Master Edvellu pardons Divek from his duties for the rest of the night, and the cook of the Valerid keep, when the situation is explained to her, allows Kimry to leave as well.
“You ask much of me, dear Leah,” Lev says, watching from a hallway window as the two siblings sit in the courtyard and talk, occasionally falling into more tears and hugging.
“I ask nothing, Master Edvellu,” Leah says with a smile, standing beside him. “Though your heart may feel moved by what you see, all on its own.”
“Ah,” he laughs. “If you knew what it would cost me…”
“I would take on both their debts myself if it would let Kimry live out her life happy.” Leah regrets saying this for a moment, realising that she doesn’t know this man well enough to know whether he’d take her literally.
Instead, Lev looks at her with a soft expression. “Oh, my dear,” he sighs. “This moment is already tender enough without another tear to add. Don’t tell me she’s one of yours?”
Leah watches the siblings talk, their words lost through the glass. “She is dear to me.”
Lev breathes deeply. “If you knew what it would cost me…”
“Tell me.”
“Pardon?”
Leah looks away long enough to meet his eyes. “What does a living person cost, in this world? Kimry has six years left to her debt; how much does six years, taken from the peak of a person’s youth, cost?”
Lev’s face is no longer sentimental, but quite distant and professional. “Miss Talesh, you are not a woman of business; what would you do, with the figure I cite? Would you haggle for your friend’s happiness? Would you tell her what it cost? This is a moment of joy for your friend, and friendship and business do not mix.”
“You said it yourself, sir.” Leah turns back to look over the courtyard. “The first half of this meeting is not for personal affairs.” She breathes deeply and wrestles with her conscience. I have nothing of value, except maybe Beeswax, or my weapons if we ever find them again. Or Jeno’s dagger, I suppose…but he’s right; I don’t think I could physically withstand putting a dollar price on Kimry’s family. There’s only one thing in this world that’s really mine…and I think it’s too late to pretend that other people aren’t going to get it eventually. “So; you are a man of business. Here is what I offer.”
Lev clasps his hands behind his back and listens, not looking at her.
“What have you heard about the contraption that captain Eschen wore around his wrist, during the battle? It was present at the interrogation as well, though inactive.”
Lev’s head turns a fraction towards her. “Rumour among the citizenry would have us believe it dispels all magic, instantly.”
“Then rumour is accurate. We have not finished testing its capabilities, but it can block scrys on a person even if the caster and target are standing as we are now.”
“It apparently can also block firestorms called against a target.” Lev says it quite evenly, but Leah can hear the interest under his voice.
“It can.”
“This is a powerful artefact indeed, then.” Lev stands straight. “Is it yours to sell, though?”
“What good would a single item be? You are a businessman; I don’t offer the item, I offer the knowledge.”
Lev nods, once.
“One of the primary components in its creation is zinc; it will not work without it. As I understand it, it is considered a worthless metal, and currently the only source of it is in Nent.” Leah pauses, but Lev does not comment. “When Nent realises they have the essential component for a device like this, they will no longer be a backwater. They will very quickly become one of the wealthier and more influential nations of the Gulf – and zinc will be much more expensive than it is now.”
Lev breathes in deeply. “I see.”
“Right now, the only nations with the understanding to make it are the Contested Lands and Cheden, and possibly Devad. If this world is being thrust into a magical revolution, then at least I want both sides of the conflict to be prepared. Maybe Bair could figure out a way to work around it, or even incorporate it into magic use – and if not, then knowing its potential is vital to magic’s survival in the Gulf. I know that a device like this will overturn everything about this world,” Leah says, a little forlornly. “Especially at a time when magic use is so highly contentious.”
“Miss Talesh, you hardly need to tell a man of Bair that a device capable of restricting magic is an epoch-shattering invention,” Lev says calmly, unclasping his hands and re-clasping them in front of him. “Are there other necessary components to this device?”
“Copper, acid, a few others. I will write up an explanation of how to make it.”
Lev raises an eyebrow. “Am I to understand that you are the creator of this device?”
“I am.”
He turns to look down at her. “And am I still to believe that you have merely ‘lost your memories?’”
Leah does not comment, keeping her face even. Out in the garden, Divek is in the middle of acting out a story for Kimry, both of them laughing.
“I did not think I could admire you more.”
Leah looks up at him. “Oh?”
“Even when bargaining to buy an individual’s freedom, you manage to choose a payment that is not only to my benefit, but which restores the balance of power to a region teetering into chaos.” He smiles. “You have bought freedom for a youngling, and simultaneously burdened me with the responsibility and honour of distributing the instrument of peace. Can you never do something just for greed, like the rest of us?”
“Just to be clear,” Leah says softly, “Whose freedom did I just buy?”
Lev sighs. “I cannot be sure that Lord Valerid will wish to sell one of his staff, but before I leave I will make the offer. If he is unwilling, then it is Divek I will let go.” He nods once, curtly, then turns to her with a smile. “What horrid business! I absolutely cannot stand to talk to you like this, my dear Leah; let us go back inside and rejoin the rest, before yet more tongues begin to wag.”
Leah smiles and gives a half-bow. “I think I may be too well-known as an invert, now, for anyone to suspect that of me.”
Lev lays a hand on her elbow and guides her back in with long, smooth steps, the trailing edge of his jacket fluttering. “If that is so, I imagine that not a soul will be asking you to dance, and that is a thing I could not stand for. Allow me to be the first; when the dancing begins, you will grace me with one song.”
Leah raises an eyebrow cheekily. “Remember, I’ve forgotten everything; I don’t know any of the steps.”
“Neither do I, my dear, and we shall make fools of ourselves together.”
Seffon’s eyes fall on her immediately as she enters, with a look of relief mixed with curiosity; Leah gives him a friendly smile and a nod, and he relaxes a smidge, turning back to the Algic representative he was talking with. Solace has withdrawn to one side and is talking with a pair of people with south-east Asian features, not unlike Kain’s but a bit lighter. I ought to learn the vocabulary for peoples, here. What’s the ethnic diversity? Also, how is there ethnic diversity? There seems to be plenty of cross-nation contact, so there must be mixed marriages, and this is an awfully small corner of the world to have such a variety of traits so carefully sorted by nation.
Leah and Lev say goodbye once inside and go their separate ways; Lev immediately swept into conversation with another of the Bairish groups, and Leah hurrying back to the table for food and a moment alone.
“Sometims I fes I cou ta fe ju dirly.” Leah looks over and sees that Adan has joined her, wearing a wry grin. “D tengs ju ge u teu…I fell di of cjuryausety befõ anyfon es fry teu explain teu e my.”
“I wish I could talk to you,” Leah says with a sad smile. “Sometimes you seem like such a funny person, so sarcastic and cool. I promise I’m trying to learn Olues, quick as I can, but I don’t know how far I’ll get before – ” She cuts herself off and shrugs. “Missed connections, I guess.”
Solace butts in between them and reaches for something that roughly resembles a devilled egg, only smaller and much more orange. “You’ll tell me the story as soon as this is over?” she asks, popping the egg in her mouth and grinning.
“I’m going to need to tell Seffon as well; apparently I just struck a pretty significant bargain.”
Solace arcs one of her brows, the gold eye shadow twinkling. “Will he be upset?”
“I don’t think he’ll be surprised.”
“Then please only tell him when I’m there to watch.” She winks. “I love a good show.” With that she leaves, wandering over to one of the other Bairish groups to translate for them as they discuss with a Volsti representative.
Adan snickers. “Fa an absolu firlfen of chaos,” she says, leaving to go stand watch by the wall.
Leah chokes back a laugh. “Word.”
They joke back and forth, neither fully catching anything the other says, while watching the rest of the ‘business’ half of the night play out. A few times some Algic representatives pass by to wish her a quick recovery, both in body and mind, and Leah thanks them warmly.
“We met, before your accident,” one woman tells her. She is dressed in cream-coloured pants and a green brocade jacket, full-cut in the shoulders to allow for movement, and sparkling tin beads hang from the frogging over her chest. Her golden-red hair is held back in a French braid down to her tailbone, and her lips are painted a matching brassy red.
Leah keeps her face neutral, just in case. “Oh? I’m sorry to have forgotten.” Fuck. That’s not neutral, you idiot.
The woman beams. “Seek me out again, when you remember. You are always welcome on my ship, so long as you bring that lovely voice of yours.”
Leah blinks. “Voice? I’m hardly a singer…”
“Oh, but you always knew the old travel songs so well,” the woman says. “Prayers of fortune and safe travels, and returning home again.”
Leah swallows a growing wave of eagerness. “I think I remember one, though the words escape me,” she says; at the woman’s encouraging nod, Leah hums the tune.
“Hai do Davrou,” the woman says, nodding. “What melancholy! You carried that sadness in your eyes wherever you went.”
“I’ve been asking people for a translation of the words, but no-one is certain what they mean. You wouldn’t happen to know – ”
“She has drawn my steps to homeward / I have walked the path before me / through the day and through the darkness. / Walk in peace, and rest your head there / walk in peace, and know no want there / lay my path towards the homeland.” The woman shrugs. “It is not as musical in Volsti.”
Leah hands Adan her plate and takes the woman’s arm. Two Algic sailors standing behind her in crisp uniforms flinch to intervene, almost drawing weapons, but the woman gestures for them to stand down. “This might be very important,” Leah says, speaking low, and the woman leans in to listen. “This is a song for the Lady of Murk, yes?”
“Na ievessoi Dohair.” The woman nods.
“But is it a spell, too?”
The woman leans back a tad, looking over Leah carefully.
“I ask because I know that Algi has a lot of ‘scansion-spells,’ bardic magic. Is this one?”
“All songs are spells if they have enough power behind them,” the woman says, eyebrows drawn together. “That is the nature of a bard’s magic; to believe the words so fully, to measure the sounds so carefully, that you can will them to become truth.”
Leah takes a steadying breath and grips the woman’s shoulders. “Thank you,” she says, smiling. She gives the woman a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you.”
The woman raises a hand to her cheek and smiles vacantly, while Leah rushes off to find Seffon. He is with one of the Nentish representatives, speaking Volsti, and Leah waits on the edge of their conversation to be noticed.
Seffon smiles and gestures for her to join. “There are in fact some sulphur deposits in the far north, just past Nent’s formal borders, in the wastes. I don’t suppose you’d have any wisdom to offer on the safest measures of harvesting it? Anything you observed the Chedens doing, or that you’ve read about?” “From your home world,” hangs unspoken in the air.
“Gasmasks and gloves, and maybe a bit of that anti-poison charm,” Leah says. “When you have a moment, there’s something interesting we ought to discuss.”
Seffon raises an eyebrow but makes no other acknowledgement. “It seems things are wrapping up here; I’ll be free in a few minutes.”
Leah nods and backs away, letting him return to his conversation with the now highly curious and distracted Nentish man. She withdraws back to the wall, to stand next to Adan.
Adan glares at her until Leah caves. “What?”
“Fa fas I jus sajeng? I fell di of cjuryausety.”
Leah’s hands are trembling a bit, and she takes back her plate from Adan to give them something to keep them steady. The conversations in the room seem to be petering out, away from business and towards more social talk. The food is running low, and across the way, another pair of doors are being opened.
“Do you dance at all, where you’re from?” Solace asks, sweeping into place alongside her, Adan following along behind and looking uncomfortable.
“Oh sure…I even took some ballroom dancing lessons, in high school. I think I remember the waltz, and maybe a bit of the tango. I can do a cèilidh dance, if there’s someone to call the steps.”
Solace snickers. “Would you like me to teach you?”
“I don’t think we really have time – ”
“Oh, have you got somebody else you’re supposed to dance with?”
“Yes, actually, but even before that I’ve got to – ”
“Then let me at least give you a few pointers.” Solace tugs Leah’s arm and pulls her towards the centre of the open tile floor.
“Miss Avaresh!” Leah whispers sharply.
Solace stops dead, and turns to look at her in shock. “How…I haven’t used that name in years.”
Leah steps up and stares her down. “I’ve got one question for you, and then I need to speak with Seffon, and then very possibly we’re all leaving here to go back to the Hold and send me home.” Solace’s eyes widen, and she nods. “That thing they recited, when the Baroness…the thing that sounded like a poem, ‘go in peace’ and so on. What was that?”
“Volsti funeral rites. Letting the aura, or soul, or spirit, or whatever you want to call it, pass from one realm to the next.” Solace tilts her head and looks at Leah with doubt. “How is this relevant to your situation?”
Leah pulls her out of the press of people and towards an empty corner. “It’s the same as the Algic prayer Leah always used to sing, the one that Kimry said was for the Lady of Murk, the song of returning. Leah’s parents are dead, and frankly I think her whole family is, and Leah was depressed and didn’t want to be an adventurer, and Kimry said Leah wanted to escape, and she sang this song every night, and isn’t it possible that with that much willpower and intent, that the prayer went from a song to a spell?”
The bard’s face is very hard and still, but her eyes dart in thought. “Not impossible.”
Footsteps approach them, and Seffon joins their little huddle, looking intrigued. “What was this thing we had to discuss, Leah?”
Leah turns to him and holds her hands steepled in front of her mouth. “I think I know what did it.” She taps the side of her head. “I don’t know how to fix it, but I think I know what did it.”
“What?” Seffon takes her arm excitedly. “What was it?”
“I think Leah Talesh was a bard – and I think she chose to leave this world.”
*
The dancing lasts until the middle of the night. Musicians positioned at one end of the hall play a variety of instruments, some familiar and some not – two violins, a flute, something that looks like a mandolin but lower-pitched, something that might be an ocarina, a hand-drum, and a plank of wood strung with metal strings which the player hits with little wooden sticks.
Lev takes his promised dance; a simple quasi-waltz that Leah manages to pick up quickly enough. “Your mind is elsewhere, my dear Leah,” he says, leading her around the room.
“I’ve been given some new information…lots of new information.” Leah focuses on the steps.
“About your memories?”
“Yes, actually. One of the Algic representatives knew me from before, and mentioned something that might become useful.”
“Ah, captain Nedies.” Lev nods sagely. “A cunning woman. It does not surprise me that she knew you. This information she gave you, is it magical?”
Leah hums uncertainly. “In a way,” she says. “Yes. It is, in the end. And once we’ve returned to Seffonshold, we may be able to use it to figure out a way back to normal, for me.”
“Then when I next see you, you will be returned to us?”
Leah nearly stumbles but doesn’t. “I hope so, my dear Lev,” she forces a smile when she looks up at him. “I’ve been floundering in the dark for long enough.”
The dance ends and the partners split, each bowing or curtsying to the other. Not quite confident in her ability to curtsy, Leah elects to bow. Lev takes her hand and kisses over it politely before withdrawing to his party, and leaving Leah to hers.
“It seems in poor taste,” Leah says, rejoining Seffon at the side. “To be dancing, when the Baroness has just died.”
“Many people have just died, Leah; there was a major battle yesterday. These people have come in at our request to help Valerin recover from its occupation. They are bringing food, and medicine, and supplies to rebuild. Algi has already sent one of its shipwrights to scavenge the sunken Devadiss ship, and use its wood to make a temporary bridge marking the victory. This evening is to give all nations a chance to discuss plans, but also to show solidarity – to reaffirm that the Gulf must stand together.” Seffon hands her a glass of wine, already halfway through one himself.
“You drink?” Leah asks, distracted.
Seffon casts her a side-eye glance. “Of course I do, I’m not a child.”
“I’ve never seen you drink.”
“You’ve only ever seen me at work or with my family, Leah,” Seffon snickers.
“Is this not work too?”
“Of a different sort,” he says, straightening a bit. “And it would be rude to refuse.” He takes a sip. “Also it’s quite good.”
Leah takes a sip and hums. “Oh damn,” she says, and Seffon snickers again.
They stand watching the dances for a while, a little ways away from the crowd. “We’ve done all we can here, the four of us,” Seffon says eventually. “We will return tomorrow, by horse. The battalion will remain, but the four of us will go – unless there is anything else that needs to be done here?” He looks to her expectantly.
“I don’t think so, but I want to check up on a few friends. Well, on the five and on Wellen, no-one else I’m really close to. Maybe Kimry, if she’ll see me. I don’t imagine I’ll be passing by this way again, before I go, so I have to say goodbye to them.”
Seffon nods distractedly and just stops himself from running his fingers through his hair. “Of course.”
The Algic captain passes by with a smile, and Leah returns it with a blush. “They will play the Tabreashets, next,” she says, holding her hand out. “I don’t suppose you remember the steps?”
Leah realises that Seffon is subtly holding out his hand to take her glass back. She takes one last sip and passes it over. “I don’t, but I’ll try my best.”
“I will lead,” captain Nedies says with a wink.
“Mhmm,” Leah squeaks, letting herself be drawn onto the floor.
*
Back in her room, tipsy and tired and flustered, Leah lays on her bed flipping through the diary, looking for anything she might have missed the first time around.
“Went to the market today. Olives expensive; merchant said a storm had sunk a shipment, and they were making up for lost profits.”
Leah remembers the Cheden ship at port, so early on in her stay here; the sailors yelling about Devadiss ships, putting on such an act. She knew it too. She saw through it even quicker than I did. The Chedens were putting on a huge act about being against Devad without ever actively harming them, just talking the talk – and she saw right through it
“Beeswax doesn’t like the noise of the marketplace much, but it’s the best place to go to meet people. I don’t know if it’s worth her unhappiness, poor thing.”
Meet who? I suppose that’s been answered for me, though. Leah runs her thumb over the page. ‘If it’s worth her unhappiness’… I’m going to choose to not understand that. She reads on.
“The fishermen say it’s almost salmon season. Vivitha says they return to breed upriver, and each generation always knows the exact path to take to get back to the breeding grounds, like they’re born knowing. I wonder how?”
Leah sighs and puts the book away, blowing out the candle. She tries to bring up memories of home; the apartment, the parks, the grocery stores, the cafes, the honking of horns and the thudding of baselines over the radio.
Gods, it all feels so distant. But it’s almost done. I’m almost going home. She rubs at her face and settles in to sleep.
