The cold wind bit into Lanri’s cheeks bitterly. Dark clouds had rolled in while she and Seeker were in the tavern, heralds of a coming storm that blocked out what warmth the direct sunlight of the afternoon might have brought. The streets were a little quieter than before, she noticed, and wondered if everyone had decided to pack up and go home to ride it out.

She wobbled a little when Seeker stepped past her, and into the muddy street. “You’re not going to make it twenty paces before you wind up in the dirt, are you?” The question was posed with a hint of resignation to it, like she’d already decided what the answer would be.

“Nope,” said Lanri with a dopey grin. “Turnzout losing a bunch of weight an’ a leg did awful things to my tolerance, and it is fuuun…”

“Fun I think you’ve had enough of, by now.”

Lanri gasped, and she widened her eyes in mock offense. “How dare you imply I should have less fun?! For shame.”

“I’m implying you should be able to walk and stand straight.”

“I’on wanna. I want to enjoy the buzz, and the you, and I have every confidence neither of us will get killed because you let me sober up the mundane way.”

“I’m not asking for permission to sober you up, Dear. My prerogative, remember?”

Lanri giggled, and nodded. “But I am asking you to just… not.”

Seeker smiled a little at her answer, and came closer. “Fair enough.” Once she stood directly in front of Lanri, she took a loose hold of both of her crutches. “Come on,” Seeker urged. “They’re barely helping right now. Take a hold of me, instead.”

Lanri easily obeyed. She took her hands off the crutches, and leaned forward into Seeker. She could feel she was tilting a little to the right, and firmly gripped her cardigan with both hands. She saw Seeker’s smile grow a little, and felt the crutches being pulled out from under her arms. She watched as they moved away from her a little, before disappearing completely into nowhere.

It sent the slightest sense of unease through her. She could just about get around with them. Without them, though? “I’m gonna want those back, y’know.” She pulled Seeker down and forward a little, and dropped her voice into a husky whisper. “I hate them, but I’m kinda screwed without them.”

Seeker smirked. “You would be if you didn’t have me to give you that piggyback ride for the ages.”

“That’s a fantastic idea!” Lanri blurted out, and Seeker laughed as she began to shuffle her back towards the tavern, and let her lean against its walls.

Seeker gently but firmly pried her fingers loose from her cardigan, then turned around, and crouched enough to let her throw her arms over her shoulders. Lanri did so, then folded them together. A moment later, Seeker’s hands pressed against her legs from behind, and with a hop from herself and a stretch from Seeker, they were set.

Seeker looked back over her shoulder, up into Lanri’s eyes. “Are you comfortable… ish?” She giggled and nodded, then placed a kiss on Seeker’s ear. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Seeker hesitated for only the briefest of moments, then picked a direction, and set off.

“I really am just… yours, huh?” Lanri mumbled as Seeker turned a corner.

Seeker laughed, and nodded. The motion rubbed a tuft of her red hair across Lanri’s mouth and nose, and she briefly wished the brooch weren’t in the way of her enjoying that properly. “You really are, Dear.”

Lanri sighed, and smiled. There was a sense of liberty that came with admitting her place, and accepting she only had as much say in things as Seeker, her Seeker allowed her. She could, with effort, force herself to recall what Seeker had shown her. The plan to travel together, first to seek out a healer, then for its own sake.

“Won’t I… uhm… keep you from your… y’r duties? Be a… l-liability… burden… thing to you?” The question, hard to phrase though it was, was a melancholic one, and once it came to her, it brought a wave of apprehension with it.

“Why, yes,” Seeker easily told her in a chipper tone that felt entirely dissonant to the topic. “I’m carrying you like a sack of tubers. Of course you’re a burden.”

Oh. That was a joke.

“I’m sorry, maybe now’s not the time. But, to answer your question, no. You’re not going to keep me from my duties, you’re not a liability, and what little of a burden you are, I’m proud to bear.”

“D’ya promise?”

Seeker briefly looked back at her, and there wasn’t even a hint of the usual skeptical quirk to her eyes. “I promise, Dear. You’re a boon, that’s what you are.”

Lanri smiled again, the brief insecurity vanquished as quickly as it had come. She rubbed her cheek against the back of Seeker’s head, which seemed like the easiest way to show affection when she had her hands linked together as she did. “I’m excited to travel together,” she whispered. “To be alone, together.”

“Me, too,” Seeker said with a giggle. “Though, it’ll mean a lot more time in a carriage. And I know how much you like those.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.” Carriages were an awful way to travel, but they got better the closer you were to the people you shared them with. She’d seen a few tribes of nomads throughout her life, traveling in big convoys of carriages and wagons that, in some cases, had been lived in for generations. She recalled seeing the inside of one as a child, sitting on her mother’s lap as she negotiated with a caravan’s leader, and earned some slight percentage of what they stood to gain from trading while their little mobile village lived on their farmland. She’d always thought those looked pretty nice. Like a cozy, cluttered little house on wheels.

“We’ll make it nice,” Seeker promised.

Lanri considered how they might go about that, imagining they could furnish it with a stove for warmth, and an actual soft bed to sleep in, rather than a hard bench to sleep on. She was about to ask Seeker how she wanted it decorated, when she heard something. Frustrated, distant voices. An angry group, assembling ahead of them on the city square. As they got closer, she could see it over Seeker’s shoulder.

A dozen or so people were yelling at each other, some of them blamed the merchants’ greed for how expensive the food was getting, while others said it was the baron’s fault, and that he wasn’t protecting the city’s interests. Already, two sides were forming, people physically standing with those they thought were right, and against those they thought were wrong. Occasionally, Lanri saw someone appear, listen for a while, then when they took offense at something someone said, they joined the other group.

“I’ll bet it is Armitage’s fault,” Lanri mumbled in Seeker’s ear, and she made a point of imbuing her father-in-law’s name with the contempt it deserved.

“We are not involving ourselves in a political shouting match, Dear. They need to sort this out on their own, and we need to get to this Yornleif’s shop.”

“You’re not leaving me to sort my… uhm… problems on my own.”

Seeker sighed, and looked over her shoulder again as she turned to cross the square. “I didn’t have a hand in causing theirs like I do with yours, and unlike with you, I don’t even know what I could do to help them. Half of them think it’s their own fault, and half of them think it’s his.”

“I think it’s his fault, too.”

“Lanri, do you really expect me to intervene because of that? You’re drunk, and you have plenty of reasons to despise the guy. We’re staying out of this.”

When they got to the shop, Lanri was beyond relieved to be put down. She was grateful to have been spared the walk, but the price had been her equilibrium. She felt the pressure of nausea at the back of her throat, and behind her eyes, and every bouncy step Seeker had taken made it worse.

“I don’ feel so good,” she managed as she leaned against the building. The cold air would have helped her feel better, but the wonders of a cool breeze was more than offset by the stench of sulfur and manure. She squeezed her eyes shut, and took several deep breaths to steady herself.

“I take it you’ve had enough of that fun by now?” Seeker asked, and Lanri could hear an edge of satisfaction to her voice.

“V-very much so,” Lanri mumbled with a nod. She almost immediately regretted the motion. “Please make it go away, now.”

“Y’know, some people say getting sick from drinking is Shala’s influence, trying to keep you from hurting yourself.”

“Well, then she’z not being very…” she paused under the rising pressure at the back of her throat, and reluctantly gave in to it. A mouthful of putrid gas escaped, tasting of beer and old vomit. “N-not being very merciful.”

“To think you called someone else a heretic this morning.”

Lanri opened her eyes again, and shot Seeker a pleading look. “Please help,” she repeated. Seeker rolled her eyes, and it was all Lanri could think about that she would throw up if she were to do the same.

“Purifiez la drogue.”

Hearing the spell sent shivers and a sigh of relief through Lanri. She nodded gratefully, as she felt her head clear up. Unfortunately for her, it didn’t clear up instantly. The pleasant numbing of her senses fell away first, and she grew all the more keenly aware of the dizziness and pressure in her throat because of it. She tried to steady herself, to stay upright, but failed. She started to fall to one side, speeding up until Seeker caught her, and slowed her down even more abruptly.

And she couldn’t hold it any longer. It took every morsel of self control she had to turn away from Seeker before she spewed up half of what was left in her stomach. She collapsed onto her hands and knees as it came out in several prolonged bouts, despite the nausea causing it already being gone. She sighed as she looked down at the puddle of what had been her lunch a few moments before, and spat what was left of it in her mouth out to join the dirty patch of cobblestones.

“Graceful,” Seeker commented.

Lanri tilted her head up, and glared at the smug Heartwarden as she wiped her mouth clean with her sleeve. The nausea being gone was nice, but losing her buzz so suddenly was anything but. She tried to think of something mean to say that would be witty enough to get away with, but came up blank. “Help me up, please,” she asked.

Seeker nodded, and stepped over the puddle, then took Lanri’s hands and pulled her up. Then, while supporting her with one arm around her waist, reached into nowhere once, and then again, emerging with a crutch each time, both of which Lanri accepted eagerly.

“I’m sorry I made you wait so long, Dear. I should have just cast the spell when you asked.”

Lanri shrugged, and sighed again. The spell in question had cleared her head of the alcohol, but it hadn’t taken away the fatigue and exhaustion that had taken root while she’d been drunk. “Your prerogative to teach me a lesson, right?”

Seeker seemed to consider that, then pointed at the door leading into the store with her chin. The store. Right. Lanri quickly remembered that they’d already arrived. She took a few steps back, and looked at it. It was a very traditional Cereni building, with a sharply pointed roof that curved into a gentler slope as it got closer to the edges, and the second story had a substantial overhang that shaded the storefront.

There was a beautiful selection of porcelain wares on display in the windows on either side of the door in the middle. To the left, the display was filled with plates, bowls, and tea sets. To the right, the shelves were covered in toys and other trinkets. Horses in gallop, knights in armor, and the like, some of them painted, some of them pristine white. A handful of the toys, almost all on the bottom shelf, had clearly broken, and been repaired. Gold colored paste filled cracks to glue the pieces back together, and even filled some gaps where pieces were missing.

Lanri started to go inside, but noticed Seeker wasn’t following. The Heartwarden was looking at the display of toys, and had a peculiar smile on her face. “Seeker?” Lanri quietly asked, a little amused by how easily Seeker seemed to be getting distracted today.

Seeker’s head snapped up, and her smile broadened a little. “Are you ready to go inside?”

“Are you?”

Seeker nodded, and she gestured at the door, urging Lanri to go first. Lanri did as she was told. She put her hand on the door’s handle, and pushed it open. A little bell jingled as she did so. Inside, she could see display cabinets filled with more wares, and a counter in front of a curtain. To one side, stairs led up, hinting that everything beyond the counter was a raised platform. If the server at the tavern hadn’t confirmed this store belonged to a dwarf, that certainly would have.

“Absolutely not,” came a gruff, high pitched voice as soon as Lanri put her foot in the threshold.

“Excuse me?” Lanri looked around, trying to figure out where the voice came from.

“I said absolutely not. I won’t have some drunken fool in here again, stumbling and breaking my wares. I saw you feeding the pigeons out there, human, and I ponder you’re not done yet.”

You ponder?

Behind Lanri, Seeker filed into the store as well, and looked up as she said “she’s finished with that, I assure you. And I’ll pay double for anything she might break if I should be wrong about that.”

Lanri looked up, too, and was surprised to see a cutout for folding stairs in the ceiling, through which an elderly dwarf with a long beard was looking down at them. “And I suppose you’re sure she’s finished being a cripple who can’t use her crutches properly, too?”

“Hey, fuck you!” Lanri spat up at him, as she felt Seeker put a hand on her shoulder, and squeezed it reassuringly.

“Her injury is why we’re here, actually,” Seeker told the potter, diplomatically. “You’re Yornleif, are you not? Abbot Du Bois believes you might be able to make a prosthetic for her.”

The dwarf scoffed, and disappeared from view. Lanri could hear heavy footfalls move across the ceiling, to behind the store’s back wall. The footfalls were soon replaced by creaking stairs and a manic giggle. A moment after those too stopped, the curtain swished open, and the dwarf appeared behind his counter. “The Abbot takes me for an alchemist?”

“Well, no,” Seeker said. “I don’t need an alchemist. I can enchant it myself. What I need is someone who can make the actual thing.”

The dwarf leaned forward, and curiously eyed Lanri’s leg. She had to stop herself from hiding it. “And… you do realize I work with porcelain, I assume. Porcelain is heavier than flesh by a wide margin. It would be like wearing a lead shoe, for her.”

“Not only porcelain. We’ve seen your work at a tavern, and I’d wager you’re as adept a woodworker as you are a potter.”

“Don’t try to flatter me into agreeing,” huffed the dwarf. “It’s a bad idea. I could make something that looks like a foot, and even moves a little like one. But it would be heavy, and fragile, and take a long time. It’s not worth the effort.”

“Very well,” said Seeker, and she tugged on Lanri’s shoulder to urge her back out. “Let’s go, Dear.”

Unsure about what to make of this, Lanri obeyed. She turned around, and took the first few steps out of the door.

“Wait!” said the dwarf, and Seeker tugged on her shoulder again to stop her. Lanri sighed and turned around to look at him again. “I can’t have you leaving here pondering I’m too lazy to try. Come up here, sit down in my studio, I’ll try to come up with something.”

“Pants and boot off, human,” said Yornleif moments after Lanri and Seeker squeezed themselves onto the man’s dwarf-sized furniture. The storefront had obviously been designed with humans in mind, and the workshop clearly had not. Lanri could barely stand without her head hitting the ceiling, and Seeker was stuck crouching.

“What?” asked Lanri.

“Well, I need to see your legs to make a bloody prosthetic, don’t I? And unless you prefer me to cut your pants open to get a better look, just take them off.”

“I—”

“Just do as he asks, Dear,” Seeker assured her. “It’ll be worth it.”

Reluctantly, Lanri obeyed. She untied the laces of her boot, then the lace cinching her pants on. “Would you turn around?!” she demanded of the dwarven craftsman. He sighed, and did as she asked. A moment later, she shuffled out of her pants. She looked down at her bare legs, then glanced at Seeker, and tugged at her cardigan. “May I borrow this?”

Seeker nodded, and took off the article before draping it and Lanri’s own trousers across her lap. “You can turn around, now,” Seeker told him.

He sighed, and turned around. “Let’s have a gander, shall we?” he asked. He sat down on the cushioned footstool in front of Lanri, and pointed at his lap.

Lanri hesitated a little, but did what she thought his gesture meant. She lifted her right leg, and rested it on his knees. She didn’t like this. She hated looking at what was left of her shin, and quickly realized someone else paying attention to it was almost as bad. Seeker squeezed her hand, and when she looked up at her, she gave her a reassuring nod.

“Twist your foot for me,” said Yornleif.

Lanri looked away from Seeker, and towards him. She made a point of looking at him like the idiot he seemed to be. “My… foot, which is gone?”

“Yes, that one,” Yornleif told her, and matched her expression with a condescending stare of his own. “I need to see which tendons and muscles still work, or the thing won’t fit right.”

Lanri rolled her eyes, and humored his request. She twisted her foot inward, and to her surprise, the stump seemed to actually deform a little. “Huh,” she said, and the dwarf smiled at her.

“I’ll need to use something softer there, then,” he said. “Leather, I ponder. Now,, your left instead.”

Again, Lanri did as she was asked, and offered her left foot for him to look at. He focused on it for a while, and she flexed it in a few ways she thought would be helpful. He nodded at it without looking up. “I’ll need to make a cast,” he mumbled, seemingly more to himself than her.

“A what?”

“A cast, madam…”

“V—” she cut herself off as she started to say her surname. She didn’t need everyone in the city to know the Baron’s kin had shown up unannounced. “Lanri. My name is Lanri.”

“Well, Lanri,” began Yornleif as he gestured her to pull her foot back so he could stand up. “I need to make a cast. Something I can reference when sculpting the porcelain. Won’t take but an hour.”

By the time Lanri and Seeker got away from him, it was past sunset, pouring rain, and Lanri thought nothing in all the world could compel her to go back into that little room to listen to Seeker decide detail after detail about the commission. Seeker had spoken and decided for her almost without exception, and Lanri had not minded that. What she had minded was having to sit there, and listen to it. It had turned her mind to jelly faster than even the dullest lectures she’d ever heard at university.

And now, she shivered a little. As they walked away from Yornleif’s, she could see her breath in the light the various windows and storefronts and oil lamps cast on the streets. “That was…” Lanri began, but she felt the line of thought fizzle out. “I want to go to bed,” she said instead.

“I think that’s wise, Dear,” Seeker told her as she put a hand on her shoulder, and wordlessly steered her around a puddle that was already starting to freeze. “I’m proud of you.”

Lanri looked back, and up at Seeker. “You are?” she asked, despite seeing the sincerity in Seeker’s eyes.

“I am,” she simply said, as she pointed her chin forward, drawing Lanri’s gaze back to where she was going just in time to swerve around a horse-shaped hitching post that was almost invisible in the dark. “You tolerated his poking and prodding far longer than I expected you to. Going in, I half expected I’d have to help you keep your temper.”

Lanri smiled at herself. “Researching, writing, and defending my dissertation about—” she paused, and put on her professor’s voice for the first time in a month, “-The Decline of Trade in Eastern Remere and the Lands Beyond taught me more about tolerating rude old men and humoring their pet interests than any spell you could have cast.”

Seeker giggled. “Oh, I’m definitely going to have to disprove that assertion, my dear little professor. I do seem to recall you on your knees this morning, too busy studying my eyes to keep from drooling. I bet I can improve your concentration just a touch with some spellwork.”

Now it was Lanri’s turn to giggle. “If you want to do so, my office hours are any time after I’ve had a night’s sleep, in perpetuity.”

Suddenly, Seeker nudged Lanri to one side, and gently but firmly pushed her back against a damp wall. Seeker loomed over her, and leaned forward, propping herself up with an arm that rested just above Lanri’s shoulder. She looked awesome and terrible like that, wet hair glistening, face wreathed in shadows, and her breath billowing steam like a dragon blowing smoke. “My Dear, if, right now, I wanted to do anything to that—” she tapped Lanri on the forehead with her finger, and the gesture felt oddly powerful, yet familiar, “— delightful little mind of yours, I don’t think you’d tell me to come back later, would you?” She leaned in a little closer, and purred in Lanri’s ear. “You wouldn’t dare to deny me what’s mine.”

Lanri grinned, giggled, and nodded furiously, a fresh wave of reverent awe pouring over her. It tightened her chest, and flared heat between her legs. On instinct, she let one of her crutches go to reach behind her head, and checked if Seeker had plucked the brooch from her hair without being noticed. But it was still there, a shield against her mighty aura. “H-how are you—”

“I’m not.” An easy answer. “Oh, I could, of course. I could do all sorts of things. I could use every dirty trick a Heartwarden might use to get my way. I could slip something into your drink, or whisper the right spell to unmake your brooch, or give you an enchanted bauble that tangles your mind up so profoundly you can’t ever hope to escape it.”

Lanri stared at Seeker with wide, eager eyes, and swallowed as she put a single finger on her throat. The same gesture she’d weaponized that morning, that seemed to say that awe and adoration was natural for a mortal staring into the eyes of divinity. And Seeker wasn’t just any divine being at that. She was hers. Her personal protector, shielding her from villainy.

“But what I’ve always liked so much about you, Dear, is that with the two of us, none of that is necessary to begin with.” With that, Seeker leaned in, and pressed her lips to her own. It wasn’t nearly as aggressive or needy as Lanri had expected and wanted it to be. In fact, it was… confusingly chaste. She wanted more, hells, she needed more. She wanted to be out of this fucking rain and in bed, despite the thought of sleep being long banished, but she needed to get more than a peck on the lips She tried to lean in, to escalate the kiss to whatever Seeker was planning would come after, but that single finger on her throat just pushed her back, applying as much pressure as it needed to keep her at bay.

“Hey, lovebirds! Isn’t safe here.” A single voice in the rain said, somewhere to their side. Lanri felt the briefest pang of tension in Seeker as she broke the kiss, and turned to look at them.

“Excuse me?” demanded Seeker, as Lanri was left blinking, and tried to clear her head.

“Mob on Epsim’s Square! They’re yelling, and fighting, and it’s bound to spread if the guards don’t get off their fucking arses.”

“Fucking perfect…” mumbled Seeker, and Lanri watched as she nodded her thanks at the speaker. “Come along, Dear. We should get out of this rain, anyways.”

It was hard to argue with that decision. As soon as Seeker peeled off of Lanri, the chill of the rain and wind became unbearable again. She was already soaked, and without Seeker literally pressed against her for warmth, she started to shiver.

“Séchez.”

Lanri had heard that spell before, a while ago, but addled by exhaustion and a sense of arousal she would really like to either be snuffed out by the cold, or get an opportunity to deal with quickly, she couldn’t quite figure out what it meant before it started to take effect. The cold quickly lost its bite once it did, though. The magic seemed to flow across her, and dried her out. Her clothes separated from her skin all at once, no longer heavy and sticky with rain, and she came out in goosebumps as her body hair stood on end, reacting to the spell and cold, equally.

Seeker quickly led her down the narrow streets after that, but as they moved back towards the baron’s palace and the monastery built against it, the angry voices they’d heard before grew louder and louder. Despite the rain, and the wind, Lanri could still make out the sounds of resentment and hate, now mixed with the occasional shattering window, or loud thud.

“That sounds bad,” she whispered, expecting Seeker’s grasp of her thoughts to take her meaning, rather than her voice which was drowned out by the whistling wind.

“I agree,” Seeker said back, much louder, and close to her ear. “We’re almost home, though.”

When they turned the next corner, Lanri got to see just how bad it was. Perhaps a hundred people were gathered by now, screaming at each other and hurling rocks that were only visible when the light of illicit bonfires hit them just right.

The anger of earlier had boiled over into hate.

“Can’t you calm them down?” asked Lanri, and she turned to give Seeker a pleading look. “They’re going to kill each other!”

“You’re right,” mumbled Seeker, without looking down at her. She had a skeptical expression on her face, eyebrows furled as she scanned the crowd. “They are. And I don’t understand it.”

Lanri joined Seeker in looking at the crowd, though she didn’t know what the Heartwarden was looking for. All she could see were starkly lit people in dark and wet clothes. If Seeker was looking for someone suspicious, Lanri suspected it would be an exercise in futility to find anyone who didn’t look it in that crowd.

But she wanted them to be harmless, even if they didn’t look it right now. She wanted them to go home and curl up by their stoves and fireplaces with their lovers, rather than be out here, hating each other in the cold and wet. “Seeker, please! Make them—”

A crack of lightning. It interrupted her plea, and stung her eyes as it struck the middle of the square, right between the two mobs of people which both staggered back from it in equal measure. In the brief blast of light, Lanri could see a handful of people from the tavern had joined, spread out across either group.

“Did you do that?” Lanri found herself asking as she tried to blink away the afterimage of the bolt.

“No, she did,” Seeker said with gratification in her voice. She pointed to just behind where the lightning had struck, where two figures stood. Two women, cloaked in black. One of them was carrying a quarterstaff, and had a familiar silhouette. “Ithella, Priestess of Duin.”

The one from the villa?

Seeker nodded, then urged Lanri to look ahead again. The crowd had gone deathly silent and still, leaving only the rain and wind.

“YOU GULLIBLE FOOLS!” The elven priestess began with a shout so loud and booming Lanri was certain it was a spell as well. “YOU SQUABBLE LIKE CHILDREN, SCREAMING AND THROWING ROCKS IN SEARCH OF A VILLAIN TO BLAME FOR YOUR MISFORTUNE! YOU ARE LOST! YOU SEEK TO BLAME YOUR INEPT LORD AND GREEDY MERCHANTS THAT YOU HAVE TO TIGHTEN YOUR BELT WHILE YOU ALL COWER BEHIND YOUR WALLS, AND LET YOUR REAL ENEMY BLEED YOU DRY!”

Lanri and Seeker slowly made their way forward, and Lanri watched on as the priestess, Ithella, dragged her staff through the mud in wide arcs for a few silent moments, and a small trail of red fire appeared in its wake. Everyone, the whole mob, was enthralled by the display, slowly coming closer to watch as more and more lines appeared, and a picture started to take shape.

A map.

Ithella was drawing a map of the barony, Lanri realized. The valleys to the south, the borders of the bamboo groves, the river, roads, and villages. Once it was done, and featured every major landmark in the region, Ithella stabbed her staff into the mud. Red sparks and embers splashed away from the weapon, startling the crowd into stepping back again. Lanri could just barely see the weapon now stuck into the ground north of Cerene, close to where Bodrin, the village she had grown up in, was marked.

A pang of worry rose in her throat like bile. Living in Astoria had meant more than a handful of letters per year to her parents was unsustainable, and when Faron died, the magic contraption he’d devised to talk to them had suddenly stopped working. She’d had to resort to traditional mail, and had not expected an answer to her letter about Faron’s death until after she got back from her expedition with Mick, Tallah, and Jolus.

Seeker’s hand squeezed her shoulder. “I’m sure they’re safe, Dear,” she said, and Lanri dearly wished she could believe that.

“A BANDIT MAGE! SHE PROWLS YOUR LAND, AMBUSHING YOUR MERCHANTS TO STEAL THEIR WARES AND KIDNAP THEIR PEOPLE! FOR MONTHS NOW, YOU HAVE TOLERATED THIS, ALLOWING A CANCER TO FESTER! AND NOW YOU GATHER HERE TO DECIDE WHICH TRIVIAL SYMPTOM YOU WOULD BLAME RATHER THAN FACE THE TRUE CAUSE! YOUR BARON IS INEPT, AND YOUR TRADERS FLIRT WITH EXTORTION, BUT THEY ARE A DISTRACTION!”

“She’s amazing at this,” Lanri told Seeker as Ithella paused to draw breath, eager not to dwell on her parents.

“She is.”

“I WILL NOT ALLOW THIS TO CONTINUE! I WILL NOT ALLOW YOUR SHORTSIGHTEDNESS TO RUIN THESE LANDS, AND CEDE THEM TO A BAND OF THIEVES AND RAPISTS! MY PATRON WOULD DISAVOW ME IF I ABIDED YOUR BARON’S PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A RESPONSE, AND HONORED HIS TRAVEL BAN! I AM ITHELLA VAL GYR, DAUGHTER OF WAR; I AM TOUCHED BY DUIN, AND IT IS IN HIS NAME THAT I DEMAND THAT THOSE WHO ARE ABLE STEP FORWARD, AND PICK UP BOW, SWORD, OR SPEAR TO EXCISE THIS BLIGHT FROM YOUR LIVES AND LANDS!”

Silence fell over the crowd as Ithella stopped screaming, and stood panting, illuminated red by the light of the magical map she stood on. “Outstanding,” Lanri heard Seeker whisper, and she turned around to look at her.

“It is?”

Seeker nodded forward, and smiled. “Oh, yes. I’d bet my sword she just stopped this fight for good.”

Lanri turned back to the crowd, eager to see if her Seeker was right. The silence lasted for a few moments longer, growing viscous and tense until, from the group blaming the Baron, the first volunteer stepped forward. Lanri recognized him almost immediately. It was Millan, the orc server from the tavern. She watched him approach Ithella, and shake her hand.

Then someone from the other group stepped forward. A tall, broadly built woman she didn’t recognize, but would be loath to anger even when she didn’t have the spear Ithella had promised.

Then a third person, a twig of a boy who Lanri thought looked cut out to be a scholar and very little else. Then a fourth, and a fifth. The groups merged, more and more of both sides volunteering and growing louder and louder as they did so. Just before the gap in the mob that had allowed her and Seeker to watch the show closed completely, Lanri could see a grin on the priestess’ face. The expression spoke of euphoria and bloodlust, and scared Lanri as much as it impressed her.

“Should she be leading an army?” she asked as Seeker nudged her shoulder, urging her to continue on their way.

“Oh, yes she should,” Seeker assured her. “I doubt there are many people more eager to deal with kidnapping and mystic bandits than a priestess of Duin that spent years as an Abanian’s slave. Though, I do wonder why Mara is so quiet.”

“Who the hell is Mara?”

Lanri practically screamed sheer relief when her back hit the mattress. She made a point of throwing her crutches to the floor, expressing her feelings about the cursed bamboo things with the primal and hateful violence they deserved. They were too big, the handles made her palms blister, and they were a perpetual reminder of her new disability.

“Take your clothes off, Dear,” Seeker bade as she produced another little jar of the salve, and Lanri did so without hesitation. She untied every lace and undid every button of her outfit, and slipped out of every article in the moments after. They were all dry from the spell, Seeker having cast it a few more times on the way to the monastery and once more on the threshold, but they still stank like a drunk had worn them in the rain all day.

Lanri watched as Seeker looked down at the discarded pile of clothes, and think about something. “What is it?” she asked.

Seeker’s eyes snapped back onto her, and she smiled. “Oh, nothing. I’m going to wash those while you’re asleep, and find you a different set, is all.”

Lanri snickered, and she raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to choose my outfits now?”

“Why not?” asked Seeker as she crawled onto the bed, and, still dressed, straddled Lanri’s lap. She didn’t seem to even consider giving her instructions this time. She simply took both of Lanri’s wrists in one hand, and pinned them to the wall above her head. Lanri quickly decided she liked being handled like this. With her other hand, Seeker brought the jar of salve to her mouth, and she popped the lid off with her teeth.

“Why don’t you use magic for this?” Lanri asked Seeker. “You don’t have to follow the priests’ customs about healing spells.”

“They wouldn’t apply even if I did.” Seeker agreed as she began to slather the numbing cream on Lanri’s armpits. “But you’re still recovering from the…” Seeker trailed off, and a guilty expression flashed across her face before she continued. “-many healing spells I used before. But you’re almost done. Just another day or two, I’ll bet.”

“And then what?” Lanri found herself asking. “I don’t really plan on getting run through with a spear any time soon.”

Seeker smiled, and seemed to think about it as she moved Lanri’s hands into her lap, and began massaging the cream into her palms and wrists like the night before. “Oh, I know that, Dear. But you ought to feel a little better, and have more energy. That’s worth looking forward to, don’t you think?”

Lanri nodded, and smiled.

“And speaking of energy, I’m going to give you another choice to make. Would you prefer to go to sleep, or finish what we started this morning?”