Chapter Text
Alanna--
The more time I spend here the more certain I am that your seneschal's friend might have been a little deep in his cups when he saw this "demon wolf." For a start, the locals (who, to be clear, barely speak Common. Or, well, they certainly speak something but I am not entirely certain it's Common. It's certainly common, though.) can't seem really to decide if it's a) a bear b) a giant wolf or c) some kind of strange horse creature? There is a girl here who heard it from her cousin, or perhaps her brother, or both, but he says that his friend who is what passes for an apothecary here saw it in the night stealing medicine and swears up and down that it had human hands like a small girl. This has not given me much hope for finding anything other than more saddle sores and ticks.
My only consolation is knowing you're more displeased in your court dresses and setting about wedding preparations than I am here, on this lumpy, flea-ridden bed, wondering if the horse you loaned me is somehow deficient, as he seemed somehow more bone-rattling than the general run of such beasts.
Hell and damnation on you and yours.
All my love,
Numair Salmalín
p.s.
Please ignore all the above, perhaps only excepting the section on the horse.
Something is Very Strange in Long Lake: I set about for a highly efficient tour of the lakeside on wing (I know, and it went badly but also I'm here to write to you about my travails), where they told me to look for the wolves. I did, actually, find wolves once I figured out that lakes have a very queer effect on the air currents around them, and espied myself some three or four half-grown cubs.
Now, at first I believed they were attempting to hunt some kind of pony that had gotten loose some time back (remember my mention of the horse?! Of course.) But soon I realized it ought to be something more than that, remembering that someone else had mentioned seeing some sort of strange horse, so I stayed to investigate. The horse didn't appear to take much notice of the pups at all, though they tussled very near her--she merely cropped grass, as one might expect for such a creature, and based on her droppings she had been there no small amount of time, well mowing the litttle clearing.
But I meander--I did not then and very adroitly closed in before looking at the clearing with my second sight, having, of course, intuited that whatever creature was terrifying the valley had to be something magical.
The horse was so lit up with wild magic, I just about dropped out of the sky (I have very nearly the trick of magic while holding my form a hawk) I think that /it/ might be the source of these legends in truth! It looked as though it had not ever seen any kind of human hands whatsoever, and when I drew close to the ground as such, it gave me such a look and set off after me with the wolf cubs! It took quite a chunk out of my tail feathers, after some ravens joined into the game, though I am nearly certain that was no kind of unnatural magic, and merely ravens as I've been dive bombed near every time I fly out. It's vexing.
Nevertheless, I think I'll have this sorted and find back to civilization soon enough, though I wouldn't complain if you sent me that foreign princess twaddling about--not like that! But I hear her kind have a way with some horse gods or summat.
Mithros, the local dialect has its claws in me already.
May you find a stone in your shoe each day of the rest of your life, and that awful prince of yours too.
All my love,
Numair Salmalín
What did I tell you about flying around you thrice curst idiot? You've caught half luck you didn't die in full, and I'll take it out of your hide (are you practicing your sword forms?) when you return.
A stone in the shoe would be kinder than these [unintelligible] they make me wear. Switch with me? You'll do wedding gowns what I do a page uniform, I'm certain. Mine ought to fit you perfect--they're tight even on me. What do they feed these women?
Must run, they're after me again. As though there can be any greater certainty that I'm no man than what they got, lest they wish to drill peepholes through our walls.
If you get eaten by a horse, I'll sell you to the man who makes pies down the road--
Alanna
Would not put it past them. Not eaten by a horse, but no progress. I went back on foot (yes, mother), and found myself terribly lost and very wet. Will send a drill in the next post, with some instructions on how certain shapes in glass will give a better view to a peephole.
All my love,
(the faintly mildewed) Numair Salmalín
I have no sympathy for you whatsoever. Did you ever meet the Sarain princess? She seems to have been called down to curse me. I'm sorry to have nothing more encouraging to say to you. When I was a girl and thought that I'd have to grow up and marry the prince it always seemed such a curse for my mother to have set upon me before even my birth, up until I met Jon (don't titter at me. I was a child, and he really was a nice boy). Now, the closer it gets the more I feel doomed. I don't know why I ever thought this was a good idea.
Alan
p.s. Did you talk to Tait? Coram says he knows what's what, even if no one else will speak you any sense.
Alan--
What's the Sarain princess done to you now? I've never met her, but all the rumors have her the most beautiful woman in the world, and quite charming at that (ahh, I see). You must tell me everything.
In better news, I finally met with your contact. He's seen plenty of evidence of this demon horse (I grow more certain) out in the bush, and better yet his sister's daughter has met the thing often enough.
There seems to be a strange cleaving of opinion on this creature. Tait's sister and her wife have been visited by it often enough (they hold a small farm with their daughter on the edge of town) and the first time simply thought that the horse (pony? what's the difference?) had simply gotten loose, and brought her back to their farm on a lead. That night, while the girl slept in the pen with it, she said she saw an enormous shape with hands like a child and the head of a bear of wolf undo the lock and help the horse escape. A few days after that, a brace of pheasants were left on their porch. They say that since then, every couple months the horse will appear for a brushing or her hooves farried (visited upon by a farrier? Trimmed?) and some game or foraging will be left for them in thanks. The girl also reports having seen the shadow of an enormous wolf in the forest while she played with the horse, and Tait says she has a cool head for her youth and is not given to inventing tales. Her mothers were scared sick that the wolf might take her, but didn't claim to have seen anything off about the horse, other than an unseemly intelligence.
I know not what to make of this. Local magistrates and several others call for its head, but it seems more out of fear for what it might do, that what it has done. It has not killed any person--everyone agrees on that--and I've plans to meet with a man who had broken his leg in the forest and said he was saved from freezing by the beast.
I am sorry that you are not happy with your lot, darling. Gods know I'll have you if you ever consider throwing over that devilishly handsome bit of frippery for a real man (I can hear you laughing, and I do not appreciate it).
All japing aside, Alan: any court would have you. Whatever arrangement your mother set for you, you can winkle out of it. You're the first female knight in five hundred years, you brought the Dominion Jewel to Corus to prove your worth. There are no guards who would stop you, if you should choose to set upon your horse and ride out again. It's a trap of the mind, my love, and one I know well.
But really, I ache to hear of the princess. Are her breasts as lovely as they say?
Your ever-fervent suitor,
Numair Salmalín
I'll have you whipped, see that I will.
Her breasts are incredible. The problem is Jon agrees with me.
Alanna--
Do you doubt him truly? Or is it only that this wedding has you both set at one another's throats, and he cannot greet his nursemaid without you baring your teeth? Does he bite about you writing me?
I spoke to the young man with the broken leg, who fell in the woods while harvesting mushrooms. He said that an enormous demon wolf came to him where he was fallen and yelling, and that he was certain he was to be eaten but it stole his neckerchief and brought it to him again soaked in fresh water, and lay on his body through the night so that he would not freeze, then in the morning carried him on its back to his family's farm. His sister remembers, so that we know it was not a fever dream.
I feel now as though I am not here quite to find or kill this creature, but to find some way to keep the townspeople from hunting it. The valley is not too small to support humans and wolves, and a very odd magical horse who seems to keep them all in her thrall.
Perhaps it is some kind of old god. I don't mean to blaspheme, but no living wolf grows to that size. Every person has said it left paw marks wider than a man's hand with his fingers spread, and was taller even than the horse. I might again try on wing to see it.
As to your letter: you know by now that I have no great wisdom to give you in matters of the heart. Please know however that I am at your disposal entirely, that I love you, and I'll curse Jon's ass to boil forever if he touches her magnificent breasts before I do.
All my love,
Numair Salmalín
Numair,
I suppose you will have to put up with me twittering on about this, but you have called it upon yourself, and I am in desperate need of someone with their head on awright about this. Afore you tell me again of how often I've sworn your ma dropped you on yours as a babe, all the ninnies here act as thought Jon could grow horns and start bleating and I'd still be as certain to marry him as the sun to rise in the morn.
I guess--well, he has no sense of it, and I cannot talk to him of this. But it seemed such a gift that I loved him in truth when we had been mandated to marry, what with mother being near-royalty in Barzun and all. It seemed like the gods were smiling upon us, and I do love him, so perhaps we did not listen to my court manners being so bad, and how I've always hated politicking and never held my temper in my life, and all the things they tell me my mother did, and Queen Lianne does, and Thayet does so well.
I don't fear Jon will stray, not in truth. He is too good to. But he does like Thayet, of course. She would be in every way a better queen than I would, and everyone can see. It's less that Jon is about to marry himself off to her, and more that the courtiers who always hated me have already done so. She's not done any of it, and courts Carthak. I can hear your response from here, and I have spoken to her of your time with Ozorne (leaving you out of it, of course). I am more afeared that I know she would be a better queen than I, and I cannot speak to Jon of it because he knows more even than I do. You understand? It has the ring of truth, as his love affair with her does not, though I am not certain that they would not also suit in that way: it would be very much easier if she was shrewish or spoilt or unkind (most princesses being all three) but when I went to speak to her about Carthak we found ourselves up half the night talking of my time at the Roof of the World comparing Kmiri fighting methods. We had just missed one another in Sarain, the same roads on different days. I felt it was the first sane conversation I had in days. I even told her about George, who knows I look to him like a lifeboat, and encourages me to it, and Jon evermore to real jealousy.
I'm sick with all of it, but I have made a friend. I suppose that is the one good thing of all of this. Thayet is teaching me the ways of noble ladies, and they are far stranger than ever I knew. I would have thought Jon would be terrible smug, as he always said that I needed more training in deportment than from the "once-whore mother of the king of thieves," as Eleni herself once put it, but instead he is jealous of Thayet as well. Blood of the mother.
I am all twisted about, but I will wring your bird neck with his if you break it going after this wolf.
Come home soon,
Alanna
Alanna--
Saw nothing on wing. Tait has been harrying me to go out with him and his dogs to look for this wolf in person, and I have steeled myself to do so.
I have no advice to give to your troubles. Perhaps I could curse Thayet with boils and cure both your problems?
I do not mean to make light of it, only to make you laugh. As ever, I remain an utterly empty receptacle for all your thoughts,
Numair Salmalín