for Leah to patchily translate. Jeno seems shaken but is clearly forcing herself to listen and understand. The battery bandolier is still lying at the foot of the bed, though unattached now; Leah takes it back to store it somewhere someone won’t unknowingly turn it on and undo all the wards – again.
“Is it gone?” Jeno asks.
Leah stills, thumb running anxiously over the leather. “Without going into too much detail, no. We’ll try to get rid of it. For now, it doesn’t really impact you – the memories are trapped, but only if someone other than you tries to access them. He can’t see or hear you, it’s not a scry.”
Jeno’s thoughts do not seem to pass anywhere near where Leah’s thoughts had. Leah does not bring any of it up, since it would only unsettle her more.
The situation as settled as it can be for the moment, Sewheil goes to start her day, early though it is. “Yu au teu accompany my ba teu th ʁospetal, fõ yõ frien,” she says gently to Leah. “Sy uell auaen seun.”
Leah is torn, and Jeno clearly wants her to stay. “Jeno, yesterday afternoon, one of my teammates rode into the Hold from Valerin. She has things to tell us, and I need to be there to help her feel safe here.”
Jeno looks up at that. “Kain?”
“No, Vivitha.”
Jeno thinks, then nods. “I don’t know her well, but I remember seeing her training some of the keep’s guards before the…whole thing.”
“I’ll come back for you soon, but I need to check up on her. We’ll do breakfast, how about that?”
Jeno nods with a tiny smile, and Leah leaves to follow a patient-yet-reserved Sewheil to the hospital, swinging by the lab to drop off the battery.
During the walk, Leah suddenly realises Sewheil must know all the details, but hasn’t made any comments yet. Leah hazards to ask if Sewheil knows the full extent of her and Jeno’s relationship, and if it bothers her.
“E esnau a crim en Baĩ.” Sewheil offers no more than that. Leah has a hard time properly deciphering Gllythe facial expressions, but believes that Sewheil’s face shows a mix of understanding and stress, bafflingly.
In the hospital, Vivitha is still asleep, sleeping on her back but with her arms curled awkwardly around her. The guard on-duty nods to them as they enter, and Leah resumes her sleepy watch over the weak-looking archer. Leah reflects on what she knows of Vivitha. We didn’t speak much, before the arrest, but she was always supportive, and ready to take my side against any accusation. I wonder what her reaction was to the news of the betrayal…or the escape. Did Iris kept the secret totally, or did she eventually tell the rest of the group?
Leah finds herself burning with questions to ask. How did the five take it? How did things change after my arrest, then after my escape? Did any of them begin to do their own research into Seffon? Did any of them know about the Valerid duel and just didn’t tell me? Did any of the others know Eschen well?
Near sunrise Vivitha begins breathing oddly – not struggling, but the change is noticeable. Leah leans in and tries to comfort her, figuring it is a nightmare. Remembering her own recent dream experience, she suddenly gets a horrible feeling that Vivitha might be similarly tagged, irrational though she knows that to be. She shakes Vivitha awake. “Vivi?”
The archer grumbles for a moment, then slaps Leah’s hand away and sits bolt-upright, grabbing at the blanket covering her. Her eyes dart around in confusion, but she settles quickly. Sewheil watches from the other side of the hospital but does not interfere.
“How do you feel?”
Vivitha turns to Leah, looking her over a few times. “I’m alright. How’s Rip?”
Leah blanks for a second. “The horse? He…looked exhausted, when they took him to the stables. Last I heard he’d collapsed in a stall. More importantly, what happened? How did you two get like this?”
Vivitha throws off the blanket and swings her legs over the side of the cot. She tests her hands and fingers for mobility, then rolls her neck and shoulders. She groans heavily but softly.
“Cheden ships are blockading the port, and no supplies are being allowed in. Their troops are all over the main island, and they’re pillaging the mainland. With what was in the keep already, we were confident in being able to withstand a siege, but the Cheden forces haven’t let up for an hour since this began, and we’re exhausted. No-one in the keep has rested since the fighting started, and the five have been constantly on duty protecting the walls.” Vivitha pauses and makes an odd face. “Hm. ‘The five’ no longer feels exactly accurate.”
“Never mind that, continue with the story. How are things going over there?”
Vivitha sighs and resumes her slow stretching. “Meredith has been given a larger role in the keep, organising shifts, suggesting theories and tactics. Apparently there was a rather impressive shouting match between her and one of the ranking members of the keep’s guards; it ended with Meredith being removed from watch duty, only to then take up a self-appointed watch at the weak-point of the walls she had been warning them about, and successfully beating an attempted infiltration there. Most of the guards don’t like that she was right, but Lady Valerid wanted to appoint her to lead the watch for that. Meredith’s been in a strange mood ever since, something between pride and bitterness.
“The Cheden attacks are constant, presumably due to some magical advantage. The captain has been spotted at a distance, a few times, and his ship is still at the mainland port. The invaders started kicking people out of their homes on the island to set up barracks, and while the populace are fighting back as best they can, we are losing. Some citizens are safely within the keep, but even the keep is dangerous, with the attacks Cheden has been doing.”
Leah sits up at this. “What attacks? Like the fire one from the duel?”
“Not like that, thank the Gods,” Vivitha says with a shiver. “The bridges and banks are lined with archers, and they send battering rams and skirmishers in the night trying to get past the walls.
“Kain caught the first wave,” Vivitha’s voice suddenly goes hollow. “They were climbing the west wall, and she was able to sound an alarm and push the first four off the wall, some onto the ground and some into the river. The fourth grabbed her and pulled her with him as he fell.”
Leah goes still. “Did she hit the rocks or the river?”
“She went in the water, and she could swim better than the other man, but she was captured by the Cheden side before she could find a way back in.”
Leah nods, her blood cold. “So it’s only Meredith and Iris left there now? What made you leave? How did you leave?”
The sunlight breaks through the trees, just barely showing over the lip of the wall. Vivitha rolls her shoulders again and shakes her head. “I went out with a negotiator, as protection. The war began when Volst declared it, and Valerin doesn’t technically get a say in the matter as a mere province, but the details aren’t yet settled; the stakes, the accusations, the terms, that sort of thing. I don’t know the specifics.”
“How did Cheden respond?”
“Apparently Cheden is claiming that Jeno was innocent, and that Valerin tried to execute her against their wishes. They say your whole thing was a staged kidnapping, and that since Seffon is in Jun province he must have been working with the Valerids.” Leah scoffs and Vivitha mimics it in solidarity. “When the negotiator denied this, they became aggressive and attacked him. I was hanging behind a bit to shoot anyone who tried to harm him, but they outnumbered me by too much. At least it meant I had a head-start on the retreat.”
Leah can hear from her tone that it hurts Vivitha to admit she ran away.
“They chased me for the first two hours, but Rip’s fast when he’s on familiar roads, and I’ve had him since before I left Valerin to join you guys…”
Leah gives her a moment. “Did they follow you all the way here, do you think?”
“We lost them in the forest. I know what game trails look like in these woods, and they don’t.”
“Did you go the whole way off-road?”
“Gods no, we’d never have made it if we had. But we had to duck off often, just in case.”
“When did all this start? Your escape, I mean.”
Vivitha shrugs. “Evening, day after the square.”
Leah does the math. “You were riding for almost a whole day! Did you rest at all, during the trip?”
Vivitha shakes her head. “Couldn’t risk it.” She pauses. “Can I see Rip?”
Leah hesitates. “I’ll have someone go check up on the stables, see if they can make time for your visit.” Privately she thinks that she must find out if the horse is even still alive, before sending Vivitha to check up on him.
Vivitha nods, accepting this. Leah advises that she should rest some more, and promises to get right on checking up on Rip.
“Ask anyone to send for me, when you’re feeling more rested and can talk more about what happened.”
Vivitha tries to argue that she is rested, but even as she says it she is lying back on the cot and pulling the blanket up. Leah makes eye-contact with Sewheil, who nods; Leah smiles back and leaves Vivitha in her care, going to seek Seffon and report on what she’s learned.
*
Leah asks around the guards and eventually catches up with Seffon doing the final ward-renewals – the whole keep had to be redone, it turns out, and Leah winces a bit at the useless waste. Teo finishes assisting and Seffon directs her in Olues to a certain part of the keep for further work. She leaves with a quick smile at Leah.
Seffon symbolically brushes his hands clean and turns to Leah. “Well then. What have we learned from our visitor?”
Leah recounts the situation in the keep; constant attack on the walls, port blocked, Kain kidnapped, negotiator killed, Cheden’s stance that Valerin is cooperating with Seffon and that they were opposed to the execution.
Seffon gets increasingly upset by the news, brushing his hair into place but still looking freshly awoken a bit.
“Are the rest of the five still considered personal guards, or has their contract changed to a more explicitly military one?” he asks.
Leah hesitates. “I got the impression that Volst declared war, not Valerin.” Seffon makes an ‘of course’ gesture. “So Valerin isn’t sure where they stand, or what to do, before they get the specifics – the legal stuff, I guess. I doubt the contracts have changed…although Meredith seems to have more authority than before.”
Seffon nods along. “Many nations will be watching the combat, over the next day or so. Old debts will be called in, alliances invoked. Right now it’s only Cheden and Volst, nominally, but if Cheden’s whole plan was in fact to incite war with Volst on Devad’s behalf, then Devad will be declaring itself soon.” He begins walking, and Leah joins him. “Are you sure Jeno knows nothing about that part of it?”
“She might know something small, something overheard, but that would be it. I don’t want to pressure her about it, but I’m paying attention.” She chews her lip. “When can we do the…spell break?”
“Right now,” Seffon says. They walk on and arrive at the door of the magic tower, with a guard on the outside. “You’ll want to be there for the counterspell?”
“Of course.”
“Very well,” he says, packing a bag of spell components. “It will take only a few minutes, and you may return to Vivitha afterwards. I’d like to talk to her myself, actually, if you think she’d listen.”
“I’ll prepare her for it. Oh! She wanted to check up on her horse, and I wondered – ”
“It’s a bit early to have her wandering the Hold.”
“No, I was wondering how the horse was doing after the run. Apparently they were riding for almost twenty-four hours uninterrupted.”
Seffon’s face is grim. “I haven’t heard.”
Leah accepts this answer, and follows him back out. Leah flags down a passing servant on the way, and through Seffon asks for two breakfasts to be brought to Jeno’s room.
The breakfasts arrive shortly after they do; omelettes with thin slices of potato and sweet potato cooked in, and a spicy sauce. They wait to eat, Jeno sitting still while Seffon sets up the spell.
He draws a few runes in chalk on her forehead and hands, and places a small raw crystal in each palm, vivid dark red. Seffon hesitates before continuing. “I’m going to need a small bit of blood,” he says gently.
Jeno tenses, then holds out a hand, not looking at it. Seffon takes it very lightly and turns it over, to prick the back of her arm. Jeno winces only the tiniest bit.
Seffon lights a candle and mutters over it, the blood-coated needle in one hand; he puts the blood to the flame, and it sizzles and boils away. The runes on Jeno’s forehead and hands glow a faint red, then lift off her skin and float into the candle flame, sparking and burning and disappearing. Seffon extinguishes the candle with a pinch, and Jeno lets out a held breath, watching warily from the corner of her eye.
Seffon holds out his hand expectantly, and Jeno looks at it. “The rubies?” he says eventually, and Jeno starts, opening her palms and letting the stones drop out, back into his hand.
He stands with a curt bow. “It is done. He will know that the spell has ended, but I imagine he didn’t expect to catch us more than once with this particular trap, so that’s alright.”
Leah nods at him with a smile, but Jeno is still too tense to move. “Thank you,” Jeno finally mumbles out, holding her arm where he made the cut.
Leah thinks that Seffon looks a little hurt at how timid Jeno still is, but he does not press; with another curt bow, he turns and leaves them.
