“Not a very long walk,” Richold said lightly, when they returned. “Everything okay?”

“It was long enough,” Aelfeva said, settling on the ground next to Teoda. Josceran, without comment, took the place beside her. “We all need to talk, and as Jos just pointed out, we have more privacy here than we do at the townhouses with parents and maids and cooks around.”

“About what?” Guillen asked.

Aelfeva took a deep breath. “Rich, could you please tell everyone about getting to Blaecstan and what happened?”

“We had the same long ride as everyone,” Richold said obligingly, though he looked puzzled. “I got distracted when I saw someone selling flowers. Aelf and I stopped, but we thought Leofeva was with our parents still. We got lost and were lucky enough to be found by the Cristovals.”

“And we came the rest of the way together,” Teoda said.

“‘We’ being our family plus Rich and Aelfric,” Ilduara said. “Just in the interests of accuracy. I assume you were with Einwulf and Melisend.”

“No assumptions, please,” Aelfeva said. “Rich?”

“We got inside,” Richold said. “And found out that Leo told our parents she was going with us. While we were trying to figure out what to do, Herlinde showed up. She was annoyed we weren’t keeping a closer eye on Leo, and she said that the wedding was happening anyway.”

Aelfeva nodded. “And what was her solution? Jos already figured it out somehow. You know, Teoda knows. We may as well come clean.”

Teoda wrapped her hand around Aelfeva’s and squeezed in silent reassurance. It actually helped more than Aelfeva would have expected.

“We don’t have a cousin who came to stay with us,” Richold said. “Herlinde did some kind of magic thing that turned Aelfric into Aelfeva.”

That matter-of-fact statement elicited only dead silence, until Ferrand said, “Oh, come on, that’s not possible.”

“For a seidkona as powerful as Herlinde,” Josceran said, “it is extremely possible.”

“I bloody watched it happen,” Richold said.

“Rich is bad at lying to me,” Teoda said. “I got the truth out of him and I’ve been trying to help.”

“And your first thought was to lie and pretend to be someone else?” Guillen said. “Thanks for trusting us to have your back. I know you hate asking for help but this is bigger than usual.”

“It was a bit unexpected,” Aelfeva said shortly. “I did not have a plan ready just in case a ridiculously powerful witch-lady turned me into a woman because my sister ran off and she needed a Glaedwin to marry a Denisot! I did not know what to do, and in fact I still don’t, other than trying to make the best of it and looking for some kind of solution that won’t involve either dragging Leofeva out of the cloister or having to stay this way forever. As long as I stay out of Aelautha’s temple, then in a sennight the spell breaks and I’m back to normal, but the only obvious way to do that is to force Leo back into the position she just ran away from. I am perhaps feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment.”

Guillen watched her intently through the whole diatribe; when she finished, he shrugged. “Fair enough, I guess. I’m not sure how I’d react, even if it would technically offer another option. Any doubts I had that you’re you definitely just died.”

“What other option?” Aelfeva asked.

“I need to point out here,” Josceran said, “that Aelf is still clueless about relationships and missed everything except Rich and Teoda. Anyone able to miss that one is probably dead.”

Guillen and Ferrand traded looks, and sighed almost in unison.

“Do we take that as a compliment on hiding well?” Ferrand wondered.

“From Aelf?” Guillen said. “No. Although I should have made the connection about still not figuring it out, given the utterly innocent question just after we got here about why I was upset about the marriage arrangements. Maybe if I hadn’t been so distracted with other people around... I don’t know. Maybe I’m just so used to you I didn’t even think about it. Technically, I suppose if I got turned into a woman, it would mean I could marry Ferrand, but I’m pretty sure I’d be so miserable that it would make it pointless. I think it’s very unlikely that I’d be able to stay calm and just go along with it even for a few days.”

“Although at least I like both, not only men,” Ferrand pointed out. “I might, and I’m saying might, panic less, I don’t know, but you don’t like women.”

“Even as a hypothetical, it really doesn’t work well. Would it be worse than you marrying my sister? Eh... I don’t know. Or worse than Aelf marrying Jos?”

Oh. That probably explained why Ferrand was so often around while Aelf and Guillen were indulging in their shared hobbies or spending time together afterwards.

It probably also explained why the two of them always managed to be sitting next to each other.

“You lied,” Ilduara said tightly. “To me, repeatedly, by pretending to be a stranger when it was just the three of us. I don’t care about the bathhouse. Just overall.”

“Dara, hush,” Guillen said wearily. “You are on shaky ground to be offended about lies.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If you didn’t know where Leo was, you’d have been absolutely frantic, up all night pacing and probably nagging me to take you out looking for her. Instead you just accepted that she was missing and calmly went to bed. That note wasn’t a surprise, you knew exactly where she was and what she was doing.”

“It was the only thing we could think of! We were supposed to... Leo was going to learn as much as she could, she was thinking of doing this anyway, because Osgyth told us that Fritha’s healers don’t marry but often have a companion, another woman, who lives with them and... and you were every bit as oblivious to that, weren’t you?” That last question, as she trailed off, was to Aelfeva.

“Actually, I missed that too,” Richold said quickly. “Girls are always hugging each other and playing with each other’s hair and it’s harder to find anything that looks like the romantic kind of love instead of the friendship kind of love.”

Ilduara rolled her eyes but said nothing.

“So where we stand right now,” Josceran said, “is with Ilduara and Leofeva wanting to be together but being told to marry my brother and I, Ferrand and Guillen wanting to be together but Ferrand was told to marry Dara, Aelf is stuck being a girl and Leo’s replacement, and the only people likely to be happy are Rich and Teoda except that all the people they care about are going to be miserable and grumpy all the time. Did I miss anything?”

“The angry fathers who are making this worse?” Ferrand said dryly. “I’m going to hazard a guess that if Einwulf was annoyed at the situation yesterday morning, he’s worse now. And ours is just... he insisted on a detour yesterday, which is why we were late getting here. I’ve been thinking about it and I think he might have been looking for a way to get out of having to obey Herlinde.”

“Which is stupid,” Josceran said, “since before he sent me away, he wanted me to court Leo and try to persuade her to marry me. But he’s furious.”

“Our parents are pleased,” Teoda said. “They’ve always approved of Rich, and they trust Ferrand.”

“At least that’s one out of three,” Ferrand said. “So, yes, nice summary, but all that tells us is how completely doomed we are. About the best we’re going to be able to do is try not to make it any worse for each other. Dara and I can at least just sort of look the other way—is it technically cheating if everyone involved knows and accepts it?”

“That probably depends on who you ask,” Josceran said. “But I’m not convinced yet that there’s no hope. I just managed to survive the past year and a half with nothing but one new friend and my own obstinacy. We’re all together—except Leo, obviously—and we all want all of us as happy as possible. Almost everything is out in the open, and that helps.”

“Almost everything,” Teoda echoed. “What’s left? Anything besides you being all mysterious about where you’ve been and what happened?”

“Just that. And it’s very hard to talk about. But I don’t think we’re lost just yet. We might have been, if Aelf was really back in Rosebridge and we were trying to work around a cousin no one had met, but as it is, I’m not giving up yet.”

“We need Leo,” Aelfeva said. “Somehow. I wonder whether we can convince her to come out of the cloister long enough for all of us to talk, or if we could persuade the cloister that this is enough of an emergency to let us talk somewhere men are allowed.”

“We can’t today,” Teoda said. “We started late, bathing took time, and we’ve been wandering around shopping for quite a while. By the time we get back to the townhouses to get the horses, it’ll be dinnertime, and the cloister is less likely to be accommodating if we show up at an inconvenient time. I know we only have another two days, but...”

“Early tomorrow,” Aelfeva said.

“We’ll come get you,” Ilduara said. “Guillen can have the stables get our horses ready and Teoda and I will help you if you need it.”

Guillen nodded. “Did it occur to you that I would have recognized Swallow the first time I went to the stable to check on the horses? The story about riding back to Rosebridge would have collapsed instantly.”

“I was maybe not thinking that far ahead,” Aelfeva grumbled. “It was an instinctive reaction more than any logic.”

“Now that, I’ll buy. You three can pay Leo an early visit and we’ll see what comes of that. I’m not holding my breath, but that’s certainly the next obvious step we need to take, so...” He shrugged.

“For the time being,” Josceran said, “I suppose we should start towards home, although we don’t need to rush. If we find a shop we missed earlier or a food cart that Dara likes the looks of, we can stop. At least we don’t have to check in by sunset today.”

“Yesterday was a very long day,” Ferrand said, his bad leg crossed over the other so he could rub the muscle. “Taking our time heading home sounds good. Too bad we probably can’t get away with letting someone invite us over for dinner. And, well, sleep, because the next couple of days are also going to be long.”