#FAIRYPRINCESSPROBLEMS (Patreon)

Chapter One

I walked into my apartment, still too numb even to appreciate how nice it looked in the light of early afternoon even though it had been ages since I’d seen my own place in normal daylight on a weekday.

During the week I’d been getting up as the sun rose to take a circuitous metro route to get to my internship where I often stayed until I absolutely had to leave –unless I wanted to walk home. That meant I often didn’t get back until after dark.

I suppose that wasn’t a problem I was going to have any longer.

My shoes made a satisfying clunk as I kicked them off and I wandered over to flop over onto my couch with the intention of staring at the wall until I came up with the energy to have feelings again. 

Unfortunately for me, that position put me eye to eye with my coffee table and the neatly folded blanket on top of it. Specifically, it was a blanket I had not put there. It was a blanket I had never seen before.

I stared at it.  

Now, I wasn’t bothered by the idea that someone had been in my house while I was gone. There were something like twenty keys in existence for my apartment. My family shared most everything so my apartment was more like a timeshare than anything else. I often came home either to visitors or evidence of their passing in the form of new food in the fridge to replace whatever they’d eaten, but that was family.

The blanket, on the other hand, had a bow on it.

If my family left things for me then they usually just put it away and left me a note about it on the kitchen white board. None of us were gift wrapping sorts except my mother on rare occasions when the spirit moved her. 

It wasn’t my birthday and I didn’t even celebrate Christmas in December, much less on the Summer Solstice. 

I reached out to nudge it around in a circle. Sure enough, there was a price tag on it sort of carelessly tucked under the bottom fold. Out of curiosity, I slid it out and looked at it. It was from some boutique home goods company I’d never heard from and the price had been blacked out with a grease pen. 

Amateur. 

I tilted it this way and that until the light coming in the window caught it just right and I could make out the slight impressions made in the cardstock when they’d printed out the price. 

A pained whistle escaped me as I realized that there was no decimal point in all those zeroes. No wonder he’d blacked it out.

Right around that point, I realized I didn’t have the energy to deal with the mystery blanket.

I rolled over onto my back and stared at the ceiling like… well, like someone whose five year plan had just gone off the rails. The brief surge I'd experienced as a byproduct of my curiosity exhausted itself almost immediately.

Part of me was still sitting in front of a desk in the HR office as Mandy, the rep in charge of herding the interns, explained with a tense smile that I needed to take an open-ended break or we were going to have a problem.

I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket and dialed mom’s number without even looking at the screen because that’s how often I call my mother. Whatever power watches over unhappy young women must have been on duty because the call not only connected, but mom answered right away. 

“Hello darling.” She was surrounded by the sound of distant voices. “What a pleasant surprise! Did they let you out early today?”

“Sort of.” I wet my lips. “They let me out forever. I got fired.” 

Mandy had called it an ‘extended leave’, but I wasn't that bad at reading subtext in English. Her tone had left no doubt that the leave would be extended for longer than I could ever try to wait it out.

The other end of the line went dead silent. For a minute I thought the call had dropped until someone said, in heavily accented Arlese, “Are they insane?” 

I realized mom had me on speakerphone.

“I’m going to take this into the other room, ladies.” Mom switched over from English with great dignity. I heard a chair scrape and the sudden babble of voices, at least one I recognized as the oldest auntie in my mom’s household, erupt in angry mutters. A door creaked open and then shut away the noise. “Okay, Alessa honey. Lay it on me. What happened?”

“I don’t know.” My voice cracked. My feelings were coming back on line and it made everything that much more awful. I rolled over on my side, facing the back of the couch. “I mean, I do know, but… it just doesn’t make sense.”

Mom was quiet. “Is this about the Jorgumandr expedition?” She asked.

It probably was, although Mandy hadn’t said so. I hadn’t made waves in the office until the expedition had been announced. “Maybe.” I sighed and tried not to relive the humiliation of the past two weeks. “Yeah. It is.” I amended.

“Then I don’t understand.” I could hear her start to pace. I’d told her about the expedition as soon as I’d heard about it. She’d taken the news worse than I had. Her position meant she couldn’t intervene without causing a whole host of additional problems. That meant it had been up to me to avert the oncoming disaster ---and I’d failed.

“They wouldn’t listen.” My face flooded with blood leaving me feeling hot and miserable. “They’re leaving today. They’re probably leaving right now.” I tried not to picture it.

Mom stopped pacing. “You cannot be serious.” She said after an agonizing pause. “Did you…”

I cut her off. “I tried everything, mom. I made appointments no one showed up to. I made phone calls and left messages. I sent emails no one ever opened. Today I tried to get into the third floor to talk to someone in person, but my keycard wouldn’t work in the elevator.” 

My workstation was in a corner of the Deputy Administrator’s office suite and that was on the main level so I hadn’t ever needed to use the elevators, but I’d seen other interns come and go. I’d just assumed my keycard had the same permissions. “I caught Administrator Markham’s aide in the lobby and tried to talk to him.” This was the most embarrassing bit. “He called security on me and I got escorted to human resources.”

“Human resources.” Mom’s voice was flat, but starting to show signs of her thick Midwestern American accent. She usually had a better lock on it, but when she got upset she tended to slip up. “They didn’t walk you out of the building?

I shrugged even though she couldn’t see it and closed my eyes. Duvall was a busy, important person who wasn’t used to being asked to question the decisions of the Administrators —not that he’d let me get that far. 

The Bureau of Interplanar Relations was a new organization, relatively speaking. If you believed the bio page on their website, it had been founded in the forties shortly after the Veil, a massive curtain of shifting insubstantial white light that circled Earth like a lopsided equator, had first appeared.

In practice, though, BIR started out as a civilian organization that had consisted of four semi-government-sanctioned conspiracy nuts working out of an old bomb shelter with some sporadic grant money, but they’d been mostly crowdfunded before that and in a time when crowdfunding wasn’t really a thing. There was a lot of interest in the Veil in those days. It appeared not too long after the United Stated first deployed an atomic bomb so people were understandably concerned by the correlation. 

There were tons of crackpot theories about the Veil in those days.

Some people thought it was part of a convoluted Soviet plot. Certainly, a sudden giant mysterious atmospheric phenomenon on American soil made the Cold War even more tense than it would have been otherwise. 

Other people -Evangelical American Christians for the most part- thought it was a sign from their God announcing the Great Tribulation. 

I’d also heard stories about New Age cults in the 1960s who were very convinced it's presence meant that aliens were coming to take them away. 

Markham and his cronies had the dubious victory of coming closest to the truth and were on the record as the people who’d made first contact with an interdimensional being. 

That happened shortly before the US Army rolled in, confiscated all their records, and relocated Markham and his team somewhere. There was a period between 1977 and 2010 -when the Obama administration overturned a Reagan-era act of secrecy concerning all contact with beings from beyond the Veil- when no one was really sure where the original members of BIR were or what they’d been doing.

Only Markham was left by the time the Bureau was made public. The other three had either died or retired or disappeared. BIR became an independent agency of the US Government; a bit like NASA, only without the same level of funding or brand recognition. 

My immediate (former) boss had plans for the first, but the second required the cooperation of elves willing to be shown off on camera. So far that hadn’t happened and that meant the average US citizen probably knew about the Bureau, but not why they should care.  

Before 2010 the American party line was that the Veil was just an atmospheric phenomenon like the northern lights; pretty and harmless. Once people got accustomed to the fact that they could pass through it without getting hurt or mysterious cancer it became just another landmark. 

Knowledge of its real nature had been restricted to the White House, certain key figures in the Pentagon, and people like my mother and I whose nationalities were an issue of extreme bureaucratic frustration.

In reality, the Veil was a thin spot between realities. Some spots were more permeable than others. Those spaces functioned like gates for anyone who knew how to use them. If you just walked through it then nothing happened. You stayed on the same material plane. If you knew how to open a Gate, however, that was different. 

All Gates on Earth lead to Anwyn; home to creatures and races that up until recently only existed in fairytales as far as anyone knew. 

I wasn’t born there, but I’d lived there for most of my life. All song and story to the contrary, elves don’t actually kidnap human babies –not unless they’re an impulsive young adults like my dad with a human wife at home who wanted a baby he couldn’t give her.

Mom and Dad met a little bit after the Veil first appeared. Dad was part of a scouting party sent to Earth to explore the new alien landscape that had intruded into their reality. Mom was the Wisconsin farm girl he fell for halfway through his mission when she -thinking he was a stray dog or hitchhiker- went to chase him out of the barn he was sheltering in with a rifle. 

Unlike humans, elves could cross the Veil whenever they wanted so long as they were at a spot where it was thin enough and there was solid ground on the other side. 

Anwyn was host to multiple Veils so when the Veil leading to Earth became visible, they (unlike anyone on the other side) knew what they were dealing with.

Some spots were so dense that only a Guide could penetrate the barrier, but the majority of the Veil crossing through North America is permeable enough that no force on Earth could keep Dad out.

Elves and humans can’t reproduce and -while my mother wanted very badly to be one- she’d been willing to sacrifice that in order to be with Dad. Dad, on the other hand, wasn’t the type to sacrifice anything if he didn’t have to.

Mom wanted a baby so as far as he was concerned she was going to get a baby.

That was where I came in.

I’d been left at a safe surrender site somewhere; only a few hours old. My dad had been casing the place for weeks and, according to family legend, afterwards he presented me to my horrified mother with all the enthusiasm of a cat giving their owner a live mouse. He never did understand why taking me was such a big deal, but in his defense mom wasn’t so horrified by what he’d done that she was willing to give me back. 

That had been in the late eighties.

I was raised in Anwyn, but eventually chose to attend school on the Earth side of the veil. I was curious about Earth and wanted to engage more with my heritage. I spent some time in a human boarding school followed by college. After graduation I was offered an internship by BIR’s deputy administrator and chief financial officer, Charles -call me Chaz- Brinkerman.

While nominally Markham’s second in command, Brinkerman dealt with the Earth-related parts of BIR’s day to day affairs; boring stuff like fundraising and reporting to Congress.

It had been going well until the Jorgumandr Expedition was announced even though it seemed like half of what I did was follow Brinkerman around at parties, tutor him and his direct reports in Arlese, and take notes at meetings. He never introduced me as his date and I knew social gatherings made up a large part of how regular humans built their networks so I gritted my teeth and did my best to become a familiar face among Brinkerman’s set.

I’d never worked closely with Markham –or with much of anyone except Brinkerman. The person who oversaw my first few days in the general intern pool before I was released to the deputy administrator’s office was Shelby Cruz, a senior intern who’d been hired and re-assigned as a junior aide within my first month. After that I spent most of my time either working on my own projects or assisting Brinkerman in the field. 

Things might have stayed that way except for an email that the intern distribution list had been copied on by accident. There had been a little bit of correspondence about travel plans that had been going on seemingly forever between Amos Duvall, Markham, and the Associate Administrator and Markham’s real right hand person; Angie Devereaux.

I’d been bored and under-occupied that day, so I’d read through the email chain until I got to an embedded scan of Ylem’s original invitation. It had read, in typical Dwarven style, ‘Come if you will. A party will meet you at the Gate on Jorgumandr at Midsummer.’

At that point, no one in the Bureau aside from me had ever actually been across the Veil. Their only contact with Anwyn natives had been carefully chaperoned seminars with the Elves of Red Harbor -i.e. my family- who had more experience with humans than most and so were much harder to offend, but even those encounters had dried up. 

My dad, Duke Eran Harou of Clan Harou in Red Harbour and Western Land Warden of the Tapama continent, had been given responsibility by the Allied Clans for building up an acceptable relationship between Anwyn and Earth. It wasn’t going very well because Markham had done something to offend my mother years ago that my family refused to discuss. 

Whatever it was hadn’t been serious enough to cause an immediate rift or get Markham killed on the spot, but was bad enough that the Council of Elders who made decisions for the Allied Clans agreed that no further overtures would be made by the elves to Elliot Markham or anyone who served him until my mother received a sincere apology. 

Having met the man, I was half convinced that they were blowing it out of proportion. Mom probably would have forgotten about it, but elves have long memories and the longer Markham went without apologizing the less they wanted to deal with him. At this point I was fairly sure they were just waiting for him to die before trying again with that side of the bureau.

Brinkerman had stepped into that breach somehow, despite being Markham’s subordinate, and now my Clan had decided they would only deal with him. It was outside the scope of his role at BIR, but little things like that rarely stopped him.

I remember re-reading the whole email over and again, hoping I remembered it wrong –but no. The Jorgumandr Expedition would leave bright and early on the Summer Solstice in the US with no idea of what they were heading into.

Jorgumandr was one of the two major southern continents of Anwyn; roughly equivalent in size to Africa although much further away from the equator. The landmass corresponding to the Adirondack Gate was Tapama; home to a multitude of species and political entities, but mostly the Elven Alliance of Clans. Jorgumandr was where the dwarves lived.

Up until 2018, the dwarves had not shown much interest in their extraplanar neighbors. The Earth Veil only touched a narrow corner of Jorgumandr and that patch was not thin enough to act as a Gate unless you had help from something much bigger than an elf.

Something changed their minds, although I had no idea what. The High Prince of the Dwarven Nation, Ylem, sent a messenger first to my family’s seat at Red Harbor in Tapama and then through the Adirondack Gate. We were friendly enough with the dwarves though to trust they weren’t interested in making trouble. No one on our side knew the contents of that message or things would never have gotten so far.

“I’m officially on leave,” I continued, determined to get it all out. “…but I had to fill out an exit interview before they had me clean out my desk.”

Mom was quiet for a bit and resumed her pacing. “Well.” She said after a moment. “I suppose nature still has a way of weeding out the stupid even in a post-industrial society.”

I sat up, “Mom!” I wheezed. “He’s going to get people killed.”

“Who?” She huffed. “The expedition staff is Markham, Duvall, and Devereaux, yes? Maybe their replacements will be more tolerable. Where was Brinkerman during all this?”

“He hasn’t been around.” I reminded her. “Remember, he had to have that procedure done on his shoulder.”

“Then you’re not really fired.” Mom sighed. It sounded like relief. “You’re just getting a little vacation. There’s no way he’d let you go just on Markham’s say-so. Not even he thinks he's the one in charge there.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. Markham could fire anyone he liked. He was the Director. He’d never actually done it, to my knowledge. He always seemed harmless and sort of bemused by where he’d ended up in life on the rare occasions when we’d had anything to do with one another, but that was just an observation. We’d never actually talked. The most he’d ever done was nod in my general direction.

Still, I remembered the sneer on Amos’ face as I’d been escorted away from him towards my final encounter with Mandy. Admittedly, I’d lost my temper. It’d been a long couple of weeks before I’d spotted him carrying a box of files to the elevators from the basement archives and I'd seen one last opportunity to divert a disaster. 

I’d spent weeks trying to meet with someone -anyone- who could get my message through to the expedition team. It would have been easy if Brinkerman had been around, but I’d arranged meetings and passed messages for him before. Usually I dropped a note with Amos or the receptionist and I’d get a call when someone on his team had a minute.

Days passed before I checked again and that time the receptionist told me to my face that my business would have to wait. She didn’t come right out and say that the others were scrambling to prepare for the Jorgumandr expedition because her desk was in the middle of the lobby.

I tried a few more times after that until she made it clear that no appointment times were available nor were there going to be any in the future. 

“Look, honey.” She’d told me, expression pinched around what aspired to be a calming smile. “Whatever it is, it’s gonna have to wait until the Deputy Administrator gets back. He’ll take care of it so you just need to be patient. Okay?”

It could not wait, but I wasn’t about to air the Bureau’s dirty laundry in public and I could take a hint. She was tired of dealing with me and wasn’t interested in helping. I couldn’t afford to be seen to beg. I’m not as concerned with my dignity as the rest of my family is, but even I could only go so far.

Besides, her tone had bothered me. She made it sound like I was Brinkerman’s anxious pet rather than a normal employee and that was so far outside my experience that I didn’t know how to respond.

From there I’d moved on to phone calls. I didn’t have the direct number for any of the administrators nor could I seem to get my hands on it. I tried leaving messages on the general office line, but the phone system generated emails to let you know when your message had been deleted without being heard. Not one of my messages had been listened to.

By then, I’d discovered that I didn’t have the building access I thought I did. Brinkerman’s other direct reports were sympathetic, but didn’t have any more luck getting through to the Administrator’s office than I did. Bless them, though. They tried.  

Then, this morning, I’d spotted Amos in the lobby. He’d been dressed in a slick charcoal suit with black and white wingtip shoes and I'd known in that moment that I was looking at my last chance to avert a disaster. 

The thing to understand is that Amos Duvall is an asshole. We haven’t ever gotten along although I made the effort to try a little bit at the beginning. I don’t know his exact age, but I know his job as Markham’s aide was his first job after college. He’s driven, ambitious, and comes from a lot of money.   

We can work together sort of if I don’t ask too much of him, but whenever he sees me coming he always starts to walk faster.

For once he didn’t beat me to the elevator.

What followed was a huge mistake on my part. 

I hadn’t lived in the human world long, but I’d been there long enough to understand that there were invisible codes of behavior for different types of people broadly assigned by skin color and then refined upon by how well you could present yourself. 

I pass for white among the right company although I’ve never really put any effort into it. Given my background, I don’t know what the combination of my actual ethnicity is and can only make some vague guesses based on the town where Dad found me; predominately white, some black, and no hispanic people at all. 

Among white people, I look like a fairly light complected woman of color and sometimes it causes me a kind of trouble that I'm not good at heading off at the pass just yet 

The point is that people like me don’t get to be angry in public. We can’t raise our voices if we want to be taken seriously. I ended up doing both.

I jogged up to him. “Amos, I need a minute.”

He kept walking like I didn’t exist. That was new. Normally he would slow down enough to say something snide and I’d honestly been counting on it. All I needed was to secure his attention for one minute and I knew afterwards his sense of self-preservation would take care of the rest.

He’d never iced me out like that before. My already frayed nerves stretched and snapped.

I caught him by the arm and my voice was louder than I intended when I repeated myself only getting as far as his name. The box in his hands went flying, papers inside spilled across the floor, and he shoved me away shouting, “What’s wrong with you?”

Things happened very quickly after that. The security team doesn’t get to do much in the normal course of things, but the two officers stationed in the lobby got me by both arms and dragged me away from Amos. I was too stunned to defend myself. I hadn’t thought I’d grabbed him that hard. I’m not a large or strong person. Amos had several inches of height and at least fifteen pounds of muscle on me.

“Ma’am, you need to calm down.” One of them told me while the other asked Amos if he was all right.

“I’m fine...” Amos told him as he rubbed the spot where I’d caught his sleeve. “...but she’s been harrassing Administrator Duvall for over a week now and it’s getting out of hand.”

“Amos, you need to…” I didn’t get much further than that before he talked right over me.

“I don’t need to do anything.” He snapped, straightening his collar. He addressed the security officers. “Mandy asked to see her if something like this happened. Could you take care of it? We’re moving out soon and now I’ve got to clean this up.”

The officers did not let me get anything else out before taking me away. Mandy didn't really let me talk either except to say 'yes', 'no', and 'I understand.'

I only looked backwards by happenstance to find that Amos was not cleaning up the papers like he said he was. He was watching them hustle me away and smiling.

I blinked myself back into the present.

“There’s support staff too.” I watched my free hand clench in my lap. “Shelby Cruz and Emil Patterson.”

“Ah. I hadn’t heard they were bringing junior staff.” Mom said, suddenly much more sympathetic. “That’s a shame. Poor kids. Maybe they’ll make it. It’s still cull season in those parts. Someone is sure to find them. I’ll have your father send word. Maybe one of the hunters will hear it.”

“Maybe.” I admitted, although the likelihood of that happening was dim. I hadn’t been in Jorgumandr since I was fourteen, but I still remembered the trip there and the bitter cold that lingered in me long after we’d reached safety.

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.” Mom paused as something rustled in the background and sighed. “One moment. Your father was spying.” I heard her put her hand over the receiver. She said something and then something else. Her voice got louder and then the line was no longer muffled. “…you give that back!” Mom snarled, but Dad must have already had the phone out of her reach.

“I’m sending someone out.” He growled and I knew he wasn’t sending them over to pat my hair while I cried. I sniffed and felt oddly better. Mom would listen and give me good advice, but my dad would give me somebody’s head on a pike if I wanted it. That wasn’t often a practical solution, but sometimes it was comforting to know that option was on the table.

“Dad, the expedition is probably at the Gate by now. Ylem will be pissed if you send an assassin into his keep.”

“Not if I send a keg and an explanation in with them.” He grumbled, but I could tell from his tone that he knew I was right and he wasn’t going to fight me about it. Bloodthirsty as he could be, he was in fact a very good diplomat.

“Maybe later. Can you give the phone back to Mom? Someone left a $4000 blanket in my living room.”

“Is that a lot?” He asked and I could hear mom say, “Yes, dear. For just one thing, that’s a lot.”

“Well, good.” He had that odd note of approbation in his voice that showed up a lot when I’d started receiving gifts from this particular suitor. It was someone dad knew and liked. “I’m sending Aster to you with an escort. If you don’t have to drudge for the humans then I want you home. Your aunts will have questions for you too.”

Of course they would. My only consolation was that they wouldn’t try to have Markham killed unless they saw a clear benefit for the family coming out of it. The aunties didn’t kill over pride. They were far more mercenary. 

Assuming he survived Jorgumandr; Markham would probably wish they had killed him once they’d finished making him pay for this insult. 

“Okay, dad. Love you, see you soon.”

“And I, you.” His tone was solemn and sincere. “Here is your mother.”

“Thank you for talking him down, dear.” Mom said as she came back on. “Now what’s this about a blanket?”

“My secret admirer has left me a…” I reached for the tag again and read it out loud. “…weighted qiviut fur blanket. I don’t know what a qiviut is.”

“It’s a type of fur from a muskox.” Mom hmmmed thoughtfully. “I think this is my fault. We had dinner guests last week and I was showing someone an article on my phone about weighted blankets. We were talking about human physiology and psychology. It’s supposed to help you sleep better, reduce stress, and that sort of thing.”

“Not going to tell me who was visiting, huh?”

She laughed. “Of course not, dear. That’d be cheating.” 

The list of people who casually dined with my parents and could move substantial amounts of American currency wasn’t that long, but it wasn’t more than I already knew about my mystery suitor.

He wasn’t the first suitor I’d had, but he was the most persistent and yet so far the most considerate. I’d had a glut of them when I was a teenager starting with a disastrous encounter when I was fifteen, but the attention had died down after I went to college and started spending most of my time across the Veil. 

My current admirer had started sneaking me gifts about the time I’d started at the Bureau, but I hadn’t been able to learn anything about him except that he was very sneaky and familiar enough with the human world that I hadn’t been able to catch him; not even on camera. 

Honestly, I could have put more effort into catching him, but I’d had so much going on that I hadn’t had much energy to spare for convoluted elven courtship games. I hadn’t put the word out that I was looking for a relationship so he was doing this on his own and that meant I didn’t have to play if I didn’t want to. The burden was on him to engage my interest. So far I hadn’t had the time.  

“Why don’t you change out of your work clothes if you haven’t and make something to eat.” Mom advised me, sounding a bit more sober. “Your escort won’t be there for a while. Take an hour for yourself.”

‘Lick your wounds’ is what she really meant.

“All right.” I dragged myself off the sofa and trudged towards my room. I stopped almost as soon as I entered. “Oh… my.” Words failed me.

“Dear?” Concern sharpened my mother’s tone.

I took a picture and sent it rather than try to explain the dress laid across the foot of my bed. 

“Oh…my.” My mother squeaked.

The dress was a deep red brocade figured with abstract botanical designs on the bodice and a scene of the hunt above the hem on the skirt. It was lined in soft golden fur with bronze tips and subtle rosettes. A modest chapel-length train dripped over the edge of my bed and had been arranged on the floor so I could see the embroidered scene of a clever-faced fox lounging on a stone above a milling pack of oblivious hounds.

“Am I the fox?” I wondered aloud.

“I doubt he’s one of the hounds, darling.” Mother countered and I bit my tongue to keep from echoing ‘he?’ at her. A pronoun was more than I’d ever gotten out of her. 

I’d assumed my suitor was a boy. Elves verified their potential sweetheart's orientation before starting courtship and I'm straight ergo my suitor was likely  male, but I hadn’t known for sure. I wasn’t about to let mom know she’d slipped up though.

I gently lifted the train and turned it so I could see more of the back of the dress. Sure enough the scene continued up the skirt. The embroidery thinned out to meld seamlessly into the brocade’s pattern of vines, flowers, and… a tail? 

Frowning, I turned the dress all the way over and found a tree cat lounging on a bough between the shoulders. It wasn’t embroidered, but instead the picture had been woven into the brocade itself. Its soft gaze was directed down at the fox. It didn’t look threatening just fond --and patient. 

Hah. Subtle.

I took another picture and my mother barked a laugh.

A small smile clung stubbornly to my mouth as I went to my closet to see if I had a spare garment bag. One day I’d catch my mystery suitor and while I might not marry him I’d thank him for this little bit of brightness in an otherwise bleak day. 

An odd feeling engulfed me as I sorted through the hangers in my closet. The air closed in and light bloomed all around until everything in my apartment had been drowned out by it. 

At first I thought I was sick or maybe fainting. I was alone in my room, but then there came a terrible anger that did not belong to me. It crashed through me with physical force, breaking me into hundreds of little pieces before forcing me back into one. Somewhere far away I could hear a familiar voice rising in panic, but I couldn’t make sense of her words. 

Then, just as quickly, the pain stopped. The light held me tight in its grasp, but all that rage had abated. 

Images rolled through me; a group of humans on a platform all wearing smart business clothes and carrying luggage with them, a white wasteland of snowy rock, and a looming sense of urgency.

My mind cleared enough that I finally recognized the massive presence for what it was. 

Somehow, some way, I’d pissed off a Guide. 

Guides were the vast, multidimensional beings that lived along the borders of the Veil. The spots where they made themselves known were called the Gates. They didn’t bother themselves with the thinner spots where smaller beings with enough magic could cross by themselves. 

No one really knew why Guides presided over the Gates. The human public had only been aware of them since 2015 and in the sixty years that the US Government had been studying the Veil, they hadn’t learned more about the Guides than they’d known at the beginning. The elves knew more, but so far no one on Earth had been able to offer them enough to share.

Guides didn’t really interact with mortal beings at all beyond ferrying them across the Veil. At least there was no reliable record of one doing so. There were fables in Anwyn of one intervening in a murder that happened nearby, but the details were so inconsistant that no one knew if there was anything true about those stories. If I survived the next hour that might change. 

They would help anyone cross no matter who asked or how dangerous it was on the other side. Not every Gate led to somewhere people could survive. 

I knew they could move around, but generally didn’t unless something motivated them to do so.

You couldn’t dissect one or force it to pay attention to you except through the ritual that asked them to part the Veil on your behalf. They didn’t answer questions. They didn’t talk.

As far I knew there was only one Guide in North America; the one that lived in the Adirondack Gate.

Acknowledgement tolled through me like a bell and I realized they did talk; it was just beyond anything a squishy mortal creature like me could withstand. Its words were pictures and feelings all projected straight into my brain at a frequency that felt like it was shaking me apart at the atomic level.

The Guide’s ‘voice’ was softer than it had been before when it kicked my psychic door down, but I still felt like the inside of a whirlpool. If I’d been able to move I would have curled up into a sobbing knot. As it was, I could feel hot tears spilling down my face. 

There came a sense of motion. I could feel it all the way in my bones. I’d felt something like it before, but I couldn’t seem to remember where.

I closed my eyes and opened them elsewhere. 

Chapter Two

I was laying on the ground outside. The air smelled like summer, dust, and cats. Overhead the sky was clear and vibrant blue. It had been raining when I’d gotten back to my apartment. How had it changed so fast?

I could hear voices and…

Hands closed on my shoulders.

“Don’t crowd her!” Someone snapped and the hands lifted me up halfway into sitting. I blinked hard, trying to force my eyes to focus on the bleary shapes around me. They were speaking Arlese in sharp, alarmed tones. Was I –was I home?

Had the Guide sent me home?

I was surrounded by a group of guards wearing my clan crest emblazoned over their left shoulder guard. They were mostly elves, women I recognized from my year group even, but two of them were Marshlanders standing as close as their spikes and bulk would allow as they hissed out their distress. Past them I could see the red-streaked granite that characterized the walls of the Clan Seat at Red Harbor.

Stars, I was home. 

“Aster?” I blinked owlishly at the person holding me up; a tall, powerfully built elf woman with tawny brown skin, a smooth cap of warm black hair tied back in a blue headband, and eyes like pale citrine. She looked like Aster, but she had a Captain’s stripe down the right side of her face. The stain looked fresh. Why was it fresh? Promotions in the Guard didn’t happen until the year end. “How’d I get here?”

“She’s talking.” Someone out of sight said. Going by their hissed sibilants, it must have been a Marshlander. I was too addled to recognize who beyond that. “Speech is good. Make her move her eyes and limbs.”

“I can hear you just fine.” I tried to obey, but my body was sluggish. Moving my arms was all right, but my legs didn’t respond the right way. “There was a Guide…” I squeezed my eyes shut as a headache stabbed me in the temples. “Oh, I hurt.”

That put the fox among the hens as the guards erupted into noise, all talking over each other. 

“A Guide?” “She’s got the crossing sickness.” “She can’t possibly. Humans don’t get it.”

Aster didn’t engage. She bounced me in her lap once to get a proper grip on me and, to my dismay, lifted me up. 

It wasn’t the first time Aster had picked me up and carried me around. She’d been in the one of year groups ahead of me and part of her communal service period to the clan as a girl had been minding the semi-feral packs of children that ran around the Keep and town. The children my age had three great fears in life; the Duke, the Shaman, and Aster. 

This time at least I wasn’t thrown over her shoulder or tucked under one arm like an unhappy football.

“I can walk.” I complained.

“Poppet.” Aster’s voice was strained as she charged through the fairy-lit halls of the Keep. “You’re bleeding from your eyes and ears and you aren’t wearing any shoes.”

Alarmed, I touched my cheek to feel little rivulets of cool tacky fluid streaked down my face. I pulled my fingers away and stared at the drying blood clinging to the tips. 

Oh.

I hadn’t been crying. 

Aster hauled me up a flight of stairs and into the magi’s tower. A study session must have just let out because the first level was crowded with apprentices. I stayed quiet as wide-eyed young elves in novitiate vests threw themselves out of Aster’s way. 

The room Aster brought me to was a smallish, sunlit study where a single mage – a willowy and elegant lady I didn’t recognize who wore her pale gray hair in a floor-length plait tucked over her shoulder- sat by the window puzzling through a thick old book. Her gaze snapped up as Aster clomped in and she sprang up out of her seat when she saw me.

“Larkspur, we need you.” Aster wheezed. “There was a Guide.”

“I see that.” Larkspur pointed at her worktable. “Lay her there.”

“I feel fine.” I protested, but Aster never had taken direction from me. I don’t know why I thought she’d start now. 

“You might be fine.” Larkspur laid her cold hands against my face. “You’re not bleeding anymore. It’s very possible that the Guide healed you. They don’t often hurt people for no reason.”

“It was angry with me.” Her hands felt very good and I realized I was overheated. “Then it looked in my head and… wasn’t? I don’t remember it all.”

“No, you wouldn’t be sane if you did. They can’t talk like we do. They’re too big and too much.” Larkspur agreed. She let me go and sighed in relief. “It’s all right. You look worse than you are. Do you remember what it wanted?”

I blinked hard, trying to reassemble my fragmented memories. “It’s the Guide at the Gate where the Jorgumandr expedition crossed over.” It was hard to tell my memories of the exchange from the emotions that the Guide had left behind. “They’re going to die and it –it thought I had something to do with it?” I looked up at Larkspur.

Aster made an angry noise, but it died at a look from Larkspur.

She pursed her lips. “Maybe. You said it was angry at first and then it wasn’t?”

“It didn’t really speak using words. I just… felt what it felt.”

“Hmm. Guides read the minds of everyone they transport. You don’t remember it because it takes those memories away before leaving. As you’ve learned, psychic contact with a Guide is distressing at best. They’re not omniscient though. All it would have known before it touched your mind was what the other humans knew about you since you’ve likely never travelled by Guide before. That must have been what happened.” Larkspur tapped her fingers gently against the curve of my jaw. It felt nice. “…and it brought you here?”

“It dropped her right into my arms.” Aster interjected. 

“It wouldn’t do that for no reason.” Larkspur released me. “If it had absolved her of guilt then it would have left her where she was with no memory of the encounter. It still wants something. They have agendas sometimes. There’s something it wants from the humans otherwise it wouldn’t be so furious about the possibility of them dying. It must have to do with the dwarves.” She turned to the open door and I realized my mom was standing there. “Lady Catherine?”

My mother was a slight woman, but you almost never realized it unless you were watching her sleep. Her presence could fill a room. To begin with, she was completely white –not Caucasian white although she had been once, but the white of alabaster; her hair, skin, irises were all paper white save for the pinprick blacks of her pupils. If you cut her, she bled clear.

Aster and Larkspur fell back as she came to my side. It wasn’t fear, exactly, but cautious respect and some discomfort. It was almost impossible to relax in my mother’s presence unless you loved her as well as my father or I did. 

“Are you all right?” She asked me, low and urgent.

“Yes.” I was feeling more myself already.

Mom turned a look on Larkspur. “Did I overhear you correctly? A Guide did this?”

“And undid it.” Larkspur folded her hands and kept her gaze glued to the floor. As a mage, my mother’s presence was triply uncomfortable for her. “If I may speculate? It wants something. There may yet be a chance of saving the humans and if a Guide is concerned with them then it may be in our best interests to help it. There are old stories of Guides closing their gates to those who have defied them.”

Silence reigned for an impossibly long heartbeat before Aster turned and bolted out the door. Mom snorted and tucked her hands into her sleeves, but not fast enough for anyone to miss the way they were shaking. 

Elves didn’t need help to access Earth, but the Gates did more than move between different material planes. You could also travel between Gates on the same plane, which was something we had not shared with the humans yet. It required different rituals and the residents near a Gate wouldn’t share theirs easily. Still, trade in Anwyn was heavily reliant on the Gates. Our merchants didn’t have cars or planes or trains. They travelled in caravans pulled by horses or oxen and overland travel was dangerous. Unlike Earth, when our maps said ‘here be dragons’ it wasn’t an exaggeration. Losing access to a Gate could cripple the entire area.

I’d never heard of Guide refusing to transport someone, but I’d never heard of one asking for anything before either. 

“Mom…” My voice died as I tried and failed to put together a plea. I didn’t even know what it was I was trying to ask for.

“Markham can mummify in the mountains for all I care.” Mom snapped, but her eyes softened. “You said there was junior staff?”

“Shelby and Emil.” I confirmed. Using their names was manipulative, but I was willing to use any tool at hand to sway her.

Neither of them were friends of mine, but they’d never been cruel to me. Shelby had been patient while I was being trained and Emil would always stop to help carry boxes even though he would never have gotten anything out of it. Neither of them deserved to die because the space cadet they worked for was a dick to my mom once. “They were in the intern cadre last year.”

“Just kids.” Mom shook herself and looked at Larkspur, who bowed deeper. “Find Coryfae and explain the situation. Tell her to find us an excuse to enter the dwarrowlands.”

“It will be done.” Larkspur rose, graceful as a lily. Her green eyes faded into blank whiteness. Space folded in on her and then she was gone. 

Mom pointed at me. “You.” Her voice brooked no argument. “Stay here. Help is coming.”

“What?” I started to ask, but then I realized that the hem of my mother’s skirt ended a foot from the ground. I’d been talking to a sending the entire time and hadn’t realized. I closed my eyes and cursed at myself. I was in worse shape than I’d thought. Of course, my mother wouldn’t have been able to physically reach me within minutes of my arrival. Her offices were on the other side of the keep. That was a twenty minute run away.

“Yes mother.” I agreed. I was feeling a lot more obedient now that I knew that there’d be nobody around to catch me if I fell trying to get off the desk. My legs still felt disconnected from my body and I wasn’t all that sure of my balance. 

Help arrived a handful of minutes later in the red-cheeked and winded form of a beautifully gowned young girl with a red apprentice band pinned to her sleeve. I didn’t know her. She had the soft chestnut colored hair and green eyes typical of the south –possibly one of the coastal families? Her skin was a deeper shade of gold than the northern elves so maybe.

She drew herself and curtsied as well as one could when you only had a second to spare for it.

“Please don’t try to get down by yourself.” She gasped as I started to swing my legs over the edge of the desk. 

“It’s all right.” I promised her. “It’s better than it looks.”

“It would almost have to. Let me get under your arm before you try to put your feet down.”

Between the two of us I got down without much incident. I was weaker than I thought and was forced to lean heavily on my rescuer as she guided me into the hall.

“I’m sorry. I don’t think I know your name.”

“It’s Kayt, my lady. I came from Telluri to Red Harbor for my interview with the shamans.” She seemed to know where we were going, so I let her guide us. “I was offered a place here to do my clan service and apprenticeship under the guidance of Ornatrix Efa.”

“Efa has her mastery?” I couldn’t help my smile. I don’t know why I was surprised. Efa was part of my year group and had always been an overachiever. I’d been in her care for three years during my own term of public service and I’d never been better dressed.

Aster was a guard captain and Efa had an apprentice already. I wondered what my other year mates had achieved while I’d been gone. 

“Yes, but only recently.” Kayt admitted. “I’m her first apprentice.”

Kayt took us out of the Magi’s tower and into utter chaos. The courtyard was alive with rushing bodies. I could hear Aster’s raised voice somewhere out of sight, but Kayt drew me closer to the wall and out of the way. 

“This way, my lady. Let’s get you cleaned up first.”

I was in no shape to linger, but I tried to take in as much of the chaos in the courtyard as I could. Someone had gotten out three of the big cat sleighs and I could hear the unhappy grizzling of a queen cat who’d been forced out of her cool den and into the summer sun.

The winter bath hall was deserted during this time of the year and while the water was kept clean no one bothered with the boiler unless it had been raining. During the cold months there were never less than twenty of my kinsfolk in there soaking out the chill, but today I bathed in solitary and lukewarm splendor. It was as close to private as we could get. The summer baths were open air and if any of my aunties or uncles saw blood on me then we’d lose hours. If Larkspur was right then we didn’t have even seconds to spare.

Kayt stripped me down to my shirt before she attacked with a damp towel. I was a sullen patient until I saw the amount of dried blood coming away from my face then I was as helpful as I could make myself. I couldn’t face my father looking like that. It was bad enough that mom had seen.

It turned out that the blood had gotten everywhere including my hair and that was the cruellest blow. My hair was in sengalese twists and while I loved the style, they went frizzy on me if I so much as looked at water. Frizzy hair was better than the alternative though, so we rinsed them out and hoped for the best. We didn’t have time for anything else.

I was scrubbing at my arms and Kayt was disposing of the now rust-colored cloths we’d already gone through when dad found me.

If Aster towered over me by a head then Duke Harou, my father, had both head and shoulders on me. He’d seemed like a giant when I was a child, albeit a friendly one who let me ride on his shoulders and liked to fuss.

I expected him to start shouting. He didn’t. His silence was excruciating as he reached forward to cup my face. “Roll your eyes for me, sweetheart.” He put me through the same tests Aster had. Then he made me move a dagger from one hand to another behind my back without cutting myself, walk a straight line with my eyes closed, and then recite a verse from memory before the tension eased from his shoulders. 

“I’m all right, dad.” I promised him. Behind his back, Kayt slunk in from the open door, grabbed my bloodstained jacket, hid it behind her skirts, and crept out walking backwards.  

“For the moment.” He scowled. “Are you well enough for a jump?”

“I’ll have to be.” 

He nodded and I could tell that my concerned father had taken a backseat to my political leader. “Then we have decisions to make.” He put his arm around me and space crumpled around us. When I opened my eyes I was in my mother’s solar. 

The room was abandoned, but only recently. I could see discarded ledgers, instruments, and handiwork littering the floor near a ring of cushions and rugs. Mom had been hosting the aunties when I’d called. Had she been on the line when the Guide struck?

I hoped not.

Mom’s solar sat outside the Family apartment; i.e. the rooms my parents shared with all the aunties and uncles who made up their household. I hadn’t lived there since I was twelve. Children belonged to the Clan as a whole and were moved to the children’s dormitories when they were old enough to start career training in preparation of one day grouping up into their own households, but some part of me always thought of it as ‘home’ whenever I had a reason to visit.

Straight away, we almost tripped over a trunk left just inside the sitting room door. There were others stacked on their side of it. By the look of it, someone had dragged my mother’s old winter wardrobe out of storage.

Kayt had beaten us to the apartment and was deep in conversation with a very familiar figure. Efa looked up as we entered and pointed at me then at a cushion by the wall, out of the way. She’d grown out her hair since I’d seen her last and her figure had filled out. Like Kayt, she was elegantly and simply dressed. “Sit. Kayt will bring you something to eat. Try and choke it down. Food’s the only thing that helps crossing sickness.”

Efa had trained me well when we were girls. I was on the cushion before it occurred to me that I didn’t have to let her boss me around anymore, but by then it was too late. 

“You’ll be in good care here, I see.” Dad snorted and kissed my forehead. “I need to be in the Courtyard. You’ll be leaving within the hour. Efa and her apprentice will act as your ladies of the chamber. Be good for them.”

Kayt gave me crackers dressed in coarse salt and a thin sugary glaze. My stomach did not want food, so I took my time with them. No one consulted me as Efa raided my mother’s chests, but I hadn’t been home for more than a few holidays since I’d left for college. My own wardrobe wouldn’t be good enough for a state visit and I didn’t know the current styles anymore.

“This one for the journey.” Efa announced to the room in general as she flicked the creases out of a long, plush indigo robe lined in white rabbit fur. She looked at Kayt. “Layer it over the light blue over-gown with two of the silk wraps below. It only needs to look good on the top layer. The rest must be warm and comfortable.”

Kayt looked at me and then asked Efa, “Hair?”

“We don’t have time for hair.” Efa gestured and a broad brimmed blue hat trimmed in white feathers and a pale blue merino scarf sailed out of the closet to land on the stack of clothing Efa had amassed in the center of the room. “Use these. Remember, she won’t be able…”

“...to regulate her own temperature.” Kayt knelt by my side and gave me more crackers. “We’ll make sure you’re comfortable, my lady.”

I waited until Kayt had her back turned to give Efa a thumbs up, which she accepted with a proud nod. She had a good apprentice.

Clan children all interviewed with the elders and shamans when they were old enough to leave their parents’ household in order to determine their future careers and what training they would need. 

I was no exception and Shaman Noe apologized to me when she chose me as a future Clan Speaker; a deeply unpopular job among Elves since it meant constant travel far away from home. Speakers had to establish their own mobile households and as a result tended to live lonely, unsettled lives.

I’d chosen to look at it as an opportunity. After all, where else would I be speaking for the Clan other than our nearest border and my original homeworld?

Efa had been given control of my wardrobe and toilette shortly afterwards as part of her own career training, not because I particularly needed to be presentable. Trainee diplomats only wore black while working and kept their hair back in a plain tail, but my father decided earlier was better when it came to unlearning my bad habits --like choosing my own wardrobe. 

She was kind enough about incorporating my own preferences into her plans. I’m not the easiest person to style even for other humans. Like many mixed girls my hair has multiple, contrary textures. I do best in a protective style, but elves don’t have curly hair beyond a slight wave so she’d faced an uphill battle on that front with only my mother -a blonde, white lady from an equally white and very rural farming community- for help.

Kayt didn’t shy away from the task at hand. She layered the wrap-dresses over the remains of my once-nice pant suit. It was close enough to traditional elven foundation garments to make no difference in the way the outer gowns lay. Then she coiled my sad and damp braids into something like a gibson tuck fixed with long gold pins and covered it all with a warm shawl so I wouldn’t freeze. 

I was hot already, but I knew I’d appreciate the heavier clothes as soon as we left.

If there was no time for hair then there was no time for cosmetics, but that didn’t stop Kayt from attacking what little of my smeared mascara that had survived the bathhouse with an oiled cloth. I didn’t want to face my former coworkers with any evidence that I’d been crying on my face so I submitted without complaint.

Guards appeared regularly to take away packed cases as Efa filled them. A lady of the chamber had complete control of a household’s wardrobe and public appearance so I was reassured that those trunks were not just mine otherwise that was a lot of luggage for what should be a very short trip.

I still needed Kayt’s support when it was time to go back to the courtyard. Aster had assembled a team of four guards including herself -all Elves, the Marshlanders would suffer in Jorgumandr without careful planning that we didn’t have time for- and three big cat sleighs. The cats themselves were unhappy in the summer heat, but too well-controlled by the queen cat to do more than moan about it a little. 

To my surprise Larkspur was also among my assembled staff, but it made sense when I thought about it. Magi were almost all gray. Magic bleached the melanin out of their hair and the stronger they were the faster it went. Larkspur was Aster’s age and already nearly white-haired. It stood to reason that she was very strong.

It wasn’t just cold on Jorgumandr. It was also dangerous. We’d make a small party and had to move quickly. We needed a strong mage with us.

My father had been inspecting the sleighs and turned as Efa and Kayt escorted me out into the sun. He walked over and scooped me into a hug.

“Coryfae got a message out through the relay towers.” He squeezed my shoulders. “The dwarves acknowledged. The gates will be open when you arrive. Let the cats take the lead when you reach Jorgumandr. They’re trained for rescue. You know the Seek command. They’ll handle the rest. This…” there he handed me a sealed document case, “...is our excuse for getting you into Ravnvaldr. Review it once you’re underway. You’ll be meeting with Ylem shortly after you arrive. We’ve packed a few weeks of supplies to help get you all through dwarf food. Try and leave as soon as our business is settled. Ylem can get his guests home on his own, but…” He looked pained as he often did when his instincts as a parent were at odds with his needs as a political leader. “... if you spot any good opportunities then write home. Larkspur will be able to send messages for you. We’ll decide what to do from there.”

“Might as well make the trip worthwhile.” I tried to smile.

“I’m more curious to find out why the dwarves and Guides are suddenly interested in humans. They couldn’t be bothered before now.” He took a breath, still frowning. “I don’t like sending you out like this.”

“I know, dad. I’ll be careful.” I returned his hug and didn’t ask where mom was. The sleigh cats were already on edge being out in the hot. If she put in an appearance then they’d lose it and take the sleighs with them. We didn’t have time to chase them down.

“Your mother sends her love.” Dad whispered into my ear. “Be good for Efa and Aster. Be swift, be vigilant, and come home soon.”

He handed me up into the front sleigh accompanied by Aster and Larkspur. It had been ages since I’d driven cats, but my hands remembered better than I did. One might have wondered why I was driving, considering I had to be supported into the courtyard, but this was mostly symbolic so that the onlookers wouldn’t realize anything was wrong and snitch on us to my aunties and uncles. They already knew I’d been offended by Markham’s people. If they knew that I’d gotten hurt over it then at least one of them would chase us down and while they’d see reason eventually, the key word there was eventually.

The queen cat was hitched in the lead with four cats in traces behind her. She was one of the older cats in the stable and knew very well that if we were going anywhere then it was East towards the nearest Gate. She ran on the ground for a bit and then with only the slightest urging from me leapt up into the sky pulling the sleigh behind her. 

We sailed over the green treetops and Red Harbor became smaller and smaller until I could no longer look back enough to see it behind us. 

I’d never come home only to leave so soon. 

“I’m ready to skip us, my lady.” Larkspur spoke up behind me.

“All right.” I called out a warning to the cats and white light eclipsed my vision. When it cleared we were somewhere else. The trees were still green and I recognized the terrain. Larkspur had skipped us about twenty miles east. We travelled a few minutes before I felt confident the cats were ready to skip again.

Larkspur skipped the sleighs ahead every few minutes. I kept expecting her to stop for a rest, but she showed no signs of slowing down unless the cats complained. She sat back in the bench next to me looking ahead with half-lidded eyes as she calculated the next skip. She’d done fourteen jumps and near as I could tell she hadn’t even started to sweat.

I wondered where she’d come from. I couldn’t imagine any Clan letting such a talented caster just leave. She also knew more about Guides than anyone I’d ever met. Then again, if she’d wanted to leave then who would have been able to stop her?

“We’re approaching the Gate, my lady.” Larkspur said. “I can feel the presence of a Guide.”

I nodded. I could see the presence of a guide. Larkspur had skipped us the entire way in less than twenty hops, which I hadn’t known was possible.

I was going to have to make it a point to stay on her good side.

The Gate we were aiming for occupied a perfectly round clearing not too far ahead of us nestled in the surrounding old growth forest. A Guide was coiled up inside the clearing like a winged snake the size of a fortress, glowing bright enough to be seen for miles. Usually they wouldn’t appear until someone had completed the ritual to summon them.

“Looks like you were right. It is waiting for us. Slowing down.” I called out the command for descent. The queen cat grumbled in annoyance, but started to angle herself in a gentle downwards trajectory. The trees rose up until we were skimming just above the highest tops. I guided the cats towards the Gate clearing.

The guide lifted its diamond shaped head to watch us land. I brought us down just behind it and directed the cats to circle around so that we came to a stop at its base. It lowered its head down to meet me, but did not try to touch my mind again.

I breathed out my relief. “Thank you. We’ll go now.” I replied and closed my eyes as it looped around us.

When I opened them we were on the border of a snowy forest. I could see the tracks of five unseasoned travelers heading toward the tree line. I’d sort of hoped they’d be waiting at the Gate, but I realized right away it was too exposed there. After dropping someone off, the Guides wouldn’t always respond to that same group for a while. The Adirondack Guide, for some reason, must have wanted them to make it to Ravnvaldr very badly to leave them there despite its distress. Once they’d realized they couldn’t just turn around and go home the expedition would have immediately left to seek shelter. Our sleds were insulated a bit with magic, but the wind still felt like razors on my exposed skin.

The lead cat hardly needed prompting and took us in the direction of our quarry. Dad had said she had rescue training and it showed.

“No distance skipping for the time being, please.” I told Larkspur, who nodded. “Save yourself for when we need to make least time to Ravnvaldr.”

“By your command, my lady.” Larkspur receded into the protective cocoon of her furs. 

The lead cat was a better tracker than I could hope to be. The snow thinned once we got under the trees. The trees in Jorgumandr had evolved to keep their broad shield-sized leaves year round and prevented the forest floor from being smothered under compacted snow. I lost the trail twice over bare earth and she picked it back up at once. Even so, we almost went past the crude bivouac that the expedition team had erected by stretching several coats across the gap between two tall boulders. The trees overhead had dumped some snow on them, so it was easy to mistake their shelter for one more snowy lump in a grotto full of them.

Angie must have heard the cat bells because she came bursting out of the shelter. Her beautiful burgundy suit dress was so damp it looked black. The cats shied, but avoided her. Larkspur cast under her breath and the air closed in on us like thick down pillows, devouring our inertia. 

“WAIT!” She shouted, waving her arms and teetering on the least suitable shoes for walking in snow possible. Markham emerged not too far behind her. He looked… bad. 

I bit my lip. I’d known Elliot Markham wasn’t a young man, but he could usually pass for a vigorous if distractible forty-something. In the cold and the wet, he looked a lot closer to his real age. 

We didn’t quite stop on a dime. I had to pull the cats around to keep from leaving the people we came to rescue behind us. Angie staggered up to the driver’s bench and caught himself on the edge. 

“Thank you for stopping.” She wheezed. “I have five people with me. We’re going to freeze to death. Please, we’re expected at the Keep and I don’t think we’ll make it there alive on foot.”

She couldn’t see me, I realized. Between my ridiculous plumed hat, goggles, scarves, and furs the only visible part of me was my gloved hands. I tilted my hat back and pulled down my goggles to rest around my neck.

“I’m aware.” I told her and she startled backwards, recognizing my voice. I looked at Larkspur. “Alert the others.”

She nodded and stood, shedding her furs, and hopped out of the sleigh. The unrelieved red of her robes made her look like poinsettia against the snow or a splash of blood. The top crust of the snow remained solid under her feet.

“Neumann?” She blinked hard. I was surprised she knew my name. Her attention seemed split between me and watching Larkspur do a passable impression of Orlando Bloom as Legolas. “What are you…?”

One of my guards, Odele, appeared at Angie’s elbow. “This way.” Her tone brooked no opposition and Angie was led away to the middle sleigh.

Larkspur returned, escorting Markham wrapped up in a blanket with Aster and Amos following not far behind. “They’re mostly all right, my lady. They found shelter at once and shared body heat. Someone knew a little of what to do.” She reported to me. “This one seems the most affected. He should ride with us and I’ll tend to him. Captain Aster will take over from me in the front.”

I looked at Aster. All elves could skip the same way all humans could sing. That is to say; it was easier for some than others and if you weren’t trained for it then trying certain advanced techniques could cause you permanent damage. “Can you manage without overextending yourself?” In terms of cost versus benefit, it might make more sense to have Aster look after Markham if Larkspur could get us to the Keep sooner.

“Aye, my lady.” Aster smirked. “Larkspur took the troll’s share of work getting us here. I can skip us enough times to make it to Ravnvaldr in good time. She’s heated the other sleighs and the chamber ladies can get our passengers dried out enough that we can afford to take our time.”

I looked over my shoulder at Markham and my unease intensified. He looked half dead. Everyone else on the team was young and could bounce back faster. Being dropped into magical Siberia right after a crossover hadn’t done him any favors. He hadn’t even noticed me yet. It was such a stark change from the person I was used to. I still didn’t like him much nor did I have cause to, but no one deserved that. 

I caught Larkspur’s eye. “Do whatever you need to.” I told her and she nodded gravely.

Amos caught sight of my face right then and stopped dead in the snow, eyes wide, and jaw slack. It was the most gratifying moment I could possibly imagine except for the fact that he’d be riding in my sleigh. I caught Aster’s eye and nodded at him. She chuffed a laugh, leaned out of the sleigh to scruff him by the back of the jacket, and lifted him in with one hand. She looked at me and leaned in.

“Let me take the reins for now. I can drive and skip at the same time. They’ll have questions and I’d prefer if you weren’t guiding the cats once they’re feeling well enough to talk.” She said.

I looked back to the other sleighs and counted heads. Someone had disassembled the shelter and everyone was inside a sleigh, more or less seated. I looked back and nodded.

Amos startled back as I stood and stepped over the divider.

“Move out!” Aster called and got responses from the other drivers. “We’ll be going overland until the cats have warmed up some.”

Borderline hypothermia and shock kept my new passengers quiet for a while, but Larkspur was a little too good at her work. Healing was its own branch of magic, but all magic-workers knew at least a little. My mage seemed to know more than most. She cast quietly, confidently, and without pause. The air in the sled took on the feel and scent of dry summer. I could feel the tingle of healing magic along the back of my neck. 

“Thank you. I feel much better now.” Markham said. He peered around with sluggish interest and settled his attention on me. I could almost see him categorize me as the most decorated person in sight, therefore the one in charge. Mother would be insufferable when she found out. “I apologize for my manners, madam. My name is Elliot Markham. I’m on a mission of friendship to the Keep at Ravnvaldr, but our hosts didn’t arrive to meet us. Thank you for your timely rescue.”

I’d never actually spoken much to Markham except for some forced small talk at the office Christmas party. Like this he sounded intelligent, patient, and personable. For a moment I could see why most everyone else at the Bureau liked him. 

It was so at odds with the troubles and tensions between BIR and my clan that I wondered if someone had swapped him out for a body double.

Amos made a thin noise of distress and ducked his gaze when Markham glanced at him.

“You’re welcome.” I took off my plumed hat and settled it in my lap. “Although, I wish it hadn’t been necessary.”

Markham blinked at me looking for all the world like a startled, wet owl. “Miss Neumann?” He looked back and forth between Amos and me. “What…” His expression darkened. “What is going on here? I left explicit instructions…”

Huh. 

I wondered what those instructions had been. Unfortunately he did not elaborate and Amos just shook his head, still stunned himself.

“Fortunately for you and everyone working for you, I have ethical reservations about letting people die out of spite.” I replied. “You’ve probably figured it out by now, but Jorgumandr is in the southern hemisphere of Anwyn. Midsummer in North America is the dead of winter here. Snowfall in midwinter can average about three feet in an hour during a storm. When the sun sets everything freezes hard. The only thing that survives out here are the monsters. If we hadn’t come then you would have been dead before morning.”

An ominous stillness settled over Elliot Markham. I couldn’t tell if it was rage, embarrassment, or a seething combination of both. He looked like he could have been a very detailed stone statue.

“I see.” He said at length. “Then I have to thank you once more.”

I suppressed a wince. We weren’t out of the woods yet and these woods were full of hungry predators; bears, wargs, trolls, maybe even giants. “Don’t thank me until we’re in the air or, better still, once we’ve arrived.” I tucked my hands into my puff to keep them from shaking. “We won’t be safe until we’re out of the trees.”

When I looked away I noticed Larkspur watching me from under her lashes. Her look was evaluating more than approving or disapproving. I found a wan smile for her from some hidden reserve and pulled my goggles back up so I wouldn’t have to spend so much time guarding my expression.

It would be a long way to Ravnvaldr no matter how fast Aster could get us there.

“Wait…” Amos looked back and forth between Markham and I. “What do you mean, ‘in the air’?”

As if she’d been waiting that cue, Aster called out ‘HUP!’  and the queen cat made her first jump up from the ground into the sky. I could hear delighted gasps and whoops from the other sleighs. Someone, and I was pretty sure it was Angie, had her hands up in the air like she was on a rollercoaster. 

Aster jumped us once to gain some altitude and the forest spread out below us like a frosty green blanket. In the distance I could see the sickle-shaped range of the Elders jutting up from the ground like exposed teeth. Our destination would be a stony ravine in the foothills there.

Now that I wasn’t driving, I had time to review my orders. I wasn’t worried about the other humans getting into my business. Dad conducted all official clan affairs in Arlese, which no one in BIR save myself was totally fluent in. Brinkerman was working on it, which was why my desk was in his office. It gave him the opportunity to practice regularly and build his vocabulary. He wasn’t conversational yet, but he was getting there. I conducted biweekly lessons for everyone else, but only Brinkerman’s direct reports had ever shown up; a decision I found less bewildering now that I’d realized the bizarre lengths Markham’s office was willing to go to in order to avoid contact with me for some reason.

Humans had a certain quality of silence when they expected someone else to start talking, but I ignored Markham and Amos while I cracked the seal on my document case and started to read the letters inside. Dad, bless him, had tacked them down to the interior of the case so I wasn’t in danger of losing them to the wind. 

My orders were simple enough. It really was more of an excuse than a mission, but it had been a year since I’d had anything exciting to do that even a minor errand looked attractive. 

Aster made an annoyed noise as I was sealing up the case. “There’s activity ahead, my lady. It’s a bit to the west. Be ready to hold on. I’ll be jumping us soon.”

I looked and saw an unhappy surge of black bodies bursting out of the tree cover; birds, lots of birds. A minute or so later the trees themselves surged up and broke apart on a furry back that continued to rise until an almost human head and shoulders crested above the snowy canopy.

“What… is that?” Amos croaked.

“Just a troll.” I sighed, relieved to see the beast’s bulbous nose and dense fur mantle. “It’ll lay back down. We’re too far away for it to bother with. It won’t bother wasting effort right now.”

That might not be that case in a few months, but at midwinter the trolls all still had plentiful fat reserves left from autumn. They were indiscriminate diners. Plants, animals, each other; they’d eat it all. That meant they didn’t get as desperate during the cold season and wouldn’t be a problem until closer to the spring thaw and the warmer months.  

“Be glad it’s not a giant.” Aster called back over her shoulder. “They’re smart enough to lay in a supply of boulders near their dens and burn off their summer fat faster. They’ll get aggressive earlier in the season.”

The troll, meanwhile, watched us fly away with eyes like glittering black marbles. You could almost see the wheels turning in its head as it tried to decide whether we were tempting enough to be worth expending valuable calories on before it sighed and sank back down under the tree cover to go back to sleep. 

The two humans stared at the rift in the canopy left by the beast’s passing until Aster skipped us away. 

On the bright side, neither of them tried to make conversation or demand any answers from me until the sleighs began the final descent into the Ravnvaldr rift.

Chapter Three

Ravnvaldr Gate was an enormous brass hexagon set into the side of the crescent-shaped canyon that shared its name. We were in luck. There was a small party of dwarves outside waiting for us. If we hadn’t been lucky or prepared then it would have meant a long cold wait while someone inside got around the checking the peephole. Ravnvaldr gate wasn’t always manned during the coldest season.

Anwyn dwarves didn’t have a lot in common with the High Fantasy ideal. They were shorter than elves, yes, but so were humans. Living underground meant they hadn’t evolved with much need for melanin so they were uniformly pale; pale pinkish skin, pale yellowish hair, and pale blueish eyes that reflected the light. It made them easier to see in the dark at least.

Aster brought the lead sleigh up to a graceful halt in front of our chief greeter, a dwarf I knew well. He stomped up to the side of the sleigh and held up a broad hand to me.

“Alessandra. You’ve gotten bigger.” He said without ceremony, speaking Arlese, and jerked his head in the direction of Markham. “Who are they?”

“I’d hope so. I was fourteen the last time we met.” I let Prince Ylem lift me down from the sleigh. Dwarves were often terse to the point of rudeness unless they were talking about something they had a vested interest in. 

Ylem was a statesman so he had more patience for meaningless courtesy than most. Even so, the fact that he deigned to greet us at the door rather than just leaving it open so we could find our own way inside was a great compliment. 

I gestured towards the sad band from BIR as my guards helped them disembark the sleighs. “May I introduce Elliot Markham and Angie Devereaux of the Bureau of Interplanar Relations? I believe you invited them to visit.”

Ylem squinted at Markham and then looked back at his people. One of them shrugged. Another nodded. “The ones from beyond the new Veil.” They said in Arlese.

The Veil leading to Earth had been present and stable for over seventy five years. It said something about the Dwarves that they still considered that ‘new.’

“Oh, them.” He turned back and gave Markham a once over before addressing him in perfect English. “Wasn’t expecting you until Summer. Stupid time of year to travel. What were you thinking? Well, we’ll find you some space.” He looked back at me, switching back to Arlese. “You might have mentioned you were bringing stowaways.”

“It was serendipity.” That was a fib, but if I took responsibility for the delegation then I’d be stuck with it and them forever. My charity was at an end. “My party encountered them near the Gate and they bargained for a ride.”

“Nosey nurse.” He chided me, although not without affection. “You should have put them back through if they couldn’t make it alone. I’ll expect you to take them away again when you leave. I’m not in the business of child-minding.”

“I suppose I could…” I said, placing the tip on one finger on my bottom lip as I made a show of considering it. “...but you’ll have to make it worth my while. They’re your guests.” I would anyway and he probably knew that, but dwarves never did anything without an eventual payoff and if you wanted a fair deal from one then neither did you.

“Yes, yes. Here, walk with me and tell me the news from Harou. My porters will see to your things.” He tucked my hand firmly into the crook of his elbow. I got a brief glimpse of Markham’s livid expression as Ylem walked us inside ignoring him entirely. I also noticed the unenthusiastic dwarven lady making her way in his direction and understood in that moment the hierarchy of Ylem’s concerns. 

The human delegation was a novelty at best, which explained his disinterest in making a good impression and maybe why the invitation had been so thin on details. Ravnvaldr Keep and Clan Harou meanwhile were old allies and very nearly friendly. I was the first and only daughter of Duke Harou. I rated Ylem’s personal attention. 

I probably also made a useful tool to see how Markham handled being ignored.

“Games already?” I murmured to Ylem. He snickered and patted my hand. 

“Just curiosity, my dear. I’ve known two humans until now, but you’re more elf than anything else and your mother hardly counts anymore. I wanted to see how the original stock compares. So far…” He shrugged. “…eh. Maybe they’ll turn it around.”

Bingo. He’d withheld information from Markham on purpose. 

Now he knew that the humans either didn’t have access to reconnaissance about Jorgumandr that he didn’t provide or hadn’t bothered to use what they had. That would put the Bureau at a disadvantage when they wanted to talk about things like trade and tourism –not that Ylem was braced for what a human would consider ‘tourism.’

I had a brief vision of chartered troll hunting trips and closed my eyes. Humans loved big game and there was no bigger, meaner, guilt free game around than trolls, except maybe the giants. Maybe dwarves and humans had something to offer each other after all. 

Ugh, no. Enough of that. 

I wasn’t about to hand Markham that kind of plum. Maybe I could test the idea out in Harou territory once Brinkerman got back. There were plenty of nuisance predators out there less nasty than a troll to use as proof of concept and if I could get that market off the ground it would save our land keepers no end of trouble during Cull month. I filed the idea away for later.

“There’s a dangerous expression.” Ylem commented, bringing me back into the moment. “Did you know you look like your father when you’ve thought of something nasty?”

I blinked, thinking of my dad’s slow half-lidded smile full of teeth. “I do not.” I said and hesitated. “Do I?”

“Like you’re his own flesh and blood.” Ylem patted my hand. “I’m going to enjoy this visit.”

000

I had a vague recollection of the apartments the Prince Ylem kept for visiting dignitaries from when I was shadowing my dad as a teenager. The rooms Ylem assigned to me were either the same ones or very, very similar. 

The bedroom was in the elven family style, which is to say it contained one enormous bed and nothing else. Everyone would sleep there together either at the same time or in shifts depending on how paranoid Aster was feeling. The rest of the space was a long room lined in thick rugs with big cushions on the floor to sit on. 

An elven settlement would have fifteen or twenty dwellings like that all built around a single longhouse where everyone cooked and ate together. The Keep at Red Harbour was built to be a fortress, but still followed that same concept. Here we had a little cook corner in the dwarven style, which was a deep stone basin of superheated hot spring water carved out of the wall and fed by the same network of pipes that heated the interior of the Keep. Burning anything this far underground was risky at best so dwarven cooking was a unique experience. There was a pot of sand suspended in the hot water. The water itself was too hot to use or even touch. Instead you stuck long handled pots into the hot sand and cooked that way; a bit like turkish sand coffee. 

Efa and her assistant got straight to work unpacking as Aster poked around looking for false walls or spyholes. I’d been running on adrenaline and about two hours sleep so I found a spot in the sitting room and closed my eyes, intending to catch a little catnap only to wake later with Kayt gently shaking my shoulder. I blinked at her, trying to focus on her little heart-shaped face as it blurred in front of me.

“It’s time to dress for dinner.” She held out her hands to help me up, which I was grateful for. I hadn’t undressed before nodding off so I felt a lot like Randy in his snow suit.

“I’m sorry.” I caught myself on a yawn. “I didn’t mean to sleep.”

“Well, I meant to let you.” Efa replied. She bustled up and inspected my face. “Your tone’s improved a bit. A little wash will help. Kayt, help Lady Alessa clean up while I set out the kit for this evening.”

‘Helping’ me wash was a misleading statement. I wasn’t meant to be an active participant, which suited me fine at that moment. I’d learned my lessons about fidgeting and trying to do things for myself when Efa and I’d been apprentices together. Kayt probably wouldn’t smack my hands with a comb, but like her mentor she had her own process and wouldn’t have thanked me for getting in the way. 

She stripped me out of my travel clothes, wrapped my hair up under a silk scarf, and attacked me with a damp and perfumed wash cloth. Efa swept by to deposit the underthings she’d picked out and Kayt did the necessary work of getting me into them. Stepping into loose linen trousers and a soft woolen tunic underscored the feeling I’d been having all day of being home at last after a long stay on the moon. I stood still as Kayt circled me, adjusting my tapes here and there, making sure everything lay smooth.

“Acceptable.” Efa declared from the other side of the room. “Captain Aster and Maeve will be on duty tonight. You may help them with their hair and anything else they need. I’ll take over from here.”

“She reminds me of you at that age.” I commented as Efa approached me with the pale gold foundation skirt she’d picked out of the copious pile of luggage. 

“Don’t insult the girl. I wasn’t allowed anywhere near an adult’s toilette until I was in my twenties.” Efa popped the skirt over my head. It was narrower than I remember the fashion being, floor length and high waisted with a panel of pleats in the back cinched in with a broach behind the knees. The top was a sort of peacock colored slub knit sweater belted with a silk scarf that tied in the front and fell down to my knees a pleasing fan of blue and gold. 

“Is this a new fashion?” I asked.

Efa mm-hmmed at me as she adjusted the waistband up my torso until the hem of the skirts fell down straight to the ground and the hem no longer creased on the floor. “It’s influence from the Water people. Lady Catherine hosted three of the Triton’s daughters for the summer and they brought a seamstress with them. Kayt!” She barked over her shoulder. “Make a note for me to take up the gold silk tweed. It’s too long.”

I frowned. “What do you mean ‘too long?’” I asked because I didn’t see any reason to alter my mother’s wardrobe and was shushed. Efa’s attention was on picking out jewelry and that could be a landmine in dwarven fashion so I stayed shushed. The line between the statements ‘I didn’t see a point in dressing up’ and ‘I’m deliberately outdressing you’ rested on the edge of a knife and I didn’t care to fall on either side of it.

For once, my hair was the shortest part of getting ready. We didn’t have time to redo my braids, which had become a frizzy mess as predicted so Efa pinned them around my head and wrapped them up under a gold scarf tied to look like a flower at the base of my neck. After a moment’s thought, she pinned a lapis lazuli brooch to the scarf where it would rest against my forehead. We were just finishing up with enough makeup to make it look like I’d had a full night’s sleep when a page arrived to take me to formal supper. 

An informal meal for the rest of my household waited on a swaddled cart in the corridor. The last time I’d been to the Keep I’d been one of the people eating in the apartment while my parents attended the big dinner downstairs. I couldn’t tell if that past me was excited or terrified. 

Ylem’s feasting hall was one level down from the apartments for visiting dignitaries and smelled a bit like a sauna due to its proximity to the kitchens. Dwarves didn’t have social castes exactly, but only Ylem’s family and the uppermost echelon of artists, entertainers, and civil servants were invited to the Prince’s feast table. Everyone else ate at the Guild Halls or in public eateries. Dwarves rarely cooked or ate in their homes; only if someone was disabled, ill, recovering from illness, or in mourning, really. Even then those dwarves would receive meal service carts like the ones provided to visiting dignitaries. They considered cookery a craft just like blacksmithing, woodcarving, and weaving thus it was left to trained professionals unless there was no other option. 

I entered the Hall flanked by my guards, who were resplendent in formal dark grey uniforms with gold pauldrons displaying the Clan crest and ornate blue aiguillettes draped over their arms and pinned to their chests. 

Kayt’s touch could be seen in Maeve’s elaborate braided crest and the faint touch of makeup enhancing the tattoos on the shaved sides of her head. Aster’s hair was slicked back and she’d exchanged her headband for a more formal gold demi-mask that covered her forehead and cheeks. A matching captain’s stripe had been painted over the mask where it covered the one on her face. 

The table itself stretched out further than my ability to see; a dazzling arrangement of fairy lights and covered trays. I didn’t even pretend to know where I should sit and let the page guide me as was correct and respectful among the dwarves. I ended up fairly close to Ylem himself --in that I could see him, but there was a solid barrier of courtiers and family members between us. 

He must have been worried that I’d try to talk business during the meal. Even my father forgot that one on occasion, but fat chance of that happening tonight. My appetite had woken up and I wasn’t going to be much good for conversation until I’d gotten some food into me. I hadn’t eaten anything so far that day except half a ready-made salad, some peanut butter, and Kayt’s crackers.

Maeve went to sit against the wall. Aster stood behind my chair and pushed me in. I looked over my shoulder, suddenly blank on one particular point of etiquette. I couldn’t remember when my guards ate during official functions. “Are you and Maeve going to be alright? This could take a while.”

“We ate from the supplies while you were asleep.” She replied, just as quiet. “We’ll rotate; a quarter hour on and a quarter hour off. I’ll touch your shoulder when we change.”

“Thank you.” I breathed out my relief. That did make sense. Their presence was largely a statement, but if I did need their help then they shouldn’t be footsore and stiff from having stood at attention for two hours.

Aster hmmed thoughtfully. “There’s an unhappy face a quarter turn to your right.”

I looked and about two thirds of the way down the table, well out of Ylem’s sight, was Markham, Amos, and Angie. The others likely had a dinner cart of their own. Angie had no attention to spare for me. She was at a faerie kingdom feast and nothing was about to harsh her buzz. Neither did Markham, who seemed unconcerned by the potential slight of being seated below his former intern. Instead he was making a leisurely examination of the length and breadth of the hall. I couldn’t blame him. 

Ylem spared no effort to impress. The cups were made of faceted crystal set in gold filigree. The porcelain plates were so thin you could see light through them, but I knew from experience that something about the glaze made them so sturdy that they’d dent the table if you dropped one. The utensils weren’t too alien for a human either. We all had a knife and a sort of teardrop-shaped spoon that served as a very upmarket spork. 

Amos was on the far side of Angie. I was surprised to see him at the table at all. He was technically support staff, but office scuttlebutt had it that Markham was very dependent on his aide. It might not have even occurred to him to leave Amos behind.

He wasn’t quite staring at me, but his face was turned in my direction. I met his gaze, smiled, and turned away to face the dwarf seated next to me, who turned out to be Ylem’s poet laureate and we spent the rest of the meal discussing forms of verse. The food arrived as I was inexpertly trying to explain beatboxing and the conversation rolled to a natural pause.

Dwarven cuisine was an experience like no other. They did not eat grains or red meat. Fungus played a major role in their diet, supplemented by root vegetables and blind eels that lived in underground lakes below most Dwarven settlements. They had begun to import preserved fruit, dried fish, potted fowl, and spices in recent years as luxury goods. A great deal of it all made appearances at Ylem’s table.

Aster kept up a quiet report on what the other humans were doing, which was not very much as they wrestled with unfamiliar cutlery and learned the hard way that the courses changed at the Prince’s whim.

Markham learned fast to watch the head of the table with one eye to see how quickly the people there were eating. Angie and Amos took their cue from him. Fortunately for the newcomers, Ylem was in a mood to linger over his food and they only lost their plates before they finished once or twice. 

Maeve and Aster swapped places just as the last dishes were being cleared away and the evening’s entertainment began. Three balladeers sang a sweet chorus about the less sweet adventures of a young elven huntress, the beautiful young people she hunted, and the one elf maid who hunted her in turn before catching her for good. Then there were jugglers and acrobats. 

The evening closed with a display of illusions put on by the graduating class of a nearby school of grammary; the sort of elementary level magic you learned before specializing as a mage. 

Not all the children were dwarves, either. Like the elves, dwarves often accepted members of other races into their community so long as they could integrate and thrive there. A small goblin boy presented all the ladies at the head table with delicate flowers made of illusory ice crystals that dissolved into a puff of butterflies when he bowed.

I was still chatting with Toka, the poet, this time about the differences between musical theater and dwarven opera when Amos approached me. Toka paused in the middle of a question with a concerned look on his face and I turned just enough to see Amos rounding the corner of our table. His expression, even in that brief glance, was mulish.

It was bad manners by anyone’s account, but especially by the dwarves’. Mealtimes were not for business. The correct, if not particularly pleasant, thing to do would have been to send a page to request a meeting after the meal had ended. 

Amos knew that because my clan’s mistress of ceremony had crossed over to do a series of seminars on the subject. They’d mostly focused on elven traditions, but she’d done a general overview on basic manners among different species of the world. She’d crashed at my place. I hadn’t been invited to the seminars, but at the time I hadn’t thought it was too weird. I already knew the thorny ins and outs of interspecies etiquette and there was nothing worse than taking a class alongside someone who already knew all the answers. 

Through sheer happenstance I also noticed Ylem watching us both with a look of intense curiosity and realized that he wasn’t just evaluating the new humans. He wanted to know what behavior I'd tolerate from them.

There was a moment where I felt suspended in mid-air with deep chasms yawning open to either side of me; home and my family on one side, my ancestry -alien even to me- on the other. Then I realized it wasn’t a choice. I’d agreed to do a task for my father. I was in Ravnvaldr to represent my family and that horrible feeling of being torn down the middle drifted away. 

I turned to look at Maeve, tilted my head at the incoming problem, and shook my head. She folded her hands in acknowledgement and tried not to smile. 

Toka blinked as I pointedly returned my attention to him just as Amos reached us. Maeve stepped into his path and became, for all intents and purposes, a brick wall. He tried to duck around her and was gently, but firmly redirected.

Conversation dipped as my fellow diners turned to watch the scene. I noticed Angie was up out of her chair and hurrying over. Her narrow-eyed attention, however, was all on Amos. She caught him before Aster decided to intervene and said something in his ear that brought him to heel. I did not watch her herd him back to their side of the table. 

“You were about to tell me about heraldic verse?” I prompted Toka as he looked back and forth between me and the dire expression on Angie’s face. 

“Yes, of course, Lady Harou. Where was I…” Toka’s gaze dipped in thought before he brightened. “I was actually going to ask you about this play a distant acquaintance of mine was able to see during a trip across the veil. ‘Hamilton’, I think it was called? Does that troupe travel? Do you think they might be willing to come here?”

000

Aster and Maeve bracketed me like large, disapproving chaperones all the way back to the rooms, but Amos didn’t try to make contact again. Angie either had him in hand or he’d remembered his company manners. My money was on the first option. I hadn’t forgotten that nasty smile he’d sent my way as security dragged me off. People like him didn’t change easily.

Efa had the apartment in order when we arrived. Kayt got me undressed, washed, my hair up in a silk cap, and the rest of me in warm lounge clothes before I quite knew what had happened. I lowered myself into a soft cushion with bone-deep exhaustion and gratitude. I’d been in emergency mode for over a day and I was glad to finally let go.

Larkspur kicked another cushion over to my side and perched on it with rather more grace than I’d managed. I was surprised when she reached out to feel my face. I was less surprised when her hand lit up with a warm honey-colored glow and the ache in my muscles started to ebb. I also lost the pleasant drowsiness I’d been nursing since we’d left the feasting hall. It would be harder to sleep now.

Well, of course it wasn’t time to sleep yet. There was still work to do.

“Thank you.” I sat up and rolled my shoulders. 

Larkspur nodded and held up her writing case. I hadn’t noticed it in the folds of her robes. It looked incongruous against a mage’s finery; plain, black, and scored with ancient dings and scratches. It looked like something a scribe would carry. It looked like something a scribe had carried. “Do you need to make any notes?” 

I nodded because I did and the idea of re-acquiring the knack of writing with a stylus made my head hurt in anticipation. “Are you sure? It would be a waste of your skills.”

She allowed a small smile to cross her face, there and gone like a cloud passing over the moon. “I don’t think so. I was a clerk before my gift woke.” She looked distant and then returned to the present with a rapid blink. “Sometimes I miss the work.”

I smiled. “Then let me cure you.”

We spent the next hour going over the evening. There was more to that modest case than met the eye. The pen transcribed everything we said then blotted the pages and filed them in a separate case on its own. Larkspur herself was more mentor than secretary because she had no compunction about asking clarifying questions. What did I think about Ylem’s actions? What were his possible motives? What were the power dynamics in play during dinner? What did I think Amos wanted to talk about? Was I sure?

She made me think and think hard. I think I came away with more questions than I answered, but that was good and the entire point of the exercise. 

It meant I’d be thinking about those questions later when I’d have a chance of getting those answers. 

Chapter Four

I woke the next morning half under Maeve, who’d rolled over in the night, with Kayt tucked up into my side to get out of range of Efa, who was well known to kick in her sleep.

Moving carefully, I slithered out from under the blanket and my guardswoman. Kayt rolled into the warm spot I’d left behind and I tucked the blanket back around her shoulders. Then I stretched and looked around. My housecoat and others lay draped across the bottom corner of the bed, near where Aster and Larkspur were still asleep spooned together and looking unbearably cute. Aster was the little spoon.

Well. That explained what had brought my mage to Clan Harou.

“Bravo, Aster.” I murmured and crawled off the bed so I could retrieve my coat without waking the sleeping lovers. It was hard to get privacy in an elven household and, in fact, few elves even wanted any. That had been part of the attraction of the human world to me when I was a teenager. Now that I was a little older, I missed the comfortable rank-free puppy piles of home. 

The other two guards, Odele and Friea, looked up from an intent card game as I entered. 

“Good morning, my lady.” Odele said amiably.

“Stooop.” I moaned, taking a snaking path towards the cook corner. “It’s too early for titles.”

“Poor you.” Friea said, not without sympathy. “Are you making tea?” She asked, hopefully. “Can you make tea?” She amended, casting a dubious look at the enameled copper water dispenser that took up most of the cooking corner.

“Sure, sure.” I caught myself on a yawn. I’d learned to use a dwarf kitchen when I was fourteen during a series of meetings to renew and revise the original treaty between the Allied Clans and the dwarves. I’d been stuck with the job every trip since then. “Odele, do you want a cup too?”

“Yes. Strong please.” 

I turned to Friea and she nodded. “Same.”

The water heater was about my height and more of a filtration system than anything else. It looked like a brilliantly enameled samovar complete with a little spot on top to warm a teapot. The dwarves used a network of natural hot springs to heat the mountain and cook food, but the water in the pipes was gray water. You could bathe in it if you didn’t mind a little mineral build up, but drinking it straight from the pipe wasn’t pleasant or healthy in the long term. The filters made it potable, but the water came out near to boiling so you had to let it cool if you wanted a cold drink even though hardly anyone ever did. The halls of Ravnvaldr were cold even at the height of summer. 

I made a kettle, enough for everyone, and filled it from a tap on the side of the filter designed to look like a spitting fish. 

Tea tray in hand, I went over to see what game my guards were playing and blinked in surprise. “Is that… Exploding Kittens?” I asked.

“Coryfae brought a deck back from the other side…” Of course she did. “…and it got popular in the barracks.” Of course it had. “Your Lady Mother ordered more decks on Amazon for the keep.” Odele explained. “Do you want me to deal you in?”

“I’m fine, thank you. Next time, though, please.” I said and made a mental note to bring my box of board and card games home with me next time assuming I saw my apartment again anytime soon.

Kayt came drifting out of the bedroom and bumped back up into my side. I opened my arm without really looking and wrapped my coat around us both. Young elves were always a little touch starved and Kayt was just at the edge of adulthood. I didn’t flatter myself that she was responding to any particular maternal aura of mine. I didn’t have one for starters. One of the guards would have been warmer and more solid, but I wasn’t wearing armor so I was the most attractive option. 

She woke up enough after a few minutes for tea and then the caffeine had her up and bustling within another ten minutes. I stayed where I was, spectating the card game. Odele and Friea were devious players and clearly both knew where the exploding kitten was in the deck until Odele managed to get both a See The Future card down and then a Shuffle card without Friea negating the play.

I didn’t get to see who won because Efa arrived then and hauled me off for a wash. It was more relaxed than that first night at least, but Larkspur appeared halfway through with a small stack of correspondence that had appeared overnight and which we needed to go through. Most of the notes were short invitations to this party or that concert, but at the bottom was a black bordered card with Ylem’s seal on the back that informed me I’d been granted half an hour of the Princes’ time that afternoon in the Water Garden.

Efa sucked in air and shot to her feet, barely pausing to grab a towel on her way out of the bath. Kayt came scrambling in a few minutes later loaded down with hairdressing supplies. I had a sinking feeling as I recognized several packages of fifty inch extensions among them.

“New braids?” I tried to keep the cringe out of my voice. I liked having braids and wore them frequently, but having them put in tested the limits of my ability to stay in a chair, not to mention they were hell on my edges. At least Kayt wasn’t a stranger. I’d never gotten used to that part of going to the braid shop.

On the bright side, she had magic and if I was lucky then I’d only be trapped for an hour rather than the rest of the day.

“Box braids, my lady.” Kayt confirmed without pity.

At least I got to stay in the water.

I left the bath with hip length braids capped in beads of gold and larimar. Kayt had also taken the time to turn my short french tips into long, viciously beautiful points tipped in gold filigree and real gems. It was good that Larkspur was willing to take notes for me. After this I wouldn’t be able to write by myself fast enough to be useful during an after-action session.

Efa had my costume laid out and I gulped at the sight of it. I cast an imploring look her way and she grinned.

“It’s just for an hour or so.” She reassured me. “Larkspur enchanted the trim so it won’t be so heavy.”

Envision Queen Elizabeth’s coronation robe and then add all the jewelry and floating scarves of an ancient Chinese Imperial concubine and you’d have an idea of what the gown that waited for me on the bed looked like. You wouldn’t be able to walk close to me without risking a jab from my headdress. I wasn’t sure I could walk without getting poked by something, but I’d have to keep a straight face and deal with it if I did. 

Aster looked up from where she was polishing an equally resplendent helmet. I realized I didn’t recognize the device on the side of it, below the feathered crest. It was clan Harou, I could tell because of the deer, but it wasn’t a stag. That was my father’s crest; a stag rampant framed by the base of a waterfall. This one had a doe couchant under a bower of stars and above a river. Technically, as a Speaker, I had the right to a personal crest but I’d never used it. Before I’d been too young and afterwards I’d been living on the human side of the veil where no one cared.

I looked at Aster and she had that irritating grin on her face again. She did know something I didn’t.

Making a tactical decision, I turned to Efa. “This isn’t my mother’s state gown.” I said, feeling hollow. 

Efa pursed her lips and nodded. “No. She commissioned the wardrobe once she was certain that you were done growing. We used your measurements from the gown we made for you at midwinter.” She sighed and cupped her cheeks with both hands. “I forgot that you’d been measured in heels and now all the hems need to be pinned.”

I looked back to the gown laid out before me. Had mom known how hard I’d end up struggling in order to make a career among humans? Was Ylem right? Was I more elf than human?

Given what I’d recently learned about BIR, did I even want to be more human than elf? 

I’d always thought I ought to be, but my year among the humans had been unexpectedly hard in ways it hadn’t been while I was just in school. It was more than the way other humans reacted to my gender or unquantifiable racial background and I couldn’t quite articulate how.

Brinkerman had been protecting me from a lot, in retrospect. He was a good boss and good at explaining weird human behaviors when I needed it, but I’d never realized that there was such a rift between the two apparent parts of BIR until I’d tried to cross that invisible divide on my own. 

It left me feeling stupid and powerless. 

The dress on the bed wasn’t meant for someone powerless. I’d look like an evil queen in that; powerful and implacable.

I looked at Aster. “Is that a new helmet?”

“It is.” She wasn’t grinning anymore, but still radiated pleasure. “You were always going to need a private guard, poppet.” She explained, not unkindly, and turned to show off the matching pauldron with the same crest on it. “Your father and mother agreed that it would make things awkward while you were just starting out. Even a hardhead like the Duke knows that a guard would have made your life more difficult on the Earth side, but the human world was going to have to make some concessions if they wanted to keep you long term. Human or not, you’re the First Daughter and a Speaker for Clan Harou.”

I huffed a little laugh. “Well, it’s fortunate they don’t seem to want me.” I felt a wide hand settle on my head and realized Aster had gotten up.

“Not for them.” She said in a quiet voice. “I don’t know the particulars of what happened, although I think I’ve guessed some of it. No one wanted to get in the way of your ambition, but you’ve been missed at home. Your rescue mission wouldn’t have worked if we hadn’t been waiting for you.”

Several pieces of a puzzle I hadn’t realized I’d been assembling fell into place. Kayt’s dressing kit would never have served for an elven woman. They’d never need extensions. Elves could grow miles of thick, straight, strong hair and never worried about breakage. Kayt would have had to get special lessons on dealing with my 3B hair.

Larkspur was too talented to have been available at a moment’s notice and Aster had been well on her way to becoming Captain of the home guard when I’d left for school. 

“I’m sorry you had to wait.” I said softly and bowed my head to my household. “I will do my best to make it worth the while.”

When I looked back, they were bowing back. Even Odele and Freia had stood up from their game. Efa rose and came over to give me a very cautious hug that became much more certain as I sank into it. 

“You already have.” She whispered in my ear. “We’re all proud of you. Things are only going to get better.”

000

Of course Markham was waiting outside the garden limits as I arrived. 

The Water Garden was surrounded by a carved crystal fence and guarded when the Prince was giving audiences. The master of ceremonies minding the gate was in the middle of ignoring the group from BIR as I approached.

I stomped on the sigh that threatened to slip through my guard. I had no doubt Markham was there at Ylem’s invitation and probably right on time, but he was still about to watch me breeze right past him.

Amos had blundered worse than I thought the night before. Ylem now knew that there was bad blood between me and the human delegation and he was going to use that to play with the humans like an oversized cat. 

Aster and Larkspur did not help matters by smoothly interposing themselves between me and Markham so I couldn’t even see him. I’d have acknowledged him at least, but maybe they had the right idea. I couldn’t afford to look at all interested in Markham’s good opinion, not while we were under the master of ceremony’s watchful gaze. Everything she saw would go straight to Ylem.

Maeve withdrew the black bordered note from her pouch and offered it to the master, who did not look at it.

“He’s expecting you, my lady.” She looked right at me and then turned to open the gate. “Please proceed to the Mirror Pool. Do you need a guide?”

I schooled my expression with a will of iron.

No, I did not need a guide. No one needed a guide to the Mirror Pool. It was the central feature of the wheel-shaped garden and the hub that all the spoke-like feature gardens radiated out from. It was located down a straight path from the entrance. You could see it from where I was standing, but the master had asked just to make me say ‘no.’

More dwarf mind games. How lovely.

“No, thank you. I had the pleasure of touring the gardens of Ravnvalder when I was a girl. I remember the way.” I replied quietly instead, pitching my voice so it wouldn’t carry and twist the knife further, and the compliment had the unexpected effect of engaging the master’s enthusiasm.

“The Path of Falling Rain has been expanded in the past year.” She volunteered. “If your time in the garden permits, you must see it.”

“I will do that.” I promised and allowed her to guide me inside before she firmly shut the gates behind my party. I did not look behind, but I did wonder what I’d have seen if I did.

The gardens had not changed too much from my girlhood recollection. The Water Garden was composed of rock and crystal formations and artificial mountain springs. The largest installation was a still circular reflecting pool in the center of the garden and shrouded on all sides by ornamental rock walls and draping curtains of low-light vines. The water was only a few inches deep, but clouded with some shimmering particulate that swirled in restless clouds just below the glassy surface. If you looked into it you could see yourself as clear as any mirror.

Ylem had often seen my father in this garden or sometimes the Sun Pavilion when they were at odds since it took an hour on foot to get there and it was all up ten flights of narrow stairs.

The prince was seated on a crescent shaped bench watching the clouds move below the surface of the pool, but looked up as I approached.

“I hope you aren’t angry with me.” He said by way of a greeting. 

“Oh, I intend to get fair value for my time.” I replied and curtseyed deep. “Your master of ceremonies recommended the Path of Rain to me. Would you care to give me a tour?”

“I do like how well you take hints, my dear.” He murmured and came to offer me his arm. “Why don’t we talk as we walk?”

“Of course.” 

Aster, Maeve, and Larkspur dropped back a pace or so to give us room, but still followed close behind. 

Ylem guided us away from the Mirror and down a shadowy path marked by two mossy stones. You wouldn’t be able to see us from the entrance and I gathered that was the entire point. 

The Path of Falling Rain took its name from the pinprick luminescent detritus that gently fell from specially cultivated lichen growing on the ceiling above. The flakes were harmless and enchanted so you couldn’t inhale one, but beautiful and they lit the quiet path a cool spectrum of soft blues and greens.

“Now, what business does Harou have with my court?” Ylem asked. 

“We’d like to review the guard agreement for the summer trade fair in Vigny.” I replied, much to his surprise.

“Truth?” Ylem asked. “I’ve had no complaints these past years. Have you heard something I haven’t?”

“No one is unhappy yet, but my father has had unsettling reports from the soldiers this year and last. Vendors and dwarven fairgoers have been heard saying the elves police the dwarves. It happens in social situations, usually joking but sometimes not. My father is concerned that those jokes are concealing real discontent.” I took note of Ylem's quiet look of contemplation. “Our peoples are friendly and we would like to stay that way.”

“These things do start small.” Ylem murmured. “However, my available caravan guards are almost all occupied with escorting traders to and from the fairs. We have trouble meeting demand and my caravaneers use the fair time to rest for their return trip. The way back is often more dangerous than the trip out when the brigands and giants know that they’ll be coming. I don’t have anyone to spare.”

“Would you consider providing magistrates?” My father wanted supplemental guards, but we all knew that Ylem wasn’t hiring our soldiers because he wanted to. The caravan trade brought a lot of resources into Ravnvaldr and the dwarves only had a short season to import anything they wanted to have during the long cold. It was a busy time. Any dwarves policing the fair wouldn’t be earning as much for their community as they could have been otherwise. “If dwarven troublemakers are judged by dwarven law and dwarven judges then it’s harder for them to make accusations of discrimination later when they don’t like the ruling.”

“Perhaps.” Ylem hmmmed to himself. “It will depend on who is able to make the trip. I can at least supply judicial witnesses to assist your magistrates. I will need time to review my rolls, but I think we can come to an agreement.”

“Thank you for hearing me.”

“I always have time for such a lovely and useful young lady.” He replied and laughed when I rolled my eyes. 

“Have I been so useful?” I guessed. “In your evaluation of Elliot Markham perhaps?”

“More so than I’d dared hope.” Ylem patted my hand. “Will you indulge an old man’s curiosity?”

For a dwarf, Ylem was in the middle of his prime –although that still meant he was ninety years older than me. 

“It depends on what he is curious about.” I smiled and added; “…and if he is willing to make it worth my while.”

“Answers for answers, then.” It was a generous offer, but not one I could take carte blanche.

“Within reason.” I told him.

“Within reason.” He agreed, but his charming smile faded. “What is your history with the human delegation? I don’t believe that you just happened to run into each other. For one thing, I’m aware that you’ve been living across the new Veil these past eight years.”

“I was apprenticed in the Bureau of Interplanar Relations.” That wasn’t exactly true, but I didn’t want to explain the concept of interns to Ylem. He’d do something dreadful with it. 

I watched Ylem’s expression and managed to catch a faint flicker of surprise before he could make it vanish. Aha. He hadn’t known that. Good. “It… didn’t go well and I’m still not sure why.”

“You worked with them and they still didn’t know to wait for true midsummer?” 

“They didn’t ask me and wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell them.” I held my free arm against my stomach, still remembering the terrible feeling of the Guide’s rage. “I went to my parents for help and we were able to put together a rescue. I don’t much care about the senior team members, but the junior staff didn’t deserve that fate. We caught up before anyone got hurt, but it was close.” I paused and added. “My business here was real, but father was going to wait until the contract renewal in spring to bring it up. There is tension in the South Coast between the Water People and the Coastlanders again. He can’t risk not being there if they start forcing their neighbors to choose sides.”

It cost me nothing to admit that. The Water People and their coastal cousins warred nearly every other summer. Sometimes it was just border sorties, but some once or twice the fighting had spread into the mainland and shipping lanes. Everyone knew about it.

“I see.” Ylem hummed another thoughtful note, but didn’t comment further. “Your turn for a question, I think.”

I considered it. There were a lot of things that I could ask, but we seemed to be keeping them minor and personal. Then I thought about all the things I didn’t know, that I was supposed to have been learning. Maybe there was another way and other people to learn from. Ylem had been a statesman for longer than twice my life and seemed willing to let me trade on our history so long as it didn’t cost too much. “What are your observations about the other humans?” I asked him and that got me another smile from the dwarf.

“Markham interests me and the woman... Ahn-gee Deh-veh-roh?” Ylem pronounced her name very carefully and looked at me to check if he’d gotten it right. I nodded and he continued. “They are both listening more than they speak. The other one, the younger man, I understand less. He’s ruled by his emotions, but I don’t know what those emotions are yet. Jealousy? Pride?” Ylem shrugged one shoulder as if discarding the mystery. “If he was a dwarf I would have had him sent back to school or have him trained for another vocation. He’s not suited to speaking for others.”

It was telling that Ylem thought Angie Deveraux was worth the trouble of learning her weird human name, but Amos wasn’t. “After last night, I don’t expect I will see much more of him. If your Elliot Markham is wise then he’ll be sure of it.”

Amos was a young upper class white man so I wasn’t sure I agreed, but Ylem hadn’t asked so I didn’t offer. I was still unclear about all the nuances of human racial prejudices myself and I didn’t feel up to explaining it all to an outsider if I didn’t have to. Amos would have to do worse than lose his temper at a dinner party to be grounded in the apartment.

“Maybe. Amos Duvall is one of Marhkam’s main aides after Angie Devereaux.” I said instead. “It wouldn’t be that simple.”

“Interesting.” Ylem slowed us down to a stop in front of an interesting waterfall feature. We watched the water burble for a quiet moment. The water lit up in blue-green bursts whenever it hit stone. I wondered if it was magic or an Anwyn-native species of phytoplankton. Perhaps the master of ceremonies would know. If I asked Ylem then he might take it as a sign that our question exchange was over and I didn’t want to be the one who backed away first.

I shouldn’t have worried. The comfortable silence drew the subject to a natural close. After a while Ylem released my arm, took my hand, and bowed about as low as a monarch could over it.

“My dear, I have enjoyed our conversation and I’m glad to have met you again.” He let my hand go. “I have enjoyed our talk so much that I have an offer for you. Be my guest for the winter and I’ll provide both magistrates and a supplemental squad from my personal guard for the fair at Vigny.”

I managed to bite down on my surprise and the impulse that immediately followed it to squint at him in suspicion. I’d never seen Ylem offer more than someone had asked him for. “Why?” I asked and he chuckled.

“My grandchildren are overwintering with me this year and hosting their friends.” He explained. “They are all energetic young people who have only had each other for company all during the warm months and many of them are from the surface. Varied company helps keep them from feeling confined. ”

“You’ll have an entire complement of aliens from another dimension visiting your court.” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “You have another reason.”

“I often do.” Ylem allowed. He turned to gesture towards a tangled arch of vines at the end of the walk. We continued onwards. “I’ll be fascinated to see if you can guess it.”

“If I can guess all of them, you mean.” I replied and he barked out a surprised laugh. “I’m certain of some.”

Ylem had already admitted to using me as a yardstick to measure Markham by. I doubted that he was done yet. He’d need a reason to keep me around now that my interview was over. He could have put off granting my audience, but that would have risked insulting my clan and elves didn’t often suffer insult without bloodshed. 

The only reason Markham and BIR had gotten away with it was because the Clan leaders had come to think of them as idiot children, but that wouldn’t last forever. They didn’t know it yet, but they were eating up all the goodwill my family had to spare. 

“Yes, I have my reasons and your delightful candor is one of them.” He sobered. “My dear, I am fond of your family and of you in your own right –however you are not a good example of your species.”

I recalled what he’d said at the gate. “More elf than anything else.” I quoted him. I wondered if that was what kept me from bridging the cultural divide between me and my own species.

He nodded, his gaze softer than it had been at the time. “You were raised by elves and trained by elves. Eight years won’t make you human the same way the delegates are.”

Oddly, that made me feel a bit better. 

“I had the influence of my mother.” I pointed out.

“Yes, but I will point out that Lady Catherine would have been working hard to integrate with her new community while you were growing up and she’d lived an isolated life before that.” 

‘Isolated’ was probably an overstatement, but rural Wisconsin was very different from the cosmopolitan roots of the movers and shakers at the Bureau.

Still, he’d given that up too easily and it was a mercenary sentiment even for him. I thought about what we’d discussed and smiled. “Are you using me as a role model?” I asked.

Dwarves could be cutthroat, yes, but didn’t often set people up to fail nor did they like to waste their own time. If he was going to bother with the humans then Ylem was going to give them some route to success, however painful.

Ylem took my hand and kissed it. “I don’t plan on telling them so.” He told me and his smile grew conspiratorial. “Aren’t you curious to see if any of them notice on their own?”

Well, when put like that…

“I would love to accept your offer of hospitality.” I told him. “Pending the agreement of my entourage and my family, of course.”

“Of course. I will instruct my wise folk to make a working room available to your mage should you need to exchange personnel.” Ylem pointed to a spiraling crystalline staircase just beyond the arch of vines. “Now that our serious talk is complete, I wish to show you the Path of Stars. It was completed just this month and you will not find it’s like anywhere on the surface world…”

We did not leave the garden until almost the dinner hour and well past the half hour I’d been allotted. Markham, flanked by Amos and Angie, was still waiting as I made my foot-sore way out of the gardens. 

Our eyes met as Aster helped me up the last flight of stairs. My dress felt like lead and I was too tired for emotions anymore. I nodded politely and told him, “Good luck.”

Markham said nothing and I tried not to be disappointed. 

Ylem was right. I did want to see how well he’d do and it seemed like I was going to get my chance.

Chapter Five

I made it back to the apartments almost under my own power. Larkspur gave me a small boost about halfway there that got me in the door and out of my regalia with Efa and Kayt’s help.

My dinner attire was as simple and comfortable as that first night. Kayt plaited my braids back from my face and Efa dressed me in a soft blue wool wrap dress that was saved from being a house coat in terms of comfort only by the presence of a modest train and a golden fur wrap. We exchanged my heavy jewelry for a set of golden rims that hugged the shells of my ears. Those, the precious stones in my hair, and my manicure would serve to display the wealth of our clan well enough. 

Larkspur accompanied me to the hall that evening as a companion and a more subtle sort of bodyguard. Odele accompanied us so Aster and Maeve could stay behind to rest.

The human delegation appeared at the same location as before, but I was moved up to the head table just three seats away from the Prince. I’d either proved to the master of ceremonies that my manners could be relied on or Amos had proved that his could not. 

It wasn’t an inappropriate upgrade. I was no longer a supplicant to the Prince’s court but a guest of his household –although my former colleagues wouldn’t know that.

My dinner companion was one of Ylem’s younger daughters -she was still twice my age- who wanted my thoughts on the garden expansion and wasn’t shy about getting them. We spent most of the meal discussing the illuminated water features. I’d been correct. The effect was magical, but Akan was fascinated by my description of phytoplankton and became determined to see it in person. 

I left the hall with a firm invitation to tour a mural gallery with her the next day and discuss the matter. There was something very restful about the dwarven way of doing business, but they’d walk me to death if I let them.

Efa was waiting near the door when I dragged my protesting body into the apartment for the final time that night. Dinner had been sufficiently restorative that I’d made the trek back without needing help, but my legs felt fused underneath me. Kayt helped me out of my clothes and into the soaking bath. Aster joined me with a low, pained groan as she lowered herself into the water. I’d seen her last laying face-down on the bed only half undressed. Her muscles must have stiffened up. Ylem had taken us all over the gardens. It had taken hours, well past our allotted half hour. I’d been weighed down plenty too, but Aster had been in full ceremonial armor that wasn’t broken in yet.

Larkspur joined us in the room, but not in the bath. Her one concession was leaving her shoes behind and putting her feet in the water –coincidentally where Aster could easily put her back against Larkspur’s shins.

I soaked for a while until Kayt brought the hair kit back. I was tempted to object. There was something too decadent about having my hair done twice in once day, but the extensions and ornaments were just too heavy to wear for long. I’d spent most of the day fighting off a headache already. Fortunately she was only trimming the ends shorter and swapping out the hair jewelry for something lighter and easier to match. 

“A productive day.” Larkspur commented, once we’d all had a chance to revive. 

“Yes.” I agreed. “We’ll need to get the household together before bed to discuss plans. We didn’t plan to stay the season.”

“Your guards will be able to stay...” Aster looked up and backwards to Larkspur. “…and you, my heart?”

Larkspur smoothed Aster’s fridge away from her eyes. “I have no plans to be anywhere you aren’t. I do not know about Efa or her apprentice. They may have commitments at Red Harbor for the summer and autumn festivals. I can open and hold a portal if we need to send them home. If we are all staying, then I would like to request a legal clerk or one of the apprentices. My hand is good enough for general correspondence, but I think Lady Alessa will need a contract or two drafted before long if this evening was any indication.”

“Oh ho?” Aster looked towards me.

“Lady Akan is an avid botanist and landscape artist.” I explained. “She would like to arrange an excursion to a bioluminescent beach. I’ll be visiting one of the gallery halls with her tomorrow. We’ll see if she’s able to make it worth our while. If not, I’ll direct her to Markham. He’d do it for the goodwill.”

“Dwarves don’t have goodwill when it comes to business. Even I know that.” Aster objected. “He’d just end up doing it for free.”

“There are worse ways to learn that lesson than a fun field trip.”I replied. “If nothing else, he can invite some members of Congress along and make Brinkerman’s life easier.”

Akan would need to offer me a lot to arrange that excursion. We’d have to liaise with the Bureau, but I didn’t mind that. Brinkerman would handle most of it if I got him the opportunity and made sure he benefited from it. He was a valuable connection, it was just a shame that I was starting to realize that I’d never had a future at BIR. 

It was a precious experience, of course, and there was a good chance that I’d eventually serve a term as an extraplanar ambassador if we ever got that off the ground, but what I really needed to do was cultivate relationships with trustworthy native humans who I could work through. 

Maybe I could recruit people willing to live across the Veil, at least part time. It couldn’t hurt to get people on our side used to what a human who wasn’t Mom or Me and hadn’t been carefully groomed to integrate with Elves was like either.

I let my thoughts drift along those lines; thinking about what Akan had to offer that Harou would want and what a fair price might look like. 

Efa appeared in the door with a robe draped over her arm and a pinched expression. “Alessa, there’s a visitor for you. It’s one of the humans.”

That explained the robe. A dwarf would have sent a letter with an invitation to some innocuous outing and an elf wouldn’t have expected me to even get out of the water.

“Did they give you a name?” I asked, considering. If it was Amos then I’d be sending Aster out in that robe.

“Angie Deveraux.”

All right, that was worth getting out of the bath for. 

I’d expected to be contacted sooner, really, although having one of the administrators show up unannounced at my door wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind.

My body protested as I lumbered to my feet. Kayt had gotten about halfway through my braids so she repacked her kit to follow me out of the bath. 

I chose a cushion and Kayt seated herself behind me. She looked unperturbed when I glanced back at her. 

“I would like to finish before bedtime.” She replied, but there was a stubborn jut to her chin that told me she was also determined not to give the other humans any more deference than she had to.

“Thank you.” I was relieved to see something ease in the angle of her shoulders. 

Angie was still wearing the same champagne Gucci pantsuit I’d seen on her outside the Water Garden and at dinner. I hadn’t noticed her Louboutins though. Those were nice, although the signature red soles weren’t holding up well against the stone floors of the mountain corridors.

She and I weren’t friends –not even acquaintances. The interns were below her sight line, but of the directorship she seemed the most relaxed. Her office was dominated by a squashy red couch and according to rumor the inside of her door sported a velco dart board that more often than not had a person’s face taped to it.

I’d hoped to work with her one day. There was a secret to being a brown woman and succeeding in the human world and I was convinced she knew it, but she’d never slowed down long enough for me to do more than greet her in passing some once or twice.

“Miss Neumann.” She greeted me with a cool nod.

“Miss Devereaux.” I replied, meeting her level of formality. I gestured to the cushion nearest me. “Forgive me for not getting up.” I felt a little vain, all of a sudden, getting my hair done twice in a week while Angie was there with her casual elegance and a twa that made her look like Lupita Nyongo. 

“No problem at all.” She stepped out of her shoes and sunk gracefully down onto the cushion, mirroring my posture. “So, it looks like we have some things to talk about.”

It was juvenile, but her tone rankled me. 

“Do we?” I asked sweetly. “I have it on good authority that no one in your department has interest in anything I’d have to say. That’s a direct quote from Mandy, by the way.”

“Obviously, Mandy was mistaken.” 

“Hmm.” I folded my hands in my lap. Somehow I doubted that. “What would you like to discuss?”

Angie took a moment and made a slow survey of the room, of Kayt’s magic in my hair, and Efa standing and disapproving just at the edge of my vision. Then her gaze came back to rest on me, the obvious outlier in the room. She didn’t say anything and I could have laughed.

My first lesson, which started almost as soon as I’d left the Shaman's lodge, had been on how to disregard uncomfortable silence. My second lesson was on how to never lose a staring contest. I was nine.

In the meantime, I was comfortable and in my own space. I had three guards a strong word away. The worst thing anyone in the Bureau could do to me had been done and I’d survived it. The absence of anxiety over my future was almost narcotic.

If she thought she could wait me out then she was going to have an unpleasant evening. I settled back with a placid look and enjoyed the sensation of someone playing with my hair. 

Angie waited a bit, but seemed to realize that I wasn’t going to talk unless she asked a real question. 

“Seems like you had a hell of a Plan B job waiting in the wings.” She said at last. “Did your dad hook you up? No one outside the government and the Bureau is supposed to have contact with the Elves yet. I’d be really interested to learn how he managed to swing it.”

Kayt’s hands paused and then slowly resumed. It was a struggle to maintain my expression, but I managed it. I’d caught that too. 

“In a manner of speaking.” I said slowly. “Out of curiosity, why do you think my father got me a job?”

Angie snorted. “Because Brinkerman hired you.” She replied. “We have two intern programs. I have oversight over one and Brinkerman has the other, but his spot only ever seems to be available when he wants a favor from someone. Plus he’s a sexist old fart so it’d have to be a man, ergo; you’ve got a rich daddy who bought you your first job.”

“Is that so.” My voice sounded distant even to me. 

Coryfae had been the one to introduce me to Brinkerman and I trusted her with my life. She was not an easy person to impress. I knew Brinkerman was vain and pathologically ambitious, but I’d learned to judge a human leader by how they treated their followers, waitstaff, and janitors. 

Brinkerman’s direct reports were all of diverse origin, richly dressed, and unafraid to speak their mind in his presence. When our team ate out we could expect flawless, friendly service because Brinkerman didn’t tip less than 30% of the entire ticket including tax and in cash, handed directly to the server. 

The offices were kept hospital clean and I’d been given the task of arranging massive holiday gift baskets for the small company responsible for it. Even so, he still made everyone tie off the bags in their trash cans and set them outside their offices at night.

I think Dad would have told me if someone had ever approached him for a favor or a payout. I would have found out about it after he’d sent a platoon to bring me home and maybe torch the Bureau on their way out, but I would have known about it.

“What I don’t understand is how this…” She gestured all around. “…came about. I’m grateful for your help at the Gate, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t understand how you managed it. I thought Brinkerman was out getting surgery. He’s probably blissed out on morphine as we speak. He’s the only person the elves have been willing to talk to. How did you manage this?”

That ‘you’ was loaded with a wealth of unpleasant meaning.

Larkspur had left the bath, I realized, and was standing just outside Angie’s range of vision. Her expression was as flat and unfriendly as a viper’s. Maeve, Odele, and Friea made a dark shadow beyond her. Aster wasn’t present yet, but it’d be too late if she decided she needed to put in an appearance.

Angie was, I realized, perilously close to really and truly insulting not only my honor but also my parents’ honor, in my territory, and in front of my household. She hadn’t explicitly called me incompetent and my father corrupt yet, but she was getting close enough for a group of well-armed women who already didn’t like her to use it as an excuse.

‘Honor’ was a nebulous ideal in the human world and for women it was conflated with sex in weird gross ways, but elven honor had stricter definitions. 

Elves spilt blood for the honor of their clans and households in Anwyn. Red Harbor hadn’t gotten its name from the annual algae bloom, after all. Elves could, would, and did kill over insults less severe than the one Angie was getting ready to offer me. 

“I think you should go, Miss Deveraux.” I kept my tone and posture as neutral as I could. I wanted to project boredom, but couldn’t quite manage anything better than polite indifference. If I let on that I was upset or unhappy then Angie would leave the room on a board. 

I held up a hand to forestall her protest. “You may form whatever opinion of me you like, but look around you first.” There I gestured at the women of my household. Maeve helpfully withdrew one of the curved knives at her hip and tested it with her thumb to illustrate my point in case Angie hadn’t yet gotten the point. “You’re not on Earth any longer. The rules are different here and I know that you know what they are. Ignorance is no defense.”

Angie’s generous mouth had thinned into a tense line when she met my eyes again. “So might makes right, is that it?” She asked, scorn dripping from every word. “If I hurt your feelings then your bodyguards will hurt me?”

“Manners maketh man wherever you go.” I gestured to Efa who strode forward. “Please escort our guest to the corridor. I think she would benefit from cooler air.”

“As you wish.” Efa did not quite lift Angie up by the arm and frogmarch her to the door, but it was clear to everyone involved that she could have if she’d wanted to.

Something occurred to me. “Wait a moment.” I called after them. 

Efa halted Angie’s momentum with a hard hand on her shoulder. 

I gently disengaged myself from Kayt with a quiet apology and retrieved Angie’s abandoned shoes. I brought them to her and set them down so she could step in.

“Have a good night, Miss Deveraux.” I told her. “You’re welcome for your life.”

Angie’s wide brown eyes were the last thing I saw of her before Efa swung the door shut between us.

“Do you have any idea what that was about?” Efa huffed as she stomped back towards me to coax me back into Kayt’s waiting ministrations.

“I don’t know.” I had some suspicions. Angie wasn’t a stupid woman. She wasn’t a bully either as far as I knew so her behavior must have been for a purpose. 

I wondered what she’d come to learn and whether or not she’d learned it.

Meanwhile, I’d learned quite a lot.  

000

Unlike elven magic workers, the wise folk of Ravnvalder did their workings in large, smooth-walled caverns well above the residential levels. Their magic wasn’t often explosive, but I didn’t blame them for trying to minimize the risk of interior collapse on the rare occasions when it was.

The working room Larkspur had been granted was so close to the shell of the mountain that I’d been forced to double and triple the layers I wore. Efa had wrapped me in silk, wool, fur, and knits before I’d put my foot down. I almost regretted it as the cold seeped through all my layers. I wished I really was an elf and not for the first time. Everyone else was comfortable in a single layer. Aster’s tunic had no sleeves and Larkspur wasn’t even wearing shoes. 

I stood well back from the circles and ideograms that Larkspur, Efa, and Kayt had spent the last hour chalking onto the floor. Normally a mage would have apprentices to help with a major working like opening a tunnel, but there were no apprentices at hand and my ornatrixes had the right kind of ability to help. Larkspur could do the heavy lifting, but she only had so many hands.

All of the guards were present. Odele and Friea knelt in front of me facing out like linebackers. Aster and Maeve stood at my back also facing away. Periodically they swapped so no one wore themselves out if trouble approached. Larkspur, Efa, and Kayt were well able to defend themselves, but I was what Aster had so charmingly described as a ‘high reward target’ and ‘less intimidating than a basket of kittens.’

Normally we wouldn’t have bothered once Aster had secured the room, but today we had an audience. Well above our heads and out of any possible range of Larkspur’s working was a row theater seats. They were nearly all full. 

The crowd was primarily apprentice and journeyman aged dwarves in the robes of the wise folk; likely come to witness a unique elven form of magic. Dwarves couldn’t skip or open tunnels. They didn’t have the internal magical reserves for it. They tended to be artificers and illusionists. However, there were some of the nobility up there as well.

It had been a little under a week since Ylem had invited me to spend the season at his court. Mom, Dad, and I had all been exchanging daily letters with Larkspur’s help. Mom had sent a letterbox with us so we were able to communicate almost as fast as email. My household had all elected to stay with me, but we’d also be expanding by a few members. 

Coryfae was coming to take in the entertainment at Ravnvaldr and advise me if we had another run in with our friends from the Bureau since it looked like this visit would drag some of the tension between that branch and I into the light. The rest of Aster’s company was joining us as well so that we could set up a real watch schedule that allowed all of our guards some liberty. We were also taking on a legal clerk.

However, we needed more supplies to feed them all and ourselves. Winter was long in Jorgumandr and the dwarves were vegetarians. I’d be fine with a diet of vegetables and the occasional fish, albeit cranky and thin by the time spring came around. The others were a different story. Elves were omnivores too, but my mother thought there might be some essential amino acid or something they needed that they couldn’t get with a plant based diet so a large portion of what my parents would be sending was a private supply of preserved meat and live water bugs for a set of breeding tanks we’d use to supplement our supplies.

Odele lifted her head at some invisible signal. “It’s starting.” She said quietly. A few moments later I felt it too; a pressure that you could only feel on the inside. 

Larkspur stood in the center of her chalk circle with Efa and Kayt on either side of her. A flat circle of light appeared in the air before her and she stuck both hands into it. Then she started to pull it open. She got it as far as her outstretched arms would allow, then Efa and Kayt took a side each and continued to pull until the other end of the tunnel came into sight. Warm summer air poured into the working chamber and I could hear the lazy drone of insects pick up as the tunnel stabilized, although the air in it was too hazy to see through. The silhouettes of people moved on the other side and hands appeared at the rim of the tunnel to help hold it open. The air cleared and I could see our reinforcements on the other side, neatly arrayed to move quickly. 

“It is now safe to cross.” Larkspur announced and stepped back. 

Aster’s guards came first; two Marshlanders -Sound of Wings on the right and Jumpingfish on the left- alongside two more elves I did not know. They’d probably immigrated during my absence. Each carried heavy rucksacks and dragged a travois of supplies behind them that they dropped near me before retreating back for another load. 

Another Marshlander followed, this one was much smaller and more brightly colored than my two guards and so was probably male. He wore a scholar’s armband and was looking around with bright, inquisitive eyes. That was Sweetwater; my new legal clerk. 

He joined me in Aster’s secure circle and I handed him a heatstone, which we had prepared in advance. Sound of Wings and Jumpingfish could last in the cold longer than he could and she’d only had time to make the one. 

“Lady Alessa, greetings.” He bobbed his head in a particular pattern that was reserved for friendly family members. I returned it.

“Thank you for joining us. I’ll be glad to have your counsel.”  

“It is my pleasure. Wings, Fish, and I have heard many good things about the baths here. This is no hardship and we have all been eager to have you back in Anwyn. So exciting to begin at last!” He thumped his tail happily and settled in at my side close enough that the bubble of warm air provided by the heatstone covered us both.

I blushed and realized he must have been part of my household-in-waiting. 

“I’m excited too.”

The best response for a happy person was to share in their joy, but I found I wasn’t lying or exaggerating. I was excited. In elven society, you weren’t really an adult or ready for responsibility until you were part of your own family. This was a huge step for all of us. 

My father approached as the guards crossed with last travois. My mother was behind him, anchoring the other side of the tunnel and flanked by several members of their household who all had proud smiles. 

She blew me a kiss and I pretended to catch it and put it in my pocket; something she’d often done with me as a child. I didn’t fight my fond smile although it was tinged with a little melancholy. Her letters were full of praise and support, but it wasn’t quite the same as being able to hug her.

Coryfae came with her own luggage; a set of two sleek rolling Hermes cases. My father had the matching overnight bag on his shoulder. To my surprise, Coryfae had a scarf over her hair and big moviestar sunglasses that she removed as she passed through to the dimmer interior of Ravnvaldr. She greeted me with a forehead kiss and a hug I melted into. This was pretty good too.

Humans say it takes a village to raise a child and Coryfae was a principal member of the village that raised me; as much of a mother to me as my mom. All the aunties and uncles in my dad’s household had sat up with me at least once as a baby, but Coryfae was the one I’d wanted if I couldn’t have mom or dad. 

She was my father’s most trusted advisor and was ostensibly using the trip as an excuse to leave her apprentices on their own for a bit in order to see if they’d swim or drown. I wasn’t too proud to turn her help away.

Coryfae handed me over to my father who picked me up and planted a big kiss on my cheek. “That’s from everyone.” He hugged me again, longer this time and did not put me down. “That’s from your mother and I. We’re very proud of what you’ve accomplished, but just know that you can all come home whenever you want.”

“Eran.” Coryfae warned in the tone of someone who’d had this conversation more than once already. They must have if she was breaking out his private name in public. 

“Fine.” Dad groused and set me back onto my feet. “Since you’re here for the duration, the clan is low on iron and cinnabar. If you find a source for uncut gems we can transport over water without being obvious about it then I’d be able to use that to calm the Triton down during the summers too. Coryfae has my notes.”

I made a thoughtful noise. 

A large part of why the Water People and the Coastlanders couldn’t get along was their shared tradition of ancestral worship. They’d started as one community, but split up a very long time ago. That meant both their cultures had a lot in common. 

During the autumn, the Water People and Coastlanders made regular offerings of raw gems to their venerable dead in order to ease their ancestors’ burdens in the afterlife. The gems were destroyed in the process so they had a constant need for more.

The Coastlanders controlled all the regional gem mines and were never willing to export as much as the Water People felt like they needed. In fact, the Coastlanders controlled all the Water People’s easy access to overland trade. They’d never really interfered in their neighbor’s occasional imports, but for gem stock there was no question; they’d make an exception. 

Fortunately the Water People were self-sufficient enough in all other aspects that the gem trade was their only real point of pressure.

The summer fair at Vigny was the biggest dwarven market on Tapama. It actually took place just off the Tapama mainland. Vigny was a large island located along one of the Jorgumandr Veils so the dwarves could get there without boarding a shop and the island featured many deep harbors for everyone else, all convenient to one another. The temperature was agreeable enough to support the temporary market, but nothing really grew there so there wasn’t a point in establishing a permanent trading post. 

More importantly, the Water People were able to trade at Vigny without interference from the Coastlanders. Arranging to have a dedicated shipment of gems available to them would make life calmer for everyone in the region. Ravnvaldr exported some gems, but I wasn’t sure how many they’d be willing to funnel to merfolk for them to ritually destroy. 

Fortunately, from what I understood, the Water Folk didn’t have any particular preference when it came to quality, just quantity. Even they held particularly good pieces back for jewelry and other ornamentation sometimes.

“I’ll see what I can do.” I promised.

“That’s my girl.” He turned a brief gaze up towards the theater seats. His eyes paused and narrowed on the humans before moving on. “I can’t linger --just, remember to upload the honor of the clan.” He said as he squeezed my shoulder.

That was a loaded statement. I knew my conduct so far was beyond reproach, but he wasn’t talking about that. 

Angie’s visit weighed heavily on me. There’d probably be another in the future and I wasn’t sure how Coryfae’s presence would affect the outcome if Angie’s plan was to try and provoke me again. She could smooth things over, but just as easily make it much worse depending on what exactly Angie said or did. 

Coryfae had been very patient with them so far, but disrespecting a clan member in front of one of their aunties or uncles was only wise if you were looking for a way to commit suicide and not get caught. 

There was only one respect where I knew I was more human than anything else. I hated seeing people die if I could prevent it even if it wasn’t any of my business, which was a lamentable character flaw if you asked my family.

Still, there was only one answer I could give. “I promise.” 

We all watched the tunnel close behind my father until even the last echoing sound of summer faded away.

Aster took command as Efa and Kayt helped a tired, but pleased looking Larkspur over to stand with Sweetwater and I.

“Huddle together. Friea will be skipping you all back to the rooms.” She examined Larkspur’s face and, seemingly confident that her wife was in acceptable condition, turned to bark orders to the rest of the guards. “Everyone else, pick your load and move out. Odele will be taking the lead. Maeve will bring up the rear.”

Friea herded us a little closer together and jumped us in one lot. We landed in the living area and I directed Larkspur, Efa, and Kayt straight towards the bedroom. However talented they all were, that had been a major working and required strict aftercare.

For once I was left to change by myself, although I found Efa had laid out a passive aggressive housedress for me in the bath. It was fancier than I would have chosen for myself on a day when we’d all agreed not to leave the rooms again, but I was boiling now that we were back in our rooms and ready to shed layers.

Sweetwater acquainted himself with the bath while I took myself off to the kitchen to start tea and supper. So far I was the only member of the household who had much luck with the kitchen and I had more time for meal planning so I’d naturally come to be in charge of the meals. It wasn’t a strenuous task. The guards took turns helping me with ingredients depending who was on duty. 

The stewards who oversaw the dignitary suites still brought carts three times a day, but we supplemented those meals from our supplies so that everyone was meeting their dietary needs.

Mom hadn’t had much laid by to send with us when we first set out. It was too early in the year for the dry pantries to have been built up much. I was nearly out of flour, but I had enough to put together something a little more celebratory than mushrooms. I’d started a dough that morning and set some ban -a starchy root vegetable native to Anwyn that was sort of like a less fibrous sweet potato- steaming in a basket over the water oven. 

Knoppi dumplings were better with fresh meat or seafood, but knoppi made with dried meat soaked in wine was a traditional celebration dish served around the New Year so my menu wasn’t too weird.  

I was nicely out of the way when the guards arrived with our new supplies. My new guards, Keva and Dalan, presented themselves to me and I welcomed them on behalf of the household -many of whom were passed out asleep in the other room- and accepted their oaths as guards.  

Afterwards I was left to my own devices as I made filling and started to roll out the dumpling skins. 

So of course, that’s when a visitor decided to show up.

000

Chapter Six

000

Aster was the one to answer the door and came to find me with a tic underneath one eye. “One of the humans is here.” She reported gruffly. “A girl. Not the same one as last time.”

“Shelby?” I looked up in considerable surprise. “Show her in, please. Did she say what she needed?”

“Just to talk.” Something about my body language seemed to calm Aster down and her shoulders dropped from their irritable hunch. “I’ll bring her here.”

“Thank you.”

After Angie’s visit, I wasn’t about to stand on ceremony so I kept working; rolling knoppi skins and laying them under a damp towel. I still had my formal claws since there was no point in changing them until my manicure grew out some more so I was putting off having to wrap them as long as possible. 

Shelby was dressed in leggings, shearling-lined boots, and an oversized University of Rochester hoodie when Aster brought her over. I was instantly jealous. I’d floated the idea of having someone bring my athleisure clothes back from the Earth-side apartment when we were making plans for the personnel transfer, but Efa had shot that idea down in flames. I might get away with wearing them in Red Harbour in the dead of winter while we were snowed in, but not anywhere we might possibly have a dignified visitor.  

That said, I realized this might not be an official visit. Shelby looked a little shifty, like she was getting away with something, as she looked around the apartment with surprise.

“Alessa, wow,” she breathed. “This place is so much bigger than the room we got.”

Huh. I wondered if Angie had noticed that.

“I suppose that makes sense. You’ve got a smaller group.” I patted a nearby cushion so she’d sit and stop turning in circles. This was at least familiar. Shelby wasn’t the type to hide her feelings. “What’s up?”

“I, uh…” She took the offered seat and fiddled with the drawstrings on her hoodie. “...the others don’t really know I’m here,” she confessed. “Emil does. He’s covering for me, but the others don’t.”

“I figured,” I said, glancing down at her clothes and she snorted out a laugh.

“Okay, I guess it’s obvious.” She looked at the little round of dough I was rolling out. “What are you making?”

“Knoppi.” I considered the wrapper for a minute, trying to come up with the most succinct description. “Sort of like if pierogi and bao had a baby.”

“Oh, do they not send food here?” She glanced under the damp towel I was using to keep the wrappers workable. “Do you want help? I can fold if you want.”

I was starting to realize that Shelby didn’t have an agenda. She wasn’t stalling for time or waiting for a good moment to broach a subject. She was just visiting. 

I wondered what that meant about the other apartment. 

“Sure. I’ll show you one first.” 

Then, for a little while, we didn’t do much except make dumplings. Shelby knew what she was doing and was almost faster at stuffing them that I was at rolling them. I wasn’t expecting that since she’d seemed to live off takeout and takeout leftovers when we worked together.

She slowed down towards the end though.

“Sorry for showing up unannounced,” she admitted quietly. “I didn’t really expect you’d let me in.”

 I stopped my work and considered her. “Why not? We’ve been friendly in the past. You haven’t done anything to change that.”

“Well, Ms. Deveraux was just here and she’s such a consistent bitch about you.” Shelby huffed and pinched the knoppi in her hands shut with more force than absolutely necessary. I was surprised to hear her say that. I also hadn't realized other people noticed. “She came back saying you threatened her and, I’m sorry, but that didn’t sound like you at all. Emil said she probably deserved it,” she added the last a bit more quietly, like Angie might hear.

“That’s not quite what happened.” I noticed Coryfae leaving the bedroom and moving with a certain predatory interest. “Although I can see how she might think so. She was in danger, but it wasn’t my doing.”

“So what did happen?” Shelby asked. “I know we aren’t close or anything, but I think I have a good sense of who you are. I never really understood what the Directors’ problem with you was -except maybe Angie- but I know you’re not like the way they’ve been talking.”

Coryfae smoothly took a spot at the table I’d been using as a workspace and Shelby jumped at the sudden intrusion.

“Deveraux called Lady Alessandra’s honor into question,” she answered for me and only someone who knew her could spot the dangerous glitter in her eyes. She was feeling Shelby out.

“She accused me of buying my internship,” I clarified, knowing where Shelby was likely to take that statement and also wanting to leave the things Angie almost said about my father out of it. Coryfae didn’t need that information refreshed in her mind otherwise she’d engineer an opportunity for Angie to finish digging her grave.

“I did hear that the Deputy Director does something like that.” Shelby scrunched up her face. “It still seems excessive though. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but they talk about you like you’re Lucrezia Borgia or something and Amos acts like you saved us just to make him look bad.” She rolled her eyes at the idea. “Dick,” she added.

I was vaguely flattered.

“Out of curiosity, what do you think Angie’s problem is?” I asked. I’d thought she was taking her cue from Markham, but if I’d done something to offend her personally then I wanted to know about it.

“Oh, um.” Shelby stared at the knoppi she was wrapping. “Well, let me ask you something first. Are you white?”

I blinked rapidly. “I… probably not?” I did not care to get into my entire history. “I was adopted, but my biological parents are anonymous. I’m mixed, but I don’t know my exact heritage. One of my parents was likely white given the demographics of the community I was surrendered in. Why do you ask?

“Okay, that’s what I thought,” she sighed in relief. “Um, I hope this isn’t insulting though, but I think it’s because you kind of look a little like a white girl with a spray tan and you’re always wearing locs or braids. Angie had to work really hard to get where she is and I know she had to compromise some things about how she presents herself in order to do it. You know how some people get about ‘ethnic’ hair and ‘ethnic’ voices?” 

I did, a bit. 

Some of the girls in my boarding school had attempted to give me a crash course in human racial politics, but they were between fifteen and eighteen years old so it was hardly comprehensive. 

It wasn’t explicitly stated during our classes, but I learned enough from them to understand that the etiquette and diction we were taught was white-coded behavior.

I’d been enrolled in an immersive language program where the students were predominantly people of color and I’d learned a great deal from them, including the sort of microaggressions that I could expect living in American society as a visibly brown person.

My school friends were the reason I knew that I’d messed up when I shouted at Amos. Brinkerman, though, had made it a special point when we were in the early employment discussions to inform me that I could do whatever I wanted with my hair and that if I was confronted by anyone on the subject then I was to report it to him and the problem would go away. So I’d stopped thinking about it and wore my hair as I pleased.

Had I caused a new problem for myself without realizing it? I knew something about how to handle being seen as too brown, but not being brown enough wasn’t something I had any existing frame of reference for.

“She’s the reason you don’t see a lot of that at BIR,” Shelby continued. “Director Markham is nice and all, but he wouldn’t think of it on his own. He’s that generation of white guy; not actively harmful by himself, but he’s not exactly woke either so he’s not going to intervene in institutional racism unless someone explicitly points it out to him. He relies on Angie to call bullshit on the stuff he doesn’t notice. I know it really bugs her when she sees rich white kids appropriating Black culture.”

I sort of knew about that. I’d been insulated from that kind of thing by where I’d grown up and who my people were, but it was a common topic at school in the dormitory after-hours.

I just hadn’t realized just how well I passed as white. I could get pretty light if I stayed out of the sun and, in retrospect, I had been spending an awful lot of time indoors this past year. In previous years, I’d spent my summers in Anwyn and always came back to school deeply tan. This time I went straight to my internship.

“I’m sorry to have given her that impression.” I didn’t have any clue what to do about fixing it yet. I was myself. I didn’t want to force myself into any other shape to make someone else happy and that was what it sounded like Angie had been forced to do.

Some of the anger I’d been suppressing in the back of my heart loosened up and began to drain at long last. It was good to have more context for this misunderstanding. I felt more positive about future interactions with her, at least. We still had some things to work through, but this was a better place to start from.

Shelby waved the apology off. “That’s not really your fault. You can’t help the conclusions people jump to and I think she’ll figure it out once she’s actually around you some more. She’s already coming around. Most of what we all knew about you was what Amos had to say and he’s really starting to lose the plot lately.” There she grimaced. “Director Markham leans on him a lot so he’s got more influence than maybe he should, but we’re all starting to question the stuff he’s been saying.” 

Interesting. This was turning out to be a very productive visit. 

“Thank you for sharing that with me. Do you have any questions I can answer for you?” I asked carefully. She’d given me a lot just now and I’d feel bad about asking for more without sharing something in return. 

“Oh, tons, but I don’t know that I want to ask them like this.” Shelby pulled her hood up and smiled. She looked a little pained and embarrassed. “Seems fake, you know? I mostly came to get out of the room for a little bit. Although…” She looked at the water dispenser. “...could you maybe explain how the kitchen stuff works? We have some extra supplies because we didn’t know if we’d be able to eat the food here, but so far no one’s been able to figure out what the sand pit thingie does.”

I smiled, happy that it was a problem that I could easily solve. “Of course. We’re almost ready to steam these so it’s a good opportunity.”

Coryfae stood by and watched with an indulgent air as I walked Shelby through the mechanics of cooking on the sands. 

For steaming, we removed the sand basin and traded it out for a metal mesh to set the steaming baskets on top of. Within minutes the entire apartment smelled like a mineral spring.

“This is so cool.” Shelby bounced in place as she watched the water bubble underneath the basket. “Is that how they heat this place? Emil thought it was geothermal energy or magic, but I got to talk to one of the stewards a little bit. We had trouble understanding each other, but he said the heat was in the walls and I know the Romans used to do something similar.”

“There’s a very hot natural spring below the settlement,” Coryfae finally re-entered the conversation. “There are magical heat regulators in place here and there along the network to make it hotter or cooler --although those are used sparingly. Each one has to be charged daily by hand. That is why the residential areas are located deep within the mountain and the public areas are often very cold. Dwarves don’t produce many magic users and their magical reserves aren’t large.”

What she did not mention is that the lion’s share of the Dwarven wise folk’s time went into the creation and maintenance of the many, many pleasure gardens in Ravnvaldr. They didn’t have a lot of patience for utilitarian maintenance tasks. That sort of thing got left to apprentices and new immigrants. 

I sat back on my heels as a thought occurred to me. Shelby was hanging on Coryfae’s every word so I had a moment to organize the idea in my head.

Any heating and cooling solution dependent on fossil fuel was right out. Air quality was a constant concern for the Dwarves and they lived long enough that the possibility of climate change wasn’t a far-off problem for future people the way it was for humans. 

Dwarves weren’t native to Anwyn. The first dwarven colonists had emigrated through their veil over four hundred years ago. There were still dwarves on their homeworld but they’d become totally dependent on Ravnvaldr’s aid shipments. The surface was unlivable; barren and wracked by constant megastorms. 

Over three quarters of what the Ravnvaldr dwarves imported went to supply the last dwarrow kingdom of Svartalfheim and things were getting bad enough there that my father had received a quiet warning from Ylem that his father, High King Valos, was preparing to lead the final evacuation to Anwyn as soon as they could locate and prepare another colony site. 

I didn’t know if the dwarves had been responsible for the ecological collapse of their homeworld, but I did know that they would not entertain even the slightest possibility of repeating their own history in these new lands. So they’d need a sustainable solution like hydroelectricity or perhaps very sturdy solar panels.

I thought about an urban farming initiative I’d toured with Brinkerman once. It was totally off the grid; aquaponics in a big metal shipping container fed by a couple of solar panels. It hadn’t been of much interest to me at the time. Tapama was the bread basket of Anwyn after all, but Jorgumandr was a different story. 

Coryfae waited until Shelby had exhausted herself and reluctantly returned back to the BIR apartment. Then she turned to me. “Well?” she asked, not bothering to hide the smile tugging at her mouth.

“Sweetwater?” I called into the bathroom, where he was happily floating in the bath with his kinswomen. “Do you feel up to writing a letter for me?”

He popped his head onto the tiled ledge of the bath. Marshlander men were colorful to begin with, but the water made his scales shine like gems. “I am revived, my Lady,” he declared. “I will be with you shortly!”

 The first letter was for my mother. Between her and Brinkerman, once he was back, I’d know if my idea was something achievable and what it would take to broker such a deal. This was going to be worth more than raw metal and dyestuffs for sure. 

Mom must have been watching her letterbox because we received a reply almost at once; a quick note that read; 

‘Fascinating, sweetheart. Urban farming and solar is a bit too far after my time for me to say anything right away, but I’ll show your proposal to your father and the elders. We’ll ask around and give you an update tomorrow. In the meantime, Mr. Brinkerman has returned from his leave. I’ve included a letter from him for you.’

“Why is he back already? He was supposed to take another week off.” I muttered to myself and found the letter in question underneath mom’s note. It was a sheet of legal paper that read in typical Brinkerman fashion: 

‘Lessy, what the actual fuck happened while I was out?’ 

I had to write that reply myself. 

Sweetwater was conversant in English, but his handwriting wasn’t very good yet. Fortunately our supply exchange had included a supply of ballpoint pens and mechanical pencils so I was able to do it without much trouble. Even so, It took me almost until Efa woke up and came to dress me for dinner to get the entire upsetting tale onto paper. 

“Do you mind if I read this?” Coryfae asked as I handed it over to be folded and sealed. Sealing official correspondence took magic I didn’t have. Sweetwater could do it in a pinch, but he didn’t have much magical talent and I didn’t like asking him to wear himself out for no reason. “Catherine and Eran weren’t able to tell me exactly what happened at BIR, just that you were let go from your internship.”

I hid my miserable blush with my hands. Coryfae had arranged it for me so she was going to take anything that went wrong on their end personally. “It’s all right. You can read it.”

She stuck close as Kayt and Efa dressed me up in green velvet. Kayt styled my hair into a deceptively simple updo held in place by emerald-studded gold pins. The dress was warm enough that I could wear a lighter netted wrap with a beaded fringe and tiny bells that sang as I walked. 

Coryfae finished just as Efa and Kayt started to lay out Larkspur’s evening dress. She set the stack of papers down with a thump and a blank expression I did not like to see. 

“Madams,” she addressed Efa and Kayt. “I will be taking Mage Larkspur’s place at table tonight. Please forgive my short notice.”

It was gratifying when they looked first to me.

“Go ahead. Larkspur needs more rest,” I told them. I’d been trying to come up with an excuse to let her stay behind anyway. Tunnels were usually opened by at least four powerful magi. She’d only had herself and two minor assistants. “Let Aster know.”

Kayt curtsied and hurried off while Efa went to peruse Coryfae’s luggage.

“Are you sure?” I asked Coryfae once we were alone. “This was supposed to be a vacation for you.”

“That was the excuse I gave your mother,” Coryfae sniffed as she folded the letter for Brinkerman and pressed her thumb to the back of it. Pale blue light shimmered around the edges of her nail and left behind a simple geometric pattern that acted as a seal. “I don’t take vacations.”

“You should.” I handed her a plate of dumplings. “If you’re coming to dinner then eat something now and promise me you won’t do anything awful.”

“I won’t embarrass you, dear,” she said, which was not the same thing at all. Still, it was likely all I’d get out of her.

000

Mercifully, the seating order changed that evening and I couldn’t see my fellow humans at all from where we sat. Coryfae and I were slightly further down the table to make room for Ylem’s visiting grandchildren and their promised friends.

Akan was seated next to me again and wild to tell me about an exhibition she’d seen the night before. It sounded amazing and I was sorry to have missed it. Dwarves were amazing illusionists, but they didn’t often give repeat performances. If you asked one then they’d tell you art is more precious when it is fleeting, but I thought it was really so the audience who’d managed to see it would have something to brag about.

The illusionist had apparently created a singing chorus of birds who sang a very silly song about about a wolf who wanted to make friends with a rabbit and didn’t understand why the rabbit wasn’t interested. Akan had just gotten to describing how the illusionist had made a tree sprout from the ground when I heard a commotion at the hall entrance.

Everyone, including me, turned to look. Someone, an elf I didn’t know from the looks of it, had stopped in the entrance. His company had been following close behind and plowed into his back. They’d ended up knocking over the small table the hall stewards used to keep track of the seating arrangements.

“Anyone you know?” Akan asked me conspiratorially.

“I don’t think so.” I considered him. 

He was big, even for an elf, and his back was to me. He had the straight chestnut colored hair of a northerner and he wore it in a long tail laid over his shoulder. 

There were two other elves with him; shorter men who looked like they could be Kayt’s older brothers except they were probably married going by the possessive hand one kept on the hip of the other. 

That was rare. They all had hunters’ mantles and hunters rarely married amongst themselves.

Not every elf clan was wealthy enough to keep all their children. In fact most elves moved between clans at least once if only for genetic diversity. Harou was an exception due to the size of our territory and the fact that my father was one of the five regional land wardens of Tapama. We almost always needed more people so our children rarely left home unless they really wanted to. As a result, they rarely lacked romantic options.

Hunters had no clan beyond their individual teams. They were usually orphans, youngsters whose clan couldn’t support them beyond childhood, or they just didn’t get along with their families for some reason. That was rare, given how clingy elves could be with their social unit, but it did happen. 

They all travelled a lot. Hunters went wherever monsters needed cutting back. It wasn’t an occupation for growing old in, but they made a good living at it while they were young. Eventually they either recruited enough members to found their own small clan or, more often, married into the family of someone they met during their travels.  

I was glad to see more elves. Ravnvaldr wasn’t a confined society by any means, but I knew my household would be glad to have normal people around to socialize with.

The stewards eventually righted their materials and began seating people again. The hunters ended up across from Coryfae and I. I turned to wave hello -the table was too wide for talking- and got my good look at the big man’s face. 

He was --he was very handsome with pale hazel eyes and a scar that cut up from the edge of his jaw to the corner of his mouth, tugging it slightly up into a permanent wry smile. He was older than I’d expected, probably close to my own age than what was typical for someone in his career.

He smiled back at me and something tightened in my chest. 

I was suddenly, irrationally convinced that this was my secret suitor.

I managed to keep my feelings off my face and returned my attention to Akan’s story although, admittedly, I didn’t do a very good job of keeping it there. Instead I found myself watching the man across the table through the curtain of my lashes, trying to understand where that feeling was coming from.

I have never given much weight to the idea of extra-sensory perception. I’ve been in the presence of magic. I know humans don’t have telekinesis or the ability to tell the future, but I do believe in human intuition. 

It’s still not magic. Rather, humans have an innate ability to instinctively recognize patterns and make complex associations based on very little. 

My instinct was telling me that I knew the man across the table. I just had to observe until my conscious mind made the same connection my subconscious already jumped to. 

Little by little, the pieces came together.

I might not have known him, but his body language said he knew me. He kept glancing back in my direction, trying to be subtle about it and mostly failing. 

I was good at watching without being seen to do it so to him it appeared as though I were still listening to Lady Akan. Hopefully she thought so too, but it was telling that she hadn’t said anything in the past several minutes that required an actual response from me.

He shrugged his shoulders in response to something one of his companions said and I suddenly realized what it was my subconscious had latched onto.

Hunters don’t go in for uniforms. They dress with comfort and utility in mind. The one exception is a hunter’s mantle; a sort of long half-cape draped from one shoulder and trimmed with a fur collar. Traditionally, the fur is supposed to come from a hunter’s most ambitious solo kill. 

In practice, though, many of the most dangerous and crafty monsters are ugly and stink long past death so most hunters will pick from the best of their most attractive kills. 

The mantle of the man watching me had a collar of pale gold fur with a subtle pattern of bronze rosettes fixed with a bone pin carved in the shape of a tree cat.

000

Chapter Seven

000

“Shall I introduce you after supper?” Akan murmured in my ear and laughed when I squeaked. “He’s very attractive for someone from the surface.”

“Yes, please.” I did not cover my face only by sheer force of will. “Do they winter here often?”

“After a fashion. They used to visit more,” Akan replied. “The Prince’s youngest grandsons are training more of our young people to be professional monster hunters. It’s less of a bachelor’s career on this continent. As you know, we’re under nearly constant threat from trolls, giants, and dread wolves. The gates and traps used to keep them out, but the wolves especially are getting smarter every year so we’ve had to take the fight outside. Tanvir, Carala, and Maro are some of the best hunters in the business and the Prince arranged for them to come once in a while to handle problems our hunters aren’t prepared for or can’t stay outside long enough to finish off.”

I’d actually heard of Carala and Maro. They were famous for removing an earth dragon from the salt flats far to the east of Red Harbour. I was surprised they were still hunting, but if they’d married each other then it would be hard for them to find a place where they could retire. Clan Elders liked to see a show of commitment from their supplicants in the form of an engagement to a local.

Dinner seemed longer than ever that evening. I felt like Ylem was deliberately lingering over his meal before changing the courses.

I could also feel Coryfae’s amusement once the diners were all released. Akan hooked our elbows together, prepared to take me off in search of the hunters. She almost needn’t have bothered. We found them loitering around the exit leading towards the guest apartments acting like they weren’t waiting for someone, but looking towards us every few minutes. 

If I needed more confirmation that Tanvir was my mystery suitor, I got it when both Carala and Maro grinned in my direction as we approached and started to elbow him. Tanvir, meanwhile, tried and failed to keep his expression neutral. He looked… hopeful.

Amused, I noted that I would never have to wonder what that boy was thinking. It was written all over his face with helpful little illustrations and callouts.

Somewhere in the back of my head a small voice started to whisper ‘that one.’

It was harder to understand than my earlier hunch. I didn’t know the man aside from the fact that he was skilled, determined, and gave thoughtful gifts. That wasn’t enough to build a romance on, but the voice in the back of my head did not seem to care.

‘That one’ it insisted. 

I’d never really been attracted to anyone before. I was always too busy heading for the next mile marker and lovers seemed to take more effort than I’d ever cared to invest. 

It wasn’t entirely irrational. That special time in a young woman’s life when they started to listen to their hearts had been difficult for me and ended up putting me off the idea of boys for a long time.

Somehow, when I was a teenager I’d gotten the attention of a son from one of the northern clans. We were never clear exactly from which one or else my father might have lit off the first clanwar in two hundred years. 

It happened a few years after mom’s… accident; the results of which had led to greatly increased interest in humanity from the wider world of Anwyn and an increased push from the other Land Wardens to establish a congenial relationship with Earth.  

Bride theft was an old tradition among elves leftover from the era of Warring Clans and -in their defense- the modern tradition had come a long way from its feudal roots. It wasn’t really kidnapping when your intended spouse was sitting up, packed and ready to go when you arrived to take them away while their family made theatrical noises of bereavement, but didn’t actually try to stop either of you from leaving.

One young man -nobody I knew- decided his clan would benefit from having a human. So he set out to acquire the only one easily available. 

Meanwhile, being fifteen at the time, I was coming to the end of a rough patch of puberty that granted him both an opportunity and the illusion of an invitation. 

My entrance into womanhood wasn’t easy on anyone, to be honest. Elven children sleep together in giant co-dependant piles, but I discovered the hard way that human teenage girls need a little quiet space to themselves if anyone is going to have any peace. 

My year mates hadn’t liked it even though by that point I’d spent two solid years being a histrionic bitch with feelings made out of glass. Even I was starting to think something was wrong, despite my mom’s assurances that this was just how the whole process went. I might have been upsetting them, but my cousins still wanted eyes on me so if I wasn’t in the dorm at night where I should have been then they would go looking for me, which in turn drove me insane. 

Dad found a compromise by putting a bedroom into my mom’s tower. By then she’d adjusted to life among elves and didn’t need privacy quite so often, but the kids were cautious around her and wouldn’t go into the tower even if she wasn’t in there so it worked out. I got my space even if they didn’t want to give it to me and if I got to sleep by myself then I was slightly less unbearable during the day. 

Fifteen was too young to worry about suitors --or so we’d thought. I hadn’t really gotten to the point of even having my first crush. So when a boy dressed like a thief came in through my window one evening I did not automatically think he was there to whisk me off into the romantic night. 

I thought he was a spy breaking into my mother’s office so I pushed him right back out that window. 

In my defense he didn’t fall all the way down. He managed to skip himself into the airspace over an open compost cart, but skipping doesn’t affect velocity. He smashed the cart into pieces loud enough to wake the entire Keep and only just managed to escape ahead of several angry members of the night watch. 

We might have always thought he was a spy except for a note that had been left in my father’s offices meant to inform him that his daughter would be happy in her new home.

That incident did what two and a half years of cajoling from my clan cousins could not and drove me back into the dormitory. It still took a week for me to really be able to sleep again. Every creak and nocturnal rustle woke me up. I knew that this had been an edge case, but my mother explained that sometimes when a human gets too frightened in what should have been a safe space then they get stuck like that. I adjusted eventually, but I didn’t want to talk or even think about romance again until I was well into my late twenties. 

...until now, to be precise.

“Gentlemen, I was so glad to see you tonight!” Akan led the curtsies as we greeted the men and they bowed in response. “May I introduce my friends?”

“We would be honored.” Maro, a lean and dark elf from somewhere close to the equator, said.