Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It is eight-seventeen in the morning, and Bren Aldric Ermendrud is waking up.

It takes a moment to catalog all the sensations, distant aches and sore joints and hard surface beneath him and too-warm coat on him. He is lying on his front on the ground, face mashed into what feels like stone, and there is a familiar weight on the small of his back. He is fully dressed and he can feel his books in their holsters. He dares to move his right hand towards his neck, just enough for his fingers to brush against the chain of the anti-scry amulet.

And that’s it, really- he has his books, he has his cat, he has his necklace, there is no one in his immediate vicinity that he can tell. He is the safest he’s been in a long while. That he’s been left to sleep off- whatever this is- in the middle of the floor is a little curious, but certainly not worth raising a fuss over.

Thus reassured, he lets out a quiet breath of relief, and finally dares to finally open his eyes.

He is, as expected, staring into the flat black-grey of a stone floor- slate tiles, pressed tight enough together to be practically seamless, from the looks of it. He lifts his head and looks around, starts to shift his body-

Something clatters, glass on stone, and the room he’s in echoes with the noise of it rolling away. He freezes, but nothing happens save that Frumpkin starts purring- he tries to shush him, but their connection seems weak somehow, almost entirely absent. It happens sometimes, when Bren is hurt or distracted enough that focusing on it is a chore, so he doesn’t worry about it for the moment. And he is hurt- the skin on the left side of his entire body, even under his clothes, feels hot and tight like from a bad sunburn, a baking pain that settles in once he’s paying attention to it.

He looks to his left, to the source of the noise- an empty bottle, likely having been resting in his loosely curled fingers until he started stirring. A potion bottle, from the looks of it. The echo of it is thick and medicinal on the back of his tongue.

He doesn’t remember drinking it, or even having it, or how he got hurt enough to need it. He doesn’t remember any of this.

He had been in an unnameable small village clinging to the edge of the Cyrengreen Forest- holed up under the overhang of a closed apothecary, waiting for the cold early spring rain to end, wrapped tight around Frumpkin for warmth and keeping an eye out for Crownsguard. They were overzealous in that little village, he had learned, with nothing to do but flex their empty power over those who minorly inconvenienced them. Bren only planned to stay for as long as it took the rain to stop, too worried about the potential of some of the guard finding him in the night for him to risk staying another day. He had buried his fingers into Frumpkin’s fur, closed his eyes, and- now he is here.

Perhaps he found someplace to safely spend the night? But there were too many steps from that doorway to here missing- how he got here, where is here, the potion, the burn. Start from the start, then.

He looks around again. Ahead of him is a set of stairs leading upward, the only light in the room spilling through the open door at the top. A cellar, perhaps- there are dark shapes pressed against the walls, clothes trunks and unused furniture. The room is mostly empty, and lacks the closed-in musty smell he is used to in storage spaces. Only one way in that he can see, so he intentionally chose to come downstairs, possibly to avoid discovery.

He levers himself up onto his elbows, shushing Frumpkin again when the movement dislodges him and he complains. Roll to the side- his coat is missing, shit- and Bren sits with his back to the wall, out of direct line of sight of anyone coming down the stairs. He touches his books, the necklace chain again to reassure himself. Frumpkin vanishes upstairs, paws padding near-silent on the wood, and Bren calls to him across their connection to wait, or at least hide, and tries not to worry about the lack of confirmation.

First- it had been late afternoon last he remembered, so he has lost about sixteen hours. He drank a potion in that time, so either at one point he was awake and cooperating with whatever was happening to him, or someone was going to extremes to make it look like he was. So- memory loss, or some sort of forced, sustained unconsciousness, both of which have an obvious cause. He reaches up and touches his head, starts dragging his fingers through his hair, checking for blood or bumps.

His hair is long.

His fingers curl into a fist, yanking at his scalp and pulling oddly on the length of his hair, a weight sliding across his back. Long enough to braid- he releases his fist and snags the braid, bringing it back over his shoulder- long enough for him to turn his head to look at it and see the tail of it easily. Thick and red, even in the weak light filtering through the open door. Red enough to stand out in a crowd, red enough to be a fixture in the memory, red enough to be remembered long after every other detail of him has faded away. He spends hours after it rains rubbing dirt and mud into it to shade it brown again, and now- now- and as long as it is-

He has lost a lot more than sixteen hours.

The house is small, but lovely.

Bren comes upstairs eventually, when he can breathe properly again, when he is done cursing his peculiar mind that always knows time but not anything useful like dates. He winces at each creak and groan of the wooden stairs under his weight, but there’s nothing to be done about it, he doesn’t know them well enough to avoid the noisy bits.

He comes out into a short hallway that connects what looks like a sitting room to his right and a kitchen to his left. Kitchen first- he goes in just far enough to confirm that there is no place a person could be hiding. There is a pantry- he checks that. Back to the hallway, and he nearly kicks a small body that slips expertly between his feet, paws padding into the kitchen. A thump, and Frumpkin begins yowling. Bren wants to ignore him, as he is ignoring Bren- he touches that place in his mind where the connection between them should be anchored- he turns and looks.

The cat watching him from the small table in the kitchen is not Frumpkin. It is a long-furred calico, orange and black splotches with very little white and a face divided nearly perfectly in half by the colors. One eye is missing, the socket empty and the eyelid shut and sunken into it, and the ear above it is badly mangled and folded down flat against her skull. She trills happily when she sees him looking at her- either she is a very friendly cat, or she knows him well.

He leaves her there and heads into the sitting room. There are two armchairs flanking a fireplace and a door leading outside- he looks through the nearby window, the curtain pulled aside to let sunlight in, and finds himself looking out into a yard that features an overgrown garden and a massive tree. There are vines, rose bushes climbing high fences on all sides of the yard, cutting off all views of any houses around them.

There is a set of stairs spiraling upwards from the sitting room and another hallway leading to the front door. Bren checks the back door- locked- and heads to the front of the house. The entryway widens into a small mudroom by the front door, which is also locked. Upstairs, as quiet as he can be. Four doors- he checks them all. A bedroom, a library that locks him up and has him standing in the doorway, fighting with himself, for a count of forty-nine seconds. A washroom, a room that looks like a laboratory and freezes him almost as much as the library had. All spaces where a person might fit are checked.

Bren is alone.

He heads back downstairs, before anything else- he needs to be sure he is safe. He checks himself as he goes- no coat, but a jacket, shorter and lightweight, with a few pockets on the outside and many on the inside, a plain shirt underneath, sturdy trousers and well-worn boots that actually fit his feet. A belt, looped low around his hips and clearly not there for any support, with a pouch on one side and an empty holster likely intended for the potion he had drank on the other. He twists awkwardly, peering down his own torso to see the pouch. It looks empty, and when he flips the flap up it is empty.

He checks his pockets again- still nothing interesting, certainly nothing he ought to be carrying, no phosphorus or silver thread or- whatever components he’s picked up over the years. Just one fist-sized stone in an inner pocket near his heart, unremarkably grey except for a single sandy ring around its outside edge, singing faintly with Bren’s own magic.

He looks at the empty pouch on his hip again. Takes a deep breath, slips a hand in, thinks silver thread- and there is a weight in his fingers, string loosened from the spool and unraveling slightly as he takes it out. Closes the pouch again, lets his fingers linger on it and tells himself, later.

His spellbook is- different, he finds as he takes it out of the holster under his right arm. Much thicker. It still looks like the same book, the leather old and worn even before he got it, the holster’s strap lines permanently pressed into the cover. He opens to the first page and flips until he finds Alarm and very carefully does not look at the rest of it- he can’t handle that right now, can’t afford to have another episode where he gets lost in his own head again, and he’s already had one and has been on the verge of another since he woke up.

He lays out the silver thread in the doorways and across windows big enough for a person, taking comfort in the familiar routine, the feel of the magic snapping and singing under his fingers. This, at least, still makes sense, is still the same. Nothing could change magic.

When he’s done, he sits on his heels and turns the pages until he sees Find Familiar. For a long moment- seventeen seconds- he lingers over it. Then he snaps his spellbook shut, tucks it away, and gets up and heads upstairs.

There is a mirror in the washroom, over the basin he probably uses for shaving. He stares at it for a moment from the doorway, angle too severe to see his own reflection in it, counting seconds and tapping fingertips together and scouring for courage, then takes that last step and looks at himself for the first time since he was seventeen.

Leofric Ermendrud looks back at him.

There is Una, in his blue eyes and slightly longer face and the cleft in his chin he knows is there. Leofric dominates, with his red hair and his red beard- well-shaped and starting to come in silver in places- and his long crooked nose and his swathe of freckles. He carries his stress carved in lines across his forehead as well, and etched around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes.

He turns away- he is going to be sick. He walks out of the washroom and into the bedroom and sits down on the bed, knits his fingers together and braces them against the back of his neck as he puts his head down between his knees.

He has lost years.

There is a chirrup, a muted thump, and then a furry form slips under his arm and into his lap. The cat tries to bump her head against his, finds the angle too precarious, and makes biscuits on his thigh instead, purring a loud raspy purr. Bren lowers one hand to bury his fingers into her fur, anchoring himself with the solidness of her, the vibration of her purr against his hand. He is here, he is real. There is a cat in his lap and he did not dream her up. He is real, she is real, this is real.

A blow to the head seems unlikely to have removed years’ worth of memories and left such a clean break behind. The only other thing he can think of, then, is…

The cat complains loudly as he roughly scoops her off of his lap, leaving her in a heap on the bed. He springs to his feet and strides out of the room, pacing to the end of the hallway like he can escape the thought. Stands at the top of the spiral staircase and looks down to the floor below. Counts the stairs, recounts them. Counts the floorboards he can see. Counts his heartbeats as they settle.

Library, there is a library behind him. He turns and marches back to the library and steps inside.

It is- very much like how Bren would build a library, given the chance. The window has a proper curtain that is pulled shut, unlike every other window in the house. No fireplace, no candles. A desk pressed against one wall, a long comfortable-looking couch with a small table in front of it that had rings imprinted in the wood from cups, and even an empty mug with the dregs of tea in the bottom of it. Two more tables on either end of the couch, for books and writing notes. The shelves are filled no higher than eye-height on Bren and no lower than his knees.

The books are in Common and Zemnian- some. Others are Elvish. And then- others he doesn’t recognize. Plenty in a language he has never seen before. Several he thinks aren’t languages at all, but symbols instead. Historical treatises, geography and astronomy and a- booklet on the current Council of Tal’Dorei? Names of places he vaguely recognizes. Fiction interspersed here and there, fairytales and love stories. Monsters of the ocean. Atlases. A book on sailing ships. Pastry baking. Gardening. Alchemy. Philosophy. He circles the room and traces his fingers over spines and mouths titles to himself.

And then, of course, there are the books on magic.

They compose well over half the books in the room, and are as assorted as their non-magical counterparts- heavily focused on Transmutation, but also books on cursed plants and Age of Arcanum relics. Theories on the movements of leylines. Journals full of papers proposing scandalizing new spells and ideas- he pulls one out and flips to a random page, and sees the owner has left notes in the margins and written a small essay at the end explaining a flaw in the author’s current approach and the best way to fix it. Obscure arcane artifacts, enchantments, the inherent magical properties possessed by various gemstones. The Feywild. Pre-Calamity pseudo-gods, monsters more myth than fact. An in-depth history of the city-state of Whitestone. Theories about Ruidus flares.

Bren stares at the wealth of knowledge before him and aches with it.

He doesn’t- he checks his component pouch, but no, the opening is too small for any of the books he’s interested in to fit- he can’t stay, he doesn’t know when the owner of this house is getting home. He can’t leave, either.

There is a book sitting open on the desk, and Bren goes to it- easier to start there than to try to decide from the overwhelming selection of the bookshelves. Another book on transmutation, a textbook, not quite a primer for beginners but laying in a solid foundation of the basics. The owner had written in more notes here, observations, deconstructions of the spellwork, points where young students are likely to go wrong.

Bren flips the book to the very first page, and up in the top corner on the inside of the cover, where a paperboard has been pressed to hold the book’s shape, a name is written.

Professor Caleb Widogast

Something moves out of the corner of his eye, and Bren snaps his head around and jolts back from the desk. He watches, counts to sixty, and then- a small flare of light.

On the corner of the desk is a painting in a frame, small enough to sit out of the way, turned to be easily visible to the person sitting at the desk. As he watches, the current image on it melts away into a new one- a painting of a blue-skinned tiefling woman. Her pose invokes a portrait style he can only describe as stuffy, but something about the look in her eye says mischievous instead. She has a crimson weasel draped around her neck like a stole, but its head is up and she’s reaching up with a finger to scratch under its chin. There are, Bren sees before the runes around the very edges of the frame flare again and the picture changes, a number of penises subtly worked into the details of the piece.

The next image is just a sketch, colored pencils on paper. Two men kneeling in a garden, one violently pink and tall, the other dark-skinned and wearing a large sun hat pulled low over his face and pink gloves on his hands. The pink one has a plant stem with a spray of leaves in his hand, and the other one is studying them closely.

Flash, and-

Bren is looking at himself.

A younger version of himself- clean-shaven, shorter hair, less lines on his face. He is wearing his ratty old coat and he has Frumpkin in his lap and is looking intently at the cat. He snatches the frame up and pulls it close to his face, studying the details, looking for any clues about- anything, really. It’s a pencil sketch, no colors, so it doesn’t tell him much except that someone observed him in an unguarded moment and felt compelled to put it to paper.

Flash, and a half-orc and the same blue tiefling are on a dock with a purple tiefling, the purple one’s arms hooked around the other two’s necks. There are words written across the bottom of the page in this image- look who finally got their Darktow ban repealed.

Flash- a house, a strange house that looks almost like a very small castle, crowned with a short tower with, bizarrely, a massive tree growing out of the top of it. The drawing is colored to indicate it is nighttime, and the tree has lights strung through its boughs.

Flash- Bren again, longer hair, washed properly to shine red again. Better clothes, including a long purple coat. A halfling woman wearing a yellow dress stands next to him. They’re just talking, apparently unaware their likeness is being captured. The expression on Bren’s face is fond and warm and open.

He puts the frame down as the next image- two women asleep on a couch, one dark and slender, one pale and massive with a magnificent mane of white hair- crawls across it. The magical process behind this is fascinating, but his mind is elsewhere, a far more pressing mystery starting to unravel, at least a little bit.

He pushes the book aside and sits down in the chair and picks up a pen left sitting nearby. Find an inkwell and a stray scrap of paper, and he writes out a couple of lines from the notes in the textbook. Then he writes Professor Caleb Widogast, trying to let his hand flow naturally.

He pulls the book back over and compares them, page to page, then name to name. It’s his handwriting in the book.

The cat is still on the bed, curled over with one hind leg pointing straight into the air. She looks up when she hears him come in. He heads to the wardrobe tucked into the corner, sheds the jacket he is wearing and pulls out the first coat he finds on the racks in the largest compartment. It fits perfectly, not pulling awkwardly across his surprisingly broad shoulders or ending too short on his forearms, the torso loosened just enough to make room for his book harness, the waist pinched in tight around his own lean waist, the bottom hem brushing the back of his calves. More pockets, a butterfly cocoon forgotten in one of them.

Bren looks at the cat.

“Is this… my house?” he asks her, like she would be able to tell him.

She blinks her one eye at him and ducks her head to continue licking her ass.

Bren takes the coat off and puts it away and puts the jacket back on. He heads out again, downstairs, the cat following and trilling and ducking past him when he stops in the sitting room, trying to lure him into the kitchen. If this is his house, if she is his cat, then she probably has not been fed this morning. Given that, her persistence makes a lot more sense.

He follows her into the kitchen and shoos her off the table when she leaps onto it again, then heads to the pantry. He has no fresh meat to feed her but when he had been young they had fed the first Frumpkin jerkied bits of meat and viscera, and he got on well enough with that, supplemented by whatever mice he caught. And sure enough, Bren finds a jar with similar offerings in the pantry, and shakes out a bit for her. He pets a hand down her back as she eats and her hindquarters rise from their crouch, her fluffy tail standing straight up in the air.

Then he stands and steps away. He reaches under his left arm and brushes his fingers across the journal in the holster there, checking on it for the first time. And he can tell from that touch alone that something is wrong- he unsnaps the holster and takes the journal out, and it is different, leather cover instead of rough cloth, smooth and new-ish instead of old and stained. When he opens it, the first page is a series of notes on a spell he’s apparently been working on.

So- start from the start. He has lost several years’ worth of memories. He feels confident enough to stop hiding, but not enough to use his real name. This is probably his house, or at least a place where he is welcomed. He knows people now- there had been eight other people in that rotating frame, and who knows how many more whose images he hadn’t stuck around to see. His letters to his parents are gone. He has his spellbook but not his journal, a cat but not his cat-

His brain grinds to a halt for a heartbeat, and then he claws at his own neck, hooking his fingers under the chain around it and drawing the necklace out from under his shirt. He had checked it by touch and it had been there- but he checked his journal by feel and thought it was there and it isn’t the same, he needs to see it. It falls heavily against his breastbone, two chains tangled around each other, two pendants- one multiple pieces of amber held in place by metal wiring, that lands higher up near the hollow of his throat, and one the anti-scry amulet. Bren heaves a relieved sigh and untangles the two chains and rubs a thumb over the amulet, then pauses- there should be a burr in the metal along the edge, after a close call with the dog of a shopkeeper who accused him of stealing, but instead it is smooth. He checks it over and it looks the same, just no flaw in it from a dog’s biting teeth. Either he had it fixed, or he replaced the old amulet with a new one, which seems like a lot of risk and effort for some cosmetic damage.

So he is still hiding, just no longer on the run. Which is- he has been so afraid that he would never be able to stop running, and his hands are shaking and his breath is coming in short with the slow-dawning realization. He is safe. Whatever has happened, whatever has changed, he feels safe here. Safe enough to build a life.

Perhaps he left the Empire? Left Wildemount entirely, he can’t imagine he would feel wholly safe from the Assembly’s reach in the Menagerie Coast and the thought of him being in Xhorhas at all is laughable. Maybe he even- his breath catches- maybe he had succeeded, maybe he didn’t have the journal because he gave it to its intended owners-

The cat leaps up onto the table, happily licking her chops. Bren sighs and scratches at the curve of her skull behind her mangled ear, and she purrs and leans into his hand.

“Sorry, schatz,” he says to her, and stands and abandons her once more.

The kitchen sprawls forwards towards the front of the house and has a front-facing window, and he goes and looks out it, careful not to twitch the curtain. It’s just a street, tall thin stone-walled houses in both directions, and it tells him nothing except that he definitely isn’t in a tiny little nameless village anymore.

There are two possibilities coming to him: he succeeded, and escaped, and is now somewhere else like Tal’Dorei, or- he failed at everything he was attempting to do. The first option scares him, but the second- he shies away as it occurs to him, trying desperately not to think the thoughts.

He stares out the window for a long time, trying to see anything he recognizes, mostly just turning the pieces over in his head.

Then he turns and heads into the sitting room.

His spellbook.

In many ways, his spellbook is as good as a journal- it tells of the shape of his journey, the things he learned along the way, the spells he prioritized. The spine has been expertly extended, a strip of leather the same color as the original cover almost seamlessly inserted to make space for the quite frankly excessive number of pages within. It is fat and heavy in his hand, a brick of a book.

He sits in the armchair to the right of the fireplace and then just waits for a moment. The chair across from him is piled with cushions and blankets, apparently not regularly used.

Seventeen- eighteen- at nineteen seconds his faithful shadows mrrps as she leaps into his lap. He puts a hand on her and she launches into her raspy purr as she folds herself down into a comfortable position. It occurs to him- Polymorph is probably in this very spellbook- he flips towards the front, finds the page with Detect Magic. He has not chosen his spells for the day and so does not need to bother casting it ritually, and a moment later rubs a knuckle under her chin before he focuses his full attention on his spellbook while the cat who is most definitely a cat dozes in his lap.

The book wants to fall open to certain pages, so he lets it, and sees what spells he seeks out the most. Identify and Detect Magic, of course, but he uses them plenty now, they are two of the oldest spells in this book. Again- Haste on one page, Slow on the other. Again- it opens further into the book this time- Leomind’s Tiny Hut. Again- Polymorph, as expected, a much-loved spell judging by the softness at the edge of the page that comes from too much handling. Again, even further- his breath catches in his throat- Teleport. He flips to the next page, and the next- complicated circles with short labels. Tidepeak, Lucid Bastion, Soul Z, Soul R, Soul PD. He knows none of those places, but he can go to any of them on a whim.

He closes the book again, lets it fall open- Fireball. He snaps it shut so fast he catches his own fingertips.

Fire is power, of course. He is not some researcher comfortably ensconced in a tower lab, safe from all threats and able to focus on discovery instead of self-defense. And the best defense is a good offense, and a Fireball in the face of his enemies is about as offensive as it gets.

Still.

He takes a deep breath, another. Rubs the cat’s cheek until she’s leaning into his hand and purring again. Then he picks up the spellbook, and lets it fall open, farther towards the end and comfortably distant from the Fireball page.

This spell- it says Fortune’s Favor at the top of the page, but he understands none of it. He can’t even figure out, after several minutes of studying it, what school it belongs to. Low-grade magic, compared to some of the other spells in this book, but expensive in non-magical ways- there is, as always, a note in the corner denoting material costs, and the price for this one is a pearl.

He flicks through the next few pages. The spell names stop making descriptive sense, and some don’t even have a name at all. The magical skill involved in these is already so far beyond his current knowledge that it is just gibberish to him. Further- he flips through the pages faster as he gets closer to the end- and then he stops and stares, book slumping from nerveless fingers and resting on the curve of the cat’s spine.

Someone else has been writing in his spellbook.

The spell is called Tether Essence. There is his own familiar writing in places, notes and conversions, his material list at the bottom of the page- a single piece of platinum cord worth five hundred gold, such a price for one casting of one spell. The spell itself is entirely written in another hand, pen strokes light and curves sharpened like the writer was impatient to get all their thoughts onto paper. The next page- Resonant Echo- the same handwriting out the spell, Bren’s own writing in the margins.

He turns the page, and-

The next spell spills across both open pages, and it was a true collaboration between them. The spell itself is drawn piecemeal and knitted together by the connective tissue of notes in both hands and dragging arrows indicating direction. It is not neatly put together, it does not flow- this is magic with sharp edges, its biting corners not worn smooth by generations of use like a stone washed smooth by the flow of a stream. This is something they probably came up with, together. Bren’s words and the stranger’s are both written with the same ink, the lines the same width and with the same scores on upper curves of certain letters where a flaw in the pen nib scratched at the paper, and he stares at it. They had sat together, trading the same pen back and forth, trading Bren’s spellbook between them as they each wrote their own piece.

Too much time and work and money has gone into this book for Bren to give in to his sudden impulse to throw it across the room. He drops it gently on the coffee table between the two armchairs instead, and wraps his hands around the protesting cat and brings her up so he can bury his face into the loose ruff of fur between her shoulder blades.

He is rich, he is powerful, he is close- intimately close, closer than lovers even, sharing his body is nothing compared to sharing his spellbook- with another wizard.

He puts the cat down on the ground- she grumbles and pins her ear back as she trots away, clearly fed up with his hot-and-cold bullshit- and picks up his spellbook and heads to the front door.

Time to get some real answers.

It takes him an hour just to get past the front door.

Whoever Caleb Widogast is, he does not trust his neighbors- Bren wastes so many spells just to figure out and pick the arcane locks on the door. He can’t relock it once he’s outside, so he presses a strand of silver thread between the edge of the door and the frame as he closes the door, content when the door closes tight enough around it to keep it in place. Hip-height, as low as he can get it while he’s fussing with the door lock and blocking sight of his hands with his body. He’ll just have to hope nothing happens while he’s gone. Presumably, given his state, whatever is likely to happen already has.

He casts Seeming on himself before he leaves- it’s overpowered for what he’s using it for, but it’s eight hours and does not require him to concentrate on it, so it wins. And then he darts quickly down the short walkway and onto the cobbled street, where he evens his pace into a casual stroll. He looks around, but there is no one watching, no silhouettes or moving curtains in any windows.

The street is narrow and twists abruptly, the buildings tall and narrow and pressed tight together. Bren follows the road, eyes peeled. Something about it feels familiar, but nothing snags his attention as something he has definitely seen before. There are people coming and going, humans like him, dressed in good but not nice clothes, clean but hands work-roughened. Richer than his parents were. A decent middle-class neighborhood.

He stops one man, grey-haired and paunchy with loaded bags slung over one shoulder, because he is disguised and it is unlikely this person is someone who knows him to recognize him by voice. “Excuse me, sir, can you tell me please what the date is?” he calls across the narrow street as they approach one another.

The man barely slows, hardly even glancing at him. “Thirteenth of Unndilar,” he says.

He has a Zemnian accent. Bren’s stomach gives an unpleasant twist.

“Thank you,” he says. Then- “Ah, sorry- what year?”

That gets him a sharply curious look. No disguise spell will hold up under intense scrutiny, and Bren tries not to lean away as the man sweeps a considering gaze over him.

“842,” the man says finally. “Might want to go easy on the midday drinking, son.”

“Thank you,” Bren says again, and the man nods and continues walking, staring at Bren oddly as they pass each other. Bren keeps his head up, as much as he wants to curl in on himself, to somehow shift the man’s attention away from him. He has not had access to a disguise spell in so long, he’s forgotten how to be someone else while under one.

And then they are past each other. Bren counts to twenty and glances back, and the man is continuing on his way, showing no more interest in him.

Unndilar, 842. Seven years.

There is nowhere for Bren to go to have a quiet moment to focus on keeping himself together, not unless he wants to sit down in someone’s yard. He keeps walking instead, counting the cobbles between his feet, the windows on the buildings around him. The street twists around like a river, like following one thread in a knot. The sense of familiarity is growing and he does not like it. That slim hope that he is in Tal’Dorei is fading.

The houses get more expensive as Bren walks, newer and less clustered, actual paths between them instead of flush, the red brick fronts scrubbed clean and not stained by generations of weathering. Bren keeps his head down, watching the road instead of the skyline he can glimpse between the buildings, almost too afraid to look.

The road twists one more time and then ends abruptly in an archway that empties into a plaza, busy with people and bold with color. Shops stand in a line and weave around each other, and there are carts and stalls set up with sellers crying their wares. No horses, not in this section of the city where the roads are tight and there is no room for a stable, but some goats on tethers, chickens and geese in cages or just roaming freely, children darting around moving bodies. Store fronts painted to attract attention, roofs, stall covers and awnings, all a feast of color that can almost overwhelm the eye, especially to an observer already barely holding onto his wits by his fingertips.

Bren wanders into the plaza almost in a daze. He knows this place, he recognizes the bones of this place, though the surface details have changed over the intervening decades. He is in the Tangles, in one of the plazas, he doesn’t recognize enough to remember which one was which. Which means-

He turns and looks east, and sees a vaulting peak risen high above the main body of the castle below it, and towers- cobbled-together and ugly looking, like the architect kept changing the design for them even as they were being built, one or two with wide bulges perched precariously on the long spindly stem of the tower below. He did not need to count them, but he did anyway.

The Candles.

He is in Rexxentrum.

He does end up in someone’s yard. One of the red-brick houses, pressed into the narrow gap threaded beside the buildings, back against one wall and legs stretched out to press his feet to the other. Safely out of casual sight of passerbys, while he sits and panics.

He is in Rexxentrum. He is not a thousand miles away in Tal’Dorei, he is not in the Menagerie Coast or the Greying Wildlands or even just on the barest edge of the Empire, he is in Rexxentrum. He has a house and he wears his own face and- fuck- Professor Widogast, he probably teaches at Soltryce. He is not using his birth name and he still has his anti-scry pendant but that’s it. Those are the only defenses he has against the monsters who live right next door to him.

It is very simple, then. He failed. He is a Volstrucker now, or works for them somehow. Maybe he got tired of running- there have been nights in the cold with snow melting down the back of his shirt, hands tucked in tight against his ribs because ears and nose and toes are all expendable but he cannot risk frostbite on his fingers, nights when he asked himself what he was running from, why he was bothering when he was only dooming himself to die in squalor while the regime grinds ever onward.

Or maybe- his hand is twisted into the fabric of his shirt, nails clawing into the skin over his heart, his other hand scratching up and down his forearm and picking idly at the bumps of scar tissue- maybe it wasn’t his choice. Maybe they caught up to him, ambushed him in that doorway, put him under whichever mind-control spell tickled Trent’s fancy and kept him there. Maybe he hasn’t lost any memories, but never formed them, because his mind was not in control of his body. Maybe his sudden return to awareness is a result of the spell failing somehow, and he is wasting time instead of escaping.

He can’t think of a spell that would allow such total control over someone, let alone one that would last for years. Missing memories is still a more logical conclusion.

-lost even more time to him, a voice whispers in his head, almost twenty years gone because of him-

He is wasting time instead of escaping.

Panic is useless, counterproductive even. He closes his eyes and shuts it away, shoves aside the fear and the self-loathing and the weakness, pushes through to reach a bastion of clarity beyond it. He can do this, he has to do this. He has been trained to do this.

He should run now, use that fancy spellbook and Teleport somewhere and disappear again. He will- but first-

And eventually, Bren comes out from between the houses and follows the twisting street back to the house he had woken up in, to check and see if the silver thread was still there or if the door has been opened. If it is still there, he will pack some things, toss the house to make it look like there was a struggle, put the cat outside and hope a neighbor takes pity on her.

The thread is still there. The unfortunate thing about subtle signals is that he has to get very close to see it, so he watches all around him nervously as he approaches the door, watching for movement in windows or figures skulking around street bends, not relaxing even after he sees the door has not been opened.

He is thinking about that, and writing a mental to-do list, and figuring out what necessities to grab, as he closes the door behind him. And the cat is howling, so Bren turns to follow the sound of her voice, absentmindedly intending on feeding her so he can focus on what needs done without her dogging his every step, and he is mostly distracted debating which teleportation circle sounded the furthest away and how much food he can pack before it becomes obvious someone cleared out his house.

And then someone says something, a voice cutting into his thoughts, and he jerks to a halt and looks up and freezes because-

-there is an elf in the kitchen.

Chapter Text

It’s the cat’s fault.

She’s in the kitchen when he walks in, yowling at the top of her healthy lungs, and Bren can hear nothing over her at first. He thinks he is being ungently reminded that lunch was a while ago and not very generous besides, and he mutters under his breath as he dispels Seeming and steps out of the entryway into the living room- there is a mat by the front door for boots, but he is taking nothing off- and then into the kitchen, and there is the elf.

“Hello, schatz,” he says while Bren stands frozen, his voice soft and lilting with an accent Bren has not heard before. He is at work cutting up a fish, knife flashing silvery-fast through the fish’s flesh. A pile of slate grey scales sits on one side of the wooden board he’s using, a pile of guts on the other. One piece comes free of the bones, and the elf takes a single step sideways and turns at the waist to drop it into a large pot on the stove, a precise economy of movement.

He made too much noise coming in, he was heard, the elf knows he’s here. He is going to run anyways. He takes a step back.

The elf glances at him, a soft smile on his lips. Bren flinches and manages to paste on a smile that is probably ugly as sin, and the elf looks away and Bren takes another step back.

The cat is at the elf’s feet, begging. As Bren watches, he flicks a finger, and a shred of fish flesh peels off one of the bones, glides through the air, and drops slowly until she can rear up on her hind legs and snatch it.

A wizard. Oh fuck, a wizard. And now Bren is doubly fucked.

“Uh, hallo,” he says finally, earning himself another glance and a slight frown at the delay. “I, ah.” He glances down at his feet, the boots on them.

The elf says nothing, just arches an eyebrow and turns back to the fish. Bren dares another step back, then another- then he is in the sitting room, and then the mudroom.

He stays there for a long second, mind whited out with too many thoughts and too much fear. He puts his hand on the doorknob but does not turn it, just holding. A wizard. If he tries to leave, the elf will know something’s wrong, and a disguise will not protect him long if he is the only person on the street. And he is not at all prepared to go toe-to-toe with another wizard, especially not if this is the one who’s been writing in his spellbook, that person is brilliant and probably very dangerous and Bren is just… Bren.

His hand clenches around the doorknob and-

“Caleb?”

-he lets go, kneels down and works on the buckles of his boots and takes them off and puts them on the mat. Then he presses his forehead to the wall in front of him and just breathes.

Clarity, again. Panic is even more useless now. He has to be calm and rational about this- he can still salvage this, still get away, but only if he plays along. He can do this.

“Sorry,” he calls back, in a fairly good approximation of his normal voice. “I came in and heard a cat being tortured in the kitchen and forgot to take my boots off.”

The elf chuckles, and Bren stands up and heads back towards the kitchen. The elf is still cutting up fish, his back to Bren. And now Bren has a decision to make.

He can’t run, not without revealing himself, not without the too-great risk that the other wizard will catch him. But he can take advantage of the trust being offered here- he has spells that are brutal, that will kill the elf with very little opportunity for him to fight back. He can even just… wait until he puts down the knife and walk up behind him and put his hand around that slender neck and squeeze. It would only take moments for lack of breath to steal his voice from him, and without that he will have little in the way of self-defense.

He has a moment- the elf is not facing him anymore, turning back to his work- so he studies this newcomer. Barely too tall for Bren to comfortably rest his chin on the top of his head, with the delicate bone structure and slender build that is considered the ideal for his people. Longish blond hair and skin a few shades more golden, blue eyes. He is wearing a woolen tunic, sleeves rolled back with meticulous folds.

He has looked at Bren and not panicked and brandished that knife at him, at least, so Bren’s earlier theories about this being his house and Caleb Widogast being his alias are proven out. They know each other, are comfortable enough with each other to be using pet names. If he lives here as well, then they are very close indeed, for there is only one bedroom.

Is he a part of whatever Bren has been doing here in Rexxentrum? Does he work for the Assembly too? Or- far worse, and Bren’s stomach turns oddly at the thought of it- is he some poor sap Caleb Widogast pulled in to help sell whatever cover story he has built? Just an innocent bystander with no idea of his partner’s true vocation, used as a living shield so Widogast could be the picture of obedient patriotism and harmless domesticity, a professor shaping young minds with a lovely partner waiting for him at home.

Bren has moments to decide- the last piece of fish is deposited in the pot, the bones placed near the pile of guts. The cat is sitting impatiently at the elf’s feet, raised up on her hindquarters so she can grab dramatically at his leg with both front paws.

“Gretchen tells me you have not fed her today,” the elf says. He flicks the knife tip through the fish guts, finds something that appeals, and bends over to offer it to her. She takes it without even a cursory sniff and chomps down on it, squishing viscera between her sharp teeth.

“Caleb?” The elf looks up at him. His eyes are deep and dark like the twilight sky, almost purple.

Bren takes a single breath and decides. He will excuse any odd behavior as not feeling well, or a bad encounter in the plaza, and as soon as the elf takes his eyes off Bren for longer than a few seconds he will be gone. He has lost the advantage of surprise, and they will know he is running and not merely missing. But until he knows more, he can’t bring himself to hurt this man.

“Sorry,” he says, gentling his voice into something soft and fond. He has been trained for this as well. “It has been a long day.” He glances at the cat- Gretchen, and he is Caleb, and it will be easy enough to disguise that he doesn’t know the elf’s name- and comes over and bends down to ruffle a hand over the top of her head. “And she will tell you I have never fed her once in her life.”

This puts him very close to the elf when he stands up, close enough for him to smell the sharp tang of hot metal that seems to cling to his clothes. It seems to be the right thing to do, as the elf smiles in quiet relief and leans into him, shoulder pressing into his chest. Then he straightens again and reaches for the water pump.

“I should have let you know I was coming,” he says, tone businesslike now that the soft moment is over. He pumps the handle twice and washes the fish slime off his hands. He studies his nails, finds his results unsatisfactory, and draws a finger through the air with a single bitten-off syllable. And then his hands are clean and dry, and the smell of hot iron reduces greatly.

Another worried glance. Bren is watching too much and not speaking enough. “It’s fine,” he says.

He thinks for a moment- I should touch him- and then he finds his hand on the curve of the elf’s waist, settled just above the jut of his hip. It feels familiar, like his body remembers what his mind does not. The elf follows the gentle pressure of his touch, turning towards Bren and slotting their bodies together knee to shoulder, Bren’s hand sliding around so it is pressed against his back instead. He drapes his arms over Bren’s shoulders, fingers playing with the flyaway strands of hair that have escaped the braid, and pulls Bren down as he rises up on his toes.

That’s enough of a cue for what comes next. He dips his head and presses their lips together, a sweet, chaste kiss. The elf hums and murmurs something in some strange language and tilts his head back to look at Bren with an expression of satisfaction, eyes heavy-lidded and tongue darting across his lips.

“How are you?” he asks. His hand is dragging up and down the back of Bren’s neck and Bren finds himself wanting to close his eyes and melt into it. Clearly they know each other very well indeed.

“Well enough,” he says. Then, laying in the groundwork for whatever excuse he might need later, “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“If you are not up for tomorrow, they will understand. It is a little morbid.”

Bren gathers the pieces, files them away to assemble the puzzle later. “No, it’s fine.”

The elf looks at him again, suspicious this time. Bren is doing something wrong. “Are you sure? You are being very…”

Bren doesn’t know what he’s being very. The words merely trail off, the elf not even making any vaguely helpful hand gestures to emphasize his lost point. Too affectionate? Not enough? Too quiet, too bold, too loud or meek?

“It has been a long day,” Bren says again, putting emphasis on the last words and letting the elf read his own meaning into them. Then, because he cannot answer questions incorrectly if his mouth is busy with other things, he ducks down and presses another kiss to the elf’s lips, then another. On the third one the elf sighs and opens to him, deepening into a proper kiss. The hands on Bren’s neck shift, one sliding up to dig long fingers into the base of his braid, one curling into a fist in the fabric of his shirt. Bren pulls the elf closer with the hand on his back and sucks gently on the elf’s lower lip as his tongue sweeps into Bren’s mouth. They part, adjust their angles incrementally- the elf somehow seems to grow taller? Bren doesn’t question it in the moment- and come together again.

And- ah. A response, one Bren had not expected. His libido has been silent for years, ever since he escaped Vergesson, but now it is perking up quite happily. And, humiliatingly, his face is burning and his breathing is trying to speed up, and he presses the elf even closer and kisses him deeper and tries to get himself under control. He has trained for this- in theory, they never actually- it was discussed but they never had to- he can do this-

Gretchen, who doubtless believes she has been very patient with the strangeness of the foodgivers while something so delicious-smelling is denied her, jumps up on the counter and bolts straight for the fish viscera on the wooden board. The elf gasps and jerks away, and Bren gasps himself as something sharp drags across his bottom lip. He touches his tongue to it and tastes blood.

“I’m sorry, Caleb,” the elf says as he pins Gretchen down with one hand and tries to pry a mouthful of fish bone from her with the other, sparing his bleeding lip a brief, sorrowful glance. Bren watches his mouth as he talks and sees nothing sharp enough for this level of damage.

“Here,” he says, and steps around and takes Gretchen so the elf can put both hands to the task of getting back the fish bones. Gretchen, good ear pinned back as tight to her skull as her mangled one, growls around her ill-gotten treat.

He gets it away from her quickly enough, and Bren drops her on the floor. The elf picks out another choice piece of fish guts and offers it to her, and she snatches it and flees the room, fluffy tail held high as she runs. Another Prestidigitation, and he reaches out and cups Bren’s cheek with his hand and brushes his thumb lightly over Bren’s scratched lip.

“Not tonight,” he says, and adds another word, something soft and fond in that strange language of his. “I don’t think either of us are up for it.”

Bren catches his hand and moves it away from his face, then returns the gesture for himself, his palm against the elf’s cheek. His fingers slide to curl around the back of his neck, into what should be shoulder-length hair. He feels nothing, though his index finger does brush against the long line of the elf’s ear. Longer than it looks, and apparently invisible earrings besides, something swinging and tapping against his wrist. He takes his hand back.

“What are you making?” he asks, looking beyond the elf and nodding to indicate the pot on the stove.

“Just a stew.” He turns away, chin dipping and face coloring with what looks like embarrassment. He takes the lid off the pot and swirls his finger in the air over it, and Bren is just close enough to see the amber-colored liquid within stir itself. “It will take a while yet. Have you eaten today?”

“Not yet.” He is taller, Bren thinks, and looks him over- no, he’s floating, toes a good four inches off the ground. He has his back to Bren, busy fussing over his stew, so Bren braces himself and dares to ask, “Is there a reason for the disguise?”

“Ah.” The elf makes a sharp gesture towards himself, and the disguise melts away. Bren catches his breath and holds it, free to react for the second but aware the elf could turn around at any moment. “I came in with a pastry box in one hand and groceries in the other, and by the time I had a hand free Gretchen had smelled the fish.”

He is an elf, still. Hair pure white instead of blond, cropped short on the sides and long enough on top to be coiffed into a neat fall to one side. Still the same height and delicate build, clothes unchanged. Purple-grey skin, and Bren knows if he were to turn his head and speak there would be fangs flashing in his mouth. A drow.

A drow.

All thoughts of this man being an innocent bystander vanish. Another spy, a traitor of the Dynasty, a double agent- it doesn’t matter. There is no possible explanation for him to be hrere, in a Volstrucker’s house in Rexxentrum, that bodes well. Bren needs to get away from him as quickly as possible.

“I, ah,” he begins, and the drow turns to him again. His eyes are the same, twilight-dark and stunningly blue against his purple skin. He has, incongruously, a faint scattering of pale silver freckles across the bridge of his nose. “I should go take a bath,” Bren says, and the elf nods once.

“All right. As I said, dinner will not be for a while, so take your time.”

Bren heads out of the kitchen and upstairs almost in a daze, nearly tripping on Gretchen as she darts between his feet and races him up the stairs. He heads into the washroom- there is another pump next to the copper tub he’d vaguely taken note of earlier. He closes the door behind him and dips his hand into his component pouch- he knows where he would put a stash of emergency funds, and this Caleb can’t be too far off from him. He thinks gold, and the coins that appear in the pouch overflow his hands and force him to take the pouch off his belt and carefully turn it over on the floor so the coins spill out without taking everything else in there with them. And oh, oh yes he is most definitely rich, he counts them as he scoops them up and tucks them away again, and stops counting after one hundred and fifty.

He stands up afterwards, and stares at himself in the mirror. His hair is pulled out of shape and falling from the braid by the pull of a hand in it, his face is red, his lip has a scratch on it where the drow’s fang had caught it.

There is a drow wizard in the kitchen. And Bren is most likely an Empire assassin-slash-spy. He can’t- there’s not even a logical connection-

A Dynasty traitor, like he had first thought? And considering the greeting he had given, how easily he inserted himself into this space, perhaps Bren himself had been the bait to lure him in. He gets an Empire wizard to play house with, the Empire gets a closer look at that Dynasty magic that has been baffling them for generations, and Bren- Caleb- gets to suck it up and suffer in the name of patriotism.

Well, not anymore. And judging by his response to… his response in the kitchen, he cannot just grit his teeth and hope he bears through it well enough to pass muster. Time to leave.

He is reaching for his spellbook when there comes a knock on the door, startling him badly. He freezes, as though the drow might think him somewhere else if he just doesn’t make any noise.

“Caleb?”

“Ja?” Bren calls back, since it is apparent the drow is not going to simply leave. He yanks the tie out of his hair and starts unweaving what’s left of the braid as fast as he can.

“You forgot a towel.”

Bren’s hair is loose now, falling freely over his shoulders. He shrugs out of the jacket and drapes it on the dresser the shaving mirror is on before he opens the door, some attempt made at making it look like he’s preparing for a bath.

“Danke,” he says when the drow holds out the towel for him. “Sorry, I am just…”

“Distracted,” the drow finishes with a nod. He is still floating, Bren notes. No worries about stepping on noisy floorboards for him. Not something Bren had considered. “Would, ah.” His hands tangle together, left thumb pressing into the right palm, the sort of stretches wizards ought to do often to keep their hands from cramping up, and apparently a nervous tic of his. “Would you like to talk about it?”

If only he knew what it is. “Not right now,” he says, as gently as he can. “I think, for now, just a bath and dinner.”

Impossible to tell how his rejection is received. The drow just nods in silent acceptance. He moves backwards, and Bren closes the door again, and listens closely. No sound, no way to tell if he left or if he’s still hovering there, just outside the door, ready to barge in at the first whisper of an incantation. It’s possible Bren aroused his suspicions by initiating the kisses downstairs, or not playing into them enough, or-

There is no point to this wheel-spinning. Bren looks at the bathtub, looks at the door, sighs. Unless he wants to risk opening it, risk the drow being on the other side preparing to interrogate him over his odd behavior, then there really only is one option now.

He takes his clothes off, pumps water into the tub, heats it with his magic for lack of more conventional methods, and takes a bath.

He gives himself an hour in the bath, reheating the water when he needs to and even refilling the tub once. Every time he starts to relax and think maybe now- the drow knocks, or calls something from the hallway outside, or one time even opens the door just enough for Gretchen, who has been sticking white-socked paws under the door and wailing dramatically for the last eight minutes, to come in and investigate the room she has been so cruelly locked out of.

He gets out and lets the tub drain and stares at the water as it swirls down the pipe. He could do it now, grab his clothes and his book and just go- instead he dries off and wraps the towel around his waist and swings open the door that had been left ajar for the cat.

The drow is in the library across the hallway, Bren sees the lights in there, hears the sound of pages turning and the shifting of a body as the drow stirs. Bren ducks away and heads to the bedroom, closing the door mostly but not all the way behind him in the hopes of discouraging company.

He picks out clothes simple enough for staying at home in, but still sturdy enough to suit should he not get the opportunity to change before he runs. He pauses for a long moment before he pulls the shirt over his head, tracing his fingers across the new scars on his chest one more time- he had discovered them in the bath and marveled at the brutality of it, thick white lines of scar tissue that start at his gut and drag in staggered dashes up to pierce through his heart. How had he survived? Unless he hadn’t, of course, and Ikithon decreed him worth the resources to bring him back. Unable to escape, even in death.

The drow knocks as he’s combing his fingers through his still-wet hair, tie twisted around his fingers in preparation of tying it back. “May I come in?”

“Certainly,” Bren says, because no is not an acceptable answer here. He has had time to think, and has come to the conclusion that the only realistic explanation for all of this is some combination of this drow is a spy and Bren is his handler who has let things get wildly unprofessional between them, or the drow is a traitor and the Caleb Widogast identity is part of his cover here in Rexxentrum. Either way, Bren is best served by following the drow’s lead until he can just disappear.

The drow comes two steps into the bedroom, Bren turning just enough to meet his gaze over his shoulder. His eyes sweep over Bren, and he says nothing about the belt with the component pouch or the book harness Bren had already put back on. He does, however, make a face and an unhappy noise as he stares directly at Bren’s hands tangled in his own hair, and disappears back into the hallway without a word. He comes back with a hairbrush and directs Bren to sit on the foot of the bed with a single gesture.

“Ah,” he says when he has come around behind Bren, one knee on the mattress to balance himself, apparently only just realizing the liberties he is taking. “May I?”

Bren, trying not to tense up under the sense of someone so close to his unguarded back, just nods. He closes his eyes when dark fingers slip into his peripheral vision, scooping back the hair that has fallen forward over his shoulder. The towel is rescued from the floor and his hair is patted dry. Then there is a pause, and the brush that had been set on the bed by Bren’s hip is picked up again.

“Lift your chin, please, Caleb,” the drow says quietly, and Bren realizes he’s been hunching down into himself and sits up properly, chin up and shoulders rolled back.

He expects it to be a tense, miserable test of endurance, another reminder of all the things he has no control over, even his own body just another person’s plaything. Instead the drow is gentle and respectful, softly warning Bren when he has to touch his neck or reach for the hair that keeps falling forward into his face or when he’s about to work on a tangle that will pull and hurt. And Bren finds himself forgetting to be wary- far from feeling violated, he is relaxing under the care, fingers brushing against the back of his neck and the rhythmic pull of the brush sliding through his hair and the occasional breath against his skin as the drow leans close to him. After six minutes, the drow pauses and presses a hand to Bren’s back, and Bren realizes abruptly that both his head and body have been tipping slowly backwards.

“Entschuldigung,” he says as he straightens again, and gets a soft chuckle and a response in what must be Undercommon before the drow returns to his work.

He asks for and receives permission to braid Bren’s hair when he’s done brushing it out. It’s far more complicated than the simple three-strand braid it had been in earlier- he separates it into three, then three again, and Bren briefly holds one uncooperative section for him while he sorts through the rest. It reminds him- and he bites his tongue just thinking of it, making a mockery of the memory- of his parents, Una sitting on a stool in the kitchen while Leofric stood behind her with a frown of deep concentration as he plaited her long hair.

“There,” the drow says when he’s done, tying off the end of the braid with a quick twist, and stands up and moves away. Bren reaches back and traces the braid with his fingers, unable to tell much without seeing it but feeling the perfect division of the strands and the precise weave. His lover appears to have some perfectionist tendencies.

The word lover rises in his mind and then sinks low in his belly, where it curdles like overwarm milk. Sure, the man is handsome, once Bren’s initial shock of him being a drow wore off. And he seems hesitant, scared to cross any lines, and is careful and gentle even when he is given permission to do so. But none of this is something Bren himself would choose.

“What time is it?” the drow asks.

“Six-oh-four.” Bren slides off the bed and turns to face the drow. He has changed into more weather-appropriate clothing, long linen pants and a soft-looking tunic of some light material, dove-grey in color with asymmetrical fastenings. He favors silver jewelry, Bren sees, dangly earrings with sharp-angled geometric shapes and unadorned rings on his fingers.

He has, around his neck, an anti-scry amulet.

“Dinner should be ready soon,” the drow says. He is walking again, the bottoms of his pants swirling loosely around his bare feet as he moves. Bren follows him into the hallway and watches as he goes to the library doorway. “I will be down in a moment,” he adds, and ducks into the room.

Bren does not wait, does not look back- he can’t afford to, he’ll lose his nerve. He heads downstairs and into the hallway between the sitting room and the kitchen, and then down the stairs into the cellar, flicking his fingers to summon his Dancing Lights as he goes. He ducks his head instinctively and the lights show him the low overhang, the stairs too shallow for the floor they’re going under. Bren would have clocked himself right at the hairline.

The cellar is still surprisingly empty, but now that Bren is looking for it, now that he’s thinking and not panicking, he can taste the ozone tang of strong magic in the air, faint now. He brings the lights down and they converge in a tight knot over a strange pattern on the floor, a circle inlaid into the stone with glyphs and sigils scattered within its borders. A Teleportation circle.

This is why Bren woke up down here this morning, and how the drow got into the house without going through the front door. He should have known.

Upstairs, a floorboard creaks- the drow is not floating anymore. Bren heads back upstairs and steps into the hallway. He looks up, unsurprised to see the drow coming down the hallway.

“Gretchen was downstairs this morning. She seems to have found some way to open the door,” he explains, and the confusion clears away instantly.

“Perhaps we have mice?” he asks, coming over to poke his head around the door and peering suspiciously down the darkened stairs.

Bren closes the door when he steps away, and makes a point of testing to see if it latched, if it will pop open again with a cat’s-worth of pressure. It wobbles a good deal, enough that he could see her prying it open with a decent amount of work. The drow hums in thought, then looks at Bren again.

Clearly something is going on, and the drow is worried and keeping a close eye on him. The best bet for Bren now is to wait until the drow is asleep. He has already said nothing would be happening between them tonight, so Bren can tough it out.

He heads to the kitchen. There is a loaf of bread carved into thick slices on the counter, and the drow follows him in and produces a bottle of wine that he begins to pour into wineglasses fetched from a cupboard. Bren guesses on the cabinets and finds soup bowls on the second try, and hands the drow one and receives a murmured thanks. The drow releases the glasses and the wine bottle and all three float neatly to the table, then he takes the bowl and goes over to the pot on the stove.

It is safe, it is perfectly domestic and manageable, Bren can certainly sit through polite dinner conversation with this man. And then-

“Cay-leb!”

A woman’s voice, exploding into his head like she is shouting directly into his mind. He startles badly, dropping his bowl- thankfully on the counter, where it just rocks on its side rather than shatters. The drow jerks around, surprised and alarmed, but Bren has no time to explain.

“Are you excited about tomorrow? We’re gonna get there kinda late, there was a thing with a sea monster, it’s all- what? Shit! Is-”

"Scheisse,” Bren mutters when she falls silent. He scrapes a hand over his face and shoots a weak smile to the drow.

“Jester?” the drow asks, already relaxing and clearly amused. Before Bren can decide how to answer that, she’s back.

“-Essek there yet? He said he was gonna spend tonight with you so you guys need to get Cad tomorrow.” A pause. “Cupcakes?” Another pause. “Doo do doo doo-”

The drow- Essek?- maneuvers around Bren to reach for a purple box on the counter. He opens the box to show that it does indeed contain cupcakes.

Bren can still feel the sticky grit of magic clinging to him, the woman’s spell waiting for some sort of response. He does a quick count- she used twenty-five words each time, for a certain definition of words- and scripts his own message.

“Hallo, loud one,” he says, gently so as to make it a friendly tease. “Essek is here, and he has brought your cupcakes. We will make travel arrangements for tomorrow, don’t worry.” He doesn’t know what Cad is. He’s assuming a person. Thankfully, the nature of the spell allows him to skimp on the details. “Be safe out there.”

He hits twenty-five and the magic fades away. Bren and Essek-until-proven-otherwise both wait. Apparently Bren’s answer was good enough, for her voice does not barge into his head again.

“Travel arrangements?” Essek asks after a good forty-two seconds. He turns back to the pot and picks up a ladle.

“We have to get Cad tomorrow,” Bren says, telling exactly what he knows and no more. “Ah, and our friends will be late. Something about a sea monster.”

Essek nods and turns to pick out a slice of bread to accompany his stew. The purple pastry box is sitting near there, and Bren indulges his curiosity a little and opens it. The cupcakes inside are dark and topped with an unappetizing grey-black icing.

“Black moss cupcakes, from that one bakery in Uthodurn she likes so much,” Essek says, and heads over to the kitchen table with its two chairs that Bren had noticed earlier and thought nothing of. “I will Send to Caduceus after dinner so he knows to expect us.”

Bren nods and picks up a slice of bread and ladles himself some stew from the pot. There are vegetables floating in the stock, onions and mushrooms and potatoes and something he doesn’t recognize, a thick meaty leaf-shaped object that is so dark a green as to be nearly black. Bren carefully avoids scooping many of those up, not sure if he has a strong opinion on them one way or another, and goes over to sit at the kitchen table with Essek.

The fish is slightly overcooked from the fire being too hot, but the vegetables are properly done. Bren tears the crusty bread apart and soaks some of it in the liquid of the stew and looks across the table. At least he has a few conversational leads now, thanks to Jester.

“How was Uthodurn?”

“Loud and crowded, as usual.” Essek picks out one of the leaf-things and pops it into his mouth. He is politely engaged with Bren but mostly keeps his eyes on his own food, allowing Bren to search out a leaf-thing in his own bowl and try it for himself. Not too bad, a little earthy-tasting. “I have only been there in winter, and I think I prefer it then. It has a smell in the summer.”

Bren has never been. He sips his wine- white, crisp, mildly sweet, a nice compliment to the stew- and nods as though he can sympathize.

“Reani sends her love,” Essek adds.

“And how is Reani?” Bren prompts.

The conversation goes on from there, slightly awkward as Bren tries to navigate the gaping chasms of all the things he should know. Reani, as it turns out, is a sweet and friendly druid who can apparently steamroll Essek into helping her on whatever her mission is through sheer force of personality. He has been gone weeks, from the sound of it, and Bren drinks his wine and eats his dinner and turns it all over in his head.

It would be very odd, if Essek really were living under cover in Rexxentrum, for him to simply disappear for weeks on end. To say nothing of this dedication to the ruse of a domestic life here, with only the two of them, as if they really are a pair of lovers sharing a home and a life. The assumption now is that he seduced Essek as a source of information into Dynasty magic, which is probably what is written all over the last part of his own spellbook. Depending on what cover story Bren told him, the poor bastard might not even realize he’s working with the Cerberus Assembly, however indirectly.

The problem is that Bren doesn’t know.

“You’re going to spoil her,” he says, when Essek has wound done from recounting his latest adventures and is sneaking another piece of fish to Gretchen. She has been begging at both of them under the table, but Essek seems to be a softer touch.

“I am,” Essek says doubtfully, arching an eyebrow at Bren. He sits upright again, agreeing with a nod and offering his glass when Bren holds out the wine bottle. He has drunk more than twice as much as Bren at this point, although Bren had had to finish off his first glass and refill it quickly after Essek had asked if the wine was not to his taste. “School is finally out, correct?”

“Ja.” This, thankfully, Bren can talk about- he remembers his Academy days well enough to guess at what a professor’s life might be. “More than a week ago.”

“Glad to be rid of them?” Essek asks, swirling his wine in the glass.

“Ah, they always get antsy when breaks are coming up, it is not their fault.” For all that the Academy is high-class and tends to have wealthy students, it still follows the same schedule as all other official schools in the Empire, which includes a two-month break over the busiest part of the summer for farmers. He can easily remember the feeling in the air in the classrooms on those days, anxious and drowsy at the same time, unable to focus on anything to save their own lives. He catches Essek’s eye and smiles. “But yes, I am glad it’s over for now.”

Essek sets his glass down and gives Bren a serious look. His hands come together again, fingers twisting around each other. “I do not mean to pry,” he says quietly. “But you have been- distracted all evening. So I will ask again, and only once. Would you like to talk about it?”

Again with the maddeningly vague it. If he would only give Bren a clue, literally any single thing to work off of- but he doesn’t. Just sits and watches Bren.

“I would rather not think about it, to be honest,” Bren says, and Essek nods and relaxes, as though he is not looking forward to that conversation either. “But if it is troubling you…”

“Of course not,” Essek says quickly, with all the proper manners Bren has already come to expect of him. “I am merely-.” He pauses, exhales sharply, tries again. “You must know the others will not be satisfied with an answer like that.”

“A problem for tomorrow,” Bren says, and Essek accepts that and visibly lets the topic go.

They clean up together after dinner. Bren carries their dishes over to the washtub and Essek falls into place beside him automatically, towel in hand, so Bren washes and Essek dries. And then they retreat upstairs together, even though it is not even seven and the sun has only just started bleeding into the horizon. They end up in the library together, Bren alone at first while Essek retreats into the washroom, but that only lasts for a sparse handful of minutes before the drow reappears.

They take up separate stations in the library, Bren at his desk and messing with the book he has there, Essek on the couch with a small stack of books he seemed to have picked out earlier. Gretchen tucks herself into a loaf on the back of the couch and Essek occasionally reaches up to pet her, starting her purring again every time.

“If we are ferrying people around tomorrow,” Bren begins after seventeen minutes. He is keenly aware of Essek’s every move, and the growing urge to break the silence finally got the better of him. “Should we be getting an early start?”

“We will need to wait for Beauregard,” Essek says. Bren glances at the magical frame with its rotating pictures and wonders if these names- Jester, Caduceus, Reani, Beauregard- belong to these people. “But if you would like, we can spend some time in the Grove tomorrow.”

The Grove, not a name Bren has heard before. Are they leaving the Empire? He has only just gotten back and now he’s leaving again, and taking Bren with him? What sort of traitor-spy is he? Bren cannot imagine any asset being given such a long leash, let alone one wearing a protection amulet. There is more he doesn’t know, something very big that he’s missing, and it bothers him that he can’t risk sticking around long enough to figure it out.

“If the others are getting in late I don’t see the harm in taking our time,” he says, unsure of what the appropriate response is.

Essek nods in agreement and stands up, abandoning his book briefly on the side table. “Would you like some tea?” he asks, and pads out of the room on his feet when Bren murmurs an agreement. Bren watches him go, listens to the soft sounds of feet on the staircase- he thinks maybe now-

Essek’s voice trails upstairs, too quiet for Bren to hear the words. For a moment Bren almost panics, worrying that he has been too odd and Essek is reporting to whichever superior of his he knows about. He rises quickly and slips to the library doorway, catching the tail end of the words.

“-do not know the precise time, but early morning.” Essek says, and falls silent, and- ah. He had said earlier that he would need to Send to people to establish travel plans. Nothing to worry about.

Bren retreats back into the library and sits down at his desk. After a moment’s thought he takes out his spellbook and opens it, flips to the first page he doesn’t remember. He needs to know what’s in here before he can leave, familiarize himself with some useful spells.

He is still there when Essek returns, bringing tea with just the right amount of milk and sugar. If he finds it odd that Bren has settled at the desk, instead of sharing the couch or whatever their usual habit is, he doesn’t say anything. He sits on the couch by himself and starts Gretchen purring again and picks up his own book, and this time the silence that settles between them feels natural instead of awkward.

It is past ten by the time Bren has read through his spellbook, then reread the interesting bits. He straightens up in his chair, wincing as his spine pops audibly in the quiet room. His eyes are strained- he has been casting Dancing Lights for the last hour for light to read by- and his joints ache with disuse. Still, he stands with relative ease, and stretches to encourage proper blood flow in complaining extremities.

“Going to bed?” Essek asks as Bren tucks his spellbook away. Bren nods, and glances over his shoulder as he waits, but apparently that is all Essek needed to know.

He looks decadently comfortable, sprawled sideways on the couch, sunk low into the cushions built up between his side and the armrest. His legs are stretched across the length of the couch and Gretchen at some point has abandoned her loaf in order to curl up in the space between the bend of his left knee and the straight stretch of his right leg. She is getting multicolored fur on his pants, but he does not seem to mind, and as Bren watches he reaches down absentmindedly to scritch at her ears again.

He looks up when Bren comes to stand over him, and Bren hooks two fingers under his chin to tip his head even further up. He bends down and presses a kiss between his brows, and feels a light tremor shake through the body under his hand.

“Good night, Essek,” he says quietly, then straightens and walks away, and does not look back.

He changes into sleeping clothes but leaves his daywear in a neatly folded pile, component pouch and book harness included, on the dresser nearest the doorway. He gets a piece of colored glass from the pouch before he gets into bed, and presses its sharp edge into the meat of his palm every time he feels the haze of sleep start to descend.

He is not surprised when Essek finally joins him well after midnight- elves need less sleep than humans, after all, and there is no reason to think drow would be any different. He is floating again, moving quietly so as not to disturb Bren, although that proves to be a lost cause as Gretchen follows him around the room, meowing the entire time, then leaps onto the bed and lands directly on Bren’s chest.

Essek slips under the covers and curls cat-like in his half of the bed. Bren shifts, rolls over to face him. He feels impossibly small in this space, in the dark where Bren cannot see his sharp watchful eyes. Bren wants to pull him close and hold him, but he has already said his goodbye, so he pretends to be mostly asleep still and tucks his face down into the pillow so those dark-sighted eyes cannot see him awake and watching.

He counts breaths, counts minutes, and waits. And when it has been an hour, when Essek seems deeply asleep- Bren slips out of bed, scoops up the clothes on the dresser, and pads out of the bedroom.

It would have been better if he had been allowed to pack, to sort through the belongings and find everything small and of value to sell later. He does swing through the kitchen and packs a small sack with as much food as he could that wouldn’t spoil easily, and pauses for a moment to stare at the purple box Essek had left on the counter. The Uthodurnian cupcakes.

If he could, if he had the spell- if he knew who she was- he would Send to Jester and demand answers from her. Who are you, why did Essek promise you cupcakes, why has the Assembly given us such a long leash? Essek went to Uthodurn, and had been gone for weeks from his stories, and Bren had simply… let him go. Let an asset, one wearing an anti-scrying pendant at that, teleport away to destinations unknown. Was the Assembly so certain of his break in loyalty to the Dynasty?

His staring contest with the pastry box is suddenly broken when Gretchen jumps onto the counter. She meows loudly, clearly having certain expectations upon seeing a person in the kitchen. Bren shushes her but she just meows again, and turns her head to rub her cheek against the corner of the pastry box.

He catches her face between his cupped hands when she turns back to him, and presses a kiss between her eyes when she delights him with a purr. Her cheeks are squished and her good eye is squinted shut and her good ear is folded forward under his fingers, and he wishes he could take her with him. He misses Frumpkin terribly.

“Be well,” he tells her, and lets her go and leaves the kitchen.

He ducks into the entryway to pick up his boots, then heads down the stairs into the cellar. It is pitch black but his body knows the way, head ducking instinctively to clear the low overhang, feet counting the stairs until he reaches flat ground. He dares a single light globule then, and paces the teleportation circle etched into the stone floor. He has memorized the actual teleportation spell, and studied several of the circles he had written down. His destination is Tidepeak, wherever that is- it sounds like something near the ocean, and he doesn’t think the Assembly’s reach stretches too far into the Menagerie Coast. They will, of course, send hunters after him, but hopefully navigating the politics between the two nations will slow them down enough to give him a healthy head start.

As he had thought, the circle in the basement is not in his spellbook. It ties a strange knot in his chest- this is home, he didn’t need to write it down. He memorizes this one too, just in case, then dips his fingers into his component pouch. There is just enough floor space left over for him to draw his outgoing circle without overlapping the permanent one, so he kneels down and sketches out the Tidepeak circle on the bare spot.

He is done, spell cast, circle glowing blue- its light mixing with his one amber magelight to cast a sickly green hue over the room- and stands up and brushes the chalk dust off his hands and finally lifts his eyes from the circle-

-and Essek is standing on the other side of it, watching him.

He starts to say something, curious and confused but not suspicious, not yet. Bren does not hear his words. Bren hears nothing but a roaring in his ears, screaming, the creaking wheels of a cart being pushed and fists thumping against a door and he cannot stay here. And the hand that had been putting the chalk away in his component pouch comes out smeared with phosphorus, and the screaming in Bren’s head kicks up to a crescendo as Essek’s eyes widen. He will die, Gretchen will die, another home will burn, the Assembly will know and begin the hunt immediately- but Bren cannot go back.

Phosphorus in a line across his palm, the words on his lips-

The blade of Essek’s hand slices through the gathering magic, shattering the Wall of Fire before it can coalesce. Bren’s heart, which for some reason had seized up, remembers how to beat again.

Essek’s hand reverses, first two fingers pointing and twisting, and he snaps something in Undercommon. Bren is not so quick on the draw, his lack of practice betraying him, and he counterspells too late, still halfway through the somatic when suddenly his limbs all turn to lead. His body weighs a thousand pounds, and his legs cannot hold him up, and he collapses under the weight- under the gravity, he realizes when he manages to roll his head to the side and sees Essek is floating again. One defies gravity, and one is crushed under it.

The teleportation spell is fizzling, the light from the circle flickering and waning, and of course his magelight is gone. A moment later the circle dies, and Bren is in the dark with a drow who can still see him perfectly and no longer has any need to play at their false domesticity.

A pause, fourteen long seconds of nothing but Bren waiting helplessly for Essek to decide between landing the killing blow or, worse, reporting in. He closes his eyes against the heat welling up in them, frustration and fear and desperation all rising up and making him want to scream, and tries very hard not to flinch when Essek speaks from very close by. Another pause, a sharp word- and the weight on Bren is gone, and he claws at the stone underneath him, the sudden lightness feeling like he is falling upward.

“Well,” Essek says quietly as Bren tries to cling to the ground like a lizard on a wall. “You are not someone else in disguise, and you are not under any effects that can be dispelled. So please, tell me- what is going on?”

Bren is painfully aware of the power imbalance between them right now. At least he is readjusting to proper gravity, and can lever himself up onto his knees without feeling as though he is slingshotting himself into the sky. He doesn’t dare try to stand, not yet, and keeps both hands in front of him and well away from his component pouch. That gravity spell had been a cantrip, probably the very same one he uses to float; it would be the work of a half-second to disable Bren again.

“Caleb?”

At any other time, Bren would have heard the waver in his voice, the uncertainty and the fear underpinning the calm facade. But now, all he hears is that name. And he himself is scared, and angry, and aware that he has not only blown his only real chance at escape, but also revealed that something is wrong with him. He stares at the floor, unwilling to risk meeting Essek’s eyes in the dark, and feels himself curl up. Whatever fondness he might have been developing for this man is evaporating and he feels more vulnerable than ever.

“Don’t call me that,” he says quietly, barely whispering the words.

“What am I to call you, then?”

Bren doesn’t answer. His fingers are on his forearms again, hands sliding under his sleeves and nails picking at scar tissue.

“Why were you trying to leave?” Essek presses when Bren is silent.

It can’t hurt. Best case, there is goodness in him and he will be convinced to let Bren go, or at worst he is rotten to the core and will only laugh at him. “I need to leave. Please let me go.”

There is a stirring, air moving around him. Then Essek mutters a word, and pale lavender light floods the room, his own Dancing Lights curling through the air. He steps out of his float and drops to his knees before Bren, catching at his wrists and pulling his hands away from his arms. “Please, Caleb, tell me what is happening,” he begs.

“I don’t know who you are,” Bren says, and the slender fingers on his wrists spasm tighter. “I don’t know why you are here, what promises I have made to you. But you are a traitor to your people.”

Another clench, and then the hands on him disappear altogether. Essek rocks back on his heels, eyes wide and expression wounded.

“You have betrayed your people,” Bren repeats, emphasizing his words so Essek will understand the gravity of them. “If that matters to you at all, if you care about anyone but yourself- I have to leave, and you should as well.”

Come with me, he thinks at that moment, a strange impulse that rises out of nowhere and briefly overwhelms him. He bites his tongue before he can say it. He still doesn’t know enough about this arrangement for it to be a safe offer.

“You don’t know me?” Essek asks, and now Bren can hear it, the shaking, the hurt. By the gods, how deeply has he embedded himself into this man’s life, that this is such a blow to him? “What of the Mighty Nein?”

Bren says nothing. He can guess names- Jester, Caduceus- he might even be able to describe them, thanks to the frame in the library. But he will not be able to bluff his way out of this one, so he doesn’t insult either of them by trying.

A wall is going up, all those hurting vulnerable emotions disappearing behind solid ice. Essek stands up and Bren flinches back, expecting a blow, gravity, Hold Person- something. Instead Essek lifts both hands and a strand of purple light snaps between them.

“Apologies for waking you, but this is a matter of some urgency. Please come to Caleb’s house as soon as possible.”

Bren closes his eyes and folds down on himself, what little hope he had left swiftly dying. He could try fighting now- he will never have better odds than he does in this moment- but decides it is better to save his strength. As he is, Essek is more than a match for him, and trying to escape will just put him in a worse mood.

The response Essek gets does not please him- his eyes are flat and cold, and he looks down at Bren kneeling at his feet with an expression of aloof indifference.

“Come,” he says, gesturing for Bren to rise, to move ahead of him. “We’ll wait upstairs.”

Bren looks back at the teleportation circle one last time- a door he had opened, was seconds away from stepping through, freedom so close he could almost taste it- now dark and closed.

Then he goes upstairs, to whatever fate awaits him.

Chapter Text

They go into the kitchen to wait.

Essek does not confiscate Bren’s component pouch, but then he doesn’t need to; he has the experience to back up his magic, while Bren has all potential and no refinement and no delusions about his ability to beat this drow in a fight. So he sits at the kitchen table- Essek had looked at the armchairs in the sitting room and grimaced and turned quickly away from them- and keeps his hands in sight and makes no sudden movements. Gretchen is oblivious to the tension and keeps jumping onto the table no matter how many times Essek shoos her off, circling from him to Bren and back again, looking for scritches and purring the whole time.

Bren keeps his eyes on her, unable to even look at Essek, halfheartedly wishing he’d just kept Bren pinned to the cellar floor and left him alone down there. Anything would have been better than this waiting, Essek sitting across from him, inscrutable and always watching.

In the silence he hears the scuffing of quick footsteps approaching the front door, so the knock doesn’t scare the shit out of him. Essek gestures and a moment later the door is unlocking and opening, and Bren looks over his shoulder as the newcomer bolts through the hallway and bursts into the kitchen.

“What’s wrong?” she demands, still moving as she speaks, a blur of brown and blue. She comes halfway to the table, sees they’re both alive and apparently uninjured, then turns back to the doorway as if to check the rest of the house. “You said emergency, dude, what’s up?”

“I said urgency,” Essek corrects as he rises to his feet, then rises further into his float. She makes an impatient noise and comes back to stand at the table, and Bren gets his first good look at her. He has seen her in the magic frame- human, dark skin, dark hair shaved close to her scalp on the sides of her head with the rest in a braid, blue eyes. She is wearing blue robes, arms and midriff bare, and sports scars across her abdomen and over her left eye.

“Okay,” she says in her deep, gruff voice, clearly mocking Essek. “What’s the urgency then?”

Essek looks to Bren and says with damning expectation, “Caleb, who is this?”

She catches on fast. She flicks quick glances between them, mouth opening- then she sees the look on Bren’s face, hears the answer he does not give, and whatever she was about to say comes out as “oh shit” instead.

Bren looks away from her, digging his fingers into Gretchen’s fur and trying not to tuck his shoulders up to his burning ears. He hates this, hates them both staring down at him, expecting something more from him. Measuring him and finding him lacking somehow. Even just being the focus of their attention burns like sandpaper scraping across bare skin.

“What happened?” the woman asks.

Essek looks at Bren, and Bren looks at the cat under his hands. She clearly wants to get up, but Bren’s hands are heavy on her and keep her in place. Her tail is starting to flick back and forth.

“He has been acting strangely ever since I arrived,” Essek says finally. “And just before I Sent to you, he attempted to sneak away and Teleport to Tidepeak Tower. When I asked him why he was trying to leave, he told me he didn’t know who I was, nor the Mighty Nein.”

An interesting abridgement of the actual events. More pressingly, Essek had apparently recognized the circle for Bren’s chosen destination. So all of that might have been for nothing at all, if he could have so easily followed or warned someone on the other end.

“And you checked for…?” She makes an unhelpful gesture, hand open and flat and palm up, waving it in circles in front of her. Essek stares at, brow furrowed.

“I cast Detect Magic, yes,” he says slowly, clearly unsure of what exactly she was trying to say. “I dispelled him as well. If this is the result of a spell, it is not one I can remove.”

“Okay.” She bites at the inside of her cheek, staring intently at Bren. He realizes he is twisting snarls into Gretchen’s fur with his mindless fidgeting and smoothes his fingers down her flanks instead. Then the woman turns to Essek and jerks her head to one side. “Can I talk to you out there?”

“Certainly.” And he circles around her and leads her to the hallway. She follows him but stops in the doorway, glancing frequently over her shoulder to Bren.

The chairs are perpendicular to the hallway, so no one sitting at the table has their back to the doorway. Bren needs to only look to his right to watch them, but there is not much to see- Essek gets two floating non-steps down the hallway before the woman stops him and they put their heads together to discuss something. He is taller than her while floating but not by enough that he would still be so while standing, and Bren watches with interest as she puts a hand on Essek’s shoulder and pulls him down so he’s closer to her level while they talk.

Hard to see Essek’s face in the dark hallway- there is one light in the kitchen, a magical orb that gives off a soft gold candlelight-glow that nevertheless lights the whole room, which Essek had activated with a gesture and a word when they first came in- but his posture is easy to read. His back is straight, his chin is up, his mobile hands are still for once, folded neatly together in front of him. He is a completely different person to the one Bren had spent the evening with.

At one point the woman’s hand on Essek’s shoulder tightens and gives him a gentle shake. Then she releases him, and they both turn away, Essek into the sitting room and the woman back over to the kitchen table. Gretchen, annoyed at Bren’s manhandling, peels away from him and jumps down off the table, trotting quickly after Essek. Bren sits and stares at the blank spot on the table between his hands where she was and tries not to flinch when the chair opposite him scrapes as the woman pulls it out further and sits down.

“What happened?” she asks again, in a tone of voice that is probably meant to be gentler but is mostly just quieter.

“Who are you?” Bren counters.

He can see her hands on the table, knuckles wrapped and scars peeking out that Bren has only ever seen on people who fight with their fists. Her fingers curl into those fists now, seemingly unthinkingly.

“I’m Beau,” she says, and he dares to lift his eyes up to hers. She has a lock of hair falling into her face and he focuses on that instead of meeting her gaze properly. “Expositor Beauregard Lionett, of the Cobalt Soul.”

The only part that means anything to him is that she seems to expect it to mean something to him. He shakes his head a little- better to admit now to not knowing than get caught out in a lie again.

“We’re monks,” she prompts, and he says nothing. “Never mind. So what happened, Caleb? I need to know what’s wrong before I can help.”

Bren is debating how much to admit to- more specifically, he is trying to figure out what is going on. He was expecting Volstrucker, Assembly people, perhaps even Ikithon. Instead he got one monk. “Why are you here?”

“To help, what did I just say?” She bites her lip and grunts as soon as the words are out of her mouth, clearly frustrated with herself. Oddly it makes Bren feel better, that she is so abrupt and tactless. Assuming, of course, it isn’t just an act. “We’re family, Caleb. Whatever’s wrong, I wanna help.”

Essek had not put on a disguise when she came in, and she had not been surprised by him. So she knows him. And if Essek is what Bren thinks he is- does she know? How much did she know? Would it be safer for him to pretend he lost even more years, that he had been taken all the way back to when he was still a student?

None of this makes sense, and he is missing the pieces necessary to figure it out.

“I have lost a considerable amount of my memories,” he says slowly. Be ambiguous, then, until he’s sure which answer is safest.

“How much is ‘a considerable amount’?” she asks, and he shakes his head again. She stares at him thoughtfully for a moment before tapping a fist against the table twice.

“Okay,” she says. “Tell me what’s happened since then. You wake up like this?”

Bren hesitates, but it won’t hurt to tell her, and hopefully giving her something will distract from all the questions he isn’t answering. “This morning. I was in the cellar.”

“Teleportation circle?” she asks, and sits back in her chair and bites at her lower lip when he nods. “Is there any way to- hey, Essek!” Bren jerks a little as she yells, then looks to his right as Essek appears in the doorway. “Is there some way to tell where someone came from when they Teleport? Like, backtrack the origin of the spell?”

A very long pause, then finally, “...no.”

“Yeah, okay,” Beauregard growls, and he disappears again. She focuses on Bren again. “So you just woke up in the cellar with no clue of how you got there?”

“I had a potion bottle in my hand,” Bren offers.

“Empty?” He nods. “Were you hurt? Did it feel like you’d been in a fight?”

“Ja, felt like I’d been burned,” he says, fidgeting uncomfortably with his sleeve as he admits it.

“And what happened after you woke up? Spend the whole day here, trying to figure out what the fuck happened?”

“Ah, no. I went out to the plaza in the afternoon.” He knows what her next question will be.

“Anyone watching, following? Someone really interested in you, you talk to anyone?”

“I was in disguise,” he says. “And no, none of that, except for one man who thought I was drunk when I asked him what year it is.”

He bites off the end of the sentence, but too late. And now she knows that he’s lost years, not weeks or months.

She does not seem to find this relevant. She just huhs and stares at him for a moment before shoving her chair back from the table.

“Hang here for a moment,” she says, like he has any choice, and walks out of the kitchen. Bren gives her a ten-count before he rises as silently as he can and follows the sound of voices in the sitting room. He stops just outside the doorway and shamelessly eavesdrops.

“-not saying that,” Beauregard is- trying to whisper, he supposes. “I’m just saying, this all started with Caleb casting a spell, so if something went wrong with that and this isn’t some kind of memory loss…”

“Amnesia is a far simpler answer than displacement, temporal or planar,” Essek says, then sighs and adds, probably in response to her expression, “Lost in time or across dimensions.” Another pause, then, waspishly, “Simpler means more likely to have happened-”

“Okay,” Beauregard cuts across him. “I’m gonna let that go ‘cause you’re having a bad night, but dude, don’t push it.”

“My apologies,” Essek says after a moment, all courtly grace. Beauregard groans, as if this somehow annoys her even more. “But Caleb is very familiar with Teleport, and more importantly, the consequences of a Teleport spell misfiring are well-known. You yourself have experienced some of them. Something like what you are suggesting is unheard of.”

“No, I get that. I’m only saying, you two are always fucking around with alternate realities and all that shit. So just in case it isn’t amnesia, ‘cause you know simpler has never actually meant more likely for us- keep an eye out for any, y’know. Dunamagic vibes.”

Another pause, and Bren almost wishes he was in the room with them, because something tells him the look on Essek’s face right now must be spectacular. Eventually there is a soft sigh.

“Of course.”

“Okay,” Beauregard says again, in a much different tone as the ready-to-fight tension bleeds out of her voice. “But since amnesia is the simpler answer, maybe first we should try getting him to Caduceus.”

“I Sent to him,” Essek says. “I cannot Teleport again until tomorrow, and twenty-five words limits the amount of advice he could give.”

Beauregard sighs. “Shit, right. Just- keep it together, okay? I think we’re dealing with early days Caleb here and I can only handle one emotionally stunted wizard in crisis mode at a time.”

Essek does not verbally respond, but he must show some sign of acknowledgement, for Beauregard’s voice is gentler when she next speaks.

“We’ll fix it, hot boi,” she says, tone reassuring. “Just keep-” a pause, fabric rustling, as if she were making some sort of gesture and her robes were flapping around. “Shadowhand-ing it up until then, I guess.”

Bren moves back down the hallway then, the conversation clearly over. Beauregard catches him slipping into his chair, but she doesn’t say anything.

“So here’s the thing,” she says, pulling her own chair around so it’s facing backwards and sits down straddling it. “Whatever you’re scared of, I can promise it’s already handled. We took care of it years ago. Ikithon’s gone-”

She says more, but it is all noise, barely audible over the ringing in Bren’s ears. “What?” he croaks out when he can hear again.

“Ikithon is gone,” she repeats, spacing her words out.

Bren scoffs and drags a hand through his hair. He- no. No, he couldn’t be.

“That’s not possible,” he says. “He- it must be part of a plan of his.”

“Nah, man, he’s gone,” she says again, faster now that she sees he’s present again. “We took- you took him down. Locked him up and threw away the key.”

Prison? Trent Ikithon in prison? That is just plain impossible, unless- “Who has replaced him?” Beauregard hesitates, and Bren leans forward, suddenly able to meet her gaze. “Who is the Archmage of Civil Influence?”

“Astrid Becke,” she says, sighing as she says it, and Bren folds back into himself like he’s been punched in the gut. “She’s not like him,” Beauregard adds quickly. “She turned on him, she helped us bring him in, she dismantled the Volstrucker program and the Soul’s been keeping an eye on her. She’s- not great,” she grimaces, “but she’s not like Ikithon.”

Had he helped Astrid stage a coup? Had they found the nerve to turn on their master? Had she gotten to Bren first while he was on the run and convinced him to help her dethrone the old man? Or, most likely, was it all an act, and Ikithon is still pulling Astrid’s strings from inside his cell? Regardless, Bren is living in Rexxentrum with a Dynasty traitor, and he cannot think of any single way for him to have gotten here that does not include him becoming the sort of monster he spent years running from.

Beauregard raps her knuckles on the table, and Bren jolts back to himself and realizes he’s been staring intently at her while his mind churned with possibilities.

“Something like this has happened before,” she says, slowly again, like she thinks he might be panicking still. “We got a cleric who can fix it, we’ll take you to him tomorrow.”

Bren feels his fingers curl around the edge of the table. Take you to him- he is so very much not in control in this house but he will have even less control if he leaves.

“I would rather not leave,” he says, his voice faint to his own ears.

“That’s fine,” Beauregard says after a pause and a quick glance over his shoulder. Bren looks as well, but if Essek was in sight, he is already gone again. “We’ll bring him here. That okay?”

Bren takes a deep breath, another. The air fills his lungs and somehow he still can’t breathe.

If they- they’re bringing in a cleric- if they give him his memories back, will he lose himself again? He is in Rexxentrum and he is living with a traitor and there is no path that could have led him here without him becoming something he hates. If he remembers those lost years, will he remember the rationalizations he uses, that let him sleep at night? That lets him work for the Assembly, the same Assembly that tortures children into becoming weapons for their own use? He is not a good person, not as he is- he lies, he steals, he uses peoples’ kindness- he is not contributing to the betterment of the world, but he’s not really hurting anyone either, not on any serious level. If he remembers being Caleb Widogast, if he becomes Caleb Widogast again, can he still say that?

“Caleb?” Beauregard asks from miles away, and he looks up to find her ducking her head to try and catch his wandering gaze.

“Ja,” he says. “That is acceptable.”

He can’t run, not with someone watching his every move and Essek ready to counterspell everything. He will simply have to see what opportunities tomorrow brings.

“Hey,” Beauregard says, and he looks at her again. “I know it’s not gonna mean anything to you just now, but, we’re family. You and me, him,” she jerks her chin to the sitting room. “And the rest of us. We’re the Mighty Nein. And the thing we’re best at is getting our friends back from whatever’s taken them away from us.”

It doesn’t mean anything to him. It sounds like a threat, almost, more warning than the reassurance she probably means it as. He says nothing, and she stands up again. “So I gotta go home and pack some shit for the trip. You two gonna be okay?”

“We will survive, I’m sure,” Essek says from the doorway. Clearly he has heard everything, if he knew to come in just now.

“Great,” she says, and ducks past him.

Bren listens to the sound of her moving quickly and lightly down the hallway, then the front door opening and closing. And then it is just him and Essek, alone in a silence that is once again incredibly awkward. He turns in his chair and finds Essek staring at the counter across the room.

“What promises do you think you have made to me?” he asks after almost seven minutes of silence. Bren flinches and looks away.

Another minute, and Essek steps over and turns the other chair around properly and sits down in it. He steeples his fingers together and rests them in front of his face. He does not try to force Bren to meet his gaze, but instead waits patiently across from him until Bren looks him in the eye on his own.

“Please don’t try to run again.”

“Or else?” Bren asks.

“There is no or else. I do not wish to hurt you.”

“But you will, if you need to,” Bren says, finishing off the obvious ending.

That mask is impenetrable. Essek watches Bren without a single change in expression, not giving him a single twitch. Bren cannot maintain eye contact with him and looks away, and wonders as he does if he was wrong about which Essek is real.

“You should get some rest,” Essek says. “If I am bringing Caduceus here tomorrow- hah, later today- then you will be taking us to Nicodranas.”

Nicodranas? He knew there were plans for some gathering tomorrow, but he had thought they were all coming here, give or take a few pit stops. Well, it is better than staying here in Rexxentrum, so he nods and stands up. He heads upstairs, Essek on his heels, then ducks into the bedroom just long enough to grab a blanket and his pillow off the bed. Then he goes into the library, laying down on the couch instead of sitting at the desk chair. Gretchen, naturally, joins him almost immediately and spends a few minutes marching up and down his body, kneading at the blanket and purring fiercely, before she finally settles in the curve of his waist just above his hip. For his part, Essek opens the curtain on the window enough for some sparse moonlight to spill into the room, then brings a book over to the desk from the pile still left on the end table.

“Good night, Caleb,” he says, and snuffs the lights, leaving them in the dark with just enough moonlight shining in for Bren to see the vague outline of him at the desk. Bren closes his eyes, but he is fully aware of every sound Essek makes, of the vulnerability of sleeping in a room with someone awake.

He puts a hand on Gretchen and she purrs, and he slows his breathing and keeps his hand on the cat to feel the vibration of her purr.

Sleep is a long time coming.

He does sleep, deep and dreamless, exhausted by the emotional toll of the day. He even misses the changing of the guard. He only realizes Beauregard has returned when he starts stirring, sunlight in his eyes, and the blanket is tugged away from him. In trying to grab it back, he overbalances and rolls off the edge of the couch.

“C’mon,” she says as he blinks at the rug under his nose. “Cad made breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” he echoes, and rolls over.

It is morning, in spite of his own doubts that he would ever fall asleep. There is muted sunlight pouring through the window, its curtain pulled aside, and his own infallible sense of time tells him they’re almost to the point of needing lunch, not breakfast.

Beauregard offers him a hand and he stares at it for twelve seconds before taking it. She hauls him up with a surprising lack of ease, and claps him on the shoulder with her other hand once he’s up. He steps away from her as subtly as he can, and knows from her fond eye roll that she picked up on it all the same.

“Mushroom scramble and hashbrowns,” she says. “He’s a really good cook, and he’s only drugged someone without asking one time.”

“Very reassuring.”

For a moment, Bren looks down at her- she is shorter than him by a good three or four inches- and wonders. She has demonstrated absolutely no aptitude towards nor understanding of magic, and he can cast some spells very quickly. She might be easy to overwhelm- or her confidence might be well-earned, and even trying will only get him humiliated. Certainly there is power within that lithe frame, even her casual movements seeming fast and agile enough to make up for her lack of brute strength, and he is well within punching range already. So he turns away instead of risking it, and starts to head towards the washroom so his privacy can be most thoroughly violated.

“Hey,” Beauregard says, and Bren glances back at her. “You don’t have to run, man. I know you’re freaked about being in Rexxentrum but Cad’s here to fix your little memory problem, so…”

“So…” Bren echoes, prompting her to continue, then bites his tongue viciously. Since when does he mock people like that? Especially people who are potentially very dangerous?

“I’m not watching you go to the bathroom, so don’t bother Teleporting in there and making us track your ass down,” she finishes impatiently.

Bren stares at her for a moment longer, then walks across the hallway and into the washroom and closes the door behind him. He does not understand that woman at all.

He does think about it. He thinks about how there’s a cleric downstairs who’s going to make him remember all the things he’s done as Caleb Widogast, whether he wants to or not. He still knows Teleport- he takes a minute with his spellbook as soon as he’s alone- and he knows how to disappear, and it is doubtful these people know his habits well enough to find him.

they found you once- except he doesn’t know that. He hopes it’s true, hopes he was hunted down and brought back into the fold and didn’t just get cold enough, hungry enough to turn himself in one day, but he doesn’t know.

He doesn’t Teleport. He can hear Beauregard pacing in the hallway outside, and knows he won’t be able to cast the spell in time before she gets to him. He does take his time, though, mostly to gather himself, scrape together courage for the coming encounter. He takes his hair down- the braid is already falling apart, not meant to stand up to the mauling he’s put it through, he’s used to shorter hair and has a habit of pushing his hand through it. His hair is kinked from the weave of the braid and he drags his fingers through it a few times before tying it back in a ponytail.

Then he finally gives in, accepts his fate, and comes out of the washroom. Beauregard is waiting for him in the hallway, arms crossed over her chest. She pushes off from the wall she’s been leaning on and gestures him down the stairs.

There are voices in the kitchen, so Bren goes that way. He comes into the kitchen doorway and freezes, so suddenly that Beauregard walks right into him and knocks him half a step forward. He stumbles but doesn’t break eye contact with the- person in the kitchen.

Tall is his first impression, and then pink. Tall and pink, tall enough that he- they?- would have to duck a little to clear the doorways in the house, pink hair long and unbound, studded with thin braids and wooden beads here and there. Long ears, a flat face with a nose that reminds him of nothing so much as a cow, pink beard, purple eyes that blink placidly at him. Dirt ground into his hands enough that a dozen washings wouldn’t get them clean, a soft layer of grey fur over his whole body. He is wearing a silk shirt with long, trailing sleeves patterned to look like the veins on a leaf. That gaze falls on Bren instantly and does not waver, piercing straight through him.

“Hey, Deuces,” Beauregard says, slithering through the narrow gap between Bren and the doorway and into the kitchen.

That eerie gaze finally shifts away from Bren, and the person smiles. “Good morning, Beau,” he says, voice deep and slow.

So this must be Caduceus, the cleric who is here to fix Bren’s little memory problem.

“You need help over there?” Beauregard asks. Essek has apparently been tasked with helping mind the stove and is stirring hashbrowns in a sizzling pan. He looks absurdly small standing next to Caduceus.

“Here.” Caduceus produces a small satchel and offers it to her. “The kettle should be ready in a minute. Do we want to eat out in the garden? There’s only two chairs in here.”

There is no objection to that, so Caduceus tasks the other two to gathering up food and plates and the tea when it’s all done and comes over to Bren while Beauregard is grumbling about the division of labor. Bren retreats before him- he has been trying not to actively show fear since the moment he walked into the house to find Essek in the kitchen, but something about Caduceus sets him immediately off-kilter.

“Come on,” Caduceus says to him. “We’ll talk before they get out there.”

He goes, because outside is just as good as inside. Gretchen slithers out the back door as soon as it’s open wide enough for her. Bren walks out into the little garden and watches as she jumps into a planter filled with a carpet of grass and immediately flops onto her side, rolling and luxuriating in the grass. There is sunshine, but it filters in thin rays through heavy cloud cover, casting a haze over the day.

The garden itself is not as overrun and wild as he thought- the plants in it, he sees when he looks closer, seem to have been specifically chosen to flourish in spite of benign neglect. Sunflowers, lavender, milkweeds. They look uneven, all staggered heights and sprawling out from their assigned plots, but the leaves are glossy-green with good health and the blooms are big and vividly colorful. Even the rose bushes have escaped, happily climbing the fences with no visible attempt made to rein them in.

“Under the tree, I think,” Caduceus says. Bren turns away from his inspection of the garden and looks up at the tree instead. It’s an oak, a magnificent old beast, towering well over the houses around it, branches spread out to provide shade to at least half a dozen yards. It is, nevertheless, Bren’s tree, its trunk firmly in his house’s yard. The ground at its base has been left clear of everything but grass, and Bren follows as Caduceus leads him over to it. He has produced a staff from somewhere, taller even than him, knobbly wood that wraps around a large chunk of amethyst at the top.

“Now,” he says when they’re under the tree. Bren looks up at him and then cannot look away, caught and held by that inescapable gaze. “Essek told us you weren’t happy with being called Caleb?”

“No, Caleb is fine.” It will remind him of who he is to these people, at least, or more accurately who he isn’t.

“Are you sure? There are other names.”

Bren finally tears his gaze away. He steps back and leans against the tree. He knows, deep in his bones, that if he asked, Caduceus would be able to tell him his real name.

“It’s fine,” he says again, faintly. He has not gone by Bren anywhere but in the safety of his own mind in years, and something tells him these people would not appreciate being given a different name.

“All right.” Caduceus turns away from him and sits down, crosses his legs and sets his staff across his lap, and says nothing else. Bren is left to stand awkwardly over him, but at least he is not looking at Bren now.

“May I, ah.” The pink head turns a little, one ear flicking and tilting backwards to better catch his words. It is easier to talk when he isn’t staring at Bren, though, so he gathers his nerve and continues. “Would it be rude to ask- what are you?”

The ear flicks again. “I’m a firbolg.”

Firbolg. Bren has heard of those, but this does not match the mental image he’d built of them, something far closer to its bestial nature than humanoid. Now for the next, harder question. He takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it out. No hyperventilating, not now, not here. “And who do you worship? You are a cleric, yes?”

“Oh yeah.” Caduceus fiddles with something for a moment, then holds out a hand. Bren dares a step forward and sees, in his palm, a symbol he does not recognize, a wreath of leaves around a shepherd’s crook. “I’m a follower of the Wildmother.”

Bren comes over and sits down next to him, far enough that Caduceus couldn’t just reach out and touch him- most healing magic requires contact, he knows. Better safe than sorry. “Wildmother worship is illegal in the Empire,” he says quietly.

“I know,” Caduceus says calmly, and fastens his symbol to the front of his shirt again.

There are dozens of clerics the Assembly could call on who all serve a proper god. Bren had been visited by a few during his time in training, clerics of Pelor with their bright golden sun sigils and their shadowed eyes as they asked no questions, even once a hooded person whose only identifying feature was the raven broach on their cloak. Bren looks at Caduceus, who worships an illegal god and almost seems to be daring someone to try to do something about it.

He has to be missing something. None of these people are what he’s expected them to be. He should be in Vergesson again by now, or Ikithon’s tower, or wherever he needs to be so they can hammer him back into submission. Instead he is still in this house, with a monk of undefined loyalties and a cleric of an illegal god and whatever Essek is. Perhaps with Ikithon in prison, the Volstrucker have fallen out of favor? Maybe this is his version of living underground, hence the house and the elaborate cover- he’s playacting as a normal citizen of the Empire. Hiding from his own government, recruiting outside help because the unofficial channels he would usually use are denied to him now.

“Where are you from?” Bren asks, aware he is being rude and not caring.

“The Blooming Grove.” Caduceus glances at him, smiles a soft smile at the confused look that must be on his face. “It’s in the Savalirwood.”

Not even an Empire citizen, although Bren supposes that makes sense, given his choice in deity. “It sounds, uh. Nice.”

“Well, you seem to think so,” Caduceus says calmly. “You’ve been there many times. Usually the graves bother people a lot more at first.”

Bren opens his mouth and shuts it again. Caduceus just studies a nearby flower, serene and unbothered.

“You live in a cemetery?”

“Graveyard. Yes.”

Well, then. A little tongue-in-cheek for a healer to live in a graveyard, but perhaps Wildmother clerics do things differently. And who is he to judge anyway? Prior to waking up here, he lived nowhere at all.

He turns his head just enough to watch the firbolg out of the corner of his eye. “Are you going to fix my memory now?”

“It’s what I’m here for.” He turns his staff over, studies a section of it closely. Now that he is closer, Bren can see it is covered in a pink lichen that is almost exactly the shade of his hair. “Won’t hurt anything to wait until after breakfast though.”

“What if I didn’t want it done at all?” Bren asks. His hands are curled into fists and pressed against his thighs and he cannot look at Caduceus at all right now. He knows what the answer will be, but the manner of refusal still might provide useful information.

“Well. I know you. Not you,” and Bren sees movement out of the corner of his eye and glances over in time to see Caduceus gesture towards him. “But you you. And you’ve made your opinion on people tampering with your mind pretty clear.”

“So to respect my wishes about people tampering with my mind, you are going to… tamper with my mind,” Bren says.

“Mhmm. We have a bit of a tea leaf situation here, Mister Caleb.”

“A tea leaf-?” Bren begins, looking at Caduceus again.

“Yeah. There’s more than one you to consider.”

“I don’t know about him,” Bren says, discarding the random aside about tea leaves- some sort of inside joke?- and focusing on the crux of the matter. “But I am right here.”

Caduceus looks at him again, studies him. Bren holds his gaze for as long as he can before he buckles under it and looks away.

“Can I ask why not?” Caduceus asks finally.

The sound of the door opening draws their attention, and they look over as a teapot drifts through the air into the garden and hangs just outside the door. They both watch it for a moment, but it appears to be unsupervised.

“I don’t think I would like to be this Caleb Widogast,” Bren says.

“Huh.” Caduceus rubs a thumb along his jawline and peers at Bren one more time. “I mean, I could tell you the same thing Beau’s told you, that you’re happy and everything’s okay.”

“How can I trust that?”

“You can’t. You just have to trust me when I say it’s true.”

“And how can I trust you?”

“Well.” Caduceus sits up straighter. Bren follows his gaze and sees Beauregard stepping through the doorway, hands full of serving plates loaded with food. Essek follows a moment later, carrying individual plates and teacups and silverware. He frees one finger to gesture to the floating teapot, which follows him obediently when he starts to head towards the tree. “Trusting me enough to eat breakfast would be a good start, I think.”

A moment later Caduceus shifts, setting his staff aside and moving further away from Bren, putting enough space between them for both Essek and Beauregard to sit.

“You do it yet?” Beauregard asks as she crosses her legs and drops neatly to the ground, plates perfectly balanced and not wobbling a bit.

“Not yet,” Caduceus says, and leans around her to accept a plate and a teacup from Essek.

“Why not?” There is a stack of bacon on one of the serving plates, and Beauregard helps herself to a fistful of it. Two of the pieces go onto her plate and the rest goes into a pocket in her robe.

“We’ll get to it.” Caduceus takes the drifting teakettle and pours himself a cup of tea, apparently having said all he’s interested in saying on the matter.

The space next to Bren has been left empty for Essek. He is tucked up close to the tree but is still wearing his real face- the reason behind the tall fences and overgrown rose bushes, Bren assumes. He hands out plates and cups and silverware and directs the still-floating teapot with a single pointing finger. Bren accepts a plate loaded with mushroom-studded scrambled eggs and some hashbrowns from Beauregard and a cup of tea from the floating pot, and then sits and stares at the plate in his lap.

A challenge of trust, from people who so far can only say that at least they haven’t killed him outright. Bren doesn’t know what Caduceus thinks breakfast will prove, as there is no need for him to worry about them poisoning him. Essek alone has already demonstrated that he possesses the power to kill him quickly and with very little fuss, and that is not even considering what the other two are capable of.

He drags his fork through the scrambled eggs and brings a piece up, momentarily fighting with a string of melted cheese that connects fork to plate. When he looks up from that, none of the other three are paying any special attention to him, so he breaks the cheese strand with a quick swipe of a finger and puts the food in his mouth.

It’s good, still warm despite the trip outside, the cheese nicely gooey and the mushrooms well-cooked. The hashbrowns are crispy and have a subtle spice to them, something chopped up into them that has a little bit of bite. The bacon is too overcooked for Bren’s taste, but considering how much of it has disappeared into Beauregard’s pocket, he suspects that his taste was not the primary concern. Even the tea is good, a blend Bren has not tasted before.

They eat in silence at first, awkward and nervy as Beauregard shifts impatiently in her spot. Then Caduceus sets his teacup down on the ground near his knee with a certain sense of finality, and they all look at him.

“So how’s Yasha?” he asks, looking at Beauregard. “I thought she’d be here.”

“She’s good, she’s on the Nein Heroez. She’s been itching for a fight for a while, and nothing was happening around here until-” she glances at Bren, looks away again. “So she went with Fjord and Jester when they shipped out a few weeks ago and she’s been beating up sea monsters and shit.”

“That’s good,” Caduceus says. He only has hashbrowns on his plate, Bren notes. Both the scrambled eggs and the hashbrowns had been served from communal plates, and Beauregard had not made an effort to serve him from a particular section of the heap- he is not worried they will poison him, but he is still aware of the possibility- so this must simply be personal preference.

“Garden’s looking nice,” Caduceus says another awkward eternity later, looking around as he says it. There is a viney flowering plant intruding into the tree’s space that he has already investigated, and he leans over to study it again.

“Ah, thank you,” Essek says demurely. Bren stares at him for a moment in surprise, then looks at his hands- skin unblemished by scars or calluses, nails neat and short. Not working hands, certainly not hands that dig in the dirt a lot- his magic might help with that, but what is the point of grubbing around in a garden if you are not willing to get your hands dirty?

Caduceus gives up on conversation and they finish their meal in silence, and then sit and wait even longer while Caduceus enjoys a second cup of tea, his eyes closed and a soft smile on his face as he basks in the weak sunlight. Beauregard is all but vibrating with pent-up energy, and Essek is unreadable, and Bren is contemplating throwing sense and dignity to the wind and bolting just to see how far he could get. He might make it all the way to the house, if he catches them off-guard enough.

Then Beauregard, who is close enough to see into Caduceus’ teacup, abruptly turns to Bren. “Ready?” she asks, reaching on her other side and pushing Caduceus’ staff closer to him.

The teacup is set down, but the staff remains on the ground. Caduceus looks over Beauregard’s head to meet Bren’s gaze. And Bren looks him in the eye and nods.

He appreciates the illusion of choice- resents it too- but it is just an illusion. Whoever he is now and whatever he is doing here in this city, it is very clear these people consider him indispensable to their operation. They’re not going to simply let him go, and if he keeps resisting, they might dispose of the false kindness altogether. And if his odds are bad now, they will be much worse when he is chained up in a prison cell somewhere.

His fingers clench into the grass as Caduceus stands up, the other two quickly shifting out of his way. Two strides with those long legs, and he is kneeling before Bren. If he can just- hold onto this, remember how he is now, maybe he can influence who he is about to become-

Caduceus produces a small pouch of something from his belt, pours it into his palm- sparkly and fine like sand, Bren sees before he curls his fingers around it to prevent the breeze from stealing any of it.

“You sure?” he asks, one eyebrow raised.

Nein. “Ja. Let’s get this over with.”

That hand with its pretty dust comes to press against Bren’s chest, just over his sternum. Caduceus speaks, invoking his goddess, and Bren closes his eyes as he feels the divine power well up around him, the world fading away as it surrounds him.

He doesn’t know what the Wildmother’s power should feel like- he is imagining wet earth and sunlight on his skin. This feels like honey, sticky and thick and clinging. Bren flinches away from its gentle caress, clings tighter to the thought of who he is and how much he does not want this. It presses in against him, presses into him, even as he tries desperately to pull away. It is sweet, oversweet, it is starting to smell of death and rot, and it pours under his skin and into his throat, thick like tree sap, like mud up to his waist and dragging him further down, and he cannot breathe. He is drowning in it, sourness and decay clinging to him-

The world returns in a rush, the magic falling away, and he rolls to one side and scrambles up to his knees and manages to get a few good feet away before he heaves, losing that perfectly lovely breakfast onto the grass.

Beauregard makes a disgusted noise from somewhere behind him. “You okay, man?” she calls when it’s over.

He groans, not trusting his throat with words yet.

“Huh,” Caduceus says, confused and thoughtful.

“Here.” Essek has come over, and gently- light touches, very little pressure and none of it lingering- helps him sit up and presses a cup of tea into his hand. “Drink this, it will help.”

“What the fuck, Cad? Restoration’s never made any of us sick before, did something go wrong?”

“You could say that,” Caduceus says.

He risks a sip and the churning in his stomach eases. He shuffles away from the mess and sits back on his heels, turning so he can look at the others. Still unfamiliar to him, these people unknown and untrusted. Bren takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, relief flooding through him.

“It didn’t work.”

Chapter Text

“Do it again.”

“Beau.”

“No.” She’s on her feet, clearly needing to move but not wanting to go far. She looks at Caduceus. “Just do it again, and maybe don’t make him sick this time. Wait-” she turns to Essek, still kneeling near Bren and looking utterly poleaxed as his wide-eyed gaze swings from Bren to Beauregard. “I asked you last night to keep an eye out for dunamancy shit-”

“I have been.”

“And?”

“And nothing,” Essek says, and Bren watches that mask settle over him. He straightens his spine and lifts his chin, his expression turns cool. It is like watching someone put on a set of armor, all their soft vulnerable places hidden away. “There have been no signs of displacement.”

“Are you just guessing or is there a spell you can use to actually check?”

Essek looks at Bren, studying him for a moment, less like he is looking at Bren and more like he is looking at a problem that needs solving. “There is no spell that does what you’re looking for,” he says. “There has never been a need for one, because the sort of thing you are proposing does not happen.”

“Mother-” she turns away, rubs a hand over her mouth, finishes the swear with an emphatic fucker.

Caduceus gathers his dishes and stands as well. “Hey, Beau, why don’t you help me take these inside.”

“We have to figure this out, we’re not leaving him like this-”

Caduceus shoves the plates into her hands and she scrambles to catch them. “We’re not leaving him, we’re regrouping. Thanks for helping.”

She scoffs, clearly rallying herself to argue, but Essek floats his and Bren’s plates to the top of her pile and gathers the teacups to hand to Caduceus. He takes them, puts them on Beauregard’s pile, then puts a hand on her shoulder and turns her and steers her away. They head inside, pausing only long enough to shoo Gretchen in when she strolls through the doorway ahead of them. And then they are inside, and Bren is alone with Essek again. They do not look at each other, but Bren is keenly aware of Essek, who is still close enough for his every twitch to be felt stirring the air, every breath to be heard, and he knows Essek must be similarly aware of him.

Regrouping is a dangerous word. It could mean the cleric simply wishes to be out of sight so he can pray to his goddess, checking to see if the issue is with him instead of Bren. It could also mean chains and a prison cell is next, until they come up with another solution.

Essek sighs, and Bren turns to look at him and sees a moment where his armor fails him- he looks tired. Upset and worried, yes, but mostly just tired, like he is exhausted to the bone. Then he sees Bren looking, straightens up from the slump he’d slid into, and slashes a hand through the air with a murmur. A small void opens, and he flicks his wrist and withdraws a book and a pen from it. The void seals itself again and Essek settles down cross-legged and flips the book open and starts writing.

Bren kneels in the garden under the tree and watches the drow write, looks towards the house where the monk and the cleric have vanished, and wonders what he’s supposed to do with himself now.

Finally he turns back to Essek again. He has been extremely tolerant of Bren’s impositions so far, it honestly can’t hurt to ask for a little bit more.

“Displacement?” he asks.

“It’s not,” Essek begins, then sighs again and stops writing. “It is not impossible,” he says, and taps his pen against his lower lip. “It is extremely unlikely, but if there is even a chance…”

“Is that what you’re doing?” Bren asks, glancing at the book in Essek’s hand- a notebook, not his proper spellbook. He starts to look away, scared to be caught trying to peek at his work, but to his surprise Essek angles it where it rests on his knee so Bren can see the writing in it. None of it makes any sense to him, but the mere gesture, apparently unthinking habit, disarms him. “Creating that spell she’s asking for?”

Essek flashes a smile- honest, crooked, a hint of fang showing. “It would not be the first time I created a spell to help the Mighty Nein.”

He is so casual about it. As if inventing magic is nothing, a small favor to ask of a friend who doesn’t seem to be busy with more pressing things. Bren has reskinned spells himself, found new ways to weave old magics, even deconstructed and rewrote spells he had only seen cast a handful of times. But to create something new wholecloth…

“You, uh.” He watches Essek’s hand as he starts writing again. His penmanship is surprisingly sloppy, the pen quick and light on the page and apparently struggling to keep up with the workings of his mind, unnecessary letters and sometimes even whole words dropped to create a sort of shorthand. “You did not seem to think displacement was the issue.”

“I would be very surprised if it were, as I do not believe you were involved with anything lately that would cause it. Although I honestly don’t know what you were doing the other day, you have been… distracted recently.” Bren only has half of his focus, his gaze on the notebook as he pauses again, thoughts ebbing and flowing like the tide. The pen comes back up to his mouth, only this time he parts his lips and actually bites at it, momentarily pinning the rounded end of it between his flat bottom teeth and the sharp point of a fang. Impossible to tell if he is doing this on purpose, but it is terribly distracting regardless, and Bren has to look away. “Nevertheless, it won’t hurt anything to try, and it is something I can do to help. And Beauregard will be the least of my concerns soon, since we are going to have to tell the others we won’t be going to Nicodranas today.”

Bren watches that pen return to the page and start flying over it again as he absorbs all of that. Perhaps most immediately pressing is the apparent change to their travel plans- where are they going, then, if not to whatever gathering was happening in Nicodranas? Again the notion of chains and bars flits through his mind, and he shivers and looks away. The first, easiest solution did not work, so now they are clearly settling in for more long-term problem solving. And what is to be done with Bren while they work on the riddle he presents?

Essek is his best bet for the softest touch among these people, even after their chat in the cellar. The affection he feels for Caleb Widogast is still there, simmering just below the surface of whatever facade he is attempting to put on, spilling over at the slightest provocation. Bren can be Caleb Widogast, if that is what it takes.

They are still close enough to touch. Bren considers it, then decides it is a bit too much for this moment, too obvious a manipulation. Instead he tucks his hands into his lap and says, carefully, “We’re not going to Nicodranas?”

“You said last night that you would rather stay here.”

Last night they were talking about taking him to a cleric to fix his memory, today they brought the cleric here and he failed to fix anything. Bren is just adapting to the situation as it changes. He shrugs, says nothing, and Essek looks up at him again.

“I see no reason why not, if you wish to go,” he says.

“I would rather not stay here, in this city.” Bren looks up to the east- he can’t see anything, not with the tall skinny houses around them, the tree towering over them, but he knows they are there.

A pause, and then, “Of course.” As if he understands, as if he knows, and Bren briefly entertains the urge to demand to know how much of him this drow actually lays claim to. Does he know his true name, his parents’ names? Did he meet Frumpkin before the fey cat was sent away? Does he know that Bren spent years cowering in the gutters, only to fail at the one task he had given himself?

“Your magic allows for interactions with alternate realities?” he asks instead, staring hard at the sunlight peeking around cloud edges.

“Yes. That is what this spell is going to attempt to detect, if this is not the time nor world you are meant to be in.”

Bren bites his tongue hard enough to draw blood. He cannot seem too eager- but if that means what he thinks it does- “You can manipulate time?” he echoes, careful, light and curious and dying.

“Not to the point of time travel,” Essek says calmly. Which is- unfortunate. “That is far beyond us. But to a minor degree, yes. And time and space do go hand-in-hand, and if I am checking for the one…”

Bren tears his gaze from the sky and looks down at the book on Essek’s knee again. The words on the page make no sense to him, and not just because Essek is taking no care to make his writing legible. But it is familiar, and he reaches under his right arm and pulls out his own spellbook, flipping near the back. He stops on the page with the spell for Resonant Echo, a phrase he’d picked out of the scrawl in Essek’s notebook.

“Have you been teaching me your magic, Essek?” he asks. For a moment Herr is on his tongue, but he realizes at the last second that he does not know Essek’s surname, and awkwardly switches to Essek’s given name instead. It sounds unforgivably familiar, almost flirtatious, and he is sure his face is red as a tomato when Essek looks at him.

“Yes,” he says simply.

And what do your people think of that, Bren wants to ask. The Empire has been trying to get their hands on Dynasty magic for generations with no success, and here Essek is, giving it away for- what? A warm body in his bed? A small house in Rexxentrum, where it is a gamble for him just to wear his true face in his own backyard?

It occurs to Bren that now, with the truth out between them, he can just ask. So he does.

“Why?”

The scribbling has slowed down to a crawl, and as Bren watches, Essek sighs through his nose and closes the notebook. It will not be a short project, especially if there is no precedent for him to work from. He does not tuck the notebook away, but instead places it on his knee again and folds both hands over it.

“To use you, at first,” he says slowly, staring into the distance, watching the wind stir the flowers. Bren can study him at his leisure, and does so, counting the freckles that dot his cheekbones, observing the plain silver studs that have replaced the elaborate dangling earrings, noting how the carefully coiffed swoop of his hair is dissolving into a mess of curls. “So that I would have something over you, a debt to control you with. And then, because you were interested, because you were the only person I knew, aside from myself, who saw the potential in what I was doing.” He huffs a silent laugh, barely more than a breath. “And then I was not teaching you at all, and you were figuring it out yourself through, ah, noodling.”

So, not too far off from what Bren had thought- a mutual acquaintanceship that ended with Bren seducing him for his magic. He puts his spellbook back in its holster and turns away.

he doesn’t love you, he wants to say, he is using you- but he can’t bring himself to say it.

The door opens and they look over as Beauregard takes a single step into the yard and jerks her head towards the house. “You two coming in?” she calls over.

“Wait, please, one more thing,” Bren says, actually daring to reach out and put a hand on Essek’s forearm to halt the motion as he starts to rise. Essek glances at him, then settles back into place.

“In a minute,” he calls. Beauregard squints suspiciously at them, but mutters something and disappears back inside. Essek banishes his notebook back into its pocket dimension and turns to him with expectation.

They clearly have had the chance to get their stories straight, but Bren wants to- needs to- hear it again, from a different source, with more detail if possible. He closes his eyes and tries to steady his breathing, which has sped up. Bracing himself for the worst.

“Beauregard told me last night that Ikithon is in prison,” he says, and opens his eyes in time to see the flash of confusion cross Essek’s face, and feels his heart plummet in response.

“Present tense?” Essek asks, glancing towards the house.

“He’s not in prison anymore,” Bren says, not asking. Of course not, no prison could hold that man, if he couldn’t wriggle his way free then one of his lackeys would simply blow the walls apart-

“Caleb,” Essek says, and only when Essek places his own hand over Bren’s does Bren realize he still has his hand on Essek’s arm and is now squeezing. He pulls away quickly, hands instinctively seeking out his own forearms, and he doesn’t care this time if Essek notices. He wonders distantly if Essek’s guard is lowered enough for Bren to hit him with something fast and easy- just a cantrip, just something to knock him off-balance long enough-

“Caleb,” Essek repeats. There are hands on Bren now, on his shoulder, his wrist. He is breathing too fast, doubling over. Ikithon is free and Bren needs to be gone-

“Caleb.” Strong hands cup Bren’s face and lift his head up until their gazes meet. “He is not anything anymore.”

“What?” Bren rasps out. His hands are on Essek’s wrists now, he realizes, grip tight enough to bruise. Essek doesn’t seem to mind. Those fingers curl, brush comfortingly over his cheeks, scrape through his beard. He can tell how badly he is shaking because of how steady Essek’s hands feel.

“Trent Ikithon is dead.”

Caduceus was right- it really is a lovely garden.

There are insects buzzing quietly, murmuring to themselves as they investigate the flowers, a butterfly tumbling with charming gracelessness through the air as it meanders from one bloom to the next. The dirt underneath is rich and dark and healthy, and there are rocks partitioning separate sections of the garden, grey stones that look unremarkable at first but shimmer with a faint iridescent sheen as the light moves across them. Here and there are raised planters with nothing but untrimmed grass in them, luxurious beds for a spoiled cat. A few flowers aren’t Empire natives, one a series of reddish-orange bells strung along a long stem bowing under the weight of them, one a deep purple bloom with long white stamens.

Bren’s arms are itching, the scars burning ever-so-slightly. As long as he holds onto Essek’s wrists, he will leave them alone. So he holds on.

“How long ago?”

“Three nights.”

“How did it happen?” He is watching the butterfly float on the breeze, eyes caught on the color and the movement. Its wings are orange and yellow and big enough to cover the entire palm of his hand, were it to land there. Bren is drifting as well, the heavy weight of his body shaken off. Only the tether of Essek’s voice in his ears and Essek’s arms in his hands keeps him present.

“Officially, old age. He was over eighty.” There is the tiniest hint of irony. Eighty has probably long disappeared over the horizon behind him.

“Unofficially?”

“I don’t know. Everything I know, you told me, and our communication was limited.”

“I want to see the body.” He can do that. Put on better clothes, put on Caleb Widogast like a second skin, walk into whatever prison they were keeping Ikithon in, confirm it for himself, no trust needed. He can keep himself together that long, at least.

“You cannot. You saw it the morning after it was discovered, and shortly afterward it was, ah, disposed of, to prevent attempts at revivification or other tampering.”

The butterfly is coming closer, fooled by their stillness. It lands on the flower Caduceus had been so enamored by earlier and flexes its wings as it drinks.

“Is this why you were so worried about me yesterday?”

“Yes. You said you were fine, that it didn’t bother you, but.” A sigh. “I should have come here that morning, Caleb. I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t know what to do with that. “And we were going to Nicodranas today to celebrate it?”

“As I said, a little morbid. But the Mighty Nein needs very little reason to have a party.”

The butterfly flits away, up and over the fence to the neighbor’s yard. It should stay closer to the ground, near the flowers where its bright wings are less likely to attract the attention of a hungry bird.

His knees are hurting from kneeling so long and his hands are cramping up from their tight holds. Bren heaves a long, shuddering sigh, and finally releases Essek. He stares at the divots his fingers have left, watches as Essek rolls his wrists and massages the tendons at the base of his hands. He wonders what bruises look like on a drow, what colors his fingers have pressed into Essek’s skin.

“Sorry,” he says quietly.

“I’ve had worse.”

Bren looks at the garden again. Most of the insects are gone now, and the air feels heavy and smells of rain.

“We should probably go inside,” he says.

Essek nods and stands, and Bren rises and follows after him. Still distant, but actually connected to his body now. The shock has worn off.

how can i believe any of that

The first raindrops start pattering against the roof, and Essek holds the door for Bren, and they go inside.

They go down into the cellar, after that.

Essek is calm and distant again, Gretchen cradled against his chest and purring happily- she is apparently coming with them, for someone in Nicodranas to mind while the rest of them are busy. Bren cannot stop looking at him, gaze constantly flicking over to him. His voice is still echoing in Bren’s ears.

“We should tell Yussa we’re coming,” Beauregard says.

“I’m sure he won’t mind,” Caduceus says.

“I’m sure he will, but he owes us like a million for the whole Cognouza thing, so.” She shrugs. “But don’t tell him too much. We need to keep this in-house for now.”

“Where are we going?” Bren asks. He is having a hard time keeping track of the surrounding conversation, the words slipping past like white noise.

“Tidepeak,” Essek says quietly, apparently well aware of the irony. Bren closes his eyes for a moment, then takes the chalk out of his component pouch and gets down on his knees. Essek has burned two big spells already today, fetching Caduceus. Bren’s turn to pull some weight around here.

It has occurred to him that they could be lying about Nicodranas- but they could also be telling the truth. Bringing the cat is an interesting choice, if this is a ploy. Either way, Bren has few options, and so takes the gamble.

“Should definitely warn Veth, we don’t want to just drop this on her. Give her time to get over the shoot something impulse, you know?”

“I don’t think it will take that long to walk to her house,” Caduceus says thoughtfully, and Beauregard snorts, though her amusement dies quickly when she glances at Bren.

Bren focuses on drawing the circle for the second time in twelve hours. His right hand is steady, the chalk leaving a perfect line behind it, but his left hand is shaking so badly he has to press it to the floor to steady it.

“Hang on, is there a potion bottle down here?”

Beauregard’s feet skitter past Bren, avoiding chalk lines and his hands with ease. He flinches nonetheless, quickly snatching both hands back close to his body and keeping them there until she stops moving around.

“We’ll give it to Yeza so he can see if there’s- I don’t know, some weird residue in it.”

Bren looks up. She is standing still again, empty potion bottle held up as she stares at it suspiciously. Caduceus is toying with something small and iridescent green on his staff, and Essek has retreated to a corner and is speaking quietly, hands twisted awkwardly around his armful of cat to cast Sending. He stops talking and listens to the reply, his cool mask back firmly in place. There is something hooked over his elbow and Bren cannot tell what it is, but Gretchen is twisting in his arms to bat at it with a paw and making it swing awkwardly.

“How’d she take it?” Beauregard asks after several seconds. She glances down at Bren, catches him looking, and he quickly lowers his head and returns to his work.

“Not well.”

“Cool. So the plan is, we take Caleb to her house, knock on the door, and leave him there and run away before she answers.”

“Should we also tell the others?” Caduceus adds. “Send to one of them, just as a head’s-up?”

There is a moment of consideration, Bren glancing up again at the silence- then Beauregard and Caduceus both turn to Essek and at the same time say, “Fjord.”

Essek sighs, shifts Gretchen a little, and twists his hands again to cast Sending once more.

Bren connects the last lines, murmurs the last few syllables, and feels the magic shift within him, around him. He is so much more powerful now, powerful enough that even this doesn’t run him dry- it takes a lot, but he can feel a healthy reserve of magic within him still, he is not scraping the bottom of the barrel for sparks. Those big spells in his spellbook scare him, especially since he clearly has the strength for them. No experience, no refinement- he wouldn’t trust himself to Teleport without a circle, not until he’s had the chance to acclimate to throwing around so much magical weight.

The circle flares bright blue, and Beauregard sighs and stares at it. “Well, fuck,” she says to no one, and steps through and vanishes with a single whiff of blue mist. Caduceus, staff in one hand and purple pastry box in the other, follows her without comment.

And then there were only the wizards, and silence between them, save for the faint singing of the magic of the portal.

“Essek,” Bren says. “Do you have Scrying in your spellbook?”

“Yes. I can give it to you when- ah. When Veth is calm again.”

“Sometime before tomorrow morning, please,” Bren murmurs, and stands up and brushes chalk dust off his hands. He looks at Essek, but he is too focused on the cat, whispering to her and scratching under her chin until she is boneless with contentment in his arms- presumably willing to go wherever he might take her.

Bren does not know how long the circle will last, and doesn’t want to have to draw it again. So he takes a fortifying breath and steps over the line-

-the world shifts, blurs around him, there is a great sense of movement but no sense of speed and he cannot even tell which way is up let alone north-

-and then out into a circular chamber.

His first impression is far closer to the prison that he’d feared than the seaside city he’d been promised. It is dim, windowless, stone walls and floor and ceiling. There are magic lights around the perimeter of the room and one doorway leading out and- he blinks, rubs at his eyes and looks again- a goblin? A goblin, well-dressed in clothing probably more expensive than what Bren is wearing, with his scraggly hair combed back.

“How’s the boss?” Beauregard is saying, standing between the goblin and the circle with her arms on her hips and her feet spread like she’s trying to physically block the goblin’s view of the others behind her. She’s only having middling success, large in personality but not so much in physical stature.

“He’s well, thank you for asking,” the goblin says, leaning to one side to peer around her.

The blue light behind Bren flares brighter before steadying out again, and Bren looks back to see Essek, Gretchen suddenly alarmed and gripping his shirt with all her claws as she looks around with her one eye wide and wild.

“Release the spell,” Essek says quietly to Bren, and Bren fumbles for a moment before finding the connection between his magic and the circle and severing it. The blue light fades, but the lines remain, glittering in the light like silver set into the dark rock.

“We’re just on our way through, our usual teleporter’s tapped for the day,” Beauregard says calmly.

“Master Yussa did very specifically ask you not to do that,” the goblin says.

“He wouldn’t even have noticed if we hadn’t told him we were coming, it’s fine.” Beauregard leans down slightly to slap the goblin on the shoulder as she pushes past him. “Thanks, Wensforth.”

Caduceus pauses alongside the goblin as well, but he just produces one of his tea satchels from the pouches along his belt. “Give my regards to Yussa,” he says, and the goblin takes it with a ghastly smile.

“Oh, thank you, Mister Clay, he’ll appreciate this.” Then Caduceus is past the gatekeeper, and that smile drops as the goblin’s head swings around to Bren and Essek.

“We’re leaving,” Essek says, and does not need to tell Bren to go.

The doorway opens onto a broad set of stairs that spiral downward into a sitting room. There is a rug down to soften the stone underfoot, and three chairs and a couch, but no personal touches- no knickknacks, no paintings, no books. No windows to help ease the sense of suffocation, one door with no handle and no locks that Bren can see. The whole room- the whole building, really- is so soaked in magic Bren can almost taste it. This Yussa clearly is a powerful practitioner. Not the sort of person whose good will Bren wants to test, and he is abruptly grateful that he didn’t manage to get here last night.

“Caduceus, if you would please,” Essek says plaintively.

“Hm? Oh, sure,” Caduceus replies. He steps over and hands the purple pastry box to Bren. “Hold this please, Mister Caleb.”

Then he starts talking to Gretchen, calming meaningless words, as Essek removes her claws from his shirt one by one. By the time she’s free for him to hand over to Caduceus, she actually seems calmer, and settles into the crook of his arm instead of plastering herself to him like she had with Essek.

Essek brushes some of the fur off his shirt and unhooks the object hanging from his elbow and opens it up- a parasol, its panels solid fabric instead of lace. Then he gestures towards himself and gives a murmur, and the drow face vanishes under a pale, black-haired elf. Bren watches this and studies this new face and wonders if he has a disguise for every city, if there is any place outside of one little house in Rexxentrum where he feels safe wearing his true face.

“Ready?” Beauregard asks. She’s taken up station by the single door set into the wall, presumably leading outside. She’s looking at Bren as she says it, and he glances around before nodding once.

Then she opens the door, just putting a hand to it and pushing, and steps outside into glaring sunshine, and Bren follows.

His first thought is that Tidepeak is weather-warded, as well as whatever other defenses it must have. Rexxentrum in summer is hot, close air and bad smells and heavy skies as the rain gathers but never quite breaks- unpleasant but tolerable. This is another level entirely. The heat is intense but bearable, sunlight burning along bare skin, sweat springing up within seconds at his hairline. The humidity, however, is a living thing, pressing uncomfortably close against him and pouring into his lungs with each breath he takes, thick and wet and heavy around him like he is being swallowed alive by some vast creature.

Bren mutters a swift oath under his breath and retreats back into the building behind him, still blinking tears out of his sunlight-stunned eyes. He puts the pastry box on the seat of an armchair and yanks his hair tie out and pulls his hair up, twisting it into a messy bun and tying it up so it stays off his neck. He hesitates for a moment, then casts Disguise Self, changing nothing except- when he rolls his sleeves up, he reveals unblemished forearms.

“We probably should’ve warned you,” Caduceus says apologetically from nearby as he’s doing this. Bren glances over and sees he looks unbothered, somehow, in spite of his thin layer of fur and thick mass of hair. Essek is near the door, also seemingly immune to the heat, although there is no telling what’s going on under his own disguise spell.

“It’s fine,” Bren says as he picks up the pastry box. He takes a few more breaths in the cool dryness of the warded building, then turns and heads back out the door.

Again, humidity. It’s like walking into a heated fogbank. Bren comes away from the doorway, blinking at the sunlight and shielding his eyes until they can adjust a little. Essek, he sees, has woven some sort of enchantment into his parasol, for the shade it casts is far too dark to be normal. Bren dares a step or two closer, leaning just a hair into his personal space- it is cooler too, not just darker. Too small to be shared, so he just moves away.

“Forgot how much I hate this city in the summer,” Beauregard says. She has taken either edge of her robe in hand and is flapping it around her body, encouraging air flow over her bare stomach. “At least on Rumblecusp there’s a breeze, this place doesn’t even have that much.” She glances over her shoulder to some of the nearby buildings, giving them a sour look.

Bren looks back at the building behind him, then staggers a few steps backwards as his head falls back onto his shoulders. Tidepeak is a proper tower, absolutely massive, built of green stone and soaring a good three or four hundred feet over their heads. The door that they had come through is gone.

Oh, they had trespassed onto a very powerful mage indeed. Bren feels a little sick.

“It’s not as big as it looks,” Beauregard says to him, an attempt at a reassurance that only makes him feel worse, then swings her arm out to nudge him with her elbow. “C’mon, I don’t wanna be outside in this longer than I have to.”

“Uh, ja,” Bren says, following quickly when she wanders away, keen to be away from this tower and its master.

There are no buildings close to Tidepeak Tower, and Bren is extremely aware of the handful of people staring at them- he should have changed more with the disguise, he’d just taken it for granted that he would be safe here, that he wouldn’t stand out compared to his companions. He keeps his head down, studying the large paving stones under his feet.

“So,” Beauregard says suddenly, and Bren lifts his head as he feels the heated glare of sunshine suddenly ease on the back of his neck. They are between two buildings now, and stretched between them overhead is a panel of some thick, sturdy fabric that looks stained and torn along one edge- sail canvas? “Welcome to Nicodranas, I guess? You’ve been here before.” She shrugs.

Bren glances at her, then looks around. The buildings are all pale, weathered wood or crumbling red clay bricks, either built tight to keep in the cool or open-air with soaring archways and open terraces to encourage airflow. The one they are nearest to, that the sail canvas overhead is anchored on, seems to be some sort of market. The smell of fish in the hot air is so thick it’s making him nauseous.

At least he’s not in a prison somewhere. He tells himself that, as he moves away from the fish stall, breathing through his mouth.

“Brenatto’s is on the edge between the Skew and the Restless Wharf,” Beauregard says, pointing across the street, probably indicating the city beyond. The buildings are too tall and clustered too close for Bren to see around them. “Long walk,” she adds, disgruntled.

“I’m going to the Chateau,” Caduceus says calmly. He still seems unbothered by the heat, his fur undarkened by sweat, his breath not wheezing as he breathes in more moisture than air. “Miss Gretchen shouldn’t be out in this that long, I think.”

Gretchen is still on his arm, calm but watchful, panting a little herself. It is probably taking a lot of magic to keep her nerves steady. Essek steps over and scratches her behind her mangled ear, but she does not acknowledge him.

“You sure?” Beauregard asks.

“Yeah, the Brenatto house and I don’t really mix well anyway.” He gestures to Bren. “Here, Mister Caleb, I’ll take that. The frosting’s probably melting.”

“Fjord said they would be getting in late afternoon,” Essek says as Bren hands over the pastry box.

“I’m sure I’ll hear from someone. I’ll meet you at the usual dock then,” Caduceus says, and tips a nod to them before he walks away.

“Perhaps I should,” Essek begins, staring after him.

“Nope.” Beauregard steps into his space, slinging an arm across his shoulders in a distinctly unfriendly way and physically turning him away. “You are not leaving me to face Veth alone.”

“She worries you that much?” Bren asks, surprising even himself. The other two glance at him, then each other.

“Well,” Beauregard says with a grimace.

“We should be going.” Essek ducks out from under her arm and turns to head down a different street than Caduceus.

“Shes’s not gonna shoot you,” Beauregard adds. “Just don’t say anything about modern literature and you’re good.”

“Modern…?” Bren frowns at that. Shoot him? What sort of person are they bringing him to?

“Come on,” Beauregard says, reaching out but not quite grabbing him, and he sidesteps away from her but follows after Essek when she gestures for him to go ahead.

As they move away from the impromptu plaza around Tidepeak Tower, the buildings start clustering around in a haphazard, unplanned order. The street is broad, probably to encourage the breeze, and the buildings are wood, or red brick, or white-painted mud. The architecture starts to vary, vaulting archways or turreted roofs or columns and spires. There are a feast of colors as well, roof tiles painted in a multitude of shades, some sun-blasted almost to white, some fresh and new. The pieces of sail canvas- tattered, torn, clearly unusable on a boat- are strung between some of the closer buildings to provide shade. The whole effect is a melange of cultures and styles that do not mesh well enough to call it a proper blending.

Bren is looking at one of the twisting spires as they’re walking past- Beauregard got impatient with the rear and took the lead, so he is now walking beside Essek, who has either dropped his float or has made his disguised self look like he’s walking- when he sees the first glimpse of it.

He is aware it’s there, of course, he can hear seagulls squawking, smell the salt on the breeze now that they’re away from the fish market, can almost feel the tidal heartbeat of waves coming in and out. He can even see, poking up above the buildings here and there, the tall masts of the ships, like branchless, leafless trees in the distance. But now he sees it, a quick glint of sunlight off of blue between two buildings, and he stops in his tracks and takes a step back so he can see it again.

For a moment he just stares- he has never been this close before- but Beauregard already said she doesn’t want to linger, there is no way she will let him-

“Hey,” she says, just in front of him, and Bren startles and snaps back around to face her. She jerks her head to the side. “C’mon. I know you like the ocean, and we can take a few minutes.”

So they abandon the main street for a wide alley that threads between the buildings. Bren glances back once, checking on Essek who is following- he finds himself doing that often, constantly flicking his gaze to him, like he is a lodestone that Bren cannot help but be drawn towards- and then they are out, and the ocean is before him.

There is no nice sandy beach, of course- it’s a working wharf in a busy city. There are three ships tied to the dock and sailors swarming over them as they unload the cargo. Bren has seen this before, in miniature with riverboats. He veers off, heading through the crowd and stepping onto the wooden planking of the dock, away from the three ships.

The water immediately off the dock is ugly green and frothy, but out beyond the ships, beyond the dock- it is blue, and it dazzles. A void of eternal blueness and light, the sun splintered on the surface of the water and reflected back as a thousand moving shards. Waves swell far out near the horizon and crest closer to the docks, white foam splashing against the hulls of the ships. Ships dot the water here and there, the closer ones big enough to tower over him, the further ones bath toys bobbing in the water. Vast and endless and so much bigger than Bren himself- all his worries, his problems, seem so small now.

Beauregard comes to stand next to him, and Bren slides a glance at her. As promised, they have taken him to Nicodranas, and he still doesn’t know what to think about that. It is possible- hah, almost definitely certain- that the Assembly has some influence here, spies and agents and well-bribed officials. But for them to leave Rexxentrum, heart of the Empire, and come here, a foreign land? For the first time he entertains doubt about his early conclusion that he is a Volstrucker. Instead, he looks at Beauregard, in her blue robes, Expositor of her mysterious order, and wonders if he’s been conscripted by another party instead.

His mind has felt slow and dull, mired down like a cart with its wheels stuck in the mud, ever since- Trent Ikithon is dead- but it is moving properly now. And since he is thinking of it-

“Why didn’t you tell me last night that Ikithon is dead?” he asks, and Beauregard shifts.

“I didn’t not tell you,” she says, and he looks at her, not quite meeting her gaze. Finally she sighs. “ ‘Cause I thought you were going to remember it for yourself. And because I didn’t want you to have to go through that again.”

That gets him to turn to look at her head-on. She glances over and rolls her eyes.

“I was there with you when Astrid first told you and you were not okay about it. You wanted to be, you tried to act like you were, but you weren’t. And that was Caleb, not.” She gestures at him. “Fuck knows how you would’ve reacted. So why put you through that?”

Is she his handler, then? She said something last night about we took Ikithon down, after all. Perhaps he is this Cobalt Soul’s hunting dog instead of Ikithon’s. Although- he looks beyond her to Essek- that still doesn’t explain everything.

“Perhaps we should be on our way,” Essek says. A couple of the dockworkers are clustering around, talking to each other and glancing at them. Nothing happening yet, but it is clear enough they are being discussed.

“Yeah,” Beauregard agrees. “We can hit the beach later if you want, but for now- Veth’s.”

Bren lingers a moment longer, then turns away as well. He is being given minor allowances, after all, even if they won’t grant him his freedom. If he continues to play nice, they might decide a visit to the beach is doable.

They make their way back up to the main road, following it further into the city, turning so they’re no longer running parallel to the shoreline. There still is no cohesive style, but as there starts to be more space, the buildings get bigger and the random assortment of architecture and decorations get more grandiose. The street widens until there is space for a median down the middle with grass and palm trees. The trees are massive, their trunks wider around than Bren is tall, the fronds large enough to serve as a hammock for an average-sized human.

Long walk indeed- Bren counts twenty-seven minutes that feel like twenty-seven hours- it is hot and Bren is sweating like a pig and panting even though all they have been doing is walking, and the air is thick and the sun is no doubt broiling his exposed skin-

“Fucking finally,” Beauregard says, trotting a little ahead. Bren looks ahead of her and sees one of the white-walled buildings sitting by itself on the corner of a junction of three streets, a two-story structure with big arching windows on the second story, one of them sitting wide open. The first floor appears to be a shop of some kind, a sign hanging near the door- Brenatto’s Apothecary. The main entrance is a set of double doors, dark wood with beautifully detailed stain glass insets. There is a fence that wraps around the back half of the building and a piece of land beyond it- a private yard, possibly, kept separate from the main shop area.

“Sign says closed,” Beauregard reports, gesturing towards the main doors. She backs up several steps until she can peer up at the upstairs windows. “Hey, Veth!”

And as Bren watches, movement in the open window catches his eye, a small figure moving, a curved shape edging over the sill, a second, a third-

-there is a twang of a crossbow string, another and another, the blur of movement in the air towards them-

Three things happen at once. Bren’s hand snaps up, already in the somatic for Firebolt- it won’t save him, there’s a bolt heading directly for him and it’s going to hit him before he can burn it up, the cleric left and they’re under attack- he’ll get it through the window and take them with him-

Essek’s own hand comes up, Counterspelling with the same ease as he had the night before, almost faster than Bren, they are both so fast, muscle memory far outstripping conscious thought, what has he been doing for seven years to have reflexes like that? Essek grabs his hand and yanks it down and Bren hears, vaguely, his voice hissing, “-a child, it is a child,” but he is barely aware of that, because Beauregard-

Beauregard makes the two wizards look like they’re at a standstill. Bren sees only a whirl of blue, then he blinks- he is staring at the crossbow bolt that was headed towards his chest, and it is motionless in the air a good two feet away from him, Beauregard’s fist clenched around it and two more. She pulls it away and glances back at them with wide eyes.

“Holy shit, she actually shot at us?”

“Look at the bolts,” Essek snaps. He has not let go of Bren’s hand yet.

Beauregard turns her hand over and looks at the bolts as ordered. And- Bren can see it now- they are blunted, the tips dull and covered in felt painted bright red. They might, at worse, leave a nasty bruise.

“Luc!” Beauregard bellows, spinning around and glaring up at the open window.

A halfling boy pops up in the window, giggling delightedly. “Aunt Beau, that was awesome!” he shouts. His voice is pitchy, wavering across octaves as he speaks, and there is a faint bloom of acne across his forehead under the fringe of his bangs.

“You could have fucking-” Beauregard begins, then looks back at Bren again. “You okay?”

A child. Bren tugs on his captured hand and Essek lets go. He almost-

“Luc Brenatto!” a shrill voice shrieks from inside the house. The boy, already losing his smile as he realizes something is very wrong, goes pale and disappears back inside and slams the window shut. There is the sound of raised voices inside for a minute, and Bren takes that time to move back until his back is braced against a nearby building. He lets himself slump against it, rubbing a hand against his chest as he breathes. The air has suddenly gotten a lot thicker, even harder to breathe than before.

And then- darkness, and the heat lessens. He looks up, unsurprised to see a parasol, then glances to Essek standing a few steps away. He has his head down and a hand up to shield his eyes- how much worse must this sun be for a drow?

It does help, to be out of the baking sun. His hands are shaking and his mouth is dry and he’s wishing he had stopped to get something in his stomach again before they left Rexxentrum, but he has been successfully knocked out of his mental fog before he could properly slip into it.

A door rattles, and Bren straightens up, knocking into the free-floating parasol and sending it bobbing upwards. He catches it by the handle and takes it with him when he approaches the apothecary, having to briefly tug on it to get it away from the grip of Essek’s gravity magic. He presses the parasol back to Essek’s shoulder as he passes, and sees those indigo eyes- undisguised, unchanged from their true color- flash up to him in surprise.

“Oh god, more weird wizard flirting,” Beauregard groans. “I was so glad when you two got past this, and now we’re doing it again.”

“I was not,” Bren begins, and chokes on the words as his brain catches up, because flirting? That was flirting? Gods, he must have completely lost his edge.

Then the gate in the fence opens, and a hand darts out to beckon them in. Bren lets Beauregard go first, thoroughly convinced of her skills now, and only follows when he hears her talking calmly to whoever is inside. Just beyond the gate is another door leading into the building, this one opening to a set of stairs that leads into a living area. Bren comes into the space and looks around- it’s an apartment above the shop, small and cluttered with trinkets and well-worn furniture, the doorways low enough that Bren would have to duck his head a little to get through. Caduceus’ comment about him not mixing well with the Brenatto apartment suddenly makes much more sense.

His attention is caught first by the scolding- a halfling man and the boy, Luc, are in a doorway leading to a hallway heading away from the main living area, the man and Beauregard both holding a crossbow with the third hanging between them, untying a series of cords looped around the triggers.

“- getting old enough that we shouldn’t have to tell you not to shoot people,” the man is saying.

“It’s Aunt Beau, Dad, I can’t shoot her, that’s the point,” Luc counters, and glances at Beauregard. “Can I have my bolts back?”

“Nope.”

Then the door closes, and Bren looks back to see Essek gliding up the stairs, parasol folded up and disguise spell dropped- more people who know him, more questions to be asked, what sort of operation is this, that it extends from a monk in Rexxentrum to a cleric in the Greying Wildlands to a civilian apothecary in Nicodranas?

“Caleb,” a new voice says, and he turns.

There is a halfling woman standing before him, long dark hair falling in two braids over her shoulders, powder blue dress with a belt slung around her waist- glass vials and pouches and even more crossbow bolts- and a bracelet made entirely of small colorful buttons. There are elaborate whorls of blue along the tops of her pointed ears, coming down to frame dark eyes that are watching him closely. They just look at each other for a moment, and Bren watches recognition and something almost like grief cross her face.

So this must be the much-talked-about Veth.

“I remember you,” she says softly as she studies him closely, like he is someone she has not seen in years. She glances past Bren, to Essek who is standing now at the top of the stairs, hesitating like he doesn’t know where to go. “And you’re sure it’s not your kind of deal?”

“We are sure of nothing,” Essek says. “But I am working on it.”

She turns back to Bren, a worried smile on her face. “All right, well, come on in. I have water or that lemon juice people here like so much-”

“Lemonade, Mom.”

“Lemonade,” she corrects herself, and gestures Bren towards her as she turns away. He follows her through a doorway to a kitchen, where he is directed to sit at the dining table in the corner while she fusses with four cups and a tall glass jug with runes inscribed on it. The glass is frosted, probably cold to the touch. Another magic user?

“Here,” she says, and puts one of the cups down in front of him. Just water, thankfully, and Bren accepts it with a murmured thanks and forces himself to stop after chugging half the glass. It feels like he has sweated every drop of moisture out of his body. Veth disappears from the kitchen for a moment, presumably delivering the other two drinks to Essek and Beauregard, then comes back in and climbs into the chair across from him and watches him.

Bren drags his hand around the cup, getting his fingers wet with condensation, and then rubs the back of his neck. He should have asked about some sort of sunblock, he is going to be red as a boiled lobster by this time tomorrow.

“Well,” she says, and he looks at her. It’s easy to meet her gaze, somehow. “I’m Veth, obviously. And I’m sure that.” She glances over, and Bren does as well. No one in the doorway, no sign of the other people in the house, save the murmur of voices. “I’m sure they haven’t told you much,” she finishes.

“Ah, not necessarily,” Bren allows.

“Okay.” She takes a deep, bracing breath, glances back at the doorway again. Then she turns and gestures to the jug of water she had left on the counter, and it lifts up and floats over to the table- Essek’s gravity cantrip. It wobbles dangerously, her control not quite there, but it makes the journey without disaster. She pours Bren more water and sets the jug on the table and looks up at him with a firm smile.

“Let’s talk.”

Chapter Text

In the living area, there are voices- a scolding father, a boy asking Aunt Beau if she could teach him how to catch bolts like that, overlapping murmurs as Essek and Beauregard discuss something. In the kitchen, there is silence, long and awkward as Bren looks around the kitchen while Veth stares at the table while she sorts her thoughts. Small, well-furnished, clearly used more regularly than the one in the Rexxentrum house. There is, incongruously enough, a crossbow propped against the wall just beside the doorway, ready to be grabbed and used. Like mother, like son, apparently.

Finally Veth lifts her head and looks at him again.

“The nineteenth of Horisal, 835.”

“I’m sorry?” Bren says, knee-jerk politeness. He takes a sip of water for something to do with his hands, then another because he’s still feeling far too warm and his mouth is dry as sand.

“My memory’s not as good as yours,” Veth says. “But I think it was the nineteenth. The day you and I met.”

The glass slips in Bren’s hand, his fingers suddenly loose around it. Fortunately it is only an inch or two above the table, and merely lands with a hard thud. Veth flicks a quick glance at it, then looks Bren in the eye again.

Five days. It was the fourteenth of Horisal, that day he hunkered down in a doorway to escape the cold rain and opened his eyes to find seven years had passed. An unusually warm day, only cold instead of freezing, but then he had been traveling south in the hopes of wintering somewhere with a more moderate climate. He had been in that village- it had a name but no one used it, the place was small enough that no one ever left it and just referred to it as the village- waiting out the rain so he could leave, planning to move on-

“We told the others we met in prison, but really it was a root cellar. They didn’t have a prison in a little podunk like that.” She smiles, strained and humorless. “They accused you of some small thefts around the village, and I- well, I looked a little different back then.”

Easy enough to believe, easy enough to fake. He’d had a dozen experiences like that over the last five years, it did not take much imagination to come up with this story. “What did you look like?”

She glances at the doorway, then pushes her chair back and stands. And- he is expecting Veth still, but a Veth who was to the one standing in front of him the way Bren himself is to this Caleb, scrawny and mangy and just a little bit feral. Instead she gestures at herself and the illusion draws around her and then she is a goblin. Almost every inch of her is covered, rags and bandages and a hooded cloak pulled low over luminous yellow eyes and, terrifyingly, a mask that covers the bottom half of her face, porcelain white with red-painted lips- but she is still very obviously a goblin.

Bren stares at the mask. He could have handled everything without issue except for that, he thinks. “Ah,” he says eventually.

Flick of the wrist, and the goblin is gone. Veth clambers back into her chair, which is awkwardly tall for a halfling. They must get a lot of visitors.

“It’s a long story,” she says. “But you agreed to travel with me, after that. We were safer together.”

And she leaves it there, sipping at her own water and watching him idly. She is letting him put the pieces together for himself, and he does, and feels something almost like shame lodge in his throat. Because it is easy to see how he would think her safe to be with- as a goblin, she would be the only person lower on the food chain than him. A rag-wearing, thieving drifter might be run out of town or tossed in jail, but a goblin in the Empire would be killed on sight. She would have lacked the social leverage to be any sort of threat to him, aside from whatever physical harm she could inflict.

“I know you don’t trust us,” she says quietly, and he lifts his gaze to hers. “I can’t prove anything. And I know what you’re afraid of.”

“Do you?” he asks quietly. They knew to reassure him with news of Ikithon’s imprisonment, that had been the very first thing Beauregard said when trying to convince him that he was safe, so they probably know- a few unsavory things about him. “And what am I scared of?”

“Yourself,” Veth says, and Bren looks away. “But also us- and everything, you were scared of everything back then.”

“Ja, well.” He shifts uncomfortably and glances at the doorway. “I am a squishy wizard, and they are…”

A swirl of blue robes, three crossbow bolts caught midflight- gods, he absolutely would have humiliated himself if he had tried something against Beauregard this morning. To say nothing of what Essek- a fellow squishy wizard, his fine-boned wrists so fragile in Bren’s unthinkingly tight grip- might be capable of.

“They won’t hurt you,” Veth says. “They haven’t hurt you, right? Have they hurt you?” Her tone slides from reassuring to sounding like she’s prepared to grab that crossbow and start shooting if he says yes.

“No, nothing like that,” he says. And it is true enough- being flattened by gravity hadn’t been fun, but Bren is fully aware he earned that with his Wall of Fire stunt. Caduceus hadn’t laid a finger on him except to cast Restoration, and Beauregard is pretty rough and tumble but that seems to be her way of giving affection, like a cat that bites mid-petting.

She stares at him for a moment, like she can see through the half-lie and is determining her level of offense taken. Finally she relaxes again. “My point is, you don’t have to worry. I know you will, but you don’t have to.”

She seems earnest, and Bren- fuck it all, he wants to believe her. Beauregard is cagey and Caduceus is unsettling and Essek is- Essek. But this one? She is watching him with wide eyes, looking at him like she recognizes him and not like she’s looking for someone else in him, and he hadn’t realized how much that bothered him until now.

Well, it won’t hurt to ask. He’s done that several times now and gotten answers, not sworn at or cuffed or ignored. But first of all- “Do you have, ah. Snack food? Something salty.”

“Oh, sure. Hang on.” And she gets up and darts out of the room, surprisingly quick and light on her feet. He gets up as well and follows her to the doorway, watching as she darts down the stairs and opens the door outside and disappears. He looks into the living area, and finds Luc explaining to a halfway-attentive Essek how he tied the crossbows together to shoot all three at once. No sign of Beauregard or- Veth’s husband, he supposes the halfling man must be, though he hasn’t caught a name yet.

“They’re in the shop downstairs,” Essek says, having seen him looking. “Beauregard is having Yeza test the potion bottle from the basement.”

Yeza, apparently. He nods in thanks, a bit awkward, and looks away. Luc is staring at him while trying not to look like he’s staring, biting at his lower lip as his expression turns stormy. Bren retreats a little back into the kitchen and tries to curb the anger that is trying to rise- whatever is going on, they have involved a child in it, what are they thinking-

The door opens and Veth patters back upstairs with a large burlap sack in her hands. “Peanuts!” she announces, then skids to a stop, staring at Essek. “Do you sweat?”

Bren’s still at a good enough angle to see the look of consternation that crosses Essek’s face. “Yes.”

Veth opens the sack and holds it out. “Don’t get the shells everywhere,” she orders, and Essek dips a hand in and takes a few peanuts, seemingly more as a peacekeeping effort than any real interest in them. Bren has seen a pair of alleycats move like that, slow and deliberate, like any stray twitch might trigger a fight.

Veth comes into the kitchen and gets a bowl out of a cabinet and puts it and the sack on the table. “Yeza keeps them in his workshop in the back, they’re an easy snack,” she tells Bren as he comes back over to the table and sits down. “They’re not very salty, sorry.”

Bren murmurs a thanks and takes a few peanuts from the sack, cracking one shell open and dropping it into the bowl. The nuts have been roasted with some sort of flavoring and taste almost sweet- perhaps applewood smoke? Regardless, Bren shells half a dozen and washes them down with some water, and it helps. He feels less shaky, less almost-nauseous.

“So, you, uh. You offered to talk.” He stares at his hands as he cracks the next peanut open, watching the fibrous husk pull apart. Veth takes a peanut for herself and smacks it between her palm and the table and picks the fractured shell apart.

“Sure,” she says. “Ask any question you want, I’ll tell you what I know.”

That is- an offer. Bren rolls a piece of peanut shell between his fingers as he considers it. There are a dozen places to start, things he needs to know, things he doesn’t want to know. Finally he picks out something- small, probably meaningless, but a good place to test the waters.

“Why Caleb Widogast?”

“As your name?” Veth asks. When he nods, she shrugs. “You told me that was your name when we met, in the root cellar. I figured you were lying, it took you a little while to get used to it, but I was going by a fake name too, back then, and.” She pauses, glances at his arms. He still has a little bit of time left on the disguise spell, so the scars aren’t showing- but the fact that she even did that- “It was kind of obvious you had things to hide too.”

It was about as he thought, then- he’s been changing names more frequently than most people change socks, these last few years. This was just the one he happened to be using when something changed and it stuck. It sounds sufficiently Zemnian to explain his accent but is unremarkable otherwise, which follows the pattern he’s been using.

“So how do we go from there,” he taps the table near the edge, then brings his hand over to tap again in between them as he completes his question. “To here? Little goblin girl and a dirty hobo wizard, and now we are, ah. Respectable.”

Veth sighs. “That is a very long story.”

“I have time,” Bren says.

“We really don’t, the ship will dock before I can tell it all,” Veth mutters, glancing towards the window over the sink. Bren takes advantage of her distraction to roll his sleeves back down. “But the short version is, we met up with the others and formed the Mighty Nein, and everything kind of went from there.”

Ah, that is a name he’s heard a lot in the last day. Essek had expected Bren to recognize it, even when he did not remember Essek himself. “And what is the Mighty No?”

“A bunch of selfish assholes,” Veth says with certainty, and Bren stares at her. She grins, mischievous. “Not kidding. We met most of them in Trostenwald and everyone except us got put under house arrest a few hours later.”

“Everyone except us?” he echoes, unable to help the disbelief creeping into his tone. Presumably Essek was not one of the most of them, considering Trostenwald is far into the Empire. But Beauregard probably was, and she seems reputable enough.

“We were better at avoiding notice,” she says. “More practiced at it, you know? We traveled together for months before we met them, we had a routine down.”

“Months?” He glances at the doorway. He had heard, vaguely, the sound of voices retreating and a door opening somewhere in the distance, and assumes Essek is being given a personal tour of the crossbow setup. Seven years ago- he doesn’t know halfling development well, but he imagines it runs similar to humans, if not a little slower due to the longer life span. He looks back to her quickly, but she is watching him, and clearly knows what he’s thinking.

“I didn’t want him seeing me like that,” she says, gesturing off to the side, where she’d been standing when she showed him her goblin form. Her eyes flick downward, staring at the table. “I couldn’t come back until after I was me again. That’s actually part of why I was willing to travel with you in the first place- you’re a wizard, and you could do all these things…” she trails off.

“A mutually beneficial arrangement, then,” he says, leaning back in his chair. It makes more sense than either one of them choosing to stick with the other out of the goodness of their heart- they needed each other, and only grew comfortable with each other as time went by.

“Yes,” Veth admits quietly. Then, sudden and fierce, she leans forward, looking him in the eye again. “We took care of each other. You taught me magic and I kept you safe.”

There are great big scars across his chest that show how spectacularly she failed at that. He nods and looks away. “And the rest of them?”

“We were ambushed on the road,” Veth says slowly. “You almost died, and I used our only potion to save you. We went to Trostenwald- we had some money, not a lot. You wanted books and I wanted booze and we both wanted someplace safe to stay for a while, and the rest of them- Fjord, Beau and Yasha, Jester and-” a pause. “Molly. We met them there. We fought a devil toad together.”

That is a new name. “Molly?”

“We lost him, kind of. Another long story.” She shakes her head a little, clearly appreciating the frustration. She had promised to answer his questions- she just never said they would be good answers. It’s a long story has the benefit of being presumably true while utterly useless.

“But not Caduceus or Essek?”

“No, they came later.”

Bren nods. Easy enough to believe that- Caduceus especially doesn’t strike him as someone easily described as a selfish asshole. Creepy, certainly, eerie, unsettling- but not an asshole. “So we went from a pack of assholes fighting toads to this, then?” He gestures to the house around him.

“Well, things kind of escalated,” Veth says. “We kept running into even bigger assholes than us. First it was a gnoll pack in Alfield, then a corrupt local official in Zadash, then fish people in the swamp, then slavers in the north…”

“Growing stronger with every fight we picked,” Bren says.

“Yes.”

“So we just leapfrogged our way to taking down an archmage of the Cerberus Assembly?” Bren demands, leaning forward and practically hissing the words, like he is scared of being overheard.

“Yes.” She shakes her head at his disbelieving noise, his dismissive scoff. “You’re really strong now, Caleb, you have to know that.”

He is. He would not believe it if he couldn’t feel it for himself, magic so strong that he can apparently bend reality itself to his will. He had dreamed, of course, wondered and fantasized and made castle-in-the-sky plans for when he was strong enough to do these sorts of things- but a part of him, cold and dark, had never actually expected him to live long enough for any of it to be more than just a daydream.

Still. “Not strong enough for that.”

“Maybe not,” Veth agrees, pinning him with an intense look. “Not by yourself. But you weren’t by yourself.”

He sits back in his chair again. He feels like he is being handed pieces to a dozen different puzzles and being told how they all go together to form one cohesive whole. He doesn’t much care for this sensation of being handled. “And these people are, what, my friends?”

“Yes,” Veth says simply, and Bren stares at her. “I know you don’t believe that, I know you can’t believe that right now. All I’m asking is that you keep an open mind.”

Friends. Hah. As if anyone would want him around for reasons beyond whatever magic he could bring to the table. She is right, he can’t believe any of this. But-

But none of the answers he’s been coming up with himself fit, either. He’s all but ruled out the Volstrucker option, none of this is anything like how the Assembly would respond to this, and if they were telling the truth about Ikithon- but how did he end up in Rexxentrum with a drow? And he knows nothing about this Cobalt Soul, which is starting to sound more and more like a key part of this whole mess.

Keeping an open mind hurts nothing. He nods once, still staring at the table, fingers toying idly with another peanut. He’ll need real food soon, hopefully before they head out again. From the way they talk about it, it’s likely they’ll be greeting the ship at the dock, which means another long walk.

“So how does the drow figure into all of this?” he asks. Start with the wild card, get a few answers there, try to figure out the rest.

“Essek?” Veth asks, sounding surprised. “He hasn’t- what has he told you?”

“I haven’t asked him much. I know he and I are.” He stops, listens for voices in the living area while he searches for words, and nods when Veth clearly interprets what he’s trying to say and makes a helpful gesture. “Ja, that. But beyond that, not much.”

“Well, we went to Xhorhas and met him there,” Veth says, casually like that is nothing, like they could just stroll across the mountains and be welcomed with open arms into enemy land. “They kidnapped Yeza and we decided to follow them and get him back, and when we did, the queen assigned Essek to babysit us.”

Bren opens his mouth and shuts it again, unsure of where exactly to start. “We went to…?”

“Yes. We walked there, underground. There was a worm tunnel, it was terrible, you were really annoying with your it’s three o’clock, and then I had to jump across lava to escape fire giants.”

He’s going to shelve all that for the moment and focus on the important bits, although he is dying to know what she means by worm tunnel. Like, from an actual worm? He sits forward, trying to keep his voice low. “Why did the Dynasty take your husband?”

Veth’s expression twists into something complicated. She glances at the doorway and bites at her lower lip for a moment. “Well, he was working on something for the war, and they wanted to know what-”

“Wait, war?”

“Oh.” Veth stares at him for a moment. “Fuck. Yes, there was a war.”

“Between the Empire and the Dynasty.”

“Yes,” Veth says slowly, drawing out the word.

“So we walked from the Empire, into the Dynasty, in the middle of a war, and were welcomed by the queen with open arms.”

Veth presses her lips together and stares at him for a long moment, clearly considering her answer. Finally she just says, “Yup.”

Bren drags a hand over his mouth, scratching at his beard, then pushes his fingers back into his hair, which is already falling from the sloppy bun he’d put it up in earlier. A war, he’d walked into the middle of a war with these people?

“We had a- a thing, we thought it was just a magical thing but it turned out to be a religious icon to the Kryn. So we gave it back to them and they all loved us, we were the heroes of the Dynasty.”

“Heroes of the Dynasty?” Bren echoes, his voice so strangled it barely makes a noise. Has he been coming at this from the wrong angle this entire time? Is he the spy? Has he been the one to turn traitor instead of Essek? He has been assuming he seduced Essek for his magic- what if it was the other way around and Essek had seduced him using his magic as a lure? Essek had been so quick to deny that his magic allowed for time travel, what if that had been a lie? What if he knew what Bren’s goals were, and has been manipulating him the entire time?

“It’s fine, we ended the war and now we’re heroes in both countries,” Veth tells him, and Bren curls his fingers into fists and pulls at his hair until the tie gives up the ghost and it all falls free.

“How? Three days ago I was no one and now I am a man who can stop a war?”

Veth says something barely audible over the rush in his ears, trying to explain- and then, right as Bren is preparing to do something a bit rash, a new voice cuts in.

“You didn’t stop the war,” Essek says, and Bren and Veth both look over to him, standing in the kitchen doorway. “The Cerberus Assembly stopped the war, because it was no longer of benefit to them.”

“We got in the same room as the king and told him why the Dynasty was attacking and he agreed to give the Beacon back,” Veth says, giving Essek a strange, sharp look. Essek meets her gaze coolly. “The Assembly wasn’t doing anything about it before then, no matter how much it wasn’t benefiting them. We stopped it.”

There is something Bren is missing, again. Essek submits to whatever point Veth is making, bowing his head in a graceful nod of acknowledgement. Then his gaze flicks to Bren, quick and watchful, and Bren realizes abruptly that Essek has achieved his real goal- in forcing himself to observe and catalog every detail of this little byplay, Bren has calmed again, centered himself, not panicking or on the verge of doing something stupid.

“And you came with us, when we left Xhorhas?” he asks, picking his words carefully. He understands so little still, for all that Veth tried to explain things- he’ll entertain the idea that they clawed their way up the ladder until the whole group of them reached a point to take down a lone member of the Cerberus Assembly, Veth was right, he certainly has the power to show for it, and apparently a fair number of equally strong and well-connected allies. But Essek is still a mystery.

“No,” Essek says. “I stayed in the Dynasty while you carried on with your travels. I left later, and for reasons that had nothing to do with you.”

Veth snorts. Both wizards glance at her, but she’s busy peeling another peanut, a task which apparently requires all of her attention.

“Anyway,” Essek says, pointedly turning his gaze away from her. “Jester Sent. It seems they’re coming in a bit earlier than they thought, and we are requested to meet them in the Wayfarer’s Cove in two hours.”

He comes over to the table and sets something down near Bren’s elbow, then turns and sweeps out without another word. Bren watches him go, looking up just in time to see Luc duck back around the doorframe and out of sight.

“He missed you,” Veth says, and when Bren glances a question at her, she adds, “Luc. You’re his favorite person in the world. I didn’t know what to tell him, so I just didn’t tell him anything.”

Essek has likely explained a few things, Bren doesn’t think he would find crossbows that fascinating to keep him away for so long. Thoroughly disarmed by the interruption, he picks up the item Essek left- a small clay crock, capped with waxed paper. When he unties the string holding the cover down around the rim of the crock and lifts the paper, it smells astringent, almost medicinal.

“Oh, that’s sun balm,” Veth says. “You should probably use it, it’s always sunny here and you get sunburn really easy.”

He dips two fingers into the ointment and rubs it along the back of his neck, where the sun had fallen on him the heaviest on their walk. It eases the sting he can already feel setting in, cools the heat baked into his skin. “How soon do we have to leave to meet the others?” he asks.

He can check her answers against the others- maybe one of the incoming members of this bizarre group will be more prone to spilling details. Not to mention, the longer he goes without trying anything, the more they’re going to let their guard down around him. If he just plays along for a while longer there might come a moment where he doesn’t have a babysitter watching his every move or a wizard in the next room over, and he can- decide from there.

“Two hours to meet them there? We can leave in about an hour and beat them there. It’ll be cooler then, the breeze always picks up close to sunset. You’ll have time to cool down some. Here- hang on-” she gets out of her chair, goes over the little nook in the corner of the kitchen that must be the pantry. “I can make something- have you eaten today?”

“Not really,” Bren says, tossing another peanut shell into the bowl. He isn’t sure how hungry he is, after all that has happened today.

Veth spins around, aghast. “They didn’t feed you?”

“No,” Bren says quickly, again very aware of the presence of the crossbow in the room. He’s between her and it, but something tells him she’s faster than him. “They did. But the restoration spell made me a little, uh.” He holds out one hand and wobbles it side-to-side.

“Restoration made you sick?!” She abandons whatever she’d been doing and darts over to the doorway- and Bren was right, she absolutely is faster than him- “Hot boi! Where’s Cad?”

That seems to be a somewhat common pet name for Essek. Bren hears the soft murmur of his voice, but not the individual words. Veth gives an almost animalistic growl, and it is suddenly very easy to imagine her as a goblin.

“How did he fuck up a restoration?”

“Mom,” Luc scolds. If Essek has an answer to her question, Bren does not hear it.

“Go fetch your father and Aunt Beau,” she says, presumably to Luc. “We’ll eat something and then head out.”

She bustles back into the kitchen and checks herself when she finds Bren on his feet, halfway between the table and the doorway. He is shooed out and heads into the living area just as Luc exits the door downstairs, already yelling for his father.

There are two chairs and a couch in the living area. Essek has camped out in one of the chairs, so Bren sits at one end of the couch relatively close to him but still at a polite distance. Like the kitchen table, all the furniture in here seems halfway between sizes, caught between halfling and average humanoid and probably comfortable for neither. The Mighty Nein must be frequent visitors.

Essek has his notebook in hand and is scribbling away again. He does not look up as Bren comes and sits down near him, just sticks the rounded end of the pen in his mouth- again that hint of fang that snares Bren’s attention to an uncomfortable degree, apparently some of Caleb is, ah, lingering- and flips to a page near the back and carefully tears it out.

“Here,” he says around the pen, holding the page out. “You have ink in your component pouch.”

Bren takes the page and reads it over- the Scrying spell. Apparently he is not to be trusted with Essek’s spellbook. He dips a hand into the pouch and comes up with a stoppered inkwell and a quill, no fancy pens here, and gets his own spellbook out of its holster. It feels a little ludicrous, putting such a relatively simple spell after pages of reality-breaking magic, but there is only one blank page and it is at the very end.

“How did it go?” Essek asks quietly after a few moments, and Bren glances up to see him watching the quill move across the page, seemingly hypnotized by the movement.

“I don’t remember anything new, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It wasn’t.”

Essek finally lifts his gaze, and they just watch each other for a moment. Bren bites his lip against the tide of questions rising up his throat, and those twilight-sky eyes flick downward for a moment and darken before he remembers himself and looks away. And it is a relief, really, to know this- interest- goes both ways. Essek has been nothing but a proper gentleman, a well-mannered stranger, since the moment he learned the truth, while Bren has been stealing glances at his mouth and clenching his fingers around the memory of slender wrists in his grip. Even now, the pressure causes a whisper of pain from the scratch Essek’s fang had given him, and Bren releases his lip only so he can touch the tiny wound with his tongue again.

“She is your oldest and dearest friend,” Essek says, leaning pointedly away, looking at the book on his knee. “If anyone could convince you that you are safe, it would be her.”

Bren looks away as well, though not before studying the slight darkening across Essek’s cheekbones. “She did well enough, before she mentioned the war,” he admits. She had answered a few questions, opened the door to so many more, and- most importantly- had proven herself without artifice. He has someone he can come to for honest answers, now, instead of having to deal with Beauregard’s cunning or Caduceus’ unsettlingness or Essek’s- everything.

“The war is the least of it,” Essek warns. “You and your friends have been the eye of a storm of chaos since long before I met you. You will be best served if you suspend your disbelief a bit.”

It’s not bad advice. It certainly won’t hurt anything to hear them out- the lies people tell sometimes say more than even the truth could. He nods and returns his attention to his spellbook right as the downstairs door opens and Beauregard’s voice fills the small apartment.

“-not your fault,” she’s saying over her shoulder as she comes up the stairs, taking them three at a time like a show-off. “It was a long shot, but we gotta check everything.”

And then she’s at the top of the stairs, her keen gaze sweeping quickly over the apartment, touching briefly on the wizards before she ducks her head and peers into the kitchen doorway to check on Veth. Then, apparently confident in everyone’s location and wellbeing, she heads over to Bren and Essek.

“Hope you’re working on that spell, ‘cause dunamagic’s still our leading theory,” she says as she comes over. Essek does not look up from his notebook, but the hand not holding the pen slides down to gesture while out of sight next to his thigh, and right as Beauregard goes to sit in the other chair it slides backwards. It doesn't go far enough for her to miss it entirely, so Bren is treated to the sight of her flailing as only the edge of her ass lands on the seat and she scrambles to catch herself before she falls.

For a moment she just holds onto the chair, jaw clenching as she stares at nothing. Then she pulls the chair forward again, holds onto it as she sits down, and looks at Essek. “So how’s it going?” she asks, clearly choosing not to rise to the bait.

“Well enough,” Essek replies calmly.

The spell is fully transcribed, so Bren hands the torn page back over with a murmured danke. Then he looks the other way, to Luc who is sitting at the other end of the couch and staring at him.

“You really don’t remember anything?” he asks quietly.

“Uh, no. Sorry.” Bren shakes his head a little, then looks over to the other two, who are talking again, always on the edge of starting a fight.

“So he’s not good enough to copy from your actual spellbook anymore?” Beauregard is asking. She has somehow gotten the Scry page away from Essek. “You let him copy from your spellbook literally the third time we met, but not now?”

“I write spells in Common now because it is the language shared by myself and my partner and frequent collaborator,” Essek says patiently, like he is explaining something complicated to a very small child. “Before I met you, I wrote my spells in Undercommon. If he wants to copy from my actual spellbook, he would need to cast Comprehend Languages first, which seems like a waste when I am perfectly capable of providing a translation.”

Beauregard lifts an eyebrow and glances at Bren, who returns her expectant expression with a shrug. That had not even occurred to him.

Then he looks the other way again, and Luc is closer now, sitting in the middle of the couch instead of the far end.

“Not anything?” the boy stresses, and Bren shakes his head a little. “Not even the fire place?”

“The fireplace?” Bren echoes, looking around even though he knows there is no fireplace in this apartment. He would be shocked if any house in Nicodranas had a fireplace.

“Yeah, the elemental fire place.”

Bren glances at Essek. Suspension of disbelief. “The Plane of Fire?”

“Yeah, we were running from some bad guys and we fought an elemental,” Luc says, and then- with far too much enthusiasm- “I died there!”

“Ho-kay,” Beauregard says, while Bren is staring at the boy, his mouth moving as words stir beneath the shocked surface of his mind but never quite manage to break through. She claps her hands as she stands up. “You said you were gonna show me your crossbow setup.”

“Literally died?”

“Let’s go.” Beauregard jerks her chin and Luc gets up with reluctance, looking back at Bren frequently as he leads her down the hallway. As they go, Bren hears Beauregard say quietly, “we’re trying to find nicer ways to introduce this kind of shit to him, Luc, his head’s gonna explode.”

“How old were-?” Bren sits back as a door closes behind them, cutting off his half-shouted words. He turns to Essek again, who at least looks appropriately disturbed by this.

“I wasn’t there,” he says quickly. “I only heard about it after the fact.”

Veth comes out of the kitchen a moment later, carrying a plate heaped with sandwiches. “Here,” she says, dropping it on the end table next to the couch. “Eat something before we have to leave again and you pass out on the way there. Beau!”

Essek puts his notebook away and selects a sandwich with great care. Bren picks one as well, putting far less effort into it- he will eat just about anything that isn’t guaranteed to make him sick, he can’t afford to be picky. Beauregard and Luc join them a minute later and she makes a point of grabbing the chair before sitting down in it.

There is not a lot of talking after that, save for when Yeza brings out a jug of a tartly sweet drink that turns out to be the aforementioned lemonade. Bren gets the feeling that they don’t quite know what to do with him, that he keeps defying their expectations. It gets bad enough that he puts down his glass after finishing his third serving of lemonade and says suddenly and far too loudly, “Well, you said this whole thing started with a devil toad in Trostenwald- tell me about that.”

So Veth and Beauregard, talking over each other and occasionally breaking to bicker over details, telling a story time has obviously given some tarnish to. And it does not start in with a devil toad, or even in Trostenwald- it starts outside of Trostenwald, after a gnoll ambush, with Caleb Widogast bleeding into the dirt on the side of the road and Nott- as Veth was called back then- scrambling to pour their one potion down his throat. And then they tell him about the circus, and meeting Yasha whose arms are worth a lot, Beauregard informs him with a happy leer, and Mollymauk whose name their voices soften on almost as though it is something precious. The old man whose name they cannot remember, who turned into a zombie- Luc cheers, having apparently not heard the details of this story before, while Essek mutters about something called a nergaliid- and whom the fledgling Mighty Nein defeated.

They happily tell him about the house arrest- Nott slipped away with Caleb somehow, but Beauregard got in trouble for trying to help one of the circus performers- oh yeah there was a little girl, I wonder what happened to her- and Yasha disappeared into the hills. They tell him about frog giggin’ and hunting the devil toad down after it fled with the little girl, chasing it to an island and fighting it in the ruins of an old witch’s hut and nearly dying because of one imp.

Sloppy, Bren thinks- reckless, stupid, sloppy, why would he have joined up with these people, how did he even survive them? And then he remembers the scars, and adjusts his thinking- has he only died once?

The story ends with Caleb putting on- depending on which of them you asked- either a stunning display of bravery and cunning by claiming to have killed the toad alone, or a decent show that had the lawmaster halfway convinced and sick enough of them all to let them go. And then they left with a cart from the now-defunct circus, Beauregard apparently committing mail fraud on their way out of town, and went to Alfield, where they encountered even more gnolls. And then Veth declares their time is up, and shushes Luc when he tries to argue for more.

Bren waits at the top of the stairs while Veth says a brief goodbye to her family, watching Essek move through his small disguise-parasol ritual. Beauregard has removed her outer robes at some point, and while they’re waiting Bren studies the jewel-green tattoo revealed on the back of her neck, a triangle and an all-seeing eye. Then Veth is there and shooing them down the stairs, telling them they’re going to be late.

He braces himself at the door, touches the sun balm crock he had slipped into a pocket just to check- and when Veth opens the door, it is choking again. The heat is somehow even worse, but there is, as promised, a breeze flitting between the buildings, bringing fresher air and night-coolness in from over the ocean. And now, late in the afternoon, the shadows of the buildings are angled enough that it’s easy to keep to them as they walk, and that makes all the difference.

Veth leads the way, though there is a brief, fierce debate at an apparent splitting point, Veth arguing for the Wayfarer’s Cove as they were told, Beauregard saying that the Nein Heroez will be directed to dock in the Open Quay because it’s not hauling cargo and the Wayfarer’s Cove is so far from the Quay. It’s tolerable when they’re moving, the breeze in their faces as they approach the shore, but standing still is torture, so Bren decides for them by randomly picking an oceanward road and following it, leaving the other three to come along as they would. Veth overtakes him again, grumbling about how no one in this group sticks to the plan.

The docks they head to are more open to the public, the ships anchoring there meant more for passenger transport than cargo. All of the piers are in use, and there are half a dozen ships more anchored close by, and Bren stares at what brief gasps of the ocean he can see between the large wooden bodies but mostly just watches where he’s going.

And there, on the main dock, long hair stirring in the breeze and serene expression on his face- Caduceus, eyes closed and lips curled into a soft smile. One ear twitches but otherwise he gives no indication that he notices them, until they’re close enough for him to say, “Afternoon.”

“Hey Cad,” Beauregard says, swinging around so she’s on his far side and nudging him with her elbow as she goes. He sways on the spot but keeps his balance. “Any news?”

Without opening his eyes, he points, and all four of them immediately crane their heads to see between the docked ships. Bren, of course, cannot tell the difference between the various vessels, but Beauregard hisses a breath out and starts bouncing on her toes.

“There’s no room at the dock so they’re sending out a longboat,” Caduceus reports, his deep slow voice almost comical compared to the barely-restrained ball of energy beside him. He opens one eye and looks down at Bren without turning his head. “She’s a big ship, she needs a special dock,” he says, and Bren gets the feeling that Caduceus understands just as much about sailing as Bren himself.

Then his ear twitches again, and his soft smile grows, and Bren looks over his shoulder at the sound of a soft voice- Essek, his purple thread of magic between his fingers, retreated a few steps back to tell someone that she is waiting for you on the dock, very impatiently. It seems almost cruel of him to be saying that, when whoever he is speaking to cannot do anything about it.

“Oh yeah babe,” Beauregard says suddenly, and Bren turns.

Rising up off one of the closer ships, bronzed in the late afternoon light- a huge pair of stunningly white wings, beelining across the water directly towards them. Bren retreats a few steps, then a few more when Caduceus passes him. Beauregard stands unflinching, watching, smiling.

The magic of the wings dissipates right as their bearer reaches the dock, white feathers exploding outward around Beauregard, melting into the wood of the dock- and there is another woman there, a full head taller than Beauregard and almost twice as broad, pale skin and a glorious mane of white hair. She scoops Beauregard up and the monk hooks her legs around the newcomer’s waist and then- oh they are kissing, the sort of kissing that is probably not appropriate for a public setting, hungry and devouring, hands wandering. Bren looks away, glancing around for people watching- of course there are people watching, the woman flew in on literal wings-

“Hey guys,” the newcomer says eventually, and he looks back to see her with her chin resting on top of Beauregard’s head. She sees Bren and sobers a little. “Uh, hi, not-Caleb.”

She has a soft voice, an even softer accent, and eyes that don’t match. Also she has two very large swords slung over her back, their hilts sticking up over either shoulder. Bren gives her a nod in greeting and does not move closer, as the other three have.

“Ah, just Caleb is fine.”

She studies him for a moment, gaze unblinking even when Beauregard climbs down. Finally she nods, her expression solemn. “I’m Yasha,” she says, although Bren has already figured that out for himself just out of context. “We’ve met before- obviously.” A brief, inward grimace.

“You like her,” Veth tells him. “You two hang out all the time and don’t talk.”

An ideal friend, if that is to be believed, and probably the first of this ragtag assortment that he could see himself actually getting along with. Still- swords. Bren stays a healthy distance away and lies to himself that this will somehow protect him if he does something to upset her.

She greets Caduceus with a firm hand on his shoulder and a soft smile- he is taller than her, but weedy and almost gaunt compared to her- and Veth with a surprisingly playful grin. Then, to Bren’s utter shock, she steps beyond them to Essek, squints at his disguise and confirms it’s him with one word that earns her a nod, and sweeps him up into a bear hug that lifts him a solid foot off the ground. More shocking still, Essek smiles and returns the hug, patting between her shoulder blades like he’s not entirely sure what he’s supposed to be doing with his hands. Wildly undignified, and Bren regrets the disguise that prevents him from having that perfect image in his memory forever.

“Is there a bar or something around here? They’re gonna be a little while, Fjord’s arguing with the dockmaster,” Yasha says once she’s released Essek.

There’s a pause, then they all as one turn to Veth. She thinks about it for a moment before nodding.

“There are a couple places nearby that we aren’t banned from,” she says, and turns and leads them away. Bren hesitates a moment, staring out over the water towards the ship Yasha had come from, the ship that apparently contains the last of their group. Already they are at six, a colorful and motley assortment, with not one thing in common between any of them. He has been thinking that Essek is the odd one out, the one whose presence requires explanation, but now he’s starting to consider that they’re all odd. Maybe Veth is right- maybe that’s what drew them together in the first place, and kept them together in spite of everything.

And then Bren heads to the group, which has noticed his delay and is waiting for him. Once more into the eye of the storm.

Chapter Text

The bar Veth leads them to is a squat building of dark, weathered wood. The entry is a set of double doors, and Beauregard digs her heels in a little to give herself leverage to swing both open at once. They shuffle in as a clump, Veth firmly at Bren’s side and Yasha bringing up the rear in a way that definitely does not make him feel secure. It is cooler inside, the humidity denied access by the tightly-stacked wooden boards and the windows are closed and shuttered. On other days, when the temperature is more manageable, there would be a nice crossbreeze from the windows, but for now the building is sealed up as tight as it can get. Inside it is dark and smells of stale sweat and cheap alcohol and cigar smoke, and the dust of what was likely once wood shavings crunches underfoot.

“No,” a voice says from the bar, and Bren looks over to see a large figure. A dragonborn, blue or perhaps green, it is hard to tell in the dim light of the bar. They are an impressive specimen, taller than Yasha and almost as broad, a scar running up their snout that twists their expression into a permanent tooth-baring snarl and ends under a patch covering their left eye. They are behind a counter that runs along the left wall, tankards in hand as they tend to the few customers in the building- it is early yet for drinking, apparently. They jab a clawed finger towards Bren’s group. “You lot are not allowed. Out.”

“You said we weren’t banned here,” Beauregard hisses to Veth.

“No, I said there are places where we aren’t banned nearby,” Veth protests. “Not that I was taking us to one of them.”

“Do you even remember where we can and can’t go?”

A pause. Then, chin high and dignity unimpeachable, Veth says simply, “No.”

Beauregard groans and glances over the others. And suddenly- barring the obvious Bren has a flawless memory, and no matter how many times he revisits this moment he is never able to identify how the decision was reached or the signal used to tell the others- the group shuffles and reforms and Bren is somehow in front.

“You talk to him,” Beauregard says.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you’re good at talking to people when you need to be. Give him money or something.”

“I’ll come with,” Yasha adds. Bren doesn’t know who to look at to get him out of this, and so goes without another protest, Yasha at his back.

In the seventeen steps it takes to cross to the bar, Bren’s opinion of Yasha does a complete one eighty, as the dragonborn watches her approach and visibly loses confidence. When Bren stops at the bar, she looms just over his left shoulder, and the bartender does not so much as spare Bren a glance.

“We are just here to wait for our friends, we have no intention of causing trouble,” Bren says, and the dragonborn’s one gold eye flicks lightning-fast to him and then back to Yasha. Bren risks a glance over his shoulder. In the dim light in the bar, her pale skin and white hair practically glow, making her look ghostly and almost unreal.

“So there’s going to be even more of you?” the bartender asks.

“Ja. But we will behave ourselves.” Bren dips his fingers into his component pouch and thinks, as clearly as he can, two gold. Fortunately he doesn’t humiliate himself by having to chase after coins from an overflowing pouch, and sets down two gold coins on the bar between himself and the dragonborn.

The dragonborn looks at the coins and gives a rumble from deep in his chest, sounding like thunder in the distance, or the first warning from an angry dog.

“Is the blue one coming in?”

“Yes,” Yasha says.

There is a sudden noise, a groan and a thump, and all three look over to find the rest of the group is pushing two small round tables together in one corner of the bar. Beauregard gives the table she’s holding a shove and its legs skid loudly across the ground.

Bren dips his hand into his pouch and produces another three gold and puts them on the bar as well.

“If the blue one does that thing with the windows again, you’re out,” the dragonborn says, making the coins disappear with a single sweep of his hand. “What’ll you be having?”

Bren looks back at the others, then at the dragonborn again. “The second cheapest cask you’ve got.”

“And a glass of milk,” Yasha adds, and the dragonborn, already turning away, stops and stares at her in open bafflement. “If you have it,” she adds, and he frowns and walks away.

“You did not need me for this,” Bren says quietly.

“I did, I don’t have any money on me,” she says, and Bren looks at her. He watches the realization set in and the humor drains from her face. “I didn’t mean- that was a bad joke. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Bren says, surprised to find he means it.

“I can pay you back.”

“That will only make this more awkward.”

She tips her head slightly to the side to study him, then smiles again and looks away. Bren follows her gaze and watches as the bartender reappears with a wooden cask under one arm. He slings the cask up onto a stand behind the counter.

“How many?”

“Uh, five,” Yasha says. “And a glass of water, and the milk.”

“No milk,” the bartender says, not looking at them as he lines up four tankards and holds a fifth under the spigot already hammered into the flat top of the cask and flips up the stopper. “No water, ‘less you want to go outside and get yourself some seawater.”

Yasha frowns, but says nothing, and Bren lets it go- they are on thin enough ice as it is. He takes two of the tankards as they’re lined up on the counter after being filled, and Yasha takes the other three, and they leave three silver on the counter- the bartender will not open a tab for them- and head over to their adjoined tables.

Essek has been put back in the far corner with Caduceus on one side and an empty chair on the other. Yasha takes the empty spot, and Beauregard immediately claims the seat beside her, and Bren debates which one he wants to deal with less before he sits down next to Caduceus, and Veth climbs into the chair next to him. She takes one of the tankards and has it half-drained in the time it takes him to get his chair pulled in.

One of the tankards is set in one of the empty spaces between Beauregard and Veth, and one of them is pushed in front of Bren. He takes it and risks a sip, and wishes he had gone for the third cheapest cask instead.

“So, uh,” Beauregard says as she takes her own drink. There is enough room between her and Veth for two more chairs, if the people sitting in them squeeze together. “This sucks. Not how I thought this was gonna go. But what the hell, cheers.” And she clinks glasses with Veth, then Yasha, and leans across the table until Bren humors her and taps his glass to hers, then she sits back and tosses her head back to chug her drink.

“We’ll fix it,” Yasha agrees, and Beauregard makes a noise of agreement around the cheap alcohol.

“Hey, babe,” she says after she swallows. “You kill any big sea monsters?”

They are a more somber group than Bren was expecting, although there are extenuating circumstances. He listens to Yasha start to explain an encounter with a minion of some sort of monstrosity they all seem to be familiar with, when there is a light touch at his elbow and a quiet voice.

“ ‘Scuse me, Mister Caleb, would you mind?” Caduceus asks. When Bren looks over, he is holding a sturdy-looking teacup of thick ceramic, filled with water he has procured from somewhere. For a moment Bren doesn’t understand, but then he sees one of the little satchels the firbolg stores his tea in sitting on the table, and realizes what is being asked of him. He takes the cup, puts it in the flat of his hand and summons fire in his palm. It takes a good eighty seconds for the heat to sink in and the water to start boiling, and Caduceus takes the cup back with a happy murmur of thanks.

“Do you prefer tea?” Bren asks, risking another sip of his booze. It does not improve with repeated exposure.

“To that? Yeah.” Caduceus stirs the tea in and sets the cup on the table for a minute, letting it steep. The bottom of the cup is very hot, but the wood of the table is battered and scarred and discolored, and could only be improved with a little bit of scorching. “To pretty much everything, really. My family grows this ourselves.”

“In your graveyard?”

A hum and a nod. Caduceus spins the cup slowly around with one finger hooked around the handle, lazily stirring the contents.

Bren looks up at him again. He is willing to admit his first impression was a bit unfair, shaded by the unexpectedness of Caduceus’ appearance and Bren’s own fear. He pours his own alcohol into Veths’ nearly-empty tankard and holds his cup out in silent request. Caduceus takes it, turns the other way and fiddles around for a moment, then hands it back filled halfway with water.

“So how did you get into this?” Bren asks as he heats up the tankard. It’s metal, battered tin, so he holds it up off his skin this time. “This, ah, adventuring business.”

“It doesn’t seem my style?” Caduceus asks, and smiles when Bren fumbles for an answer. “No, it’s all right, it’s really not. I enjoyed being out in the world, traveling and seeing things, but I would’ve been perfectly happy staying home too.”

Bren takes the satchel of tea offered to him and shakes the finely ground leaves into the hot water in his cup, and says nothing.

“You came into the Grove one day,” Caduceus says, slow and thoughtful, as seems to be his usual style. “My family had gone, one by one, to try and find a cure for the curse in the woods, and I was all that was left. Then you came, and I left with you.”

“Just like that?” Bren asks. He finds it hard to believe they would have trusted this stranger in the woods at all, let alone enough to simply let him tag along.

“Well,” Caduceus says, and takes a sip of his tea. “You lost some people before you met me. You needed the help.”

“Mollymauk?”

Caduceus hesitates, looks at Bren carefully for a long moment. “He was one of them,” he agrees. “Did they tell you about him?”

“Only mentioned him, and that it was a long story.”

“He died trying to rescue Jester and Fjord and Yasha from slavers,” Caduceus says, and nudges Bren’s cup towards him. “Drink your tea.”

Bren drinks his tea. It’s a different blend than the one from this morning, and while it suffers from being in the same cup as the cheap booze, it’s still a huge step up from the swill Veth is happily chugging.

“You needed help too much to be picky about where it was coming from, and by the time it was over you were used to me, I guess.” A shrug, as if that weren’t something remarkable, wandering into a cursed forest and finding a powerful friend willing to take on slavers with them.

“Did your family come back?” Bren asks quietly. He is aware the others are, if not actively listening in, then at least paying attention to this conversation.

“Mhmm.” Caduceus nods. “We found them and helped them, and we’re pushing the curse back. Everything’s good with me.”

“So you just- live there, now? In your Grove in a halfway-cursed forest?”

“Yeah,” Caduceus says happily, like that really is the best life he can think of, and Bren blinks and turns away.

Either this is the most well-constructed conspiracy Bren has ever seen, complete with phenomenal actors, or- or this is what he has been missing. That they really are just a roving band of assholes, fumbling their way into fame and fortune through sheer luck and a bit of skill. That still doesn’t explain even half of it, but- if Ikithon really was in prison then Bren might have felt safe enough to come out of hiding. But then, to move to Rexxentrum...

“Brace yourself,” Caduceus says suddenly.

“What?” Bren replies, lost in thought, and looks up at him, and-

Two arms, around his shoulders, and a loud squeal almost directly into his ear. Bren freezes up instantly but the person hugging him does not seem to care.

“Cay-leb, it’s so good to see you!” she says happily, and Bren tips his chin down enough to at least look at the arms around him.

Blue skin, and that voice- Jester, probably the blue tiefling from the magic frame. She is stronger than those slender arms imply and practically lifts him right out of his chair as she hugs him.

“Jess, maybe don’t,” Beauregard says with a grimace.

“It’s okay,” Jester says. She has squished the side of her face against Bren’s, and the curve of her horn is probably pressing a bruise into his temple. If anything, Beauregard’s warning makes her cling tighter. “We’re gonna fix this, Caleb, don’t you worry.”

“Jester,” a new voice says. “He’s not breathing, let him go before he passes out.”

She lets go, and Bren realizes the stranger is correct only when he gasps for air. Both his hands are latched onto the seat of the chair he’s in, as if hoping to anchor himself against that strong hold.

“Why were you holding your breath, silly,” she says as she slides into the empty seat next to Veth. She is indeed a blue tiefling, long midnight hair tied back into a serviceable braid, green cloak over a blue dress, paintbrushes wedged into her belt right next to a holstered handaxe.

“I, uh.” He doesn’t know, so he doesn’t answer. He scoots his chair an inch closer to Caduceus, once eerie and unsettling, now a safe harbor. Veth is too short to be much of a deterrent.

The chair on Jester’s other side pulls out and a half-orc sits down- handsome, scarred, white streaks in his dark hair, sea-worthy leather clothes with the scent of salt on him still. He loops an arm casually over Jester’s shoulders and pulls her closer to him, a gesture that Bren recognizes and appreciates, as it puts some extra distance between her and him.

“We talked about this,” the half-orc says quietly to Jester, who frowns at him and mutters something back that he sighs heavily at.

She whips back around to Bren, although thankfully she doesn’t fight the half-orc’s hold. “I can cast Greater Restoration whenever you want starting tomorrow, I don’t have it prepared today ‘cause no one told me I’d need it-”

“You need to be told to be ready to heal people?” Veth interrupts. Jester ignores this.

“-but tomorrow we’ll be good to go! First thing in the morning even, I’ll be ready.”

“It’s actually kind of relaxing as a statue,” the half-orc- Fjord, presumably- says. His voice is deep and smooth and rumbles comfortingly in Bren’s chest. “Like the deepest sleep you’ve ever had- you just close your eyes and next thing you know, it’s the next morning.”

“That only happened one time,” Jester tells him.

“I would rather not,” Bren mutters, his voice almost lost. There is crosschatter going on, Yasha talking quietly to Essek and Beauregard and Fjord trading quick murmurs.

“We tried that already, Jester,” Beauregard adds loudly. “Cad did this morning.”

“Oh.” She wilts, slumping under Fjord’s arm. Then she rallies and looks at Caduceus. “Well, maybe it will just take a while? Remember the island with the snake people, when Beau got sick from the bugs and you cast Restoration on her but she didn’t get better ‘til the next day?”

“Maybe,” Caduceus agrees, though he doesn’t sound nearly as hopeful.

“I should try it anyway,” Jester adds determinedly.

“It was rough, Jess, he got sick,” Beauregard warns, and Jester gasps.

“He got sick?” She pulls away from Fjord and leans forward, peering around Bren and Veth to Caduceus. “Maybe you did something wrong? Is the Wildmother mad at you for something, Caduceus?”

“I don’t know,” Caduceus says, and Bren looks over to see the firbolg’s ears are drooping and his expression is worried. “I don’t think so?”

“No,” Fjord says firmly. “No, the Wildmother is not mad at you, she adores you. Jester-”

“Can you check?” Jester presses. She’s practically laying on the table now. Fjord picks up the untouched tankard just in time to avoid it being knocked over by a swish of a blue tail. “All I have to do is ask Artie if he’s mad at me for something and he always tells me.”

“I can do a Commune, I guess,” Caduceus says slowly. He seems genuinely disturbed by this.

“Usually if a god’s upset with you, you notice,” Yasha says. “It’s kind of- obvious. But maybe the Wildmother is different, I don’t know.”

“Have you seen any weird lightning? Fight any beasts only you can see?” Jester presses, not losing stride.

“No.”

Jester pivots neatly, leaning up on one elbow and swinging her gaze to Bren. “Have you upset the Wildmother recently?”

“How?” Beauregard asks.

“Speaking of,” Fjord says loudly. “Thank you, Yasha. You taking off like that scared the dockmaster into listening to sense.”

“Oh.” She smiles. “You’re welcome.”

“We have our usual berth, so anyone who doesn’t want to pay at the Chateau can head there,” Fjord tells the table as a whole.

“Well, Artie still likes you, so we can do it tomorrow,” Jester tells Bren, clearly not about to be deterred.

This is- a lot, all at once. Bren is practically leaning into Caduceus, who still seems to be having some sort of minor crisis and is not paying any attention to him. Veth is talking to Jester and Fjord and Beauregard are whispering again, stealing constant glances at Bren as if it weren’t obvious enough what they’re talking about. There is so much noise, so many voices, so many people, and Bren can feel himself recoiling from it all.

He looks first to Veth, who after all had proudly told him that she protected him, and finds her distracted. He looks then to Essek, who is sitting silently in all of this, watching Bren with a frown on his false face. But he is stranded in the corner unless he’s willing to duck under the table and crawl out.

“Anyway!” Beauregard says, sudden and loud, and that does not help at all with Bren’s raw nerves. “Alfield! Remember the gnoll mine?”

She’s addressing the table but keeping a wary eye on Bren, the only person aside from Essek who seems to have picked up on his discomfort.

“Of course,” Fjord says. “Gnolls, manticore, Shakäste, what's-their-face, the Watchmaster.”

“Bryce,” Beauregard says after a moment’s deliberation.

“Maybe we should give a little more detail,” Veth says dryly.

“Oh!” Jester is upright again, but twisting in her seat as her attention darts from one person to the next. No wonder the dragonborn bartender had been so leery of her. Bren isn’t even going to ask what that thing with the windows is. “Is that what we’re doing, trying to make him remember by telling him all about the stuff we did?”

“Sure,” Beauregard says with a shrug.

Jester turns back to Bren. “There were gnolls attacking Alfield, so we found out where they lived and killed them all and took their ears.”

“Yeah, you put them in a pickle jar,” Fjord adds, tone caught between fondly reminiscent and vaguely horrified.

“Maybe other details,” Veth tells them.

“They were worshipping a manticore and Veth killed its baby,” Jester adds.

Bren glances across the table at Essek again. His eyes are wide and he only shrugs when he sees Bren looking, and Bren wonders at how many of these early stories he’s even heard. If Caleb had wanted to get on Essek’s good side and learn his magic, telling stories about pickled gnoll ears and slaughtered infants would not exactly be a good starting point.

“We saved people!” Veth announces loudly, turning back to Bren. “There was a kid and a mom, and a couple of others, I think? They’re alive now because of us.”

“Yeah!” Jester agrees. “And we fought a manticore, it was really big and really really mad, and then there was that gnoll priest guy, the one Beau got her goggles from- you set him on-”

Her chair jerks suspiciously forward and Jester cuts herself off with a yelp. She starts to turn to Fjord, then catches herself and remembers, twisting back to look at Bren with wide, guilty eyes. “I mean. You beat him, with your magic, it was really cool.”

“I set him on fire?” Bren asks slowly, filling in the obvious gap.

“He was feeding people to the manticore,” Beauregard says warily. They are all watching him now, but she seems especially keen, subtly tense like she thinks he might actually try to run. “Not exactly a good guy.”

Bren nods once and looks away. He takes a sip of cool tea, trying to wash away the taste of soot on the back of his tongue, breathing in the earthy smell and trying not to recall cooking flesh-

“We met Shakäste there,” Jester adds, trying to move the conversation along. “He’s really cool, he has a bird and this white afro and he calls everyone baby. Me and Fjord invited him to our wedding and he came for the party afterward, it was so much fun.”

If he closes his eyes now, he will see his childhood home burning.

“I think,” he says quietly, slowly. Everyone is staring at him. “I would like to, ah. There is room? On your boat?” He looks in Fjord’s direction, not quite looking him in the eye.

“Of course,” Fjord says evenly. “You have your own cabin there. Just ask the ship’s watch.”

“Thank you.” He stands, and Veth is at his side instantly, and Beauregard and Essek both are sitting up like they’re preparing to leave as well. “You should stay and catch up,” Bren says to them, and flicks a meaningful glance between Beauregard and Yasha.

It’s enough for her, at least- Beauregard stares at him, then at Veth, then settles back into her seat, leaning back so she’s propped against Yasha’s shoulder.

“Your social awkwardness getting the better of you again?” Fjord asks. It sounds like a poke at Bren’s expense, but when he looks over again, he sees- understanding. Sympathy, even. Fjord is giving him an excuse, saving face so they can all pretend he’s not running away like a coward.

“Ja,” Bren agrees, and retreats a few steps, waiting for- something. A protest, a warning- but there is nothing, just varying shades of sadness. And then Bren turns away, Veth falling at his side like she belongs there, and looks back only once to see the others turning back to each other to talk, Jester already claiming Bren’s empty seat to talk to Caduceus, Essek trapped in the corner and unable to make a quick escape to follow.

They look more at ease, now that he’s not there, a tripwire they no longer have to tiptoe around. Worried, yes, but relaxing, more comfortable in their space and with the people around them. And something in Bren aches, his heart ripped out and left behind, like he should be at that table still.

He turns away instead, and leaves the bar with his steadfast shadow, and does not look back again.

The sun is setting, and it is almost tolerable as a result, the night air cooler and the humidity merely uncomfortable without the sun. Further within the city, and south where the docks presumably give way to a stretch of beach, there are colored lamps being lit, voices rising. Nicodranas is a party town as much as it is a working port, and as the day draws to a close, the working class disappears and the tourists come out to play.

Bren sweeps his eyes along the ships anchored at the docks, but cannot pick out the one he’s looking for. A moment later Veth points helpfully. “Third one down,” she says, and he murmurs a thanks as he starts walking.

She keeps pace easily, falling to his side again in a well-practiced trot that keeps her perfectly beside him, and Bren finds himself fighting down the urge to slow his own stride for her. It was a kindness he, childishly, didn’t feel like offering.

“Was that too much?” she asks, and Bren glances at her and then quickly away. “That was too much. We won’t do the group thing again, you won’t have to deal with all of us at once.”

She probably means it as a kindness but her tone, her words- not even truly a question, just a statement, a determination of what he can and can’t handle- is pouring salt into open wounds. He speeds up a little, not enough to be noticeable that she could call him out on it, but enough to force her into an awkward half-run.

The ship- the Nein Heroez, they call it- is bigger than the others anchored at the dock. It’s set out away from the rest, the jetty it is anchored at extended out and built onto heavy-looking stone pillars instead of the wooden beams the rest of the dock seems to favor. Bren knows very little about ships, but she is an impressive specimen, tall enough that even walking up to her, he has to crane his head back to count her four masts.

“Is there a story here too?” he asks, and instantly regrets the bite in his words as Veth looks at him warily.

“Yes,” she says. “We found it in a cave, on an island being ruled by a fake god.”

Bren looks up at the ship again. Fake gods, now. “We have been very busy, I take it.”

“We were busy. We retired a while ago, and things have been calmer since- for some of us, at least.” She grimaces as she says it, and Bren follows her gaze- just under the surface of the water there are fresh scars on the ship’s hull, the stained top layer stripped away with paler, unstained wood clearly visible. Nothing that looks too serious, at least not to Bren’s untrained eye, but it is very clear that something with many teeth in a large mouth tried to take a bite out of this ship.

They are on the wooden walkway of the dock itself now, the platform drifting on floats that sway on the water. If the big ship were to swing out a little and bump into it, it would simply push outward, instead of trying to hold firm on anchored posts and splintering. Bren finds he cannot watch too closely as the water around the dock moves contrary to the motion of the dock under his feet and watches the ship instead. He is in her shadow now, thanks to how the dock is angled.

Veth stops him with a tug at the hem of his shirt, then peers upward, puts two fingers to her mouth, and gives a piercing whistle. A figure leans over the railing for a moment, then disappears again, and a second later a rope ladder is pushed over the side of the ship, its length unrolling until it clatters to a stop hanging just a few steps shy of where Bren is currently standing.

“I have a guest room at my place,” Veth says when Bren just stares at the ladder.

“No,” Bren says quickly, and can’t find it in him to soothe any feathers his too-fast refusal might ruffle. “I’m good here.” And he takes the ladder and starts climbing up it.

The ladder itself is an experience- the rungs are mostly wooden planks, but some are broken short or splintered lengthwise and uncomfortably narrow, and some rungs are simply rope. The sides are rope as well, a rough variety that scratches up his palms. He keeps having flashes of himself slipping and falling and landing in the narrow gap between the ship and the dock and drowning with this beast shoving into him and pushing him under. He clings a little more than he should.

And then he’s up, and clambering gracelessly over the railing and dropping onto the deck. Veth is after him immediately, fast and skittering. The crewman who had helped them gives them a nod and a casual evenin’ as he begins to expertly roll the ladder back up.

“Your captain mentioned we have cabins here?” Bren asks.

“Sure thing,” the crewman says.

“I know where, thanks,” Veth says. “Is there still food in the galley?”

“Um.” The crewman frowns as he peers at them. “Yeah, but…” and he glances over his shoulder towards the city, and his meaning is clear.

“That’s not necessary,” Bren says. “Can you just show me-?”

“You should eat,” Veth insists. “You barely ate earlier, and you said you were sick-”

“I’m fine,” Bren snaps, and instantly recoils a step or two and looks around.

The crewman is, wisely, sidling away as quickly as he can, clearly trying not to get caught up in this. Aside from him, there is no one on deck with them except one more unremarkable-looking sailor type at the opposite end of the ship, apparently assigned to stand watch at the rear of the ship and sparing them barely a glance. Well out of hearing range, unless they start shouting, and Bren usually tries very hard to avoid raised voices.

“I have been taking care of myself for years,” he says, not quite meeting Veth’s eyes. “I have gone to bed hungry before. I can handle one more night of it.”

“I know,” Veth says. She sounds like her calm patience is being hard-fought-for. “But you don’t have to.”

Bren’s sigh rips out of his lungs, sudden and explosive. “I’m not allowed even that much, then?” he asks, and Veth blinks up at him. “You all know so much better than me that I’m not even allowed to skip dinner?”

“No,” Veth says, confused and clearly not understanding the issue.

And the thing is- Bren does not know what they want, aside from him to somehow magically bring Caleb Widogast back. He does not understand why they are pretending to care, or how they are still in his life, even if circumstances conspired to push them together at one point. He doesn’t know anything at all about Caleb, except that he is powerful and shady as fuck. He is tired, and overwhelmed, and there are so many voices talking to him, about him, around him- he wants his quiet doorway in the cold rain, he wants his shitty old coat and his handful of spells in his spellbook, he wants his cat. He wants to open his eyes again in the morning and have all this be a bizarre dream.

“Am I at least going to be allowed to sleep alone, or are you planning on taking shifts again?” he asks.

Veth stares at him for a long moment. “Essek told us you tried to run,” she says finally, and Bren smiles humorlessly and looks away.

“Ja, well, Beauregard has threatened me about that already, so you don’t need to worry.”

“Caleb.” She moves in front of him, and Bren shifts his gaze away again but doesn’t try to turn away from her. “If you feel like we’ve been threatening you, or controlling you, then I’m sorry.”

“Feel like? You have been doing both,” Bren points out. His hold on his temper is fraying, but he cannot risk an argument with her, with any of them. His position here is dicey enough as it is without them thinking he’s going to be a problem.

“We’ve been- a bit overbearing, probably, but it’s because…”

“You know what’s best for me?” Bren says when she pauses.

“We want what’s best for you. You’re scared and feeling vulnerable, and we care about you, Caleb, it’s very hard to see you like this and not do anything about it.”

“Try,” Bren suggests.

Veth’s face twists into an unhappy scowl. Finally she snorts. “Fine. You want to go to bed hungry, go to bed hungry.”

And she turns away, leading him with a sharp gesture towards the doorway heading down into the belly of the ship. She almost immediately comes to a halt, and says, “Oh.”

There is someone in the doorway leading to below, a tall slender figure. They step out of the shadowy doorframe and into the last light of the day. A purple tiefling, with a riot of colorful tattoos and more scars than Bren can count littering the exposed skin of their collarbones and forearms. White shirt that gapes open at the collar, high-waisted dark pants that have different patterns woven in long stripes up the length of them. Pierced nose, pierced eyebrow, pierced ears, pierced horns, even their tail has flashes of gold on the spade at the end of it.

“Oh?” they echo. It’s hard to tell where they’re looking, their eyes all almost a completely uniform shade of red, but Bren can practically feel when that gaze lands on him.

“You’re here,” Veth continues, clearly caught flat-footed. “Fjord didn’t say you came with them.”

“Well,” the tiefling says, shrugging with shoulders and tail both, and Bren again feels that gaze on him. “Plans changed a little, but we were already on the way. Even kings need vacations.”

“You’re not a king.”

“Yet,” the tiefling finishes for her, flashing their fangs in what they probably feel is a charming smile. It sets Bren’s hackles up a little.

“You didn’t come to the bar?” he asks. This one had been in the frame with the rest of the Mighty Nein, they are obviously more than just a casual acquaintance, and yet. He regrets it as soon as the words are out of his mouth and the tiefling’s attention shifts to him.

“Didn’t think I’d be much help in this situation,” the tiefling says, sobering for a moment as they turn their head to look at Bren directly. “We’re not that good of friends,” they say, almost apologetically.

Bren’s feeling like living road rash, all exposed nerve and pulped skin. He wants to hurt someone. “I don’t have much in the way of friends right now,” he says. The height difference makes it very easy for him to ignore Veth’s reaction.

“Oh,” the tiefling says again. Their tailtip flicks back and forth, almost catlike. “Well then, time to make a new one. I’m Kingsley Tealeaf, for now.”

They don’t offer their hand, and Bren keeps his own close. “For now?”

Another fang-baring grin. “Formerly Mollymauk Tealeaf, formerly formerly someone who doesn’t need to be bothered about. Might be someone else tomorrow, we’ll have to wait and see.”

Bren starts to say something then shuts his mouth. Veth’s we lost him, kind of- even Caduceus’ we have a bit of a tea leaf situation here- not tea leaf, Tealeaf. Another complicated thing they hadn’t gotten around to telling him about. “And how does that work?” he asks when he finds the words.

Kingsley shrugs again. “Don’t know, don’t care. Last one dies, next one crawls up out of the grave. That’s all I need to know.”

Their eyes are very red. Bren struggles to breathe under the weight of that gaze. The skin on his right shoulder feels strangely itchy.

“Were you leaving or just listening in?” he asks.

“I was leaving, but if you two are coming in…” Kingsley turns back and heads down the hallway into the ship. “Want a drink, magic man?”

Bren hesitates, looks to Veth, who meets his gaze in patient expectation. Kingsley realizes after a moment that he's not moving and comes back and drapes themself artfully against the doorframe. There's a certain awareness to the way they move, almost a measuredness, like every move they make is a show they're putting on.

"Probably worth mentioning that you are the second person who's disappointed them," they gesture off the ship with a broad sweep of their arm, "by waking up as someone different than who they thought you should be."

Veth is bristling, glaring up at the tiefling. She wants to fight, but seems to pick up on the undercurrent, and keeping her mouth shut is the best way to not alienate Bren further.

He almost wants to apologize, to tell her that it’s simply been too much, too fast. That he’ll behave himself again tomorrow, when he’s had a chance to process and come to terms with everything again. But for now, he wants to make a decision for himself, to not be handled.

“The tinkerer can come too, if she wants,” Kingsley adds over their shoulder as they turn away again. Bren does not spare Veth a glance before he follows.

The tiefling leads him down into the bowels of the ship, below the first floor and onto the second. The hallways are tight, space clearly at a premium even on such a large ship. They duck through the first doorway on the right and Bren follows into a large room with tables and long benches. In the far corner is a makeshift kitchen, pots and knives and a stove all firmly fastened down, towering piles of cups and metal sheets with shallow dents hammered into the middle, probably serving as plates. Kingsley gestures Bren to one of the tables.

“Back in a moment, I have to go steal something from the captain’s quarters,” they announce shamelessly, and duck out of the room again.

Bren picks a table and sits down, circling it so his back isn’t to the door this time. Veth takes up the spot next to him, of course, though with enough space for another person between them on the bench. Bren watches her idly, wondering if she even has the magical muscle to do anything about it, should he decide to Teleport here and now.

“Did you at least trust Caleb to make his own choices?” he asks.

“Of course we do,” she snaps back. “And he makes really bad ones sometimes, and we don’t say anything about it.”

Bren doubts that. The one thing this group doesn’t seem to be shy about is willingness to express their opinions.

Veth squints up at him- there is very little light, only the same sort of magic globes that had been in the kitchen in the Rexxentrum house, and not enough of them here to properly light everything up. Veth’s eyes are unreadable and dark.

“You want to leave?” she asks, and Bren looks away rather than answering. She continues regardless. “Fine, you can leave. Tomorrow morning.”

Bren looks at her, can’t determine from her expression if this is a trap. He looks around, back to her. “Why tomorrow?”

“I need time to pack and to say goodbye to my family,” she says calmly.

“You’re not coming-”

“Well, I’m not letting you go alone.”

“You have a child.”

“Luc’s old enough, he’ll understand. We can head out for a couple of months. It’ll be just like old times.”

Bren sits back with a sigh and stares at one of the magic lights in the corner. Safer on ships than lanterns, most likely. He wonders how much they cost to install and maintain.

“If you feel like we’re smothering you, that’s fine,” Veth says slowly. “Well, not fine, but it’s kind of normal? You’re still not great with groups, you just got used to us. If you need to leave, then you can leave. But I’m not letting you leave alone. And it’s not because I don’t trust you.”

Bren looks back over at her, and she is watching him. “I mean, I don’t,” she says. “But it’s not you disappearing I’m worried about.”

“Then what are you worried about?” he asks quietly, when enough time has gone by that it’s obvious she won’t explain herself without some sort of prompting from him.

“You,” she says. “I’m worried about you. You were happy, and living a good life, and now you’re-” she gestures at him. “I don’t want that. I want you happy again, and if leaving is what it takes to make you happy, then so be it.”

Bren almost, almost, calls her bluff. He wants to know if she’ll actually let him leave, provided he lets her come with. But- if it is a bluff, the cost of calling it is too high. They have to think him cooperative, or at least cowed into obedience, so they don’t feel the need to take more- ah, extreme measures.

There is a noise in the hallway, a humming, thankfully interrupting before Bren has to come up with some sort of answer. Kingsley sweeps in, dancing with themself, spinning in a neat pirouette around the table to deposit a glass bottle filled with a rich amber-colored liquid and a box near Bren. They duck away and return a moment later with three battered metal cups, and put them on the table as well.

“Rum,” they announce cheerfully. “The good kind, too, Captain Lavorre doesn’t skimp on his booze. He treats his crew well.” A smile, a chuckle. “He has to, he’s got to make up for his wife and his ex.”

“His ex?” Veth asks, her razor-sharp focus shifting to the tiefling. “Has what’s-her-face come back again?”

“What’s-her-face?” Kingsley looks momentarily thrown before understanding dawns. “No, the other one.” And they hiss like a snake and flick their tongue out. It’s pierced as well, and forked at the end. Bren hasn’t seen enough other tieflings to know if that’s a common trait.

“Oh.”

“Also,” Kingsley adds, shoving the box closer to Bren. “Cookies. They’re kind of fresh, you can thank the priestess for that. She requires baked goods everywhere she goes.”

So they had been listening in earlier. Bren sits back, scowling at the box even as Veth makes a curious noise and pulls it open to poke her nose in.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Then you’re not drinking.” The bottle is swept off the table with a flourish. “No eating, no drinking. I’ve had enough people puke their bad decisions onto me, I’m not interested in another one.”

“Oh, they’ve got jam,” Veth says happily, reappearing from the box with a cookie in her hand, jam indeed dolloped into a thumbprint indentation in the middle of the little treat. She makes a show out of taking a bite, then holds her cup out to Kingsley with a challenge in her eyes, and gets rewarded with a healthy serving of rum.

Bren takes a cookie. Annoyingly, it’s pretty good, the cookie short and buttery, the jam sweet and a bit tart and the perfect counternote. Kingsley watches him closely as he eats it, and offers him a half-full cup of his own when the cookie is gone. Bren takes it and sips at it. It is, as promised, good rum, although Bren’s experience with rum in general is pretty limited. At least it isn’t burning in his sinuses, like the cheap booze back at the bar had done.

Kingsley sits opposite them and takes a cookie for themself. “So what were we talking about? It sounded important.”

“None of your business,” Veth says briskly, and takes another cookie.

This earns her a shrug and a raise of the glass. “Fair enough. Well, normally I would ask what we should talk about instead, then, but you’re both duds in that department. So drinking in silence, is it?”

“You are aiming to become king?” Bren asks, and Kingsley, caught mid-drink, hums in answer.

“Plank King,” they say once they’ve swallowed. “Ruler of Darktow Island and the Revelry. Pirate nation.” Another fang-flashing grin. “Not king of the Empire, you could not pay me enough to stick around that dreary place, let alone rule it.”

Bren looks at Veth. “Have we been to Darktow?” That name is familiar, though it takes him a moment to place it- the magic frame, the note on the bottom of the one drawing with Fjord and Jester and this Kingsley. Something about a ban being repealed.

“Mhm.” She pops the last bite of a cookie into her mouth and washes it down with rum. “For a day, I think? Not even? We got kicked out and told not to come back.”

“We were kicked out of Pirate Island,” Bren echoes, just confirming the facts, absurd as they may be.

“In under twenty-four hours,” Veth says, squinting as she thinks. “I’m pretty sure it was only one day. Things happened kinda fast.”

“Have you been back since?” Kingsley asks Veth. She shakes her head, and they grin contentedly, happy to be the center of attention, Bren and Veth happy enough to let them have it. “Want to hear about it?”

And so Bren eats cookies, and drinks one half-glass of what he is promised is very good rum, and listens to a purple tiefling talk about pirate politics and sailing ships. And then the bottle, already starting at only a third of the way full, runs out, and Kingsley shakes it to rattle the last few drops in the bottom of it.

“Well,” they say, standing and stretching. “This has been a delight, but you two are, to be honest, kind of boring when there’s no booze to help grease the social wheels. I’m off to look for trouble.”

“Keep our name out of it when you find it,” Veth says, but she’s relaxed from whatever her earlier issue with them had been, and it sounds like friendly teasing rather than an order.

“Oh, of course,” Kingsley says sweetly.

They circle the table before they go, leaning down to drop a kiss to the top of Veth’s head, then- too fast for him to realize what was about to happen- to Bren’s as well. And then they are gone, and Veth leads Bren to his cabin when he asks, the air between them quiet and heavy.

“Don’t worry your family with this,” Bren says finally, when he’s on the doorstep. It is a small room, barely enough space for the cot in the corner, clearly used for storage or something when not at port. He’s almost used to the gentle swaying of the anchored ship by now, and wonders if it will help him sleep.

“We’ll do better tomorrow,” Veth promises him. She’s taking the cabin across the hall. Bren is keeping her from her family regardless.

“Good night, Caleb,” she says, and ducks into her room, and Bren turns away and heads into his.

Neither of them close their door.

Chapter Text

The morning starts early- Bren went to bed well before midnight, the sun only just set even after drinks and cookies with Kingsley, and his body doesn’t seem to be carrying the usual sleep debt he’s used to. The scars aren’t the only new thing about him- he’s put on weight, enough that he can’t count his ribs by touch anymore. Caleb Widogast eats and sleeps well.

It’s five-forty-two when Bren gives up on pretending. He swings his legs over the side of the cot and summons his Dancing Lights and pulls out his spellbook and opens it to the last page. Then he picks up his component pouch and dips his fingers into it- he hadn’t checked yesterday, had never had a moment when no one was looking- he produces, eventually, a diamond as big as his thumbnail. It might not be enough, but this spell doesn’t destroy its components, so he’s willing to risk it.

He draws the circle twice, stymied the first time by the gaping between the boards and having to get creative with his placement, even crawling up the wall a little bit. Then he sits in the middle, finds the largest facet on the diamond, and Scries.

He doesn’t have a personal item, and when Bren knew him, Ikithon had at least three anti-surveillance measures on himself at all times, to say nothing of whatever defenses the prison might have. His chance of failure is high. But Bren has been trained for this. He knows the difference between the spell failing and the spell being rebuffed by defensive measures and the spell finding no target at all. He does not want to see Ikithon, he wants to see the method by which his spell fails.

For a moment he thinks the failure will come from the diamond itself- Essek’s page had not specified exactly what he needed to use, only said focus, reflective, expensive. Then the Dancing Lights spell fades, and Bren realizes the diamond is glowing faintly in his hand. It shows only grey fog, hazy and indefinable. Faint, but definite- he can see it, he knows what it means. Not the instant rebound of the spell encountering defenses, not the sense of missing a step that comes with a spell failing to connect.

“Wutrudoon,” a voice says, and Bren lets the spell drop and looks up to find Veth.

She had done most of the polishing off of the rum bottle last night, and it shows- her hair is down in a frizzy, tangled bird’s nest, her eyes are red and one is squinted shut against the light orb she brought into Bren’s room. Too much to drink, not enough sleep.

“Scrying,” he says, tucking the diamond away.

“Oh.” She blinks her one half-open eye at him. “Learn anything?”

“Uh, ja.” His breath comes out shaky and fast. “Trent Ikithon is dead.”

Dead, or not on this plane anymore. He’ll try it again in a couple of days, and probably again a while after that, just to reassure himself. But-

“Didn’t we already know that?” she asks.

He looks at her. She’s still mostly asleep, regarding him with fond exasperation that’s only just peeking through the tiredness.

“Go back to bed, Veth,” he says, gentling his voice as much as possible. She makes a noise of agreement and turns and heads back into her room. Not awake enough to remember why she’s standing guard over him.

Bren sits in his room for a long moment, just turning this over and over in his mind. It was one thing to be told, another thing entirely to confirm it for himself- Ikithon is dead.

He did not understand how great of a weight was pressing down on him until just now, when it slipped away. He feels- lighter. Dangerously so. Like the moment after Essek’s gravity spell lifted, and Bren felt like he was falling upwards.

It is almost dream-like, the act of rising, walking to the hallway. He feels disconnected from his body again, too much emotion for him to process- a good problem, this time. Ikithon is dead. He barely knows what to do with himself, now that the greatest evil he has ever known has been removed from the world.

Five o’clock in the heart of summer is just before dawn- the sky is an ugly washwater grey, a faint hint of blue on the horizon. Bren goes over to the railing and stares at the city, asleep now after whatever revelry carried it into the night. The air is cool, the humidity only uncomfortable instead of overwhelming, and the breeze is coming in off the ocean and is almost chilly.

Bren stands at the railing and stares at Nicodranas, at the mountains far beyond. What is the Empire like without Trent Ikithon bleeding his poison into it, he wonders.

“You’re up early.”

He doesn’t startle- he had seen, even if it had not really registered, the other person on deck. Approaching now, boots moving steadily over wood, a faint rustle of cloth. Bren looks to his left as Fjord falls into place beside him at the railing. He had not had much of a chance to observe the half-orc last night, form any impression of him outside of Jester’s minder. His hair is long enough to tie back, but it’s down now, pushed back behind pointed ears. He has scars on his face, including one on his upper lip that his left tusk catches on, and the smile he slants at Bren is crooked around it. He has a symbol very much like Caduceus’ pinned to the shoulder of his shirt, waves and seaweed where Caduceus’ has leaves and flowers, an anchor instead of a shepherd’s crook.

“So are you,” Bren points out.

“Force of habit.” Fjord turns away and rests his elbows on the railing and leans back against it, closing his eyes and tipping his face up to enjoy the breeze. “I like to watch the sunrise. Tells me what kind of day I’m going to have.”

Bren scours his memory- he’s heard something about that a long time ago, but he’d only half paid attention, thinking his future would not include sailing. “Red sky at morning,” he says finally.

“Sure,” Fjord says. “But also see how calm the waters are, what the crew’s mood is, if Jester got up to something the night before. Like that.”

They say nothing after that, Bren not knowing how to continue that conversation and Fjord seeming not to care to. Bren finds himself looking over at the other man, quick darting glances. He appears unconcerned with Bren’s presence, not even reacting when Bren moves a few steps away. He had been out on the deck already, Bren thinks- not here for Bren’s sake, but more likely the ship’s.

“What are the plans for today?” he asks, and gets a one-shouldered shrug.

“I don’t know. You might get Beau or Essek here later, she was after him all night to work on some spell.” He scratches idly at the hinge of his jaw. His beard is thick, streaked with white the same as his hair. “Should probably apologize in advance for them. And just- in general, for Jester. She means well, and she loves you, but she’s overwhelming on a good day.”

“She wasn’t,” Bren says, and Fjord slants a look at him, narrow-eyed and knowing. “She was- not the main issue,” he corrects himself, because she was a lot.

“Yeah, Cad and Beau caught us up on what’s been happening.” He turns around again, facing the city once more. Standing up straight, he is a good two or three inches taller than Bren, and significantly broader, for all that he lacks the usual half-orc burliness. “I wouldn’t have pushed to make it in yesterday if I’d known how bad it was. Essek just said you lost your memories, he didn’t give a lot of details. And the last time you lost your memories, you were.” Another glance, a gesture to indicate all of Bren. “Not like this.”

Again, the reference to Bren’s- Caleb’s- last bout of amnesia. “And when was that?”

“Rumblecusp.” A pause, Fjord watching him for a reaction. “Travelercon? Vokodo? What have they told you?”

“Not much.”

“Yeah, Beau was talking about Alfield last night, that was just the start of it.” Fjord looks away again. “Been standing here thinking about it, and it’s one hell of a story.”

“Hard to believe,” Bren says quietly. He studies Fjord for a moment and decides- he has asked Caduceus already, he might as well ask the rest of them- “and how were you brought into this?”

“Me?” Fjord smiles his crooked smile. He is, to be honest, annoyingly handsome. “I was there from the start. Jester and I met in Port Damali, my hometown. We came to Trostenwald together, she was just going wherever and I was heading up to the Soltryce Academy in Rexxentrum.”

That catches Bren’s attention, and judging by the wry smile, Fjord had known it would. He turns to face Fjord properly, leaning his hip against the railing. “Why?”

Fjord holds up a hand and a strand of water rises from the ocean below, eventually pooling into a sphere in his palm. “I was just a sailor for most of my life. Then my ship blew up, and I woke up on a beach, and I could do- things.” He turns his hand over, letting the water pour back into the ocean. “Soltryce is the magic academy, right? I figured if I could make it there, maybe they could help me figure this out.”

“Did they?”

Fjord looks at him again. His eyes are yellow, pupils pointed like a cat’s. They should be frightening, but Bren can read the emotion in them. “By the time we made it to Rexxentrum, I’d heard enough about it to know better.”

Bren looks away, feeling shame curdle in his gut. Safe to assume they all know his story, then.

He is about to ask after Jester, see if she plans on coming to the ship today- when there is the sound of feet running, muffled cursing. They both turn and look as the door to belowdecks bursts open and Veth comes out, hair still a wild mess but eyes open and alert now. She comes to an abrupt halt upon seeing them, then jerks back into motion.

“Good, you’re here,” she says to Fjord. “I have to help Yeza at the shop, if there are no other plans.” She looks at Bren as she says this, and his breath catches as he realizes what she’s saying.

Fjord looks between them, raising his eyebrow as he watches Bren as well. Bren merely shakes his head- if her offer is real, there’s no reason to think it won’t still be on the table tomorrow. He can take another day, see how today goes before making any sort of big decision like that. He can-

Ikithon is dead. He is free. He can breathe now. He can take his time. He has time to spare.

“Okay.” She points a finger at Fjord, looking for all the world like a scolding mother. “Don’t do anything stupid. No blood sacrifices again, or anything like that.”

Fjord ambles along the side of the ship, reaching the spot where the rolled-up ladder is sitting on the deck. He tosses it casually over the side, letting it roll down until it clatters to a stop against the side of the ship. Veth watches him go, then glances at Bren. He doubts there is a need for her this early at the shop- she woke up enough to remember, and panicked when she couldn’t find him, and is now trying to save face.

“Need help getting over the railing?” Fjord asks, all sugary sweetness, and Veth swings that gaze over to him. He grins toothily at her, and she glares back as she approaches, hops up onto the railing with far more grace than Bren could have mustered for such a feat, and begins climbing down.

Bren watches this with interest. He has been aware of the tension within the group, but in both cases it had been Essek on one side of it, and Bren had simply assumed there was history there. But this-

Fjord catches him watching, and his grin eases back into a real smile. “It’s fine,” he says. “We take the piss out of each other sometimes. It’s all friendly, these days.”

“It didn’t used to be, then?”

“I thought it was.” He starts hauling the ladder back up. Judging by the lack of swearing from below, Veth had descended fast. “She had a lot going on she didn’t tell us about.”

He could spend years, probably, trying to decipher these people. He nods and looks away- coming at it now, from this angle, it is clear enough what secrets Veth was keeping and why, but at the time, finding those things out must have been… shocking.

“So you can stay here if you want. Yasha’s coming with some books and better food, though she probably won’t be here for a couple hours, you got kind of a jumpstart on us here.” Fjord’s voice picks up a little in volume as he forces the conversation to move along.

“Books?” Bren echoes.

“Yeah, local history, retellings of the war, things like that. Beau had a journal she kept during our adventures, but she gave that to Kingsley and he hasn’t given it back yet.”

Bren hesitates. “Is Kinglsey coming back soon?”

“No idea.” Fjord doesn’t roll the ladder up, just stacks it in a semi-neat pile against the railing, careful not to cross the lines so it won’t get tangled. “They came with us because we said party and lost interest when we told them it probably wasn’t happening. He was still here when you got here last night?”

“Uh, ja. They stole some cookies from your quarters, I think.”

“The ones with jam?” Fjord asks, and nods when Bren confirms. “Those were decoy cookies. He’s going to have to do better than that if he wants at Jester’s real stash.”

Bren sighs and looks down at the dock- Veth is long gone already, fast on her feet when she needs to be.

“Is she coming here? Jester?”

“Probably not, she was gonna stay with Caduceus today. They’re gonna Commune.” Fjord makes a little face as he says this.

Bren is very curious about that- both the Communing, and Fjord’s insistent dismissal that the issue is with Caduceus- but he lets that one go, for the moment more interested in his own immediate future. “And I can just- stay here? All day?”

“Yeah,” Fjord says casually. “This ship is yours as much as she’s mine. Who do you think named us the Mighty Nein in the first place?”

He’s being handled again. There is so much Bren is being kept out of, probably dozens of conversations and so much maneuvering going on behind his back. He can only imagine the scoldings last night, after Veth reported that he was feeling smothered and considering running. And now, the decision to let him hide away today, send in their quietest and calmest to keep an eye on him until he settles down and is fit for rowdier company again.

He wants to be insulted, but instead he is grateful for the reprieve. Too much has been happening, too many voices, too much noise. He needs this time to himself.

“Want some breakfast? I know where Jester hides the good stuff.” Fjord is already walking away, confident that Bren will follow.

He is feeling hungry, and Fjord is a better minder than nosy Beauregard or Veth with her gut-wrenching offers. So he follows Fjord belowdecks, and eats sugary, too-sweet pastries, and lets Fjord teach him a couple of card games he already knows and could easily steal a win from, and revels in the silence that he knows all too well is not going to last.

It’s after ten in the morning by the time Yasha makes it onto the ship.

The rising sun burns away the soft breezes and gentle coolness and drives the humidity back into the air, and sends Bren seeking coolness deep in the bowels of the ship. He shelters in the crew’s quarters, one of the biggest rooms on the ship, still rigged with dozens of hammocks. It smells of stale sweat and wet wood, but Bren brings a light globe and a lavender-infused candle down with him, and it is… tolerable.

He is on his third round of solitaire when Yasha comes in. She is wearing more casual clothing than the battle-ready leathers of the day before, and is armed with only one sword that she unsheathes and leaves leaning against the doorframe. Her hair is twisted up into a mass of braids and tied together high up on the back of her head, keeping the weight of them off her neck and shoulders. She has flowers in it today, small pale blue blooms woven in a crown above her hairline and scattered at random amidst the braids.

“Here,” she says, dropping a heavy leather satchel near Bren. Then she paces away, flapping her light shirt to circulate air. Bren pokes his nose into the satchel and retrieves three books, checking one over, then the next. He looks up once, to see an expanse of snow-pale skin interrupted only with jagged scars, as Yasha uses her shirt to wipe up the sweat gathering on her skin.

She comes back over a minute later, shirt back on, and squats down and carefully pulls at the satchel by the corner furthest from Bren. She produces a water skin, and uncaps it and downs half of it in three big swallows. She is, Bren is forcibly reminded as she looms over him, very large.

“Sorry,” she says. “It’s hot out there.”

Bren had procured two folded-up blankets to sit on, having no delusions about his ability to withstand sitting on solid wood without some form of cushioning. He offers her the second blanket, and she takes it and hesitates for a long moment, looking like she’s almost waiting for permission before finally sitting down. Bren keeps the book on the war- the War of Ash and Light, apparently- and shoves the other two over.

“You’re not from around here, then?” he asks, recognizing in her the suffering of a fellow cold-lander.

“Hah, no,” she says. She gently pushes both books aside and takes another one from her belt. When she opens it Bren sees, on the cover, a half-orc man with his shirt ripped open and a woman swooning in his arms. “I’m from Xhorhas. The wastes, not the Dynasty,” she adds, when he glances up at her quickly.

“And what was that like?” he asks, awkward, not sure where to go from here.

“It was, uh. Not good.” She frowns and shakes her head a little. Then she looks up again, meeting Bren’s gaze firmly. “I’m sorry about yesterday.”

“It was not your fault.”

“Maybe not, but I wasn’t helping.” She looks at her book again.

Bren bites his lip, looks down at his own book. It’s a bone-dry recounting of the battles of the war. Empire-written and so biased, of course, and with no indication of what started the war, opening instead with an abrupt start about Kryn forces attacking the garrison at Ashguard.

“You were worried about Essek, right?” he asks. Because- she had hugged him on the dock, and made a point to sit next to him in the bar, and was speaking to him when everyone else was focused on Bren.

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “He’s good in a tight spot, but when things aren’t, you know. Noisy. He tends to panic.” She picks up her water skin and takes another drink. “We’re keeping an eye on him too.”

It is relieving, to know Bren is not the only one being handled. To know that they are looking after Essek as well.

He looks back at his incredibly dull book, its detailed recounting of the Empire’s side of the war. There is a casualty count at the bottom of the page, after a brief synopsis of the strategies used by the attacking army. It does not count the Dynasty’s dead.

It is, as Veth promised, incredibly easy to just exist in Yasha’s presence. Bren would not care to see her on the battlefield- or would, since he seems to be a close ally of hers- but in these quiet moments, she is unobtrusive, almost small, somehow. She reads her book, sometimes smirking at whatever is happening in it- Bren gets bored with his own book shortly and ducks his head to read the back cover of hers, and goes back to his war reports with raised eyebrows.

He starts skimming, eventually, uninterested in army movements and supply line routes. From what he’s read, it was not much of a war- the Dynasty only lost what ground they gained, and proved no city in the Empire was safe from attack. No wonder the king had been so willing to negotiate for peace.

“Do you know,” Bren begins, breaking the silence for the first time in well over an hour. Yasha has since laid down on her back on the floor, her own hair acting as a pillow, and she moves the book enough to peek up at him with one eye. “Ah. What started this war?”

He’s expecting her to shrug, to say she doesn’t know, to say that there was simply a spark after years of tension boiling up. He is therefore surprised when she hems. “Uh. Yeah, kinda.”

“Kinda?”

She sits up, rearranging the blanket and pushing a few braids back over her shoulder. Nervous habits, giving her hands something to do while her mind works. “It’s… not my story to tell,” she says finally.

Bren watches her for a moment, then looks back at his book. He flips to the last page, which has as many of the details of the peace treaty as have been released to the public. Not a single mention of any item exchanging hands.

“Veth mentioned something, a Beacon? The Empire gave it back and it ended the war.”

“It’s not in there?” Yasha asks, leaning forward as if to see for herself. She is too far away to be able to read anything. “It was kind of a big deal to the Dynasty, obviously. They probably didn’t want it talked about too much.”

“What exactly is a Beacon?”

“I don’t think I can explain it.” She sighs and frowns, as if debating with herself. Finally she says, “Ask Essek. He knows about Beacons.”

That would have been his next step, since Essek seems to be- or at least at one point was- fairly high up in the Dynasty’s echelons. But first- because they are already talking, and he’s apparently making a habit of asking this-

“So how were you brought into this?”

“Uh, well, I volunteered. Everyone else was busy, Beau and Essek are working on that spell and Caduceus and Jester are talking to their gods-”

“No,” Bren interrupts, as gently as he can. Something about this woman inspires gentleness. “I meant the Mighty Nein.”

Somehow this is an even more sensitive topic than the war. She looks away, rubs at the back of her neck as if something is there.

“I worked at the circus, with Mollymauk,” she says right as Bren is about to retract his question. Her face contorts briefly, grief dulled by time, and he nods. He is curious about Mollymauk and Kingsley Tealeaf, but it doesn’t seem relevant to his current situation, so he won’t press. Nothing to be gained here, except probably hurting Yasha. “We met the rest of you in Trostenwald, and then- things happened, and the circus fell apart, and we left.” Her hand strays down to her belt and Bren looks. There is a symbol attached to it, a shield with crossing lightning bolts, a small curtain of thin chains hanging from the bottom of it. The whole thing looks to be made of a dull grey metal, perhaps iron. “I wasn’t around much, at first. I had- things going on.”

Yasha’s mismatched eyes are dark with some terrible emotion Bren cannot identify. After a moment of staring into nothing, she looks up at Bren, and that coldness softens into familiarity. Her hand circles around the symbol, fingers tangling into the chains at the bottom, and her back straightens and her shoulders rise from their slump.

“I lost some time, before I joined the circus,” she says. Bren leans back against the wall behind him, mouth shut out of respect for the strength she is clearly showing. “I woke up at an altar to the Stormlord, and Molly found me not long after that. He wasn’t scared of me, and he was very colorful.” She smiles sadly as she says it. “As I traveled with you, I kept getting- it felt like something was calling me. I thought it was the Stormlord, and it was, sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” Bren repeats quietly when she pauses.

“When we were in Xhorhas, we fought a- a fiend, I guess he was. Obann.” A shiver crawls over her skin, but the Stormlord’s symbol is tight in her hand, probably imprinting itself against her palm, and her expression is serene. “He cast a spell on me as he was dying, and. I turned against you.”

Bren leans forward again, elbows on his knees. They would not have sent her to him if they couldn’t be sure of her.

“It was the worst thing I’ve ever felt,” she says calmly, and Bren feels a shiver of his own slide down his spine. “I was there, but not in control. I killed people, tried to kill you- I stabbed Beau.” She traces a thumb across her stomach, and Bren remembers the scar on Beauregard’s own stomach, the giant sword sitting in this very room, and feels sick.

Yasha takes her hand away from her stomach. “The Stormlord freed me the first time, and you guys freed me the second time.”

Bren swallows hard and closes his eyes. It is not the same, by Yasha’s own words it is not the same- she was under a spell, Bren chose to do what he did. He is responsible for his own actions, not the victim of mind control as she was.

“Anyway, I stayed with you guys after that,” Yasha says, then pulls at the satchel again. “Here,” she says, taking something out of it and passing it over. A napkin, wrapped in a fancy fold around a tube. Bren watches as Yasha unwraps the napkin and takes a bite out of the tube.

He’s not really in the mood for food, but he is hungry- he hasn’t had real food, only sugary sweets, since the sandwiches yesterday. And this body is used to regular meals, these days. Bren takes a bite of his own, and finds the outer wrapping is a very flat, thin piece of bread wrapped around shreds of some white-fleshed fish and rice and leafy vegetables.

“Caduceus?” he asks. It’s a little bland, perhaps meant to be dipped in some sauce that didn’t travel well.

“The staff at the Lavish Chateau,” Yasha corrects. “Beau and I stayed there last night, they’re used to loud sex.” She’s blushing, her fair skin showing it easily. She doesn’t actually seem embarrassed by her words in spite of that.

Bren is also blushing, annoyingly- he is almost as fair as her and it shows just as well on him, and unlike her, he is embarrassed. He cannot think of a thing he wants to talk about less than Beauregard’s sex life. “The, ah. The Chateau is a friendly place, then?”

“Oh, it’s a brothel,” Yasha says calmly. She had successfully diverted the conversation away from the almost suffocating heaviness of mere moments ago, but Bren is wishing even harder that he could somehow escape this conversation. Fjord had shown him the bathroom accommodations- one of the downsides of hiding on a ship- and Bren wonders if he should just say have to piss and flee the room. “But a really fancy one. Jester’s mom works there.”

Every sentence is worse than the previous one. The last one makes him freeze, frowning up at her, and she catches his baffled stare and shrugs. “Yeah, she was really good at it, she’s rich. And really hot.”

“Is she,” Bren hears his traitorous voice say weakly. Jester’s mother, they are talking about Jester’s mother.

“She doesn’t entertain anymore,” Yasha says, then frowns. “Well. She entertains, she still sings and stuff, but she doesn’t entertain. She’s married now.”

Behind Bren, on the other side of the solid wood he is leaning against, is the ocean. If he pushes back against it hard enough, if he wills it enough- he can maybe just fall right through into the water.

Yasha is smiling, that same crooked mischievous smile he had seen the day before, when she admitted to having no money and getting him to pay the bill. She is teasing him, he realizes finally, and forces himself to take a couple of deep breaths.

“That was almost as bad as Fjord, you’re normally not squeamish about sex,” she says when he’s settled again.

“Ja, I, uh.” Fuck, he’s still rattled. He grabs the war book again, hoping the bone-dry text will bore the fluster right out of him. “It has been a long time, for me, but not for Caleb.”

Even choosing his words carefully, he still says too much. Yasha’s gaze sharpens and the humor drains from her expression. “Oh no, Essek? You guys didn’t-?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “No, we- did not get that far.” He couldn’t have, anyways. It still bothers him that he tried, but at least it did not come to that.

She is staring at him still, and he can practically see the protective spread of her wings behind her. Protecting him, or Essek, or both- he cannot tell.

“Well,” she says finally. “You can stay at the Chateau, if you want. Marion- Jester’s mom- she got us rooms.”

“I might go there later,” he says quietly. Where is Essek staying, he wants to ask, because it’s not the ship, and it’s probably not the Brenatto house, considering the tension between him and Veth. He doesn’t ask- he doesn’t even know how it will sway his decision.

Yasha nods and finishes her lunch and picks her book back up, clearly considering the talking done, and Bren is quite happy to let it end there. She is good company, despite the recent conversation. He puts aside the war book and picks up one covering the history of Nicodranas and starts to flip through it, then stops when the name Yussa Errenis catches his eye. The Mighty Nein know him, clearly- Beauregard had implied he owed them a great deal for some reason. Bren flips back a page or two, finds a chapter break, and settles in to read about him.

They don’t speak again.

It is afternoon when he finally gets word.

Bren is pacing the room, the ship as much a prison now as sanctuary, kept chained here by the weather and the lack of better options. For her part, Yasha is mostly asleep, although she occasionally turns her head to track him when he gets close, pure instinct.

He’s considering stealing her book and reading it instead, chasing away all those useless dry facts that Caleb likely already knew and Bren can do nothing with- and then Essek’s soft voice curls into his mind.

“We are on our way, the spell is ready. Are you still on the ship?”

Bren waits, but that appears to be all that Essek is saying. The connection is still hanging in the air between them, Essek’s magic in Bren’s ears.

“Still on the ship, yes,” he says, and glances over when Yasha sits up, suddenly wide awake. Essek’s we is probably himself and Beauregard. “We will meet you on the deck.”

Essek doesn’t respond, but then doing so would cost a spell. Bren just tucks the books away and starts to sling the satchel over his shoulder, but surrenders it quickly when Yasha reaches for it. He leads her upstairs, then pauses at the doorway that opens onto the deck. It’s already hot, the sun beating directly down onto the deck, the sails pulled up and tied back and offering no shade. The sun balm he had taken from Veth’s house has done its job in soothing the pain, but he can tell the skin on the back of his neck is still bright red and baked tight, and he’s not keen on adding another layer of misery overtop of that. He does have to step briefly into the sunshine to let Yasha out- for all her pale skin, she doesn’t seem to burn like he does, which is completely unfair.

The crewman on watch today has already lowered the ladder, and stands watching miserably, clearly keen to get back to whatever shelter he’d been hiding in. Bren leans out enough to watch and is unsurprised when Essek- disguised as an unremarkable half-elf, a favored face of his- simply drifts up over the railing instead of actually climbing the ladder. A moment Beauregard is up as well, rolling over the railing and landing with a flourish, then bouncing back up to her feet with a broad smile as she approaches Yasha.

Essek comes over to the doorway, folding away his parasol and dropping his disguise as soon as he’s under shelter. He looks back at the two women, and Bren looks at him. He is still perfectly put together somehow, hair neatly swept to the side and earrings matching the rings on his fingers, tunic free of wrinkles or stains.

“You completed the spell?” Bren asks, stupidly. Essek’s attention shifts back to him and he gives a single nod. “That was fast.”

“I was properly motivated,” Essek says wryly, tilting his head towards Beauregard. “And Caduceus provided some surprisingly helpful input.”

“How is he?” Bren had last seen Caduceus in quite a state, for him, and feels slightly bad for having indirectly caused it.

“Fine. He is going to the lighthouse later.” Essek looks back, and Bren looks over his head to see Beauregard and Yasha finally approaching.

“Inside,” Beauregard orders, flapping her hands at them. “Way too hot out here.”

They retreat before her, and she leads them to the dining area below, as familiar with the ship as Fjord. She snags a light globe as she goes, tossing it from hand to hand.

“So how’s this work?” she asks as soon as they’re all in the room. Bren lingers awkwardly near the door, trying to make himself unnoticeable. At least for the moment, Essek is the center of attention, not him.

“It is a vision-based spell,” Essek says.

“Will you know what’s wrong and how to fix it?” Yasha asks.

“Ah, what’s wrong, yes,” Essek says carefully. “How to fix it would be- complicated. There has never been a complete immersion in another dimension.” He pauses, his fingers tightening their grip on the hem of his tunic, the skin over his knuckles bleaching to a pale ashen grey. “You would be better served by going to Rosohna and asking for help from the researchers at the Marble Tomes.”

That seems to strike some kind of nerve, as Beauregard and Yasha exchange weighted glances before looking back at Essek. “Aren’t you supposed to be the best dunamancer in the world?” Beauregard challenges.

Essek’s chin comes up. “Yes, but they have access to resources I do not-”

“Tough shit. You’re stuck with us, hot boi.”

Bren watches as Essek rallies, shores himself up with a firm nod. He reaches into his belt pouch and produces a pearl.

“In that case, Yasha, would you mind? I need dust from this.”

Yasha takes the pearl, rolling it in her fingers as she studies it. It is the size of a pea, oblong and bulging on one end, a perfect silvery sheen. It would fetch enough to have fed Bren’s family for an entire year. She curls her hand around it, confers with Beauregard for a moment, then goes over to a nearby table. Beauregard offers her a sash from her belt, and Yasha lays it across the table, then the pearl on top of it, then folds the sash around it. Then she puts the heel of her palm over it and leans her weight down onto it, and there is a terrible grinding sound.

“So, I know so far you’ve got a pretty good success rate with inventing spells,” Beauregard says as Essek drifts over and Yasha shows him the mashed pearl. “But how likely is this to actually work? Will you even know if it doesn’t?”

“I will. I have taken precautions.” Essek dips a thumb into the pearl dust and pauses, glancing over his shoulder to Bren. “Are you ready?”

Is he? This is clearly happening regardless of his opinion in the matter. He does want to know, though- if he belongs here, that is a whole other mess they will deal with later, but if he doesn’t, then-

He nods, and Essek looks away again. Mutters something, gestures sharply, and drags that pearl-dusted thumb across his own eyelids, eyes closed. His eyes, when they open again, have a pearlescent sheen over them. He looks at Bren, brow furrowing, then takes something else from his pouch, a small black stone that catches the light and shines- another gesture, a word.

And there is another Essek in the room.

This one is different, skin and hair and clothing all dull and dark, like he had been dipped in a giant inkpot and had only gotten some of it washed off. His eyes are bottomless black pits. The first Essek looks at him, then back at Bren, then says something to the new one. The new one looks to Beauregard, goes to her, touches something to her forehead and whispers in a shadow of Essek’s own voice, and then fades away as if it were never there.

Essek looks at Bren again. That sheen over his eyes is already fading, twilight-blue returning again.

“It worked,” he says. “The echo was very obviously not of this dimension.”

“Just the echo,” Yasha says quietly, and Essek nods.

Bren releases the breath he’d been holding. So, not dimension or time fuckery, apparently. He belongs here, in this time, time place. And he is- relieved.

“Now what?” Yasha asks, looking between all of them.

“Now,” Beauregard says determinedly, “we are gonna figure out what the fuck Caleb was doing between Astrid telling us Ikithon was dead and Essek dropping in. And then we’ll go from there.” She picks up her sash and shakes pearl dust onto the floorboards.

“So you’re going back to Rexxentrum?” Yasha asks.

“Yup.” Beauregard turns and looks at Essek. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“It would be best if I did not-”

“Someone already tried to kill Caleb, man,” she interrupts. “You really want him in the middle of this?”

It’s a low blow. Essek scowls at her, then looks away. “Tomorrow,” he says. “I have used a great deal of magic today, working with this spell.”

“Cool.” She rises up on her toes to plant a kiss on Yasha’s cheek, claps Essek on the shoulder hard enough to make him stumble forward in his float, and heads out the door.

Yasha sighs and takes a step or two after her, then pauses and looks at the two wizards. “She’s scared,” she says to Bren, soft and apologetic. “She doesn’t like problems she can’t punch in the face.”

“Ja,” Bren agrees distantly. He rubs at his sternum, trying to work out the tangled knot of emotions beneath it. He is relieved, yes, and that’s fine, that’s allowed. Trent Ikithon is dead and Bren has people who appear to care about him and this is his world, this is where he belongs. It’s fine. It’s better than the gutter, at least.

“I’m gonna go…” Yasha begins, cannot find the words, shakes her head and jerks her thumb to the doorway. “I’m gonna go.”

They say nothing, and she hesitates only a moment before ducking out the door. And then Bren is alone with Essek, which is- not what he wants. Not right now, at least. He has too many questions he needs to ask, too many things he still needs to know, and he is not in the right frame of mind for that right now. He doesn’t know if he even wants to know whatever truths Essek is holding- it will change things, he can tell.

There is an awkward silence stretching between them, neither of them quite looking at each other. Bren bites his lip and looks at the pearl dust on the floor.

“Thank you,” he says abruptly, and Essek startles a little bit. “For the Scry spell.”

A pause, then, “You’re welcome. Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Yes.” Bren allows himself a smile. He takes a deep, bracing breath, and looks over at Essek. “I think- how far is the, ah, Chateau?”

“Not as far as Veth’s house,” Essek says. “Would you like to go?”

It is better than this. Bren nods, and Essek turns, clearly just as anxious for some sort of relief.

“Come along, then,” he orders lightly, and Bren follows him out of the room and up the stairs and then into the sunlight, stunningly bright after the gloom of the ship. Bren blinks the sun-dazzled tears out of his eyes and hikes his shirt collar up, trying to protect the back of his neck. Then he climbs over the railing and slowly clambers down the ladder, clinging and graceless, fully aware of Essek drifting effortlessly beside him. He stops on the dock, facing into the city while Essek moves behind him and renews his disguise.

And then they begin the trek into the city, the silence stretching on between them as they go.

Chapter Text

For the first time, Bren finds himself heading into the heart of the city, instead of skirting along its shore.

It takes very little time for the neighborhoods to start classing up, once they get away from the docks. Essek leads him through an archway made of shimmering white stone and then they are on streets lined with buildings with stained glass windows and silk awnings and gold-domed spires that glitter obnoxiously bright in the sunlight. The streets are clean and the people walking along them wear expensive clothing, and Bren itches in his own day-old clothes. Fjord had shown him a trunk full of spare clothes on the ship, but they were all adventuring clothes, well-worn leather and wool, not the light linens and cottons that would do well in this city.

Essek drifts serenely alongside Bren, his illusory self walking without the sound of footsteps. He seems perfectly content to keep silent and show the way, all of the awkwardness seemingly stemming from Bren’s own overbusy mind and awareness of the precise distance between them. Would they normally hold hands while they walked? Take one another’s arm? Probably not- Bren has never been the type, not even when he had nothing to hide, and Essek seems the hands-off sort.

He wants to reach out and take Essek’s hand anyway, and cannot even begin to guess why.

Eventually Essek starts falling back a little, half a step behind Bren, and he perks up and looks around. They are approaching a tall, narrow building with outside walls painted sky-blue. There are two men dressed in armor- city guards, most likely- flanking the doorway into the building and a well-dressed man in silks already stepping out, watching Bren and Essek approach.

“Hello, Mister Widogast,” he says with a bow of his head as Bren gets within range of casual conversation. He flicks a glance to Essek, neither recognition nor surprise crossing his face- he does not know who Essek is, then, but does not find Bren’s bringing a stranger here with him to be unusual. Essek-in-disguise must be a regular visitor here. “Miss Lavorre has reserved two rooms for you,” he says, holding the door open for them as he ushers them inside. Bren hesitates on the doorstep, quickly looking to the guard to his right, and finds the man staring ahead still, looking bored and uninterested with the newcomers now that they have been vouched for. And then they are inside, and Bren blinks at the darkness as his eyes slowly adjust.

“Is Jester here?” Essek asks the doorman, who is lingering after telling them their room numbers. Bren dips into his component pouch and takes out a single gold coin but keeps it tucked against his palm for the moment.

“Unfortunately not,” the doorman says. “She left earlier, along with her husband and Mister Clay. But Marion is still upstairs, if you would like to visit her.” He flicks a glance towards Bren as he says this. Clearly Caleb is known and trusted well enough around here for his presence alone to be considered permission for this stranger to go places he shouldn’t be allowed.

Essek nods and folds his parasol down and moves away, and Bren offers the gold coin and a murmur of thanks when the doorman turns his expectant gaze on him instead. He follows Essek into the room as the doorman returns to his post. It is all pale wood and white tile, silver touches here and there. There are only a handful of tables and they are covered with actual tablecloths that look to be made of fairly high-quality material, and the room smells of wood polish and clean sea air, not heavy with perfumes or alcohol or smoke.

“Yasha said this place was a brothel,” Bren murmurs, staring up at the silver chandelier overhead. There are several of them throughout the room, and a bar along either wall, and a set of stairs at the far end of the room with a matched pair of balconies overlooking the bar area. Everything about this place tastefully reeks of money.

Essek frowns briefly. “Marion had an arrangement with the management here, but I wouldn’t call it a brothel,” he says, and Bren sighs and nods. She had been teasing him, then.

There are customers about, a small handful scattered around the tables, two sitting together and the others apart. The couple has their heads together and are talking quietly. Something about this place lends itself more to the air of a library than a tavern.

“Would you like something to drink?” the bartender calls over- gently, softly- as they walk past. The other bar is still closed down for now- it’s early afternoon and the place is mostly empty, there’s no need for a second bartender.

Essek looks back at Bren, who shakes his head. He still has the water skin Yasha had given him earlier, though the water in it is grossly warm now. The bartender smiles a pleasant smile and returns to the book she is surreptitiously reading below the line of the counter, and Bren follows Essek as he moves on to the stairs.

“Jester grew up here,” he says as they go up. The pale wood creaks and groans quietly under Bren’s weight, and now that he knows to look for it, he can see the oddness where the disguise’s walking motion does not quite match up with the height of the stairs. “Most of the third floor is Marion’s.”

According to the doorman, the two rooms the Mighty Nein had been given are both on the third floor. Bren peers up the stairway- it divides into two flights at the balconies which curve around and arch inward enough that someone standing at the base of them couldn’t see the landing. Essek takes the lefthand staircase up, and Bren follows.

The building is narrow but deep. The stairs deposit them at an intersection, one hallway stretching to the right, one ahead towards the back of the building. The hallway ahead has one door on the right side and two on the left, before ending with a window taller than Bren is, its frame set with beautiful stained glass done in dozens of shades of green and blue that paint the hallway the colors of the ocean.

“We have the rooms on the left,” Essek says, gesturing towards the doors. The locks on the doors match the silver filigreed keys in his hand, while the door on the right has a brass lock and a plaque permanently embossed that reads Private.

Bren looks down the other hallway to the right. It presumably mimics the shape of this one. So Marion Lavorre has been afforded more than half of the entire floor here? She must have been in high demand, back before her semi-retirement.

There is the sound of a door opening down the other hallway, then a heavy clomping, like hard-soled boots on plush carpet. Essek says something quietly, then catches Bren’s wrist. “Bluud.”

“What?” Bren asks, looking back at him.

“His name,” Essek says, then snaps his mouth shut- and then there is a sharp, horse-like snort.

The person who steps into the hallway is not what Bren had expected. As tall as Caduceus and broader than Yasha, brown fur and curving horns, a bull’s head over a man’s muscular body and hooves the size of dinner plates instead of feet. His ears pick up a little bit and he turns his head so he can study the two newcomers with deep black eyes.

“Widogast,” he says, his voice a deep rumble that Bren feels in his bones as much as he hears it. “And friend,” he adds, looking at Essek, just a hint of irony in his tone.

“Hallo, Bluud,” Bren says, and the creature- a minotaur- dips his head in greeting.

“Marion left word that she wanted to see you if you came here.”

Bren glances back at Essek, who only meets his gaze silently. He doesn’t want to meet another new person, not when that’s all he’s been doing for the last couple of days, but the entire point of coming here was to not be alone with Essek. He can only hope Marion is not like her daughter.

“That’s fine.”

Bluud lifts his head, flicks one ear like a fly-bitten horse. “She’ll be a minute. You can wait in your rooms.”

A clear dismissal. Bren murmurs a thanks and heads down the hallway, waits by the second door while Essek unlocks it. Then he pushes into the room beyond.

It is small but tastefully decorated, carrying on with the theme of pale wood and white paint and silver accents and just enough blue to bring some color into the room. There is a four poster bed with cotton-blue covers and lace-edged pillows, a small dresser in the corner because there isn’t room for a full wardrobe, a small round table with two chairs tucked in close in the corner nearest the door, a stand with a washbasin and a mirror on top and a shallow box half-full of sand tucked discreetly beneath. The star of the room is the balcony- a set of glass double doors open onto it and it is huge, half the size of the room itself and allowing for a probably stunning view of the city. There is a half-circle window arching over the balcony doors, more stained glass, this time trending to the deeper blues and purples. Deep blue crushed-velvet curtains are half-drawn across the glass doors, cutting down on the sunlight and the heat pouring into the room.

“Do you know Bluud?” he asks, glancing over his shoulder to Essek, who is investigating the room. There is an empty teacup and a purple pastry box on the table- the Mighty Nein have been here already.

“Know him?” Essek echoes, and glances at him blankly before realization strikes. “Ah. No, he is Marion Lavorre’s bodyguard. I try to limit conversation around him, he would recognize a Dynasty accent if he heard one.”

He has heard that minotaurs roam the wastes of Xhorhas, mindless beasts of pure brutality. Not a surprise to learn that this was only Empire propaganda, of course. However, more interestingly, it implies that Essek is not simply hiding his race- being a drow in the Menagerie Coast would draw attention and cause some trouble, being a drow in Rexxentrum is beyond considering- but rather hiding his entire identity. If Bluud is also from Xhorhas, then why would a drow bother him?

“You said you left the Dynasty for your own reasons.” He turns away, studies the embroidery on the pillows. “Can you not go back?”

Essek is terribly silent for a very long time. Bren looks over and sees he has dropped the disguise, and he is staring down at the pastry box on the table, fingers gently folding its lid shut.

“No,” he says finally, and there is a wealth of emotions in that one word, too many for Bren to count.

Because you helped us? Gave us your magic? Bren doesn’t ask. He doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t want to try and take measure of everything Essek has lost, doesn’t want to hear that he is somehow to blame.

It sits awkwardly between them for a long moment, and Essek takes a breath to say something- and then there is a knock at the door.

Bren snaps his gaze immediately to Essek- the door opens directly into the room, there is no place for him to hide from even a casual glance from their visitor, unless Bren answers it and physically blocks them from looking in. But before he can truly begin to panic, a soft accented voice calls out, “It’s just me.”

Recognition flashes across Essek’s face and he is on his feet and across the room in the time it takes Bren to realize who it must be.

The woman at the door is absolutely beautiful- a tiefling with red skin, deep red hair, pale yellow eyes, a delicate smile on a beautiful face. She is wearing a simple turquoise dress that should clash with her skin but somehow doesn’t, and her jewelry is all bronze except for one necklace, a sapphire on a silver chain. She is taller than Essek by a fair amount, probably almost Bren’s height.

Most importantly, she is cradling a small furry body against her belly. As Bren watches, Gretchen turns her head lazily and perks up as she recognizes them. She yowls loudly, freeing one leg to reach for Essek with a claws-out grab, and the tiefling gracefully leans down and drops her gently onto the floor. She twines between Essek’s ankles for a moment before beelining to Bren, chirping the whole time, and he scoops her up and presses his face into her fur. Oh, he misses having a cat around.

For a moment the woman focuses on Essek, speaking with him too quietly for Bren to hear, even only a handful of steps away. He responds, moves back to make room to let her in, and she places a comforting hand on his forearm and graces him with a reassuring smile before stepping into the room. She swings her gaze over to Bren as he lowers Gretchen from his face.

“Hello,” she says. “We haven’t met. I’m Marion Lavorre.”

“Ah, still Caleb,” Bren says, although he hesitates a moment. She hasn’t met him, or she hasn’t met him? Hard to imagine, considering the familiarity the people here have with him, that Caleb hasn’t met her before.

“Thank you for looking after Gretchen for us,” Essek says quietly.

“It’s no trouble, she’s wonderful. Much easier to care for than Jester’s dog,” Marion says with a slight twist to her lips. She shakes it off after a moment. “Well, I came to offer you an invitation to dinner, if you would like.”

“Now?” Bren asks, and Marion hesitates, sweeping a quick glance over him.

“In a bit, perhaps, after you’ve had some time to relax and clean up,” she says. “The other room you’ve been given has a washroom attached. Otherwise you’ll have to use the common one downstairs.”

A tactful way of saying Bren looks, and more importantly smells, like he’s marched through intolerable heat three times in two days, and now has cat hair stuck in places where the sweat hasn’t quite dried.

“Is anyone else joining us?” Essek asks. Marion turns that inscrutable gaze away from Bren in order to address him.

“My husband is in Port Zoon on business,” she says calmly. A very specific answer for such a broad question.

“Anyone else besides him?” Bren presses.

“No, just us,” Marion says, and looks at Bren again, a sly smile curving up the corners of her lips. “There was a team meeting called here this morning, and they all agreed to give you your space today. Something about smothering you?”

Essek shifts his weight as she talks, and Bren glances between them before nodding, for lack of any other response.

“I can have clean clothes sent up, if you’d like,” she adds, very pointedly not looking at Bren’s own clothing.

“Uh, yes. Bitte.” He had chosen these clothes yesterday morning in Rexxentrum, a Zemnian preparing for Zemnian summer heat and woefully underestimating coastal weather.

She nods and turns, slowing for a moment beside Essek, who neatly steps out of her way even though he’s not truly in it. And then she is out the door, and closing it behind her, and somehow it’s even worse for her having been here.

“Jester’s mother,” Essek says after an agonizing pause.

“Of course,” Bren murmurs. He looks down at Gretchen still in his arms. She is squinting her one eye shut and purring in bliss, chin tucked up high as he scratches under it. He swipes a thumb very gently over her empty eye socket.

“What happened to her?” he asks, a graceless and unsubtle attempt to change the subject.

“I don’t know.” Essek takes one of the chairs and pulls it away from the table and sits, turning so he is facing Bren. “I found her as a kitten in Marquet. She was already injured.”

“You found her?” Bren looks at her again in surprise. He would not have thought Essek the sort to notice an injured kitten, let alone rescue it.

“You would say a house needed a cat but never actually got one,” Essek says. “So I brought her home, and now the house has a cat.”

It sounds pragmatic on the face of it- a house needs a cat, he acquired a cat- but Bren remembers Gretchen tucked up against Essek as he lounged on the couch in the library, the way he had pet her every time her purr started to falter.

He brought her home.

Bren looks at the cat in his arms, one-eyed, one-eared, much loved and spoiled. He crosses the room and deposits her into Essek’s lap, the drow’s hands fluttering around her in surprise at the move before cradling her so she doesn’t slide right off. She purrs the whole time, of course, and stretches luxuriously, perfectly confident that she will not fall.

“I’m taking a bath,” Bren says, and picks up the other key from where Essek had put it on the table, and leaves him there with his lapful of cat.

The first room is bigger than the balcony room, but with only windows that face towards the city and offer no view of the ocean. Yasha and Beauregard spent last night here, clearly- the bedclothes have been replaced but Yasha’s leathers are folded in a neat pile on the dresser and Beauregard’s blue robe is draped over the back of one of the chairs. Bren goes into the washroom, finds clean towels and wax paper-wrapped soaps already waiting for him, and starts the water pumping. The sweat has dried his shirt to his spine, his belly, under his arms, and it peels off like a snake shedding its skin. His hair is a tangled mess that resists the fingers he drags through it, and he briefly entertains the idea of asking for scissors and chopping most of it off. It’s only a notion, though, and one he sets aside quickly- remembering Essek’s hands in his hair, the gentleness of his touch- it feels a little too much like petty revenge.

He sinks into the water, closes his eyes and lets himself drift, and takes almost ten minutes to realize that, for the first time since he met Essek, he has been left completely alone. He stares at the pile of his clothing, at the belt with his component pouch placed on top, well within grabbing range from the tub. His flight instinct is kicking in, but slowly, hesitantly.

Their guard is getting lax. He settles back in the tub, closes his eyes again.

One more day. He can give them one more day.

The staff comes with clean clothes and takes his old ones as he’s drying off. White linen shirt and cream-colored cotton trousers, an outfit that costs a lot of money to look lower class. He slings a towel over his shoulders to protect the shirt from his wet hair and heads back to the balcony room, having to knock when he encounters the locked door and realizes he did not grab the key.

Essek has cleaned up and changed as well, though Bren has a hard time imagining him braving a public washroom. No stablehand fashion here- he is in deep blue and pale silver silks, in a style similar to that worn by the people Bren had seen in this neighborhood while they’d walked here. The shirt leaves his arms bare and dips low in the collar, and Bren pushes past him and keeps his back turned as he rubs at his hair with the towel.

“Do you not like Marion’s husband?” he asks gracelessly. He is busy reviewing the memory of bare shoulders and counting every pale freckle, remembering a brush gliding through his hair and gentle hands weaving a braid together.

Essek does not offer to braid his hair, as some part of Bren had been hoping. He heads over to the bed instead, trying to shoo an unconvinced Gretchen from her spot on it. “I do not trust him, no.”

He finally budges Gretchen enough to slide something out from under her, and catches her paw when she tries to slap at it as it pulls away. He Prestidigitates calico hair off of it until it’s clean enough to put on. It is, Bren sees with disappointment, another shirt that goes over that scandalous top. It’s gauzy, nearly sheer, but it covers him from neck to wrist.

“And that doesn’t put her in a bad spot? Asking her to lie to him?”

“They both understand the need for discretion,” Essek says, picking at a cat hair his magic had missed. The overshirt is midnight-sky-blue with tiny white stitches scattered about- a starfield at night. He is, quite simply put, stunning. Bren cannot even begin to imagine what could have possibly compelled him to leave his home, his finery, his very identity behind, all to be with some farmboy wizard from the Empire.

He turns away, and finds himself looking at the table again. The teacup on it, the empty pastry box. Beauregard and Yasha’s clothing in the other room, and Marion’s use of the word smothered, which was not one Bren himself had used. The only person not present this morning would have been Fjord, who of course was watching Bren.

“You had a meeting here?” he asks quietly.

Essek pauses a long moment, and Bren looks over to find him in the middle of fastening an earring, a frown on his face as he considers Bren. “Yes,” he says finally.

“A strategy meeting?” Bren pushes.

Essek sighs. “We are aware we have been handling this situation poorly, and you are feeling overwhelmed-”

Bren turns to face him again and waits for the rest of the rehearsed explanation. Essek sees him watching, and something goes cool and flat in his eyes.

“You are not the only one feeling overwhelmed,” he snaps. Then- and it is a fascinating process to watch- his expression shutters, that mask he falls back on sliding into place. “I’m sorry. That is not your concern.”

“It’s fine,” Bren says. That itch from last night is back, apparently shared now by Essek- he wants to snap and snarl, wants to hurt these people, wants to push until something breaks. “I’m getting used to being treated like a child.”

Essek inhales sharply, his hands twitching. He wants to do something with them, but has nothing within reach save his borrowed clothing, and so they flex uselessly in empty air.

There is a knock at the door, sparing them further escalation of- whatever this is. Bren goes to answer it and finds Marion on the other side. She has dressed up as well, her dress black silk over deep gold. The sapphire is still there, an odd choice that doesn’t match the rest.

“Am I interrupting?” she asks, looking between them- sensing the tension, most likely.

“No,” they say, almost in unison- liars, both of them. They do not look at each other.

Marion considers them both for a moment. Then the shrewd look disappears from her eyes and she is a pleasant hostess once more, smiling in greeting at them. “Then shall we?”

For a moment Bren thinks Essek is about to bow out altogether. He certainly has to think about it before he steps forward, allowing Marion to usher him along. Bren follows, and closes the door behind him as he leaves the room.

She takes them across the hallway to the door marked private, which is unlocked and sitting ajar. The room inside is tastefully decorated, more color here than in the rest of the building- plush green carpet and subtly patterned wallpaper, paintings hanging here and there. One, Bren recognizes- the portrait of Jester from the magical frame in the library, the one with the red weasel on her shoulder and the many small penises.

This room has clearly been co-opted as a living area- gone is the bed, the dresser, and in its place is a couch, three chairs, a low table, a dining table that seats four. There are three places set at the dining table, and as Bren watches, Marion sweeps over quickly and claims a seat, positioning herself so she will be sitting across from one of them and Bren and Essek will be seated on either side of a corner- next to each other but not required to actually look at each other. She leans over and plucks her wineglass, already full, from the seat in the middle and swaps it out with the empty one at her new spot.

Essek takes the seat in the middle, which spares him from having to make eye contact with either of them. Bren sits across from Marion, watching her watch them.

It is, in spite of everything, clearly meant to be a casual dinner between friends- the dishware is plain instead of some delicate porcelain, the silverware is not actually silver, the bottle near Marion’s elbow is port instead of something more appropriate to dinner. It feels like an attempt to dress down, made by someone too used to luxury to understand what homely really means.

“My favorite,” she says, catching Bren looking at the bottle. “I am among friends, I can indulge in the wrong wine for the meal. Would you like some?”

Essek demures, quickly enough that he nearly speaks over the tail end of her words, and both Marion and Bren blink at this lack of manners in surprise. Bren accepts the port- he can’t let Marion drink alone, he’s already painfully aware of how this looks- and Marion rises and fetches a pitcher of ice water after she’s poured him some. Bren glances at Essek as she goes, and finds him turning his fork over and over, watching the light flash across its tines with a soft frown on his face. He seems more thoughtful than upset now, although Bren knows he can’t really read Essek well enough to distinguish truth from facade.

A knock comes from behind them, and Bren twists around to look. There is another door on the other side of the room, and Marion sets the pitcher down on the table and heads over. She opens the door and Bluud is overfilling the frame on the other side, tall enough that Bren cannot see anything above his chin. He ducks his head but Marion stands in the way, blocking his view and preventing entry, and they talk quietly for a moment before she steps back. She has a large tray in her hands now, and Bren is on his feet and crossing the room in a heartbeat, reaching out for the far end of it to prevent the dishes on it from sliding around. She does not need help- she has it impeccably balanced- but she smiles at him anyway and thanks Bluud nicely and closes the door as she turns away with a firm sweep of her tail.

“Fish stew,” she says as she heads back across the room and places the tray at the empty spot at the table. Essek, head ducked as if making himself smaller would prevent Bluud from spotting him, sits upright again and reaches out with one hand, gracefully applying magic to help with the distribution of food.

There is silence at first, when they start to eat. And it is good food- the liquid of the stew is thick and creamy and carries the mellow flavor of the fish well, and there are breadsticks twisted into elaborate spirals before being baked, and butter with herbs mixed in. It does clash with the port, which drowns out the fish flavor and makes the herb butter taste a little sour, but a glassful of water helps balance it out.

Bren remembers the first night, Essek cutting up fish in the kitchen, Gretchen begging for castoffs at his feet, and finds himself preferring that meal to this one.

“So how are you doing?” Marion asks, when the first bites are taken and there is opportunity for conversation. She looks to Bren ahead of her, then Essek to her left. “Both of you.”

Essek breaks off the end of a breadstick. “I have had better days,” he says wryly, and Marion’s expression softens with sympathy. “But I have had worse as well.” And he shrugs and pops the breadstick piece in his mouth.

“I am well,” Bren says, when that yellow gaze swings over to him. One perfectly shaped brow arches in polite disbelief, and he looks away, down at his bowl. “Well enough,” he amends.

“I know a lot has been happening recently,” she says, focusing on Bren for the moment. “And I know my daughter can be… persistent.”

Essek snorts, then ducks his head, a blush darkening the skin over his cheekbones. Marion does him the favor of ignoring that and continuing.

“If you ever need a break, there is always room for you here,” she finishes.

Bren watches her, tries to gauge her sincerity. A former courtesan, and one good enough at her trade to live like this- she is probably very good at knowing what needs to be said in any situation. Would she really shelter him even from her own daughter? Shield him from the Mighty Nein?

“Does she still stay here when they’re in port?” he asks.

“Yes. We rearranged after my husband moved in.” She nods towards the door Bluud had knocked at. “She had to give up her childhood bedroom, but now she has a balcony and a bed big enough for two.”

She is offering to let him steer the conversation, maneuver them safely away from the dangerous topic of his current mindset. He takes the chance- he needs to ask anyway, needs to prepare for what is ahead. He cannot avoid this little problem forever, after all.

“What was that like for her, growing up here?”

Marion sighs. “Lonely,” she says, sadly wistful as she regards her glass of port. “But that was my fault. She was kept a secret from my clients, so I didn’t spend as much time with her as I would have liked.”

Bren thinks of Jester in the tavern- loud, laying across the table, the center of attention and shameless about it. A lonely childhood could do that to someone, he supposes.

“She seems very friendly.”

“Oh, she is,” Marion agrees. “She makes friends with everyone now. She is,” she says with a mischievous smile, like she is imparting some delicious secret, “Essek’s best friend.”

Bren blinks in surprise, sits back and stares at Essek.

“She is,” he confirms. “She was the first of the Nein to reach out to me, and the most persistent, and she never asked anything more from me than she would ask for from any of her friends.” He pauses, twirls a loop of breadstick through his stew. “She was my first true friend.”

“Ever?” Bren asks, and Essek nods and bites at the sodden breadstick. And it is not a real surprise, not considering everything Bren suspects Essek was in the Dynasty, but still-

Marion, apparently done with her dinner, sets her bowl aside on the tray and pours herself more port. “I am proud of her,” she says, with all the fierce love a mother should have for her child. “Reaching out to someone so different from yourself is no easy thing.” She looks directly at Essek as she says it, unsubtle in her implications- the reaching had worked both ways, Essek responding to Jester’s advances of friendship. Harder still to respond to such an offer, especially for someone who openly admits to having no practice in making friends.

“They all seem very different,” Bren says. Barely a thing in common between them, really. That diversity seems to be working in their favor.

Marion hums and nods. “I was surprised, the first time Jester came home with the rest of you,” she says, regarding Bren for a moment. “But you have proven yourselves to be as good as family.”

Bren bites his lip and looks away. As good as family- one he has, however unintentionally, damaged.

Essek gestures, and his bowl rises and glides across the table to settle on the tray. “This was lovely, Marion, thank you.”

“We have dessert coming.”

“Ah, I am afraid I’m not one for sweets.” He stands up and nods to Bren, gives Marion a polite smile, and ducks away.

As soon as the door closes behind him, Marion gives a delicate sigh and turns her attention to Bren. Something in her has shifted with Essek’s leaving, some sense of caution dismissed. Bren cannot quite meet her gaze.

“You won’t hear it from them,” she says quietly. “So I will say it for all of us. I’m sorry this happened to you.”

Bren closes his eyes and looks away and says nothing.

“I know they are a lot to handle, my daughter and her friends,” she continues.

“But they mean well?” Bren mutters.

“They mean to fix it,” Marion corrects, achingly gentle. “Whether that is meaning well is up to you.”

“And if I don’t want it fixed?”

“Then you will have to advocate for yourself. They won’t ask, they will simply do what they think is right.” She sips her wine, watches Bren with a piercing stare. “Caleb is family. They’ll do what they have to to get him back.”

“Very selfish of them,” Bren observes. Very selfish of him, to stand in the way of that.

“Most people are.”

There is another knock, and Marion calls back for Bluud to come in. He does so, peering around with surprise at this sudden invitation, focusing on the empty chair as he sets down the tray he’d brought in.

“Should I take it to their room?” he asks when he’s placed their desserts in front of them and stands holding Essek’s.

Marion looks at Bren, as if he would know the best answer to that. He shakes his head- even just answering the door would require a disguise spell, and Essek is most likely in no mood for any more of that. She looks back up to Bluud and smiles at him.

“No, you may have it. Thank you, Bluud.”

He takes the tray and dips his head to Marion, flicks an ear at Bren, and ambles out. Bren focuses on his own plate, studying this dessert. A thick slice of cake, sugared fruits heaped high, all smothered in cream whipped enough to hold shape. He spears a strawberry and scoops up some cream and cake and takes a bite. The cake is firm but light, the cream sweetened. It is good together and good separate, and he does a decent job of cleaning his plate, washing the sweetness down with sips of water. They don’t speak as they eat, apparently having already said everything worth saying.

When they are done, and their dishes are stacked together for ease of cleaning, Bren sits for a good four minutes and simply stares at the far wall over Marion’s shoulder. He still has to decide how tomorrow is going to go, although that will, of course, rely largely on the Mighty Nein. Hard to imagine he’ll be granted two straight days of peace.

“Thank you,” he says abruptly, and Marion, halfway zoned out herself, blinks and comes to attention again. “For dinner. It was lovely.”

Before he can get up, Marion reaches across the table and puts her hand over his. He freezes, but she is not restraining him, only holding him at the table for a moment longer.

“You should talk to him.”

Bren looks away. He knows this, of course he does. Hearing it from someone else isn’t going to help.

“Bren.”

His head snaps around, his breath caught, and Marion regards him with a tender, almost motherly affection. She smiles, achingly sad, at whatever expression is on his face.

“You need to talk to him. This will just keep festering until you do.”

My name is Caleb, he wants to say- he knows they know but she is the first to actually say his name- but the irony chokes him, and in the end he only stares at her.

She pats his hand once and then takes hers away, and watches as he stands up. He feels gut-punched, his real name echoing in his ears.

“Talk to him,” she says, one last time, and Bren hesitates a long moment, then nods.

It is time.

Talk to Essek. As if it were just that easy.

He stays in the larger room for a long while after he leaves Marion’s, pacing and staring out the window and mostly just- being. He is tired of thinking, tired of puzzling out clues and reading too much into casual words. It is well past sunset when he finally rouses himself- it needs to be done, and better now than later.

The door to the other room is locked but Marion had given him a spare key, whose existence she had sworn Bren into secrecy. When Bren steps into the room, he is greeted by the sharp scent of sea-breeze. The room is dark except for the light spilling in through the balcony doors that have been left standing wide open.

Catha is full, moonlight shining on Essek’s dark skin and casting it in a strange color, catching his pale hair and turning it to pure starlight. He is standing instead of floating and he has wrapped his arms around himself in a way that serves to emphasize his slenderness. He ought to look small, fragile, nonthreatening. He does look small and fragile.

It takes real, genuine courage- more than he’s mustered in a long time- for Bren to approach him.

He is noticed long before he reaches him, of course, Essek’s head turning just a bit, just enough to angle his ear to the sound of footsteps behind him. He does not react in any overt way, but his arms unfold and his hands come to rest loosely at his sides- a ready position, for a wizard.

“Just me,” Bren says quietly, not wanting to risk any sort of defensive reaction, and Essek relaxes instinctively in recognition, then tenses up again in remembrance. And it bothers Bren, that second response, and then it bothers him that it bothers him- he should be grateful Essek is respectful of the lines between them, offering distance and taking no liberties. Many wizards of Bren’s acquaintance would see this vulnerability as an opportunity.

The balcony offers a breathtaking view, Bren sees as he steps out onto it- the city is built on a grade and the Chateau is tall enough that they can easily look down on the sprawl of Nicodranas and, beyond it, the blackness of the ocean. Catha is low to the horizon, its reflection a messy smear of white pouring like a drip of paint down the canvas of the water. The wind is coming off the ocean and it is cool enough to be chilly after the roasting heat of the day, and in the southwest there is a low-hanging smudge of grey with faint, occasional flashes of light- a storm, perhaps coming their way, perhaps not. Hard to tell right now.

Bren comes to a stop next to Essek, standing at the balcony railing with him, staring out over the city. Step one was approaching, now he has to actually open his mouth and make words come out.

Well. Only one way to do this.

“I have been doing nothing but listening to stories for days,” he says, glancing over in time to catch the tension subtly stringing itself through Essek’s body. “I think I would like to hear yours now.”

Essek holds himself perfectly still for seventeen seconds, then suddenly relaxes again with a deep measured exhale. His hands come together to fold around each other in front of him. “Of course.”

More silence, again, awkward and heavy between them. Bren itches to break it, to explain his request in more detail- he curbs that urge, knowing well that his clarity is not the issue.

Eventually Essek speaks, not bothering to look at Bren.

“You were right about me,” he says quietly. The wind is messing up his hair and his chin is held high and his expression is statue-perfect. Bren looks at his hands, always the busiest part of him, and doesn’t know if the perfectly calm fold of them is a good sign or bad.

“Right about what?”

“I am a traitor.” He says it calmly, matter-of-factly, then his composure cracks a little and he looks down and huffs a short laugh. “Forgive me, I have not said the words out loud in a while.”

Bren looks at him, this well-dressed, well-mannered drow, who shared his magic with the enemy and helped the Mighty Nein and cannot go home again. “Essek, if I have led you astray-”

“You had nothing to do with it,” Essek interrupts, sudden and volatile, fangs flashing as he all but snarls his words, and Bren recoils in surprise as the drow turns to him. “I made my choices long before I met you.”

A word, a gesture, and a shape melts out of the darkness in between Essek’s hands and he holds it out as if offering it to Bren. It is a strange thing, almost an orb, a shape with- he flicks his eyes across it, counts quickly- twelve sides, and a gold handle-like protrusion on either side. The shape itself is a milky, faintly glowing grey.

“A Beacon of the Luxon,” Essek says, calmer again. “A piece of the Luxon, the god my people worship. A source of light and hope in the Dynasty, and a source of dunamis.” He lets the illusion drift away from his hands and Bren reaches out to take it by instinct. His fingers pass through it and the image ripples but does not fade. “Three years before I met you, I stole two of the four Beacons in the Dynasty’s possession and I gave them to the Cerberus Assembly.”

Bren looks up from the illusion. Its glow reflects on Essek’s face, revealing a grim expression and shadowed eyes. He is aware of the magnitude of his mistake, it seems, so Bren doesn’t bother to mention it.

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to understand it.” Essek claps his hands together, and the illusion vanishes. Bren stares at the dark silhouette that is Essek, but after staring into the glow of the Beacon he can’t see much, not until his eyes readjust to the darkness. “The people of the Dynasty see them as religious artifacts. They are to be worshipped, not studied. So I gave them to people who would study them, and believed them when they told me they would share all they discovered with me. And when the Dynasty learned of the location of one of them within the Empire, they did what was necessary to get it back.”

“You started the war?” Bren asks, quiet, horrified.

“Yes.”

“That’s…” Bigger than he had thought, when he was wondering what could have driven Essek away from the Dynasty. “That is a lot.”

“It is.” His night vision has returned, and he can see the grin Essek flashes, sharp and biting. “So give me some credit, Caleb. I am perfectly capable of being a selfish bastard without needing anyone’s help to lead me astray.”

“Forgive me for assuming,” Bren says distantly.

There is a moment of silence, only the sound of the city, its nighttime revelry coming alive in the distance. Bren watches, but Essek’s nerve seems to have failed him, the strange confidence- almost a challenge- that he had wielded while shoving his treachery in Bren’s face absent now.

Finally Essek lifts his gaze to Bren’s again and says, “There should be a Teleportation circle for the Lucid Bastion in your spellbook.”

“There is,” Bren says slowly, and Essek nods and takes a deep breath.

“That will take you to Rosohna, the heart of the Dynasty. If you Teleport there,” he says. His voice is shaking. “Tell them your name, it will be enough to get you an audience with Quana Kryn at least, if not the Bright Queen herself- I do not know how you left things with her, if you still have her favor. I would think so.”

“Essek-”

“Thelyss, Essek Thelyss, former Shadowhand. They will be very keen to learn of my whereabouts.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Bren demands, almost angry now. He did not ask for this, did not choose this. He is just trying to survive and now Essek is handing him a knife and putting his own throat against the blade.

“When you first came to the Dynasty, you had one of the Beacons. You gave it to the Bright Queen in exchange for the release of a prisoner. I stood there and watched you hand over one of my Beacons to free my prisoner, and then you stayed in Rosohna in my family’s house and spent weeks undoing all of my work to cover my tracks. You were the ones who told the Bright Queen to look to her own for the thief in the first place, it never would have occurred to her. And the whole time-” he laughs, sharp and disbelieving, turning away and shaking his head and reaching up to cover his mouth with a hand. “The whole time all of you were inviting me to stay for dinner or drinks, and asking me to Teleport you to random places, and trying to convince me to share my magic with you, and coming to me any time you needed any sort of help.”

“Essek, why are you telling me this?”

“You trusted me.” Essek turns back to Bren. “You trusted me when the only thing we knew about each other was that we were using one another, and you trusted me when I admitted to being a heretic and all but confessed my sins. And when you discovered the truth, you trusted me enough to offer me a second chance.” His hands are moving now, fingers twisting knots into the hem of his borrowed shirt. “No one had ever trusted me before,” he says in a terribly quiet voice. “Not with anything real.”

Bren can barely breathe. He knows what is happening.

“You are scared and trying to run away, I was scared and collecting favors and trying to manipulate you. And now you have something real, something you could use to destroy me if you want. You do not need to be afraid of me, Caleb.” Essek’s hands are shaking, his eyes are wide and staring just past Bren. He is, Bren realizes finally, scared shitless.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you were right. We have not been treating you fairly.” Essek closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them again he has centered himself, reached for that mask he wears. It does not serve him quite as well as it has previously- his hands still tremble, his chin tucks up so he can not quite look Bren in the eye, but it’s impressive how close he manages to get to looking completely unaffected. “I am trusting you not to use this to hurt me, and perhaps it is foolish of me. But it is your choice now.”

He turns away again, turning his back to Bren, who could so easily- there is fire burning under his skin, kindled by his desperate anger- it would be so easy-

He is walking away. Bren lets him go, listens as he crosses the room and then the door closes behind him.

He drags his spellbook out, after a hundred count, when he hears nothing and sees no movement. Measures the balcony in his mind’s eye and centers himself so the circle will fit. Takes the chalk out of the pouch and sets it to the cement of the balcony floor and draws a test line across it. Draws the circle to the Lucid Bastion, says the words, watches it flare with blue, alive and ready. Looks up and sees no one still. No one around, no one to interrupt him, to stop him, to dispel the circle or pin him to the ground with a gravity cantrip.

It could all, of course, be an elaborate bluff. The Lucid Bastion could be the seat of power in the Dynasty, or it could be something else entirely. Essek has had access to Bren’s spellbook, he could have just plucked that name at random. If he is a traitor, if he did start the war, if he did sell his country’s soul to the Assembly- why would he do this? Why tell Bren exactly how to ruin what life he has, and with him, potentially the rest of the Mighty Nein as well? Is Bren really going to believe that Essek is trusting him?

He stares at the circle, stares long after the magic fades, stares until the glowing lines that have burned themselves onto his vision fades away. Still alone. Truly alone, for the first time in days.

It doesn’t have to be the Lucid Bastion. There are more options than just turn Essek in or stay here. He can use any circle in the book, even the one to the Rexxentrum house locked safely in his memory. He can just- leave. Nothing is stopping him, not right now. But-

But Ikithon is dead. And the notion that this is all just some elaborate charade does not sit well with him anymore. Some of them, Essek and Beauregard and perhaps Fjord, he could see pulling off some complicated scheme- hells, Essek has just admitted to doing exactly that to his own people. But Yasha, and Caduceus, and Veth? He has a hard time believing something like that from them. And-

And- residual instinct from Caleb, perhaps- he doesn’t want to hurt them. Not anymore than he already has.

He gets up, puts his spellbook away, and heads inside.

Essek is in their other room, sitting at a small circular table with a glass at his elbow. He looks up when Bren walks in, and Bren sees the raw relief sweep over his face.

“Plum wine,” he says, holding up the bottle he’s apparently been pouring from. His hand is shaking ever so slightly. “Imported from the Dynasty. Illegally, most likely. Would you like some?”

Bren heads over, picks up the second glass on the table and holds it out as he sits down across from Essek. He receives a healthy pour of the wine and takes a sip. It’s nice, rich and dark and heady. Nicer than yesterday’s rum, and the company is much improved- easier on the eyes, if nothing else. He swirls his expensive wine in his glass and watches it spin into a small vortex near the center. There are so many things to say, more questions to ask.

“Do you love him?” he asks. He’d opened his mouth to ask a different question entirely. Essek does not even flinch.

“Yes.”

“And he loves you?” He can’t quite bring himself to ask the question in the past tense.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure about that?” Bren lifts his head and looks at this man, really looks at him. He is impeccable as always, his stress showing itself in barely-there furrows between his brows, the first hints of lines at the corners of his eyes. He carries it mostly in his tired eyes, his tipped-down ears, his fidgeting fingers.

“As sure as I can be of such a thing.” He picks up the wine bottle again, smoothing a corner of the label down with his thumb. “I am a fugitive from two nations, and everything I know about magic, I have shared with you- with Caleb. I have nothing left to offer, save for my very presence. And that seems to be enough for him.”

Bren remembers Essek in the house that first day, the comfort he had demonstrated, the casual liberties he had taken unasked- letting himself in without asking, cooking dinner, inviting himself into Bren’s space. There is distance between them now, the contrast sharp and shocking. At the time, he had thought it a sign that he, Bren, wasn’t allowed boundaries. Now he is realizing that Essek and Caleb were comfortable enough with each other for the easy trust between them to break down those barriers, for Essek to feel he didn’t need to ask permission.

He won’t- he can’t- fake that amount of trust. But if he is going to trust any of them…

“And he forgave you?”

“It was easier than forgiving himself,” Essek says calmly, and Bren nearly flinches. “He managed both, eventually.”

Bren snorts at that, too quick for him to stifle the urge. Essek slides him a cool look before turning away again.

“So what’s the plan now?” Bren asks after a few minutes, and Essek sighs.

“Beau and I were going to try to figure out what you were doing the day before you were attacked.”

Bren drinks his wine. “And if I didn’t want to know?”

The bottle thumps onto the table a little harder than necessary, and Bren looks up to find Essek staring at him, expression dark.

“Then we will not tell you. But someone took Caleb away from me,” he says, dangerously soft. “I intend to find out who.”

Bren nods in acquiescence and looks away. He has been thinking of Caleb as a fragment of himself, a dead end offshoot on the path of his life. But, of course, to Essek Caleb was everything, and Bren is nothing but a reminder of what he’s lost. It is not his place to tell Essek he is not allowed to avenge his lover.

His glass is empty already. Bren picks up the bottle, slowly as Essek’s fingers are still loosely cradling it, and pours himself another glass. When he puts the bottle back down, his fingers leave smears of glittery blue chalk dust. Essek reaches up and smudges one chalkprint away with his thumb.

“Thank you,” he says quietly.

“There’s always tomorrow.”

“Yes, there is.” And Essek pours himself some more as well, and leaves the bottle on the table where Bren can reach it.

They finish it off together.

Chapter Text

“Hey.”

Something is poking him. Bren rolls over to escape it. It is- give it a moment for his brain to catch up- barely six o’clock, and he had a late night.

“Go away.”

“No.” Another poke. A stick?

“What do you want.” He’s pretty sure they’re both speaking Zemnian.

“You awake?”

He turns his head, finally, and shoves his hair aside to squint at Beauregard. And it is a stick she was poking him with- a staff, rather, one she now has rested against the ground.

“Leave him alone, Beau,” Essek says from somewhere else. Gretchen is chattering at him, Bren can hear her in the distance. He shifts a little, trying to see if he can find them.

“Veth said- look at me, man- Veth said to tell you not to choose your spells today until she’s had a chance to talk to you, okay?”

Bren looks up at her again and blinks. That was- words. Maybe they would make sense later.

“Are you done?”

“Eh,” Beauregard shrugs and steps away. “I told her I’d tell him, not that I’d make sure he understood, so good enough. Ready?”

Essek confirms, and the two move away, talking to themselves. Bren closes his eyes again and buries his face into the pillow-

-the door slams loudly behind them, and he jerks awake. Gretchen, curled against his back, startles as well, and he sits up to see her with her good ear pinned back and her eye wide as she looks around.

Bren shoves a hand through the tangled mess of his hair and looks over at the door, half-considering going out there and asking if that was really necessary-

It comes again, a sharp and sudden crack. Gretchen kicks off and leaps from the bed before spinning to dart under it. Bren turns and looks behind him, and past the half-pulled curtains he can see a heavy grey sky through rain-splattered glass. Ah. Thunder. The storm from last night came to land after all.

It is past nine now, Beauregard and Essek hours gone. Bren sighs and slides out of bed, dropping briefly to one knee to look under it. One eye stares back at him, still wide with fear. He reaches out, tries to coax her, and she grumbles at him. He leaves her there, not able to do much to help her.

He is in the balcony room, where he had come back to after the wine and the long silence that had come with it. He is still not entirely sure what he thinks of Essek, now. Nothing of what he had learned last night fit the image he had been building of the other wizard. But also, now that his own emotions are steadier, he can understand the courage that last night had required, and he appreciates the risk Essek had taken. Certainly there were safer ways to try to reach out to Bren, to calm him down and convince him they meant no harm, but Essek placing his own life in Bren’s hands was by far the most efficient. Now Bren can repay any harm they inflict upon him, intentional or accidental, on one of their own.

He heads into the other room to take advantage of the washroom, and finds his now-clean clothes folded neatly on the bed. He changes after he’s done freshening up, and heads back into the balcony room and spends another five minutes trying to coax Gretchen out so he can at least put her in the other room, and leaves when all that earns him is swatted fingers.

No sign of Marion, no sounds coming from her room when he pauses at her door, no Bluud in the hallway. Bren goes downstairs, and takes a moment when he reaches the second floor landing. Squares his shoulders, takes a deep breath, continues down.

Veth looks up when he approaches the table she has staked out. There are signs of others having been there, dirtied plates stacked in front of one of the seats, several cups pushed out of the way, but for now it’s just her. She pushes the chair next to her out in invitation, and Bren sits.

“I ordered breakfast for you,” she says, and he hums in acknowledgment. One of the glasses is full of water, apparently untouched, actual ice chunks floating in it. He takes it and drains half of it in one go- between the port at dinner and the wine afterward, he had been a shade past tipsy when he went to bed, and is still a little muzzy now.

“Danke,” he mutters when he sets the glass down. She is watching him anxiously, but not saying anything yet, so he just looks around the room and waits.

A server brings him a plate after only a few minutes, thick fluffy waffles with two fried eggs and crispy bacon strips, a small jug of sweet syrup on the side. It’s too much first thing in the morning, especially for a body that can’t decide if it’s hungover or not, but Veth is watching him with worried eyes so he pours syrup over the waffles and cuts into one and makes a game go at it.

“First of all,” she says, when she apparently can’t take the tension anymore. Bren sips at his water and watches her gather herself. “I wanted to apologize for- everything.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“It is,” she insists. “We’ve been handling this- not very well. And I’m supposed to be better at that, I’m supposed to be the one who knows how to handle you.”

That word. Bren shifts a bit in his chair. “Ja, well, circumstances change,” he says. “Maybe we need to focus less on what was and more on what is.” Good advice for all of them.

Veth sucks in a deep breath and Bren looks away, not sure what emotion is going to be on her face and not brave enough to find out. He pokes an egg with his fork, watches the yolk rupture and spill out across the plate.

“You’re right,” she says finally. “But still. I’m sorry for treating you like a child.”

Ah, and there it is. “Did Essek tell you about that?”

“No?” She peers up at him in confused suspicion. She gestures to the stack of plates. “Marion mentioned it this morning. All Essek said was that we needed to stop treating you like a flight risk.”

Oh. Bren blinks at her. Did Essek really not tell them…?

“Did you and Essek talk or something last night?” she asks.

He didn’t. Bren shoves a piece of waffle in his mouth and shakes his head and looks away. Hard to say why- he didn’t think they needed to know, didn’t know it would be worth mentioning, was worried about their reaction- but it seems Essek has not told the others what he had done last night. Not only gambling his own welfare, but not even telling the rest of the Nein that he has done so. It would almost be courageous, if Bren didn’t suspect that self-loathing had played a large part in that decision.

He is starting to understand what Essek saw in Caleb- and, more importantly, what Caleb saw in Essek.

Another crack of thunder rumbles overhead, loud and close enough to send the chandeliers rattling faintly. They both look up, as though the ceiling has anything to tell them, and Veth sighs.

“Well, one of the suggestions for today was to hit the beach,” she says, and sneers at the ceiling, as if the current weather exists solely to spite her. “Probably not a good idea now. Did Beau talk to you earlier?”

“She did.”

“Can I make a recommendation?” She reaches over and thumps a fist against his right arm, indicating the spellbook tucked into its holster underneath. “Polymorph.”

“To be cast on…?” Are they going somewhere? Should he choose other combat-worthy spells?

“Yourself.” She smirks at whatever expression he makes. “No, trust me, it’s fine. You- Caleb does it all the time. He likes being dumb.”

Bren unholsters his spellbook and puts it carefully on the table, opens it and flips pages until he reaches Polymorph. One of Caleb’s favorites, he remembers thinking- the wear at the edge of the page, a thumb folding the paper up and down until it is soft and supple like old leather, certainly speaks to it.

“Something small,” Veth continues. “But not like a bug, that’s too dumb. Jester did a moth once and spent the whole hour chewing on a curtain.”

It’s only an hour, and easy enough to return to his true form, if something should happen. He closes his book and tucks it away and pokes at a waffle with his fork. “Are you planning on staying?”

“I wasn’t,” Veth says. “I have to get home, help Yeza with the shop. We normally run it together and this has-.” She shakes her head, and Bren feels an ugly twist of guilt and looks away. He thinks again of her offer, and wonders how sincere she was, if she really would tear her family apart for him.

Terrifying, how far these people will go for him, for Caleb. For both.

“You know how to get around the city now?” she asks.

“Uh, ja.” He might not have the most efficient route, but he can get to and from all the places that seem important to the Mighty Nein.

“Okay, well, in the interest of not smothering you,” she begins, and he fights off the urge to roll his eyes and sigh. She is the mother of an almost-teenager, that much is very clear. “Fjord and Jester and Cad are coming here for lunch, so if you want to be- not here, when they get here, you can go somewhere else.” She runs out of steam at the end there, and grimaces at her own words.

Bren considers it for a moment- Jester scares him in one way, Caduceus in an entirely different way, and Fjord’s not going to be able to keep both of them on a leash. But he doesn’t feel any overwhelming urge to bolt, either. He’s not thrilled with the idea of being around Jester again, trying to deal one-on-one with her, but he feels steadier now, in a stronger place than he was last time. Marion’s offer runs through his mind anew- he supposes he’ll get to see if she really meant it, when she offered him a safe haven.

Veth is watching him again, waiting for some kind of a response, so he nods and murmurs a soft thanks. She is trying, which is more than he thought he’d be able to say for any of them.

“We made Jester promise not to cast Restoration,” she adds, which is the opposite of the reassurance she probably intended it to be.

“Is she a cleric?” he asks. He’d been a bit unsure of that, after his one- half of one?- conversation with Jester.

“Oh, yeah. Kind of? We found out her god is actually an archfey but he still gives her powers like she’s his cleric. We have Cad and the Wildmother if we ever need real divineness.” She sneaks a hand out as she’s talking and steals a slice of bacon, and Bren pretends not to notice. He’s never been thrilled with bacon, and now between her and Beauregard, it seems the burden of eating it has been alleviated. “But don’t actually say that around her, that just gets her worked up.”

An archfey. Every new thing he learns about these people- he thought the bar couldn’t get any higher than Essek betraying his nation and his god, but apparently it can. Unlike every other revelation that has come before, though, this one does not scare him, send him into a panic of desperate calculation, trying to figure out what threat it posed to him and how he could escape from it.

Fuck it all if Essek’s gamble hadn’t worked.

“Anyways,” Veth adds, and Bren realizes that he’s been poking at the waffles on his plate with no intention of eating it, just shoving it around to disguise his lack of interest. “I have to get going, I’m late already. But remember- polymorph.”

She hesitates, but Bren says nothing, so she slides down from her chair and pads away. And Bren is left sitting alone at the table. The server has been appearing periodically, sweeping the dirty dishes away, and Bren lets her take his plate when she returns for the last time. It’s early enough that there’s no one else around- the Lavish Chateau would be a very expensive brunch spot.

So he drinks his water, and heads back upstairs, checking once more for Bluud- still nothing- and then on Gretchen- still hiding and grumpy.

Then he goes into the larger room and sits down on the bed and takes his spellbook out again and flips to Polymorph. Reads it over, dips into his component pouch for a caterpillar cocoon. He pauses for a moment, turning the cocoon over and over in his fingers, feeling the hard fragile shell. It is a temporary spell, only lasts an hour, and he can change back at any time. It’s fine.

He puts his spellbook aside and sighs, presses a thumb to the cocoon and feels the skin of it start to give way under his grip- says the word- thinks cat-

And then.

He stretches, first- back legs, back, front legs, big shake. His fur is striped and long and his tail stands tall behind him. The ground is soft and squishy and he digs his claws in, rumbling with pride when they stick and drag at the fluffy ground. They are sharp and dangerous, he is sharp and dangerous.

The ground has a ledge- bed, he was sitting on the bed- and he looks over. The next-ground-down is far away, his length and more. He leaps, lands lightly. Looks around, whiskers out and ears up. Exploring.

Over to the table, very high up- cats can jump this- he crouches, prepares, shifts his angle and prepares again- leaps, and the table wobbles under his weight. Nothing interesting on it- he sniffs- tea spilled once, gone sour now with age. Butter-smell in another place- he licks, can’t taste it. Loses interest.

On the chair near the table, a blue draping. The spark of him that is left, the human mind that is filtering through the predator-sharp instinct drive of a cat’s brain, calls to the fore an image of Beauregard wearing this. Beauregard getting angry, threatening him, poking him with a stick. The part of the cat that is still Bren understands that there are reasons behind her actions, but the part of Bren that is just a cat understands these actions to be a challenge.

He leaps onto the seat of the chair, sits back on his haunches. Puts both front paws on the robe, sticks his claws in, pulls down. The fabric is sturdy and does not tear, but his claws drag little threads loose. So he does that instead, again and again, until he’s pulled up dozens of them. Some of them stir in the air and he snaps his head around- movement- stares. Bites at one, just to see. Pulls, and the thread comes away with him.

don’t eat it, the human-self thinks distantly, and the cat spits out the thread as best he can.

A sound- voices? He jumps down, follows the noise to the door. Human-Bren had left it closed and locked, and the cat has no hope of opening it. He sticks a paw underneath anyways, testing to see if there is room for him to squeeze under the door. Trying to trick whatever is out there into coming within range so he can grab it. His paws are full of sharpness but he has that sheathed, if a small thing is curious enough it might get close.

Nothing. The voices are on the other side of another door. He could call to them, they would hear him, but he does not- Human-Bren does not want to attract that kind of attention. Cat-Bren doesn’t care, and only refrains because he has better things to do.

He wanders over to the bed again, next, and leaps up onto it- it takes almost no preparation at all this time. It filters through, once he’s on the bed, that this is the room Yasha and Beauregard would have had their loud sex in, but the cat is more removed from the emotion of it and less disturbed by thought. Besides, his nose picks up no hint of anything of that nature- soap, clean fabric, a recent memory of water from being laundered. And, near the pillows, another scent- sharp biting ozone that his human self recognizes as magic-scent, sandalwood, plum wine, something his cat-self recognizes but cannot define more clearly than fellow night-creature.

Essek.

Human-Bren is conflicted, still. Cat-Bren is not, and thinks only of soft hands and soft words, enough trust for the other to roll over and show his belly. He settles down on the pillow, tucks his tail around his toes, and purrs to himself. There is enough awareness still for him to know not to fall asleep. There is also a sense of time passing, but the exact numbers are slippery, and he resigns himself to being caught off-guard when his hour is up.

And he is- he is aware that it’s been a while, starts to think that it should be soon- and then he’s human again, and curled embarrassingly around a pillow on which his erstwhile lover slept last night. He rolls over so he’s laying closer to the middle of the bed, still width-wise so his feet dangle off one side and his head off the other.

Well. That had been- educational. Not that Caleb was interested in being dumb, as Veth had implied. But there is a certain straightforwardness to such a mind, with not enough room for panic, or what-ifs, or endless machinations. A much simpler view of a world he is used to being so complicated. A heady escape from his own overly busy mind.

It is after eleven o’clock, now. Veth hadn’t said when the others would be getting here, only that they were coming for lunch. Bren’s spellbook doesn’t include any sort of communication spell outside of Message, so he can’t even Send to them and ask.

Thunder rumbles again, still close, but at least less explosive than before. Bren sits up and turns so he can look out the window. Nicodranas does not look nearly as fine in the rain, all its bright colors dulled by the cloudy gloom. He gets up and walks over, and can feel the heat still baking in through the glass as he approaches. Cooler than yesterday, perhaps, but still hot out there, and probably a humidity nightmare with the rain.

The problem is, after so long running scared, fighting to survive just one more day- now he’s safe, and comfortable, and has food and shelter and resources enough to provide for himself. He has time, now, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore. He hasn’t had the luxury of idle hours to fill how he chooses since… ever, really.

He can stay here- Marion mentioned last night that Jester still has a room in her quarters, so there will be no need for her or Fjord to come here. He can go to the ship, although he doesn’t think he can tolerate another day of that. He can even head to the Brenatto’s shop. He feels restless, even after his hour as a cat- he feels like he is chafing at the end of a leash, this time one he put on himself. So now, with so many options before him, it becomes a question of, what does he want?

What he wants is irrelevant, what he needs is to better understand these people around him, and that means sticking around for lunch.

He watches the rain for a few minutes more, then turns and heads out of the room, and goes downstairs to wait.

There does seem to be something of a lunch rush in the Lavish Chateau’s tavern. Part of it seems to be weather-driven- Bren watches several people duck in, holding cloaks above their heads as shields, and claim a table only to sip at wine while they talk amongst themselves. Some personal, some business, mostly just the obscenely wealthy idling their hours away. They clearly don’t know what to think of Bren, who makes no effort to blend in. His clothes are clean now, but still clothing more appropriate to a professor in the Empire than Menagerie Coast wealth, and he sits at a table with a glass of water and the romance book Yasha had given him with a wink yesterday when she was done reading it. Shameless smut is not his style, but it’s better than nothing.

He does wonder at it, as he sits there and waits- even now, at his most respectable, it’s doubtful he would have been allowed through the door. Were it not for that one chance meeting in a pub in Trostenwald, his life would be- not completely different, but worse- still exactly the same.

Then, at nearly one o’clock, the door opens and a riot of color bursts in, Fjord muted in blacks and deep reds, Jester in blue and green, Caduceus eye-catchingly pink as always. Fjord seems unconcerned with the rain, and merely pushes a hand through his hair to scoop it off his face. He spots Bren at the table and lifts an eyebrow in question, and Bren shuts his book and sits up and jerks his chin to indicate for them to come over.

Jester takes off her cloak and hands it to a server, blithely oblivious to the face the man is making as Caduceus gathers the thick bulk of his long hair in one hand and wrings it out. She has spotted Bren, and is already making her way over, and Bren finds himself tensing instinctually. The promise she apparently made to the others feels dangerously flimsy at the moment.

“Hi, Cay-leb,” she carols as she gets to the table. Thankfully she keeps her hands to herself, though they’re twitching like she wants to swoop down and hug him again. Fjord comes along after her at a lazy stroll, mostly dry again and still removing water from his tunic with little finger-flicks of magic. “Are you feeling better today?”

“Ja,” he says quietly. It is a small table, built to seat five or six if they’re willing to get cozy. Jester takes the seat across from him and fusses with her hair a little. She has silver caps on the very ends of her horns, and a small silver bell hanging from each cap, every movement of her head chiming quietly.

She looks up at him, eyes big and earnest. “That’s good,” she says, and hesitates, teeth catching at her lower lip. Clearly she has been instructed on how to behave around him, and doesn’t know what to do with herself now. Bren finds himself wanting to tell her to be as loud as she wants- she won’t scare him, not this time.

“Keeping busy?” Fjord asks, nudging the book Bren had been reading as he pulls his own chair out and sits down, edging slightly around the table so he’s closer to Jester than Bren. She leans into him for a moment, her shoulder pressing to his bicep, like she wants the physical reassurance that he’s there.

“Ja. We had dinner with your mother-in-law last night,” Bren says, giving in to the stupid urge to turn the book over so the half-naked half-orc on the cover is visible. Fjord does a double-take as he recognizes the book, then pointedly looks away, an olive-toned flush on his face.

Jester leans forward a little. “Isn’t she great? If you ever need anyone to talk to, she’s really good at helping people- wait.” A pause, as she considers the instructions she has so clearly been given, then visibly decides to discard them. “Who’s we? You and Essek?” She sing-songs the name, her grin rapidly growing.

Bren senses danger too late and hesitates, his silence already an answer, and Jester’s grin nearly consumes her entire face.

“She absolutely is gonna try to set you up with your own boyfriend, just so you know,” Fjord says casually.

“No I won’t,” Jester protests immediately. “It wouldn’t be fair to Essek.” She sits back in her chair, sitting up as high as possible, though she doesn’t have much to work with in the height department. “Cad! Are you eating lunch with us?”

Bren looks over his shoulder and finds Caduceus heading their way. His hair is still limp and wet, the bulk of it weighing down his ears, and he’s dripping rainwater as he goes. He stops at the empty chair left for him but makes no move to sit. “Think I’m just gonna head upstairs for a while, if that’s okay.”

“Sure,” Fjord says, sitting forward himself. “Should we send something up for you or are you coming back down?”

Caduceus looks at Jester, and because Bren looks at her as well, he sees the moment of communication, the subtle widening of her eyes and tilt of her head. It’s not much, but clearly the two clerics are on some sort of shared wavelength, for Caduceus just blinks and looks away from her to Fjord. “Actually,” he says. “I think I might need your help with something, if you would?”

Fjord is halfway out of his seat before he remembers and catches himself. He looks between Bren and Jester, focusing more on Bren. “If that’s alright with you two.”

Bren can give Jester the same courtesy he was giving the others, and suffer through being alone in her presence. He nods, and Fjord nods back and stands properly.

“All right,” he says wryly, seemingly fully aware that he is being pulled away for nothing, “what’d you need?”

They wander away, chatting amiably, and Bren looks to Jester. She’s watching them go with fondness writ large across her face. Then she swings her gaze back to Bren, and her expression shifts to something stubborn, and Bren regrets sending Fjord away.

“Okay, but did you actually talk to Essek?” she asks, like they were in the middle of a conversation and merely got interrupted.” ‘Cause Beau says you two have been all awkward.”

“Yes, we talked,” Bren says, and then asks the question he has been holding onto ever since he woke up, waiting to be in the presence of someone who cared enough about Essek to answer honestly. “Are they safe? Going to Rexxentrum?” A fugitive from two nations, Essek had called himself. Bren doesn’t know what he did to get himself blacklisted in the Empire, bar being from the Dynasty, but he had also admitted to working with the Cerberus Assembly and is now living with someone who appears to be extremely interested in tearing the Assembly down, which was likely to have caused some umbrage. And now he is walking into the serpent’s lair with no one but a grouchy monk at his side.

“Oh sure, they’re safe,” Jester says with a shrug. “I mean, Essek probably thinks he’s not, he doesn’t think he’s safe anywhere. But Beau won’t let anything happen to him, don’t worry.”

A server comes by then, asking what drinks would Miss and Mister Lavorre want, did they intend to eat lunch. Jester’s demeanor shifts a bit when she’s talking to him, her voice lowering a bit in timbre. She seems closer to the Chateau’s typical clientele, and when the server sweeps away, armed with their lunch orders, Bren watches as Jester relaxes again and melts back into herself. She catches him watching, and offers him a smile that tries to be shameless.

“I don’t know the serving staff here, they switch up too much. I only know Mama’s staff.” Her way of saying she feels out of place here too, Bren supposes, but all the worse for her, who grew up here.

She waits, and for a moment Bren wonders if that was it- but then the server is back with their drinks, more water for Bren and milk for Jester, something dark and frothy for Fjord. Jester waits until he’s gone again before she leans forward once more.

“So are you doing okay? For real?”

“I’m fine,” Bren says. He’s been saying that a lot the last few days, with increasing sincerity.

“ ‘Cause I know a lot’s been happening, and we thought it would be fixed real fast so we weren’t doing great at handling it at first.”

Her hands are curled around the edge of the table, fingers flexing like she wants to reach out to him. If she does- Restoration is cast by touch- he will flinch away from her. They both seem to know this, so she keeps her hands to herself.

“I’m fine,” he says again.

She studies him, surprisingly intense, then sits back a little. “Okay,” she says, like she is allowing him this answer instead of believing it.

Is that really why she had Caduceus take Fjord away? To ask him that? Bren waits, but there is nothing else. For once, he cannot stomach the silence his companion is offering.

“Was it really necessary to banish Fjord?”

“Mmm, probably not,” she allows, picking up her milk and taking a delicate sip. Yasha had tried to order her milk at the bar by the docks, Bren recalls, and hadn’t asked for a different drink instead when the bartender proved stubborn. “I kinda just wanted to see if you’d let us be alone together. You don’t have to be afraid of me, Caleb.”

The second person who has said that to him in twenty-four hours. If she admits to treason next, Bren is going to have to call it quits for the day.

“I can tell him to come back,” she offers.

“That’s really not-”

She gestures, just a quick flick of her wrist. “Hey Fjord, me and Caleb are done talking and you can come back now. Oh, and I ordered you fish wraps so if you don’t want that then you need to tell.” She doesn’t finish, just snaps her mouth shut, eyes fixed in a blank stare at nothing.

“Thirty-two,” Bren mutters, mostly to himself. Jester is listening to Fjord’s response.

“Okay,” she says finally, like he can hear her. She refocuses on Bren. “He’s coming back,” she reports, like he hadn’t been sitting right there for the whole thing.

Bren sighs, bemused, and resigns himself to wait. He watches as Jester sips her milk, then holds the glass down to her shoulder, tilting it dangerously far so it almost spills on her dress. For a moment he’s about to just accept that- the Mighty Nein have done far weirder things than this- but then a small red head pokes out from under her hair, tiny black nose sniffing at the milk.

“Hey, Sprinkle,” Fjord says as he comes over. He looks at Bren as he sits down. “Have you met the world’s most traumatized weasel yet?”

“He’s not traumatized, Fjord,” Jester protests instantly, their words and tone both sounding well-worn, like this is an old road they’ve been down many times before. She puts the glass down and scoops a hand under the weasel’s belly and presents the animal to Bren. “Here. Say hi to Sprinkle.”

It is… a weasel. Shockingly red back, white belly, green ribbon done in a bow around its neck. It looks a little skinny, and its coat is kind of uneven like it’s lost patches of fur that have only recently grown back in, but nothing about this weasel says traumatized.

“Guten tag, Sprinkle,” Bren says seriously.

Jester and Fjord both peer around, looking intently at the weasel as though they’re waiting for something. Nothing happens, so Jester blows out a disappointed sigh and tucks the weasel back onto her shoulder.

“Sometimes Artie talks to me through Sprinkle,” Jester tells him. Bren can only imagine the look on his face, after that display, is quite something.

“...ah.” He glances at Fjord, gets a slight shake of the head as the other man sips at his drink. Pauses, gathers his courage and ignores his common sense. “And who is Artie?”

“Artie’s my friend!” she chirps. Fjord closes his eyes and sighs, slumping back in his chair, clearly resigned to whatever is about to happen. “He’s my oldest friend a-a-and,” she reaches back into a pouch on her belt and produces a piece of paper folded back on itself to make a rudimentary booklet- “he’s so cool. He’s always looking for new followers too! Caleb was never interested but who knows, you might be.” And she hands over the booklet with a flourish, and Bren reluctantly takes it.

On the cover is an image of the wooden symbol hanging from Jester’s belt, an open arched doorway through which a dirt road meandering into the distance is visible. The Traveler is written over the arch in over-embellished font. Bren opens it and skims it, reading about sowing the seeds of delightful chaos. On the back is a well-done drawing of a strange man, his eyebrows and ears both dramatically long. The archfey Jester worships, most likely.

“I’m his High Priestess,” Jester brags, and Bren looks up at her again. “We’re always looking for more worshippers, Artie is so much more fun than the regular gods.”

“They’re a cult,” Fjord adds. “We’re not even pretending anymore, it’s a cult.”

Bren folds the booklet shut and slides it across the table. “No, thank you.”

“Are you sure?” Jester presses, and shrugs when he smiles and nods. “Okay, it’s your loss. He can teach you really cool magic that even wizards can’t do.”

“How did you even meet an archfey?” Bren asks.

“I knew him when I was a kid,” Jester says, giving a soft, fond smile. “He was just a kid too, we grew up together. We used to play pranks on people and get in trouble- he kept me company when Mama was working and I was lonely.”

“Heads up,” Fjord says suddenly, sitting up in his chair properly. A moment later the server deposits two plates on the table, then disappears and reappears barely a minute later with two more. One goes in front of Bren, the other is held aloft as the server looks at Jester.

“Room 302,” Fjord says, pointing at the fourth plate, and the server nods and sweeps away again, presumably to go take lunch up to Caduceus.

Jester had ordered for all of them, and had gotten them more of the wraps Yasha had brought to the ship the day before. This time, they come with several small bowls each filled with a dipping sauce. Bren investigates them first, and Fjord dips one of his own wraps into the bowl on his plate containing a thick green sauce and says, “Too spicy for you.”

“Don’t tell him that, I wanted to see him try it,” Jester hisses at her husband, who shrugs and takes a bite of his wrap.

Bren tests the other sauces, an oil-based one with crushed leaves suspended through it and a cream-based white sauce. As expected, they much improve the bland fish and rice wrap.

“So why did you leave Nicodranas, then?” he asks.

Jester makes a confused noise around her mouthful of food, then an understanding noise. She swallows with too little chewing and washes it down with some milk.

“Well,” she says, drawing the word out. “I played a prank on one of Mama’s clients, and he really didn’t like it and threatened to have me killed. Mama was worried that he might actually try, so I left.”

“And went to Port Damali?” Bren asks, remembering Fjord’s own story.

“Yeah. I never left home before then and I wanted to see the world, right? So I went to Port Damali, which people said was the biggest city in the Menagerie Coast, and then Fjord and I met up, and we decided to go to the Empire.” She shrugs, takes another, more manageable bite of fish wrap. “I wasn’t really going anywhere, I was just, you know. Wandering.”

“We were all just kind of wandering at that point,” Fjord says. He’s looking a little sweaty around the collar, and sneaks a sip of Jester’s milk while she’s focused on her food. He does not, Bren notes, eat the green sauce again.

They eat their lunch like that, Fjord and Jester sharing fragments of stories, some Bren has heard, some he has not. Jester amiably hogs the spotlight, chattering about nothing of any real consequence, and Bren and Fjord let her talk. She’s easy to talk to, easy to listen to, when she’s not trying to solve him like a puzzle.

She does beg off, when the food is gone and the conversation is running thin, citing that she needs to change into dry clothes and also go hug her mother, who probably misses her so much. Bren watches her go, pushing his own last half-eaten fish wrap around his plate.

“Feeling better?” Fjord asks, when he’s done studying Bren.

“I haven’t been feeling bad, I don’t know why everyone keeps asking me things like that,” Bren protests quietly. Fjord uhm-hmms but says nothing, just leans back in his chair and catches the eye of the bartender on duty and gestures with his now-empty glass.

Thunder rumbles, still loud even inside, and Bren glances at the ceiling and sighs.

“Yeah,” Fjord agrees. “Not much to do today, no idea how you’ve been keeping yourself busy.”

That is a blatant lie- the romance book has migrated firmly to Bren’s side of the table, once again flipped over so Fjord doesn’t have to see the cover.

“Veth recommended Polymorph so I spent an hour as a cat,” Bren says.

“That’s good, that’s about your speed,” Fjord says, and hands off his empty glass as the bartender brings him a new, full one. He is clearly ensconced in his spot, not about to intrude on mother-daughter time, and Bren is back to feeling idle again.

There are more people in the tavern area now, every table filled and some smaller parties doubled up. The way the server is glancing at them, it won’t be long before even dropping Marion’s name won’t guarantee them privacy. Fjord seems the affable sort who will get along fine with random people, but Bren itches uncomfortably at the thought of polite conversation with strangers, and finds himself stealing glances at the stairs.

“Go on,” Fjord says abruptly, and Bren looks at him. “You’re not abandoning me, I don’t mind. I know how you are around strangers.”

Bren stands up, and glances over his shoulder to where Fjord is looking and sees a small crowd in the main entryway. The server is openly eyeing them now.

“See you later,” Fjord adds. “Say hi to Cad for me.”

“Uh, ja. Later.” And Bren flees, leaving Fjord to whatever fate may befall him, taking to the safety of the private rooms upstairs.

He finds Caduceus in the balcony room.

He pauses in the doorway, although he knows for sure that the firbolg heard him unlock the door and open it. But he’s sitting at the table, turned so he can watch out the balcony doors as rain lashes the city, and one ear flicks back to acknowledge Bren but the rest of him doesn’t move, so Bren gets to decide for himself if he wants to come in. It’s not an easy choice- Caduceus seems prone to quiet too, but unlike Yasha or Essek or even Veth, it’s not an easy quiet to share in. Something about him puts Bren on edge, a little.

And then there is a noise, a soft chirp, and Gretchen peers out from under the table, where she is laying in Caduceus’ lap. She bumps her head up onto the underside of the table and chirps again, a little louder. Still wide-eyed, whiskers on full alert, but out of her hidey-hole and asking for comfort, and Bren doesn’t have the heart to deny her. He comes over to the other chair and barely has the time to sit down and pull it in before there’s claws hooking into his trouser leg, Gretchen pulling herself gracelessly up as she doesn’t have the room to jump.

“You got her out?” he asks, putting a hand on her back as she tucks into a loaf in his lap, purring but still tense as a spring.

“I talked to her a little, yeah,” Caduceus says. Free from the anchor that is a scared cat, he stands up, brushes some fur off, and heads over to the bed, where he had left his stuff in a pile. He returns, not with the tools to make tea, but his staff in hand, and pulls his chair away from the table before he sits so he has the space to lean the staff against his knee at an angle so he can gently poke at the shelf mushrooms growing near the top.

Bren combs his fingers through Gretchen’s fur until she’s relaxed a little and watches Caduceus tend to- his garden, he supposes. He kind of regrets, now, not letting Essek take them to the Blooming Grove that day. It would have been interesting, if nothing else.

“So how are you, Mister Caleb?” Caduceus asks. Not looking at Bren, just making conversation. Very casual.

“Fine,” Bren says immediately. Pauses, allows himself a moment’s grace to think. “Better.”

“You and Essek talked?” Caduceus lifts his chin, blinking at Bren over the body of his staff when Bren hesitates too long. Why is everyone so interested in asking that, he wonders. He knows why. Still annoying. “You seem calmer. And Essek’s always been pretty good at talking you down, and you him.”

Down from what, he wants to ask, but- well. It’s pretty clear.

“And how are you doing? How did your Commune go?” he asks, not willing to answer, fully aware that Caduceus already knows.

“Oh, it went fine.” Something small and green runs out of one of the knots on the staff, darting over Caduceus’ fingers. A beetle, with a metallic green shell that iridesces pink when the light catches it. “It was how I figured.”

Bren combs his fingers through Gretchen’s fur, plucking gently at a few tangles. She is no longer purring, but calmer under his steady strokes. The thunder is quietening, the storm finally starting to move away.

“Which was?”

Caduceus rolls his staff aside so it’s no longer between them and fixes that piercing gaze on Bren. “Do you mind if I ask a question? You’re not going to want to hear it, and you’re definitely not going to want to answer it, but it needs asking, I think.”

Bren looks at him askance. He has trapped himself- walked into the room, sat down at the table and allowed a scared cat on his lap. This is entirely his doing.

“Uh, sure, why not.”

“Do you want to be Caleb Widogast again?”

Bren closes his eyes. Ah. Caduceus was very much correct in his assessment of Bren’s opinion of that question.

“Are we considering what I want now?” he asks, feeling slightly bitter about that one, still. “Because you said, when we first met-”

“I said there was more than one you to consider,” Caduceus interrupts gently. “Not that you weren’t worth considering.”

Not something supported by the words or actions of the others- but then, they have lost someone dear to them, and it’s clearly harder for some of them to think of him as his own person, and not merely an obstacle to them getting their friend back. And some of them are getting better about it, adjusting their thinking as Bren is adjusting his own.

He looks at Gretchen, who swivels her head back to look up at him in return. She trills at him, curious, and he smooths the fur between her ears.

“Do you think I somehow… resisted your spell?” he asks quietly. It’s not possible- you can’t resist a Restoration.

He remembers divinity going sour, magic curdling like milk as it tried to drown him. He couldn’t have done that, no mere mortal could have just- refused to be healed.

Could he?

“Well, something went wrong, and it wasn’t on my end,” Caduceus says calmly. “But I don’t really know for sure what happened. I use magic, I don’t know it. Not like you do.”

Bren looks away, out the balcony doors to the city outside again. The ocean is slate grey, a perfect match for the sky above it, the horizon blurred by rain so it’s impossible to tell where the sky ends and water begins.

He is not answering Caduceus’ question. He doesn’t even know where to start. Caduceus doesn’t seem bothered by this.

“What would it be like? To remember?” he asks instead. Is it just another way to die? Is that what they are asking of him?

“I don’t know,” Caduceus says, achingly gentle. “None of us do.”

Thunder cracks, and Gretchen digs her claws in to brace herself, and Bren murmurs reassurances to her as he pets her. Caduceus, he sees when he looks up again, is staring out at the sky above them. He looks away eventually, returning his attention to his staff and its beetles and mushrooms.

And they are silent, tending to their own responsibilities, until the thunder overhead quiets to a soft rumble and the storm finally moves on.

Chapter Text

They bamph into Caleb’s house, and Beau-

She has to take a moment. The last time she’d come through here, they’d been coming back from a party on the Nein Heroez, Yasha’s hand in Beau’s loosened hair and Essek draped comfortably against Caleb’s side. And Caleb, their designated teleporter and as such the sober one, smiling his patient smile and herding them upstairs, watch your head, please, Yasha, none of us can carry you if you knock yourself out. Warm and cozy with the amber lights he brings with him wherever he goes. Flushed with the good humor of spending time with friends, with the promise of a night with his tipsy boyfriend, with all their successes.

And now.

“Do you know where he keeps his class stuff?” Beau asks, already heading for the stairs. She finds the first one with her toe, no lights down here, and traces the steps up out of familiarity. Essek sighs and follows her. “Schedule, and whatever? Anything that might tell us what he planned on doing the other day?”

“Yes. I will look it over, if you’re heading to the Archive.”

She is heading to the Archive, and he’s not going to believe her at all when she says it. “I’m going home, first. Gotta get my fancy robe.”

He looks at her, his eyes deep and dark in the unlit hallway. He doesn’t even have the decency to have eyes that reflect like a cat’s.

“That’s it,” she says. “Home, Archive. I’ll come back then, and we can go tackle Becke together.”

Astrid is… complicated. She doesn’t like Beau and Beau doesn’t like her, and she really doesn’t like Essek, who of course is not good enough for Caleb, and Essek doesn’t like anyone except for maybe three people outside of the Mighty Nein. But there is mutual respect between them, and a common point of interest- Caleb- that guarantees none of them will turn against the others. It’s a fun balancing act, except the rope they’re balancing on is greased and the floor is lava.

“Very well,” he says, and turns and heads towards the sitting room and the stairs to the second story.

Jester is gonna kill her for leaving him here by himself, in this house he shares with Caleb, after everything that’s happened. The poor bastard’s barely had a chance to breathe since the others got here, his every waking moment even more regulated and accounted for than Caleb’s. He is the sort to go off the deep end and do something dramatic and extremely dangerous without telling anyone, so they need to be able to nip that in the bud if they see that behavior starting. But also- they’re worried about him.

Beau and Fjord had talked about it once, over too much wine, not long after Essek officially-unofficially moved in with Caleb. It’s Dynasty fuckery, see. Essek’s never really lost anyone. He’s known people who died, sure, probably even cared for some of them, but there’s a difference between losing someone who you know will be back in a couple of decades, which is nothing to your own elven lifespan, and losing someone. He doesn’t know how to grieve, Beau and Fjord had concluded, and now he’s gone and fallen in love with a human. He’s setting himself up for a world of hurt that he won’t know how to process. And they’d talked about it, and kicked it over to Caduceus, and agreed to come up with some ways to have the longer-lived members of the Nein help Essek out, and then that had been the last of it.

They’d thought they had years, decades even, to figure this out, except it’s happening now. Caleb is gone, the chance to find out how to bring him back fast slipping away. And it’s even more unfair, because Beau was equally unprepared to lose the man who is as good as her brother, and now everyone is tiptoeing around Essek and handling not-Caleb like he’s made of spun glass and no one else is getting the chance to deal with their own issues about it and they can’t even get mad at the two wizards because none of this is their fault and-

It’s just a fucking mess.

So she leaves, out the back door because even if Caleb and Essek have this place locked down magically, there’s still almost certainly someone out there keeping physical watch on the home of the Assembly’s own personal thorn in their side. She scales the tree and along a branch to hop down in one of the neighboring yards.

They’ve got a lot of work ahead of them, and she doesn’t want to linger away from the rest of her friends for any longer than necessary.

Home is a small one-story cottage with five rooms and an obscenely big yard for a city house, space enough for Yasha’s garden and the three chickens neither of them will admit to intentionally bringing home. Big enough for a bunch of rowdy kids to play in, one day. Soon, but not today, and she’s grateful for it, after seeing how Luc had been with Caleb the other day.

Beau approaches her house from the street and walks through the front door- the Soul keeps an eye on her place, and would handle any watchers, so she can be a bit more bold. She opens the door to a mess, a legacy of Yasha’s being absent for a few weeks and Beau instantly regressing to her teenage years in terms of cleanliness without her. A quick break to do a few rounds, sorting laundry and rinsing a few of the more questionable dishes. Then she heads into the back yard to check on the girls. An elderly neighbor feeds them while Beau and Yasha are out, but she can’t spend a lot of time outside in the heat, so Beau’s mobbed by a trio of attention-deprived chickens as soon as she opens the coop door. They swarm her ankles and tell her all about their last few days in low murmuring clucks as she checks the garden and picks the vegetables that are too far along to wait- early summer veg coming in late, late summer veg coming in early, no one’s going to get to them in time so she reaps them all- and tosses them either onto the compost heap or into the coop’s feed tub.

Then she sits on the edge of the porch, the matriarch hen climbing up to perch on her knee and survey her queendom. Beau traces a gentle hand over her clay-red feathers, watching them shimmer in the morning light.

She doesn’t cry. Beauregard Lionett has cried twice in recent memory- first when Mollymauk Tealeaf took his last breath, then when Kingsley Tealeaf took his first. Whatever is going on, Caleb isn’t dead, isn’t even gone like Mollymauk. He’s still there, the framework for the Caleb Widogast she knows is still buried under those careful distances and pointed glances. He’s just- lost his way. They’ll get him back. So no, she doesn’t cry. She sits there, and pets a chicken, and thinks.

She does quite desperately want to punch something, an urge restrained only by the fact that the tree in her yard would win, and the chickens would lose horribly. They need to find a place to set up some sort of training ring in Nicodranas. Veth’s backyard, maybe.

“Gotta go, Ginger,” she says to the hen, who gives her an unimpressed look and lets her hear all about it when Beau bounces her knee until she has to move. She herds the ladies back into their coop and closes the door, then heads back into the house to get changed.

Time to do this.

Beau knows she’s being followed by the time she’s halfway to the Archive.

It’s just a feeling, an itch, an awareness of something that’s just a hair off. It’s not immediately concerning- even with her expositor’s robes announcing just how easy of prey she isn’t, one person alone would be far too tempting a target for anyone aiming to hurt the Nein to pass up, but they let her go about her business unbothered. She’s not being hunted, she’s being tracked, and she’s pretty sure she knows who’s behind it. Might save them a long walk, if nothing else.

And then she enters the Archive, and she is being watched for an entirely different reason, monks and archivists and researchers all quickly moving out of her way as she strides through the corridors, whispers following after her. The Soul, at least, knows some of what the Mighty Nein did for the world.

She heads towards the library, not stopping to chat with anyone- she’s been in Rexentrum long enough that she recognizes every face, and can put a name to most of them. At least she has her reputation for brusqueness working for her, and no one dares to interrupt her when she’s clearly in the middle of something important.

She does hesitate, when the paths branch off- one leading to the library, one to one of the training areas. For a moment she stares down the latter hallway, trying to talk sense into herself- she can just spar with Yasha when she gets back to Nicodranas, it’s actually really fun, Yasha can take a beating in a way that no one else Beau’s ever met could. They can usually even get one of the wizards to agree to blow some magic and cast Haste on Yasha, which puts her almost up to speed with Beau and evens the playing field for a solid minute. She can wait until then, she doesn’t need to hit something, she needs to be contributing to the situation, not punching her feelings out.

“Expositor Lionett?”

“Yeah?” she says as she turns, and there’s a man standing there, a half-elf with eyes the color of whisky, an archivist by his robes. He’s carrying a book, clearly on his way back to work, but has stopped to watch her stare aimlessly down a hallway.

“Did you need something?” he asks, a polite what the fuck.

She opens her mouth to say no. What comes out is, “Is Expositor Dairon here?”

Dairon, she has learned in her own years as Expositor, has something of a reputation amongst the Soul. They’re rarely in one place for long, seeking out problem cases like Beau herself, or sniffing for hints of abuse of power like Zeenoth, and it’s hit-or-miss on them even being known by name in big Archives like this one. Beau still finds herself looking up to Dairon a little, and enjoys sparring with her if nothing else.

“She was in Port Damali, last I heard,” the archivist says apologetically, and Beau shrugs and makes a dismissive noise. That decides her, though- unlikely that the monks in the training pit right now could give her a decent workout. She’ll save it for Yasha.

“Okay. Need to do some research, then.”

He perks up a little. “Oh, well then, right this way. I am Archivist Desaund.” And he gestures as he turns, and she follows him down the hallway towards the library.

Desaund- she knows that name. She’s not Caleb, to instantly recall minor details, but she’s a junkyard dog who gets her teeth into something and doesn’t let go, so she puzzles it over as they walk. By the time they’ve reached the main entryway to the library, she thinks she has it.

“You helped Caduceus one time,” she says slowly, and holds her hand way over her head when he glances at her with a politely blank look. “Pink-haired firbolg.”

“Oh, yes!” he says, and gets that fond smile most people have when reminded Caduceus exists. “How is he? Did everything work out for him?”

She has no fucking clue, she doesn’t remember what he was here for, only that he mentioned Desaund. “Sure. He’s back home now, everything’s good with him. He just mentioned that you were cool.”

That smile grows, and Beau doesn’t have the heart to tell him that Caduceus likes pretty much everyone who isn’t actively hurting his friends.

“So what were you looking into?” he asks as they enter the library. He leads her over to the main help desk, probably his station, and deposits the book he’s been carrying.

“Uh, it’s kind of complicated? Two things.” She hesitates a moment here- she can trust the Soul to keep her secrets, they will protect her and, by extension, the Nein. But individual people are still susceptible, and someone knows she came here from at least her house, assuming they hadn’t started following her from Caleb’s place. It all depends on how the conversation with Becke goes. “Memory loss is the first one.”

Desaund looks at her. “Such as, amnesia from a head injury, or a spell like Modify Memory?”

“Both,” Beau says, because they haven’t really ruled head injury out yet. “Causes- besides, y’know. Head injury. Mostly on how to fix it, get the memories back if slapping a healing spell on doesn’t work.”

He’s looking baffled, but nods nonetheless. “And the second?”

This one is a bit trickier. She’s with Fjord on this, she highly doubts the problem is with Caduceus- he’s solid with the Wildmother, no way he isn’t- but outside of that, she just doesn’t know how to phrase the question she needs to ask. “Anything we might have on divine magic.”

“Ah,” Desaund says delicately, and glances over his shoulder to an entire wing of the library, which- yeah. That’s a big subject.

“Clerical magic,” she presses, which doesn’t really narrow it down any. “Specifically, if there’s a way to block a cleric from healing someone, some sort of spell or something that’ll make someone immune to divine magic?” She’s figuring it out as she goes, here.

Desaund considers this for a long moment. “I can… pull some books,” he says finally. “I don’t really know how to search for that? Perhaps personal diaries of clerics would be best?”

“Sure, we’ll start there,” she says with a nod.

“There are desks you can sit at, if you would like to stay for a while,” he says, gesturing down one row of shelves.

“I can give you a few hours,” she says. Better two sets of eyes looking than one, after all, and if she leaves, then there’s a chance someone else will come in and steal her archivist and bump her down the priority list.

“Very well. I’ll be back in a moment with some books.” He turns and heads away, hesitating a long moment before disappearing between two shelves. Beau shrugs out of her outer robe and heads towards the desk he had indicated.

It’s gonna be a long few hours.

It’s after lunch- she knows because Desaund offers to have her brought something, then kicks her right back down by informing her that there is no food allowed in the library, and by brought something he meant you can sit in the hallway and eat it- when she hears from them.

It’s Jester, of course. Six spell-slingers in their little family and only two of them could be bothered to learn how to communicate over long distances. And they were both ready to commit bloody bare-handed murder several times over the last few days, with the Nein scattered all over Nicodranas and countless messages shuttling between all of them.

“Hello Beau. How’s it going? We had lunch with Caleb, he seems a lot more like himself today. How’s Essek?” She says this slowly and deliberately, and Beau sits back in her seat and smiles at the book in front of her, wondering if she is being blessed with the incredibly rare privilege of a rehearsed Jester Lavorre Sending. “How much longer will- shit.”

Ah, there it is. She can easily imagine Jester looking to Fjord for that last part and seeing only one finger instead of the two or three she needed.

“Hey Jes. We’re fine. I’m at the Soul, researching. Nothing so far. Gotta talk to Astrid still. Be back after that.” She understands why Fjord panics whenever people Send to him- she has no idea of her count. She’s usually with the people who are doing the Sending. She flips the useless book shut and stands- she hadn’t meant to leave Essek alone this long anyway. “Say hi to Caleb for me.”

Desaund is approaching as she finishes, and she swears if he’s coming over to shush her- but he just takes the book. “Heading out, Expositor?”

“Yeah. Got a few more things to do, then I’m leaving the city. Keep looking into this for me?”

“Of course,” he agrees. “Will we be able to reach you via Sending?”

“Always.” She picks up the robe she’d draped over the back of the chair and shrugs it on. “Thanks, Desaund.”

He nods, and she ducks past him and heads out.

She’s just stepped out the main door of the Archive, pausing to check for her shadow from earlier, when another voice pours into her head.

“Meet me at the Academy,” Essek orders. “Western entrance. I may have found something.”

That’s it. He doesn’t have Jester’s issue with counting or Caleb’s precision to plan out a perfect twenty-five words on the fly. But what he lacks in quantity, he makes up for in quality- she has taken two steps, and pivots now to head to Soltryce instead of deeper into the Tangles. Even may have found something is more than what she’s accomplished so far today.

“Wow, don’t spare the details, man,” she says as she walks. For a moment she winces at her snappiness and almost apologizes, explains that it’s just habit to bitch back. But she bulls ahead, since nothing would make the situation worse than her trying to treat him like he’s fragile, both because she sucks at that and because he’d probably get offended and gravity her. Normalcy is the best thing to keep him from panic-spiraling, and normalcy is something she can provide him. “Don’t do anything until I’m there.”

He doesn’t waste the spell to reply, but she can see the tuck of his chin he does when he’s trying not to roll his eyes, hear the quiet little of course in his voice, of course I will wait, of course I will listen to you, of course I never do anything without thinking it through first.

She doesn’t quite run the whole way, but it’s a near thing.

There is a half-elf waiting for her just inside the western entrance to the Soltryce Academy grounds. He sees her and turns and starts walking, and doesn’t look back even when he hears her follow after him a comfortable distance away. She is an uncommon sight in the Academy anyways, and this time she’s wearing the full Expositor uniform, so people watch her as she goes. The main school year is over, but there are summer courses, and a decent number of people still about, so Beau keeps her pace steady and Essek barely in sight, and lets her lead him to a small, empty lecture hall before she finally approaches.

“What’s up?” she asks, and Essek loosens the arm he’d been keeping clutched to his midsection and hands her a sheath of papers, the writing on them Caleb’s loose scrawl. Class notes, student names, a calendar. He had argued long and hard against it- that fucking memory of his, he doesn’t need to write anything down- but Beau had finally broken him down and convinced him to keep a paper trail for legal reasons, if nothing else. If Da’leth or someone tried to turn something around on Caleb, and he had to prove where he was on some random date three years ago, the court wasn’t likely to accept I have no proof but a perfect memory.

“He met with several students after his class ended for the summer,” Essek says. It’s not unusual- Caleb especially knows the importance of adult influences in these kids’ lives, that’s the entire point of his teaching here. He keeps his summers open so he can do Nein stuff, but he’ll drop almost anything to help out a student.

“Okay,” Beau says, looking over the page of Caleb personal meetings- office hours, mostly, some of them booked solid by students needing help outside of class hours. She looks it over, searching for patterns, finds-

“Who’s B.W.?” Whoever it is, they commanded much of Caleb’s attention- whenever he met with them, he met them alone, a break from habit for such a popular professor who frequently had to clump his students into study groups. One-on-one time is rare with him. Even his private schedule had a solo lunch with B.W. listed for the day of- the day of Ikithon’s death, she realized, the day Astrid summoned Beau and Caleb to her private quarters to tell them about Ikithon. Most of that day had a line drawn through it, blacking it all out, including the lunch with the student.

“A student, and yet not.” The next paper she’s handed is a small journal, a class registry with students’ names on it, notes on their grades, their performance in the class, what areas they seemed to struggle with. B.W. appears at the start of the semester, but unlike the other students, there are few personal notes on them and no marks on anything, no indication they’d ever done any assignments or taken any exams.

“He didn’t mention anything about this to me,” Beau says. Which- she’s not the person to talk to about schoolwork, and she’d gotten tired of student gossip after only a few months. But if there was something off about this student… “He talk to you about them?”

“No, but I have been away more these last few months than I usually am.”

Well, Essek was right- it may be something. She flips the registry journal to the front page, then skims through, then says, “Where’s his student list? All this has is initials.”

“I imagine we will have to ask the headmaster for that.”

Beau groans as she considers it. Headmaster Margolin is Assembly, and implicated in the Volstrucker program. He’d escaped the Soul’s initial sweep with his hide intact, but there’s more than one surviving former Scourger who remembers being hand-selected by Margolin and sent to Ikithon, so it’s really only a matter of time. He’s… less than cooperative, in these sorts of matters, especially since Caleb isn’t here to subtly threaten him into behaving himself.

“Sure,” she says. “Yeah, okay, I can. Make him give us that.” She thinks. She can’t go around punching civilians while she’s wearing these robes. Like, it’s bad under most circumstances, but especially now. “You good to not talk? He can’t know who you are.”

Essek sighs, closes his eyes. He’s broadened the strokes of his face, changed the bone structure so he isn’t nearly as pretty, and it’s harder to read him like this. “Of course,” he says, once he’s gathered himself, and Beau nods.

“All right, let’s go,” she says, and claps him on the shoulder just to watch him pull a pissy face about it, then ducks back out of the hall.

They catch an administrative aide and send her away to request a meeting with Margolin, then head to Caleb’s office to wait, idle, heels cooling. Beau is not good at waiting but she’s had good things happen when she did wait, before, so she sits in Caleb’s comfortable chair and steeples her fingers and digs deep into her reserves, and waits. She looks around, studying the room- it is both quintessentially Caleb, and yet missing something- he doesn’t feel secure here, so there’s stacks of paper and books on the shelves and a supply of cheaper components and somehow cat hair, even here, but there’s nothing valuable, nothing that means anything to him. The magic frame Jester had requisitioned from Pumat Sol is at his house, as are the souvenirs from their travels, and the books containing sensitive information. He exists here, and it shows- there is a candle scented with sandalwood, here is a box of his favorite market-stall tea, the Blooming Grove tea left at home- but he does not relax here.

She also watches Essek.

Essek is good at waiting. He sits in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the desk, meant for students in conference with their professor, and rereads the registry journal as though it could tell them something new. It’s hard to see around the disguise, but she’s learned his tells enough to read him through a spell, and he seems strangely unbothered about their current situation. His hands are calm, he’s not biting at his lower lip, he’s not breaking out the fancy vocabulary to make people feel inadequate and distract from his own unease. She would almost say it’s like he’s not about to climb out of his skin, which-

“So what happened last night?”

“I’m sorry?” he says, looking up at her. It’s briefly disconcerting to meet his gaze- he usually keeps his eyes the same when he’s in disguise around the Nein, a signal for those who know what to look for, but here and now he has gone for plain brown instead.

“Something happened.” She frees one hand to gesture at him. “You’re way too calm. So what was it?”

“We had a lovely dinner with Marion, Caleb and I shared a bottle of wine in one of our rooms, and then went to bed,” Essek reports primly. He’s breaking out the court manners, which means he’s definitely bullshitting her somehow.

“What’d you talk about over that wine?”

Essek pauses, eyes drifting to the ceiling as he sorts through yesterday’s events. “My plans for today.”

“That’s it?” Beau had seen that bottle on the table in the room Essek had spent the night in, they’d killed that thing. “An entire bottle of wine and you talked for, what, thirty seconds?”

“There may have been an admission of a desire for vengeance against whoever did this to Caleb.”

“Okay,” Beau says, and Essek looks at the registry again. “So, an entire bottle of wine and you talked for forty seconds.”

Essek glances at her- fuck she hates those eyes, she wants to see the real ones beneath the spell, she knows how to read them. “Yes.”

The kicker is that she absolutely believes that- she’s seen those two go hours without talking before, and consider it an evening well-spent in each other’s company. But that doesn’t actually explain anything.

“Good,” she says, changing tactics. “Glad you two worked it out. You’re both good at that, short to-the-point conversations like that.”

The snotty look he gives her comes across just fine through the disguise.

“If only we could all work our issues out in thirty seconds over some wine.” I’m not gonna let it go, you might as well tell me, she doesn’t say, but he hears it all the same.

Essek puts the registry down, presses two fingers to his lips for a moment as if to physically prevent himself from saying something rash, then sighs. Even with the disguise, Beau can pinpoint the moment he decides to tell her. “I entrusted him with delicate information.”

“You told him who you are,” Beau translates. “Was it just, this is where I came from and why I’m here, or also the whole and this is why I can’t go back?”

“Yes,” Essek says.

“Well,” Beau says after a moment. “That was a choice. Thanks for letting us know.”

“I also told him how to turn me over to the Bright Queen-”

“-for fuck’s sake, Essek-”

“-and left him to make his own choice.”

And it’s fairly obvious what choice he had made, considering he’d still been there this morning. Still. Beau gapes at him.

“I left you two alone for three hours,” she begins.

“It was longer than that.”

Well, Essek is right on track for solving Beau’s need to punch something. She sits back in the chair and drags her hand over her face.

“Fuck, you two really are the same,” she says wonderingly. “Stupid self-sacrificial offer and all.”

“It was not about self-flagellation,” Essek snaps.

“Then what was it?”

“I gave him something he has been missing from the start, and it helped him make his decision.” He lifts his chin, speaks over her immediate question. “Control. I gave him some measure of control over the situation.”

“Over the situation, or over you?” Beau asks, and Essek is silent. She looks at him, sees the twitching fingers and the eyes that avoid hers, and knows he was full of shit about it not being about hurting himself. “You know I’m gonna tell Jester on you like the second we get back. Right?”

Essek closes his eyes and sighs.

“She’s gonna be sad at you.”

“I am aware,” Essek says, and now he sounds worried. The smartest guy she’s ever met, that Jester scares him the most out of all of the Nein.

“Thanks for sticking your neck out for us, I guess,” Beau says, because that sure is a thing he did.

He picks up the registry again, puts it right back down. He’s looking more like himself now, in spite of the disguise- just a bundle of nerves with alarmingly powerful magic.

“And thanks for helping Caleb,” Beau adds sincerely, because he did that, too, and by all accounts did it better than anyone else has so far.

“That needs no thanks,” he says quietly, then jerks in his seat and twists around when someone knocks at the door.

It’s the aide, again, standing on the other side when Beau gets up and opens the door. She looks between them, then focuses on Beau, who probably looks a little more steady right now. “The bursar will see you now,” she says.

“The bursar?” Beau echoes, stealing a quick glance back to Essek, who is frowning as he rises. Their gazes meet, understanding passes between them, and they turn back to the aide together. The Nein have always been good at showing a united front to outsiders.

“Sure. Show us the way.”

The thing about wizards, Beau has learned-

-actually, there’s a lot of things about wizards she’s learned, all about hubris and madness and megalomania and how the only good ones hate themselves-

-after a year of fighting alongside one every day, Beau has learned that if there’s an even number of wizards on both sides, you want yours to be the one who starts shit, and therefore wins the Counterspell duel.

So when the aide deposits them at the bursar’s office and scurries away, pointedly not looking back, Beau steps back and lets Essek open the door. It feels wrong, sending someone else in ahead of her, but this isn’t something she can win.

She steps up behind him when he pauses in the doorway, and peers around him to see- not at all surprisingly- an Archmage standing behind the desk.

“Come in,” Astrid says, when they hesitate in the doorway just a moment too long for her liking.

Essek comes in, bold as you please. Beau follows and closes the door behind her and puts her back to it, as far away from in between the two wizards as she can get.

“New day job?” she asks, unable to help herself.

Astrid ignores this. “Where is Bren?” she asks, straight to the point, looking between them.

“Not here,” Beau says with a shrug. That icy stare lands on her, and she stares back, refusing to give an inch. This, she thinks, will be the closest they’ve come to actual violence between them.

“He is with the rest of the Nein,” Essek says smoothly, and Astrid flicks a quick glance to him as she recognizes the accent and confirms who he is. Bringing him was the right call, Beau thinks as she watches Astrid’s hands flatten against the desk, body slowly coiling like she’s preparing to move. She isn't scared of him, not really, but she is extremely aware of him. She doesn’t know his skills well enough to know how much of a threat he poses to her, and good old Shadowhand Thelyss spent years standing beside a Queen he betrayed, so he definitely isn’t showing any nerves here.

“Then why are you here looking into his students?” Astrid asks.

She moves her hand as she says it, slow and deliberate, placing it on a leather-bound folder on the desk.

Beau glances at it, looks at Essek, steps forward and leans one hip against the desk, careful to stay out of grabbing distance of the folder. “We’ll show you ours if you show us yours.”

Astrid stares at her for a long moment. Then she nods, once, and the tension in the room tangibly eases.

“Caleb’s recovering from an attack,” Beau says easily, and Astrid’s eyes, already hard as flint, go flat. “Don’t know anything about the attacker.”

“Recovering? Your clerics didn’t heal him immediately?” She tilts her head to the side as she studies Beau. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me where.”

Anyone who knows the Nein knows their haunts, and Beau wouldn’t be surprised to hear Astrid’s got eyes in the more common ports for the Nein Heroez. She shrugs, lazy and defiant. “That’s what we’ve got. What about you?”

Oh, sentiment, that wonderful barbed collar that wraps so sweetly around people’s necks. Beau gave her nothing, just a reassurance that Caleb is still alive somewhere, and yet it’s enough. Astrid picks up the folder and drops it in front of her.

“The person you are looking for is not enrolled at Soltryce Academy,” she says.

“Not a single B.W. in the whole school?” Beau asks, picking up the folder. Inside is a student file, but half the forms aren’t filled out. No name, just initials, class roster but no address, no student history. Like the kid hadn’t existed before they set foot on the campus.

Essek is reading over her shoulder, apparently content to let her take the lead. “They were sitting in on classes,” he says. “Learning, without receiving the credit for it.”

Learning is learning, credit or not. Fancy schools may care about official degrees, but if this kid is getting this knowledge for free, then more power to them.

Then Beau shifts her hand, and the first sheaf of paper slides down and reveals another one below it. This paper is a little older, crisper around the edges, stained on one corner. She lets the first file drop onto the desk and reads the second one.

Student’s name- Bernard Wieder. Enrolled 833. His marks were high in Evocation and Divination, several professors wrote in glowing reviews of how quick-witted and competitive this young man was. His file ends abruptly in 835. Beau looks at the papers, looks at Astrid. Looks at the date when the kid just dropped off the face of Exandria.

“Where was he when Ikithon was arrested?” She closes the folder, meets Astrid’s gaze.

“He was three weeks into training to be a Volstrucker,” Astrid says calmly.

Shit. Shit, motherfucker. This kid would have been at his peak, flush with victory at having been singled out for special training with Master Ikithon, no blood on his hands yet, not aware of the things he would be told to do during the course of his training, or be branded a traitor. And then- his teacher gone, his special program ended, his friends taken away. He must have been pissed.

“Why was he at the Academy, in Caleb’s class?” Essek asks.

“Because he asked, and Bren felt pity for him, and wanted to save him,” Astrid says. “We talked about it, once. He didn’t tell you?” She slices a look between them, barbed and poisonous.

Beau has no idea what’s going on with Essek, but she is scrambling, casting back, trying to recall. At no point did Caleb even imply that he’d taken one of Ikithon’s former students under his wing this semester, and she can’t even begin to guess why he’d have kept that from her. Maybe he’d been worried about how she would react. Maybe Wieder wasn’t ready to consider that Ikithon’s methods had been evil, Ikithon’s goal itself despicable, and Caleb had been trying to baby him along.

“Where was he sent after Ikithon’s arrest?”

“Home, to his parents,” Astrid says. “They unenrolled him from the Academy, refused our attempts to talk to him, and that was the last we’d seen of him until he turned up in Bren’s class, saying he wanted to continue his education. Bren convinced Margolin to let Wieder sit in classes until he could re-enroll.”

“Where is he now?”

“Not home.” Astrid picks the folder back up, rearranging the papers within to her specifications. “His parents haven’t seen him since Ikithon died. It was… upsetting, to many of his former students.”

“Been having rogue Scourger issues?” Beau asks. They’d been expecting it, at the Soul, had even discussed protection measures for Caleb and Beau herself, considering how instrumental they were in taking Ikithon down. And then she’d come home, and gone to bed, and got a Sending at fuck-you-o’clock in the morning from Essek asking her to come to Caleb’s house, and- well. Never mind.

“What did he tell you about his attackers?” Astrid asks.

Beau doesn’t look at Essek, just slides right in with the answer. “Nothing. He got clocked in the head, has some memory issues from it. That’s what I meant by recovering.”

Astrid glances at Essek, but if anything he’s even more practiced at lying than Beau, and gives her nothing. “Tell him to talk to me, as soon as he gets back,” she says, and there’s a bit of human seeping through the cracks, she almost sounds worried. Beau would be foaming at the mouth in her position, if someone she cared about was hurt to an undescribed degree, and she wasn’t even allowed to know where they were. But Astrid gave up the right to care about Caleb years ago, when she abandoned him to Vergesson. “And inform me if you learn anything else.”

She does wait, give them a moment to retract or add anything. Then she comes around the desk, Essek stepping backward until he is practically standing on Beau’s toes, and opens the door and steps out. When the door closes behind her, Essek finally relaxes.

“Why the fuck didn’t Caleb tell us he had a baby Volstrucker in his class,” Beau says instantly. Astrid might even have heard her. Not like it matters, not when it was abundantly apparent they didn’t know when she told them.

“He saw himself in him, most likely,” Essek says with a sigh. “Evocation was his original school of magic, and he would have been given similar notes from teachers.”

“Yeah,” Beau says. Seven years later, this kid finally crawls out of whatever hole his parents shoved him into, and he would have been just like Caleb after Vergesson. And he probably knew it, too, and would have used that against Caleb in order to play the long game. Gain his trust, get close- Ikithon’s death stepped up the timeframe, but then, Caleb wasn’t in a good frame of mind either, it was entirely likely that he would have done something stupid if this kid had just asked. He’d gone somewhere, after all, picked a fight- no way Wieder was the one he was fighting, the kid wouldn’t have lasted three seconds against Caleb- and gotten his memory blasted to smithereens. A fitting revenge, for the man who took down Ikithon.

“Is there more to do here?” Essek asks.

There is. But Beau wants to go home, to be with her family. “No. We’ll come back in a couple days, if we need to.”

He nods and takes something out of his pocket, draws a symbol in the air, says the words-

And then they’re back in Nicodranas, an immediate shift in air temperature and humidity, even though Essek brought them to the Lavish Chateau. Beau watches as he produces a small, glittery thing- the stopper of a crystal liquor decanter, she realizes, as he heads over to the table that serves as a miniature bar and puts the stopper where it belongs.

She takes off her Expositor robe and sash, folding them neatly and leaving them near Yasha’s clothes- housekeeping came in at some point, they definitely hadn’t left their clothes neatly folded the other night- and then takes her more everyday robe from the chair she’d left it on. Then she turns and strides out of the room, heading to the other one.

“Anyone home?” she calls, pounding on the door with the heel of her palm. After a moment it opens, and Caleb frowns down at her, blinking hard when she immediately points a finger at him.

“You are a fucking dumbass,” she tells him. “Come downstairs, team meeting.” And she turns and strides away, pulling on her robe as she goes.

“What did I do?” Caleb asks behind her.

“Something very stupid,” Essek says, and Beau feels the warm flush of solidarity. Then she feels something else, and frowns and looks down at her robe. The fabric over her right hip has been attacked, threads pulled up and runs torn into it.

“What the fuck-?”

“Team meeting, ja,” Caleb says, way too smooth. “We will be down in a minute.” And then he closes the door. Beau turns to stare after him, shrugs it off and turns away again. Jester can Mend it, probably.

Then she goes downstairs, because the sooner they can tell what they learned, the sooner she can get beat up, and in turn be beaten up by, her wife.

Chapter Text

It had stopped raining for an hour, the thunder faded away into a distant murmur like a conversation in another room, when there is another muffled crack.

It’s quiet compared to what all came before, but it comes from the room next door, and Gretchen has already had as much of this as she’s going to take. She explodes from her contented loaf in Bren’s lap to a thing of many legs and sharp claws and an incredibly poofed-out tail, and is gone under the bed in the time it takes Bren to register the danger of those sharp claws digging in near very sensitive areas.

“It’s just Essek and Beau,” Caduceus tells her, but she clearly doesn’t care. Bren takes advantage of his distraction to surreptitiously check for bleeding.

It is Essek and Beauregard- at least, it’s her pounding on their door a moment later, calling out for whoever may be in the room. Bren gets up to answer it, and opens it with the thought of a scathing thank you for scaring my cat, but Beauregard is faster on the draw.

“You,” she says, nearly jabbing him in the sternum with one pointed finger. “Are a fucking dumbass. Come downstairs, team meeting.” And then she turns and strides away, shrugging on her outer robe as she goes.

Bren looks to the half-elf that had been behind her. Essek, he assumes. “What did I do?” he asks.

Behave like normal, like nothing’s changed. Follow Essek’s lead on how to interact. Tell no one, unless Essek tells them first. Bren knows how to keep a secret.

“Something very stupid,” Essek says, and Bren blinks.

“What the fuck?” Beauregard murmurs, and he looks down the hallway to her and sees her frowning down at her robe. And then he remembers, through the haze of the transformation- fabric under his claws, a thread pulling free in his mouth-

“Team meeting, ja,” he agrees quickly. “We will be down in a minute.” And he steps back and closes the door right as she’s turning a suspicious glare on him.

“Sounds like they found something,” Caduceus observes from where he’s kneeling beside the bed. Bren leans a shoulder against the door, content to wait here until Beauregard is gone. It won’t take long, she’s not the patient sort.

“Won’t we just end up back up here, then?” he asks.

“Probably at Veth’s place, or the ship,” Caduceus says as he stands up, giving up on Gretchen. “The staff here doesn’t like it when we all get together, we’re a little rowdy for them sometimes. Is Jester with her mom?”

“Uh, ja,” Bren says, and steps aside and lets Caduceus come over and open the door.

“Good, I’ll get her. You head downstairs.”

He looks into the hallway Caduceus is ushering him into, and sees no sign of the other two, so he heads out and towards the stairs. Caduceus closes the door behind him and immediately turns to knock on the door to Marion’s quarters.

Bren heads downstairs instead of waiting, pausing at the balcony and finding Fjord still sitting at their table from lunch. Beauregard is standing over his shoulder, their heads put together in conference, and two other people are sitting across from him and trying not to pay too much attention. No sign of Essek, although Bren doesn’t look very hard- he rotates through disguises too much, it’s hard to search for identifying features in a crowd of people when Bren only got one brief look at his current disguise.

There is a noise behind him, and suddenly Jester bounces into place next to Bren, hitting the railing with her hip and rebounding slightly. “Team meeting?” she asks, peering down into the crowd below. When Bren nods and confirms, she bites at her lip for a moment before flicking her wrist. “Hey Veth, Beau’s back! Can we come to your place for a meeting? Also, where’s Yasha?”

“Sixteen,” Bren says when she pauses. Caduceus has come up behind them, and merely watches in amusement.

“Sixteen-? Oh! Do-do do do-do doo do!” she sings, then waits out Veth’s reply. After a minute, she hooks her arm around Bren’s elbow and pulls him with her down the stairs. “You should count for me more often, you’re better at it than Fjord.”

He can easily imagine why Caleb hadn’t- a dangerous habit to fall into. “Did she know where Yasha is?”

“At her place,” Jester confirms cheerfully. “We can meet up there.”

“Can we,” Bren murmurs quietly. Of all of them, Veth seems to have the most settled life, and is the one currently upheaving it the most for this. If she’s anything like Caleb- he is a professor, even Soltryce can’t possibly pay well enough to justify even the fortune he carries around on him, let alone whatever Bren doesn’t know about- she has riches from their adventuring days, but still.

They head downstairs but don’t brave the growing crowd- Jester mutters something about her mother not performing tonight, and Caduceus observes that the weather isn’t great for the outdoor cafes the city usually prefers- and instead veer off into a room behind one of the bars. It’s stocked with wine jugs and kegs stamped with labels Bren doesn’t recognize, probably hideously expensive whisky. And in the room, with a journal in his hand that he is reading closely, Essek, his disguise spell gone.

Jester immediately abandons Bren to wrap Essek in a hug that lifts his toes off the ground. He grimaces, turns it into a smile, and pats one hand against Jester’s back. “Yes, hello, Jester,” he says, terribly fond and slightly breathless.

“Hey Essek,” she says, setting him down and hauling him in to tuck her against her side. He disappears the journal into his pocket dimension. “We’re going to Veth’s house, can you Teleport us there? It’s awful outside right now.”

“Ah.” He glances at Bren, oddly, before looking quickly away. “I don’t have an anchor for Veth’s house, and I have Teleported once already today.”

“You’ve been to her house, you were there like yesterday,” Jester argues steadily. “And we’re not in any danger here, unless something happened when you were in Rexxentrum? So you don’t need to save your spells.”

“What did happen in Rexxentrum?” Caduceus asks. There’s a glass bottle stamped with a bee’s hive logo, and the golden liquid within actually has a piece of honeycomb floating in it, and he seems fascinated, tapping the bottle to make the comb inside shiver. “Or is that what the meeting’s about?”

“We have found a lead, possibly,” Essek says. He takes another glance at Bren, his expression opaque. “And Archmage Becke implied the threat is still very much active.”

The clerics both go quiet and still for a moment. Caduceus leaves the honey whisky alone and steps closer to them instead. Something in his placid face has shifted, his normally gentle eyes now keen and watchful. It’s the expression he wore when Bren met him that first morning, now- he recognizes it when he sees it. Watching, observing, putting pieces together.

“Is the threat here or just exists in general?”

“Exists in general. No one knows where we went, although I imagine it wouldn’t be hard to figure out.” The door opens as Essek speaks, and he pauses, tenses until he sees it is only Beauregard and Fjord.

“Becke doesn't know yet, but she will,” Beauregard agrees. “She knows Caleb’s out of commission and was pretty worried about it. You know, for her.”

Jester tugs Essek closer to her again. “Then we definitely shouldn’t be walking everywhere, there could be assassins anywhere,” she says.

Bren wants to scoff, but- if he was partially responsible for taking down Ikithon-

“I dunno, Jes,” Beauregard says lazily. “I think I wanna walk. Give us time to catch up, talk about stuff. You know, gossip.”

She’s staring directly at Essek as she says it, and he goes very still, then returns the glare. For a moment there’s some unspoken contest of wills before he relents with a sigh.

“Very well. Are we ready?”

for what, Bren almost asks- he is not seriously going to throw around such magic so they can avoid a half-hour walk-

But he is; he drags a finger through the air, the magic spilling out as he says the words-

“Wait, we have to-” Jester begins, and Bren finds himself grabbing the hand she shoves at him on instinct. The air is going tense around him, magic drawing in tight around them- activating a Teleportation circle is very different to simply casting Teleport, he can feel it sinking into him, gripping tight, getting ready.

And then-

-they are shunted, hard and fast, with an indescribable sense of movement. For a moment Bren stumbles, blinded with sudden sunlight and immediately drenched with the post-rain humidity. It is downright ugly out here, the air so thick with moisture that breathing feels like drowning

“Thanks for the warning,” Fjord says wryly, shielding his own eyes and blinking rapidly. Essek, caught outside without his parasol, doesn’t bother to reply, and instead heads towards the building behind him. There is a stone-paved patio with an awning pitched out over it, and a door into the back of the building that is opening even as Bren watches, a confused Yeza peering out at them.

“Oh,” Jester squeals, and Bren lets her hand go as she crouches. A moment later, a brindle-furred dog simply appears in her arms, all long legs and floppy ears and pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth as it nearly explodes with happiness. “Nugget! It’s so good to see you again!”

“Blink dog,” Fjord says to Bren, probably in response to the confusion on his face.

“Ah.” A moment to think that over, then, “does this dog speak for the fey as well?”

“Nah, he’s just the lucky survivor of a series of very bad decisions.” Fjord shoots him a grin- he is unfairly handsome, and knows it, the bastard. “Come on, Jessie, take it inside,” he says to his wife, clapping his hands to try and lure the dog away.

Bren leaves him to deal with that and heads inside, murmuring a thanks to Yeza who is holding the door for them with a look of longsuffering fondness. And then he’s in the backroom of the shop, and he takes a look around- glass vials, elaborate alchemical setups, entire cabinets and countless shelves boasting components and ingredients and glass vials. There is a hatch in the far corner that, when Bren goes over and pokes at it a little, he sees opens in flaps to a fan underneath that seems operated by a foot pedal on the ground just below. Ventilation. A proper alchemist’s workshop.

“Oh, uh, don’t touch that, please,” Yeza says, and Bren steps back from the simmering flask he’d been investigating and looks over to find the halfling watching him nervously. “Sorry, it’s just… really sensitive.”

Bren looks back at the percolating liquid, working its way through yards of glass tubing, then backs away. Alchemy was never his thing, for all that it is a close cousin to wizardry. He’d very much like to explore and ask questions, but Fjord and Jester are finally coming inside, and the others are all already up the stairs tucked away into a corner of the workroom, so he goes as well. It would be a little odd, having this conversation without him there.

Beauregard and Yasha are dragging the kitchen chairs into the living area when he makes it upstairs. He claims one of the two armchairs, for his own peace of mind, keenly aware that he’s going to be the center of attention no matter what. Essek takes the other one, while Jester happily flops onto the couch once she’s made it upstairs, patting her knees and calling to Nugget to try to entice the dog into her lap. Thankfully he merely lays down at Jester’s feet, giving a big dog-sigh of exhausted contentment. No life harder than a dog’s life.

“All right,” Beauregard says, once they’ve all picked a spot and settled. Caduceus is still standing, looming behind Fjord and Beauregard sitting on the kitchen chairs. He’s too tall for this apartment, his head hanging low and his shoulders stooped, and Yasha is sitting perfectly still on the couch, like she’s afraid of breaking something by touching it the wrong way.

Kingsley is not here, Bren notes, and no one seems in any particular hurry to include him.

“First off, I went to the Archive,” Beauregard says, glances at Bren and clarifies, “Cobalt Soul Archive.”

“They have anything useful?” Veth asks. She’s sitting on the couch next to Jester, slid to the very edge of the cushion like she’s ready to spring into action at any moment. The dog’s hindquarters are under her feet, the wagging tail occasionally thumping against her ankle.

“They’re looking into it, but it’s a big archive, and I wasn’t really very specific with my questions?” Beauregard says, drawing out her words to turn it into a question near the end. “I mean, how do you even look up something like why didn’t Restoration work?”

“I still think I should try it,” Jester adds. She looks at Caduceus. “No offense, Cad, but maybe Artie can be a little, y’know. More hands-on?”

“I think that’s up to Caleb,” Caduceus says, calmly evil, throwing Bren straight to the wolves with a gentle smile on his face.

“Uh, perhaps later,” Bren says when Jester turns to level a pleading look at him. Perhaps never, but he’s not getting into that right now. “Why am I a fucking dumbass?” he asks, turning to Beauregard out of sheer desperation.

She doesn’t disappoint. “Oh, well, while I was doing that, Essek was looking through your class stuff, and he found something. So we went to the Academy to check out some records, had a nice chat with Astrid.”

That is nicely distracting, a ripple echoing through the rest of them at Astrid’s name. Yasha leans forward, elbows on her knees, and Veth is practically vibrating by this point. Fjord is calm, leaning back in his chair and watching Beauregard with casual interest, but Bren knows him well enough by now to know that he is probably the best physical liar of the bunch, and his casual attitude is probably hiding the same keen interest.

“You- Caleb was meeting up with a student during non-office hours, a B.W., and when we looked him up in the- did you bring the-?”

She looks to Essek for the last part, and leans as far as she can across the space left in the middle of their circle, all but falling out of her chair, to catch the item he sends floating over to her. The journal he had been reading in the Chateau’s store room.

“-whole notebook full of notes on his students- you’re fucking welcome, by the way, we would have literally nothing if I had let you get away with never writing anything down because I don’t need to take notes, I have a perfect memory, Beauregard-” this, of course, to Bren, as though he had been an active participant in whatever argument she’s referencing. She misses his accent by a mile and he can’t help but feel it’s deliberate. “Except this kid, who never took an exam or did any homework, ever. So we went to go look him up-”

“And Astrid beat you to it?” Fjord guesses. She sits back in her chair again and gives him a nod. “And she just happened to know which student you were looking into?”

“Well,” Beauregard says, and looks at Bren. “Yeah. For good reason.”

Ah. Here comes the fucking dumbass part.

“When Ikithon was arrested, this kid was in training to be a Volstrucker.”

“What?” four voices demand at once. Bren realizes his is one of them only after he snaps his mouth shut on further protests.

“Yeah, Caleb was trying to rehab him or something,” Beauregard continues, her tone lazy and insouciant, her eyes narrowed at him in defiant challenge, like Bren has any explanation for any of this. “And Astrid knew ‘cause he told her. Nobody else, just her.”

Bren is freefalling. He is aware of voices around him, distant noisy things, arguing with Beauregard as though this is something she could change if they could just convince her. A Volstrucker? Worse still, a Volstrucker in training. He remembers that time- blood-soaked, soot ground into the lines of his fingers, blood seeping through the bandages wrapped around his arms, Eadwulf’s heavy weight pinning him down, Astrid’s clever mouth on him- he would have died rather than give that up, and would have happily killed anyone who tried to take it from him. It makes him sick to remember it, all the pain he had endured, the suffering he had caused- how hard he would have fought to keep it. How proud he would have been to succeed, to achieve his goal, to go on to live as a weapon for Ikithon’s personal use-

A hand curls around his, and he realizes he’s gripping the arm of the chair hard enough that a few fingernails are breaking. He’s not panicking, not yet, but he can feel it crawling up his spine, tightening the vise on his throat, ice in his veins and lightning-taste on his tongue.

“If you need to step out,” Essek offers quietly.

“No,” Bren replies instantly. He rolls his wrist a little, catches Essek’s fingers and gives them a squeeze. It feels like the right thing to do in the moment, and so long as neither of them look at their hands or mentions it, it’s fine.

“-should just kill him,” Veth is saying when Bren turns his attention back to the group, which is a hell of a point to jump back in.

“I agree,” Yasha says, sounding almost eager for this promised violence.

“Three weeks into training is nothing, he knows better,” Veth adds, like she knows anything about it.

“Well, now, hold on. You keep saying kid, how old is he?” Fjord asks. Beauregard opens her mouth, shuts it, blinks.

“I did not look at that part of his file-” she begins with great dignity.

“Twenty-three.”

“-but Essek did, so there. Twenty-three.”

“Sixteen when he started training,” Fjord says.

“Old enough to know better,” Veth insists, but she’s losing steam, and Yasha looks uncomfortable. Bren remembers the story she told him in the belly of the ship, the fiend who so easily turned her mind against her, and wonders how much of herself she’s seeing in this boy.

“And he just now started learning magic again?” Caduceus asks, low and pondering. Bren had lost track of the conversation a bit, but he believes this is the first time Caduceus has spoken since Beauregard dropped her little bomb on them.

“According to what Caleb told Astrid and Headmaster Margolin, yeah,” Beauregard says with a shrug, twisting awkwardly to peer up at the firbolg behind her. “He could’ve been wrong, there’s nothing in here on that kid- young man,” an unhappy concession, when Fjord opens his mouth- “but how easy is it to fake being bad at magic? I don’t think Caleb would’ve let him sit in on classes if it was obvious he was up to something.”

“So he had help, then,” Jester says. She looks at Bren. “Because- you said you were in a fight, right? There’s no way one kid could, you know.” She bites at her lower lip and looks away, clearly not ready to put his current situation into words.

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Beauregard agrees, bouncing up on her chair so she’s crouching instead of sitting properly, perched on her toes on the seat. “I thought that too! So we find the kid and gently persuade him to give us the names and locations of the people who helped him. Astrid said there’s been increased Scourger activity since Ikithon died, this is probably some fucking revenge scheme.”

“Then we kill him,” Veth says. She has produced a dagger from somewhere and is holding it like she’s preparing to hunt the kid in question down.

“We’ll put a pin in that,” Fjord offers. “What did Astrid tell you about him?”

“Not… much,” Beauregard says, starting off quick and dramatically slowing down as she processes her answer. “His name is Bernard W-” a pause, a glance at Bren. “Wider?”

“Wieder,” Bren corrects absently.

“She said he got sent back to his parents after Ikithon’s arrest and the Volstrucker program shutting down, but.” She shrugs. “They refused her people contact with him, which I find hard to believe. I wouldn’t have kept him where everyone and their mother would be looking for him, at least.”

“We did not have the best leverage in that conversation,” Essek adds. “We were lucky she shared as much as she did. And any leads we could find by following Wieder’s trail, Becke will have already covered.”

“And won’t share with us,” Yasha says. It’s not a question.

“Not without demanding something we can’t give her,” Beauregard agrees. She looks to Bren again. “She wants to talk to you.”

Bren has almost forgotten Essek’s hand is in his. He remembers when he finds himself squeezing now. To face Astrid now, like this- better off with the Nein, who are tactless and rude and clearly mean the best for Caleb, who is an inextricable part of Bren, than to roll the dice on Astrid’s loyalties. “No, I don’t think so.”

“So we’ll figure it out ourselves,” Jester says with a careless shrug. She nudges Veth with an elbow and recoils fast enough that Veth’s startled, halfhearted swipe with the dagger misses her. “Good thing we have the world’s best detective agency on the case!”

“Good thing neither of you can Teleport,” Fjord mutters.

“What?” Jester asks.

“What?” Fjord counters immediately. “Who said that? What?”

So calm and smooth that Veth does not even notice at first, Yasha reaches down and removes the dagger from Veth’s hand.

Jester turns to Bren, her eyes flicking over, then returning to Essek’s hand in his. “It’s okay, Caleb, we’ll figure it out,” she promises.

“Sure we will,” Veth says from where she’s standing on the couch cushion, reaching for the dagger Yasha is holding over her head. With the height disparity, even standing, Veth isn’t tall enough.

“If all else fails, we’ll just figure out how to fix your memory and go from there,” Beauregard adds, slumping lazily back into her seat. She’s watching him with a keen gaze.

Caduceus hums thoughtfully as he circles around behind the couch. He takes the dagger from Yasha, denying it from Veth’s grasping hand just as she finds a good foothold and makes a reach for it, and wanders away again. “If we had a personal item, we could try Scrying on him.”

“Yeah, Astrid wasn’t gonna give us something like that,” Beauregard says with a scoff. “And no clue how to find his parents either, so we can’t even ask them for something.”

Bren releases Essek’s hand and sits forward in his chair. “May I,” he says, gesturing to the journal in Beauregard’s hand. She lobs it at him, and he manages to catch it after fumbling once or twice.

Caleb, he sees as he skims over a few pages, is not the most meticulous note-taker. There are plenty of initials, shorthand, brief messages that reference something he does not recognize- did 9 on Estenburg, what? Mostly all he gets is a sense of unease at the sight of his own handwriting all over pages that he does not remember filling out.

He reads the rows with the initials B.W., which are mostly empty, no test scores or assignment grades, the notes scarce. The few he did make confirms that Wieder was ahead of the class in terms of knowledge, but not in skill, and desperately needed this return to the fundamentals. Seven years is a long time to let the magical muscles get flabby, after all.

“So now what?” Jester asks, her tail twitching, whacking Nugget on the nose. The dog just turns his head and sighs, put-upon and longsuffering. “Should we all be worried about Scourgers? Should I tell my mama?”

“Maybe don’t yet?” Veth says. “We don’t know they’re coming after all of us, they were clearly trying to get to Caleb for a while.” She turns to Essek, who is closer to her than Beauregard. “Is there anyone else in that book who’s a former Scourger?”

“It does not appear so,” he says. “But we were not given access to the student records.”

“So go back tomorrow and get access,” she commands.

“Nah, he’s right, anything there is to find in Rexxentrum, Astrid has already gotten to,” Beauregard says. “And she’s not the sharing sort, not even with Caleb.”

Who they don’t have, it goes unsaid. Bren couldn’t get through one evening with Essek, there is no way he’ll be able to fake his way through a conversation with her.

“She has not gotten into Caleb’s house,” Essek says evenly.

“Would you know?” Yasha asks him, and he nods.

“Yes, even from here. Two wizards living in one house, she would be foolhardy to try.”

“Go back tomorrow and look it over again?” Fjord offers.

“I would like to,” Bren says, and the conversation skips a beat as they all try to figure out how to respond to that. It happens sometimes, Bren has noticed- when he does something particularly unCaleblike, they have to take a moment to remember and readjust.

“Okay,” Beauregard says. “Sounds like a plan. Anything else?”

“Yes,” Veth says. “Give me back my fucking dagger.”

Caduceus does, and she disappears it back up her dress with a twist and reach that Bren will not be able to ever unsee.

“Anything else?” Fjord asks, sounding strained.

“Under the circumstances, I think a little more consolidation of our forces is called for,” Caduceus says.

Fjord makes a thoughtful noise. “I don’t want to give up our rooms at the Chateau, but we’re better off sleeping in places where we have more control. Here or on the ship.”

Jester is slumping. “I don’t want to sleep on the ship,” she says, not quite a whine but flirting with it.

“I have one guest room,” Veth says. Jester looks immediately at Fjord, who sighs.

“If it’s available, we’ll take it,” he says slowly, and Jester grins and leans over to bump Veth’s shoulder with her elbow.

“Where’s Luc?” Yasha asks Veth.

“At a friend’s house,” she says, and glances at Jester. “Can you-?”

“Hey Luc!” Jester sing-songs. Fjord, sitting almost perfectly across the circle from her, holds up both hands and folds down two fingers on one hand. “Your mom says it’s time to come home! But be careful, okay, watch out for people following you or something.”

“Don’t scare the kid,” Fjord orders as he folds his fingers down, scrambling to keep up. Jester frowns at the three fingers he ends up with, then looks to Bren. For a moment he considers pretending he hadn’t been listening. Then he makes the mistake of glancing at Jester, sees her patient hopeful face, and sighs and gives a single nod.

“Make it fast!” she finishes.

They’re clearly breaking up, the group losing its cohesive focus since the news has been shared and the lack of forward options has stymied them. Yasha and Beauregard are talking, and Caduceus’ wandering attention has wandered away, and Essek is looking caught by the talking around him. He’s watching Beauregard with sharp wariness, and she looks back at him and raises an eyebrow- something happened in Rexxentrum, Bren knows, something they didn’t share but is still sitting between them, even though they clearly know how to work together around it.

For a moment, he tries to imagine what Astrid would make of either of them. Easy to see how she would dismiss Beauregard out of hand- just a monk, fast as a striking snake but still limited in her range, no serious understanding of magic, the only threat to her being whatever privileges and reach the Cobalt Soul grants her. And Essek- unless the Dynasty has impeccable security, the Archmage of Civil Influence would consider it her business to know about his treason. A threat in person, with his unfamiliar magic and unknown temperament, but easily destroyed by dropping the right word in the right ear in- Rosohna, Essek had said his home’s name was. A city, Bren is assuming, but he could be wrong.

They would have had nothing to hold her to, if she hadn’t gone out of her way to meet them and put herself in the same room as them. For her to do so- she must actually, genuinely be worried.

“Hey, wizards!” Beauregard calls suddenly, like Bren has drawn her attention by thinking too much about her. “One of you load up Haste for today?”

Essek, who wasted a high-level spell to save them thirty minutes in the humidity, gives her the chilliest look Bren has ever seen. Beauregard actually recoils from him. “Sheesh, okay, never mind.” She looks back to Yasha. “Tomorrow work, babe?”

“Sure,” Yasha agrees, looking a little disappointed.

“Well,” Jester says. “I’m going back to the Chateau, we can come back here after dinner. Essek, wanna come with? I’ll paint you another parasol.”

She is bright, chipper, smiling, and she is a predator sensing weakness. Not at all oblivious to the interplay between Essek and Beauregard either, and clearly determined to pry it out of one of them. He sighs, but stands, and lets her take him by the arm and lovingly haul him to the stairs. Fjord follows them, pausing only long enough to check in on Caduceus.

“I think I’m going to stay here with Yasha, if Veth doesn’t mind,” he says fondly. Veth stares up at him suspiciously for a moment, then shrugs.

“Sure. But first-” she points at Nugget- “get him back outside, and keep him out there, if he Blinks into Yeza’s workshop one more time-”

“Hey,” Beauregard says, suddenly very close, and Bren looks up to find her standing next to his chair. “C’mon, let’s take a walk.”

“Fjord just said,” he begins.

“I know what he said,” she says, and holds out a hand expectantly. “Disguise yourself if it makes you feel better, but we need to talk, and I don’t want the others listening in.”

He stares at that offered hand, takes a deep, bracing breath- then puts his hand in hers and lets her haul him to his feet.

They don’t take the most direct route, Bren can tell. Beauregard seems inclined to stick to the shade, her outer robe quickly shed and draped over an elbow, her hair pulled up into a topknot at the back of her head that keeps it off her neck. She leads him, quietly at first, into a section of the city he hasn’t seen before, market stalls and open-air shops, breads and perfumes and cloths of every weave imaginable and many more he knows nothing about, windchimes and dangling stained glass mobiles catching sunlight and singing softly in the breeze.

“For what it’s worth,” she says eventually, after she’s stopped to investigate a makeup stall and came away, surprisingly, with several lengths of colorful ribbons, “I didn’t mean to scare you with the whole Volstrucker thing. Pretty sure there’s no threat here.”

“You don’t think so?” Bren asks. The makeup stall owner had insisted on giving him a squat glass jar of sun block, staring unsubtly at his sunburnt neck and making unhappy sounds the whole time. It’s thick and oily and smells sharp, but it could smell and feel like rubbing horse dung on his neck, so long as it works. “They are not the sort to give up a job half-done.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “If killing you was the job.”

Bren caps the jar of sun block and slides it into a pocket. That… hadn’t occurred to him.

“I mean,” Beauregard continues, taking his silence as invitation, “wouldn’t erasing someone’s memories be, y’know, harder than just killing them? I’ve seen wizard fights before, and I’ve seen Jester cast Modify Memory, and.” She grimaces, and Bren makes a noise of agreement. Not the most battlefield-appropriate spell.

“Then how did I get back to the house?” he asks. “I assume the sigil is not well-known.”

“Better hope not, you guys don’t even have a lock on the basement door.” She ducks away again, disappearing briefly into a small crowd around a stand with a sign on top of the awning that boasts a series of fruits, grapes, apples, peaches, several more he doesn’t recognize. A minute later she returns with a large fruit, red at the stem and fading to yellow halfway down, and produces a throwing knife that she uses to cut it open. “I don’t know, man, add that one to the list.”

She cuts a wedge free and offers it to him. He takes it and turns it over in his hand, its sticky juice running down his fingers.

“You’ve had it, you like it,” she says, tossing a slice of her own into her mouth, and Bren takes a bite. It’s milder than he expected, not a bright burst of flavor and not tart at all, but mellow and pleasant. He peels it away from the skin as he eats it, and accepts a second chunk when she offers it.

“Would Astrid speak to me?” he asks a few minutes later, when nothing of the fruit is left but juice on their fingers. The aftertaste is a little cloying, sitting heavily on the tongue, and Bren wishes they could ever be bothered to remember to bring water with them. “Essek would probably be willing to teach me Sending, if we limit it to twenty-five words she might not realize something is wrong.”

“Astrid’s not gonna tell us shit,” Beauregard says. “She’s Assembly, we’re their worst nightmare. What we’ve got is all we’re gonna get. And I don’t think we should be, you know, opening that door.” She gestures to him. “You had Ikithon talking to you whenever he fucking well felt like it for a while, it sucked.”

Probably for the best. Twenty-five words still afforded plenty of opportunities to fuck up, especially when talking to someone like Astrid. Bren has no idea where Caleb’s relationship with her stands, and is fairly confident that none of the Nein do either. Some things just can’t be shared.

“Besides,” she adds sourly, “she’s already so fucking proud of herself. She was the only person you talked to about Wieder. Not Essek or me, just her.”

Bren glances at her. There is nothing he can say to that- that wasn’t him, that was Caleb, and he can’t even begin to guess what the thought process was there.

“Don’t know shit about this kid, but that’s fine, just feel sad for him and drop your guard around him and then don’t even tell us about it,” Beauregard snarls, then immediately shakes her head and holds a hand up. “Not- you. Not blaming you. Just venting.”

“I know,” Bren says. “I wouldn’t have done that for him.”

“I know you wouldn’t, but Caleb would,” Beauregard says.

There is a solid twelve seconds of silence as that one sinks in. Bren closes his eyes and counts the seconds.

Surprisingly, it hurts, a sharp impact against his sternum like a punch she forgot to pull. It shouldn’t- he already knows they consider Caleb to be an improvement in all the ways that matter. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Caleb is magnanimous enough to overlook this boy’s history, while Bren is not.

“That’s not what I meant,” Beauregard says, clearly realizing her blunder.

“I know what you meant,” Bren murmurs.

“Caleb’s more trusting of people, is all I’m saying,” she insists. “And this kid- he lost everything, all his friends and his status and his teacher, and he got shoved into some deep dark hole by his parents and he wasn’t allowed to continue his education, and he only got out recently after years, who does that sound like to you?”

“It sounds like me,” Bren says, calmly, shamelessly. They have made it abundantly clear they all know his sins. “Which is why I would never trust him. I know what I am capable of.”

Unable to back out, unwilling to push forward, she just narrows her eyes and stares at him.

“Okay,” she says finally. “Let’s do this. You’re a selfish asshole, congratulations.”

Bren almost flinches at her words. He does look around, and finds no one looking like they’re hanging close or listening in.

“Hey,” Beauregard says, snapping her fingers under his nose, and he turns back to her. “Here’s the thing: we all were selfish assholes back then. Still are, for the most part. Saving the world didn’t fix us.”

“Saving the-?” Bren begins, and she waves it off, like it’s nothing.

“I was a bully to you and Veth, at first, and Fjord was trying to be someone else entirely, and Jester was- just more Jester, and Molly.” She pauses, swallows hard. “We were all shitty people, okay? There’s nothing special about you. You might be the only one of the Nein who has trained killer in their resume but now we’ve got someone who committed war crimes.” She, at least, lowers to a hissed whisper for the last sentence, close enough that her robe brushes Bren when she gestures with the arm holding it.

Bren freezes. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to respond to that, if she knows what Essek told him, if she just let that slip and he’s meant to be shocked by it. She doesn’t slow down enough for him to respond in any way.

“So stop thinking that we’re all secretly judging you, okay? We’re not. We’ve seen it all and we don’t care. We know you, all of you.”

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. “Family,” he says. It was one of the first things she’d said to him, after all- we’re family, I want to help.

“Yeah, jackass. Family.” She sounds both deeply exasperated and terribly fond, and- Bren smiles.

“All right.”

“And I’m sorry if I fuck up,” she adds. “It’s just, you’ve been like a brother to me for years, and now I gotta treat you like a stranger again. It’s hard to make that switch sometimes.”

He nods, and she studies him for a moment, then returns the nod when he passes whatever test she just put him to. She turns and falls into step beside him again, and they wander in silence through the market.

When one of the white stone archways that signal entry into the richer district appears, Bren looks around again, and says, as casually as he knows how, “War crimes?”

Beauregard snorts. “Oh sure, harsh the buzz,” she says. “That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about, but we were doing good there, so…” she shrugs.

“It’s going to get serious again?” Bren asks.

“Yup.” She sucks in a breath through her teeth, then lets it out again in a heavy sigh. “Look, Essek told me what you two talked about last night. All of it,” she says, with emphasis, and Bren nods. He hadn’t known whether Essek would keep that to himself, and somehow it doesn’t surprise him that a few hours alone with Beauregard was enough to get him to spill. “And he made a good point, which he does, sometimes. Smartest guy I know.”

“Is he,” Bren murmurs.

“Yeah, man, you’ve told me all about it like, twenty times. You’re all, he is such a genius, he did this and thought of that, and then you start making faces when I talk about Yasha’s arms or her- yeah, that face, right there. It’s all the same, dude, I feel the same damn way when you start lusting after Essek’s brain in front of me.”

“And what point did he make?” Bren asks, trying to skip right over that last part. First of all, he does not need to be thinking about Yasha’s arms or her- whatever- and second of all he definitely does not need to be thinking about Essek’s brain.

“Well,” Beauregard says. “There were some other issues wrapped up in it that aren’t really relevant here, but basically he said you needed to feel more in control.”

“This is not helping,” Bren points out.

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, sorry we talk to each other, we really should just let everyone make the same mistake over and over without ever trying to help. What are we thinking, right?”

That- Bren sighs- is not wrong. It galls him to be discussed like that, but he supposes that is the price one pays to have friends.

“Anyway,” she says pointedly, and relaxes when he doesn’t object. “We’re not gonna stop looking for Wieder.”

“No, of course not,” Bren defers instantly. She tips her chin up and stares at him untrustingly, and he adds, “He hurt someone you love. It’s not my place to tell you what you’re allowed to do about it.”

Beauregard nods slowly. “It’s not,” she agrees. “And I’m not giving up on Caleb either.”

Bren has nothing to say to that one.

“But you need to tell us to back off, or stop doing something, then just fucking say it, man. I’ll have your back. I always do.”

He doesn’t think Essek gave up on Caleb, he just thinks Essek was tactful enough to make the distinction between him and Bren. Beauregard clearly still doesn’t see him as his own person, just a reversion of her friend. But- if her word is good, then does her intention really matter?

She is trying to offer him a gesture of peace. “Thank you, Beauregard.”

“ ‘Course.” She smiles at him, then leans over and bumps his shoulder with hers. “All that said, still no wandering the city by yourself. No offense, just- I’m not a hundred percent sure, on the whole Volstrucker thing.”

“Fair enough,” he says quickly. No, he has no interest in tangling with any of Ikithon’s other former students.

“So we’re good?”

“Ja. We’re good.”

And silence again, far more comfortable this time, until Bren can see the blue walls of the Lavish Chateau in the distance. Then he slows his step again and says, “One more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“We saved the world?”

She stares at him for a moment, then groans. “Fuck. Yeah. Long story, needs booze.”

He lets her lead the way, and follows with a smile.

Chapter Text

They go to the store room, again.

It’s getting to be a full house, Beauregard sneering at the crowd before turning and heading around behind one of the bars, and Bren follows. This is, most likely, going to be a heavy enough conversation without having to worry about potential witnesses.

“Hey,” she says to the bartender, a half-orc who starts to protest, turns and recognizes her, and gives up mid-word with an exasperated sigh that does a better job of demonstrating that he knows her than anything else would. “You need something, just yell it through the door and I’ll get it for you, okay?”

“You’re going to be lifting kegs?” he asks, studying her. Which- she is terrifyingly fast, but not all that strong. However, that was a challenge, and Bren knows her well enough by now to tuck his chin down to hide his smile, because he knows how she’s going to take that.

“Yeah, man,” she snaps. “I’ll handle the fucking kegs. Just stay out.”

The half-orc rolls his eyes and steps aside so they can get past him. Beauregard doubles back after a step, reaches under the counter and snags two steins.

“Just for that,” she tells him, and takes the steins with her into the store room. Bren looks away, careful not to make eye contact with the bartender, and closes the door behind him as he heads into the store room.

As soon as the door’s closed, Beauregard turns back to him. “Can you do Essek’s gravity thing? ‘Cause I’m not handling those kegs.”

“I don’t know,” Bren says. “If it is a cantrip, I might not have it written down.”

“Shit.” She looks at one of the nearer kegs with a frown. At least it’s a wine keg, only a few gallons at most. He’s seen brewing barrels big enough to stuff a body into, and had even slept in one during a particularly bad night. Then she shrugs. “Whatever, we’ll just say it’s out of stock. Here.” And she hands him a stein and gestures him along as she walks down the aisle. There are three shelves, two on either wall and one standing down the center of the room, stocked with various bottles and barrels and casks. She stops and stares for a moment at one bottle, face twisting into what might have been intended to be a smile.

“Here we go,” she says, picking up the bottle. “Kamordah vineyard, I know this one.” And she turns the bottle, rolling it so Bren can see the label, Lionett Winery-

He looks at her, and she barks a humorless laugh. “Yeah, my family’s into wine.”

“Is it good?” he asks, studying the bottle. He’s more partial to beer himself, something dark and bitter.

“Sure.” A rousing endorsement. “I mean, it’s grape wine. I kinda like the plum stuff from the Dynasty better, though that could just be me being a dick.”

Say one thing for her, she made no bones about hiding her true feelings on a matter. Bren holds up the steins and she pops the cork and pours them both a healthy amount. “You didn’t go into the family business?” he asks, biting back any comment about decanting.

“Nope.” She corks the bottle again and sets it aside. “Dear old dad wanted a boy- hence the name- and nothing I could do proved a daughter could be just as good, so.” She shrugs. “Why bother trying, right?”

With no cleric in Blumenthal, Bren’s parents had been profoundly grateful for a healthy child and an easy delivery, and had no opinions one way or another on his gender, as far as he is aware. But then, his parents weren’t selling wine as far away as Nicodranas. Rich people tend to have opinions about things poorer people know not to take for granted.

“Anyway,” she says, and takes a swig of wine. “So. We saved the world.” She says it like it’s a toast.

Bren would very dearly love to hear more about that, but first, there’s something else more pressing. “How did you end up with the Mighty Nein, then? If we started so low, we could not have been worth the attention of a group that can stand against the Assembly.”

“Fuck no, I, uh.” She takes another drink. “The archivist who, ah, recruited me into the Cobalt Soul didn’t use exactly… legal methods? And I thought the whole thing was like that, just one more corrupt organization doing whatever the fuck they wanted, because they could and no one stopped them.” She rolls her stein like it’s a proper wine glass, watching the wine slosh around in it. “So I left, after a while. Figured I was doing them a favor, since I’d been nothing but trouble from the start. Hooked up with Fjord and Jester in Trostenwald about a day before we met you.”

She does not strike him as the self-pitying type, to decide herself unworthy of someone and leave for their sake. She does strike him as someone who defaults to half-truths out of sheer habit, especially if the whole truth is uncomfortable. He lets it go- it ultimately doesn’t matter why, the only thing he really needed to know was that she was on the outs with her order then, and now she isn’t.

“And we went on to save the world,” he prompts, and Beauregard, caught mid-drink with a mouthful of wine, hums around it.

“Yeah! Twice, actually. First time was betrayer god bullshit, this cult was trying to release one of them and we stopped them. Yeah.”

It is a good thing she chose steins and not wine glasses, because Bren would have splintered the stem of his otherwise. He sets it aside on a shelf anyways, because he doesn’t trust his hands to hold steady. They were fighting betrayer gods? No, just their followers- but still. From pickled gnoll ears to betrayer gods.

And that was the first time they saved the world. She’s talking again, gods help him.

“And the second time- you know Aeor, right?”

“Uh. Ja. Magic city.” He has heard of Aeor, spent hours imagining what a mageocracy during the Age of Arcanum must have been like. He cannot find the words to explain himself more coherently, because he had asked how did we save the world and the story starts with you know Aeor, right. He might need to withdraw the question, he is not prepared to hear this.

“Drink your wine, man, it’ll help,” she says wryly, and Bren takes the stein again and chugs the wine. It is very good, although he agrees with Beauregard, the plum wine is better, has a bit of tart bite that the dry white she’d opened lacks.

“Anyway,” she continues, when he’s drained half the stein and she’s refilled it. “Apparently there was a ward of the city that broke off when the rest of it was,” and she whistles a descending note and holds a hand out, flat to the ground, then tips her fingers downward to mime something falling. “And warped to the Astral Sea, ‘cause that can only end well. Fast forward a thousand years, and it is a fucked up place, like- be glad you can’t remember it, it was-” she shudders, shakes her head.

She seems to be implying they went to the fucked up city in the Astral Sea. He drinks more wine.

“The Somnovem, the rulers of the ward, they were trying to bring it back through to this plane, which would have been, y’know. Bad. So we stopped them.” She shrugs, no big deal, and tops him off again.

“Just like that,” Bren says. His voice sounds very distant.

“Well, no, not just like that. You,” and she gestures to him, drags a thumb down her own chest and belly. “You’ve seen those, right? And Jester. Cad was hanging on by a thread and you got Jester to him like ten seconds before you went down, if you hadn’t…”

He can’t decide if she’s making it better- this all, after all, is in the past, these are things that are done- or worse. Probably worse. He looks at the wine bottle, already more than half-empty, and reflects idly on how these people are turning him into an alcoholic.

“Don’t know why you’re so shocked,” Beauregard says, as comforting as a cactus. “I said we saved the world, what’d you think I meant? It’s not like I told you we spent all our time pulling cats out of a tree.”

“I thought it was hyperbole,” Bren mutters. He’d thought- saving the world is open to interpretation, after all. He had expected something smaller-scale, saving Wildemount from war- not that the whole of Exandria had been at risk, and they saved the day apparently by the skin of their teeth.

“Nah, we literally saved the world.” She snorts, a bitter sound. “Of course, no one knows about it. The Soul, like three people in Tal’Dorei, our families- that’s it. We weren’t great at making friends.” She pauses. “Powerful friends. We made a lot of friends, just not people who could help us when we said hey, do you have an army we could borrow?”

“Three people in Tal’Dorei?” Bren echoes, the sheer oddity of it jarring him back into the moment and out of the half-panicked fog he’d been drifting in.

“Yeah, Allura Vysoren? Some wizard from Emon. She’s friends with good ol’ Yussa.” She gestures with her stein in a vague direction, and it takes Bren a moment to place the name- so much has happened, it’s been days but feels like weeks- Tidepeak Tower. “He got jammed up and she helped us get him out of wizard time-out, the first time. Second time we saved him ourselves.” A swig of wine, a shrug. “So when we were going around trying to find people to help us fight- the Somnovem,” interesting pause there, “we went to Yussa and he sent us to Tal’Dorei. She gave you her staff and her wife traded swords with Yasha.”

Bren hesitates, tilts his head to study her out of the corner of his eye. “Euphemism?”

Beauregard makes a confused noise, goes to take another drink of wine, and figures it out just in time to snort it instead. She coughs and groans and rubs at her nose with the edge of her robe. “Fuck. No. Literal swords. Thanks for that, man.”

Bren sets his stein aside. “And how did we know?”

“Know what?”

“That the world needed saving. If this city was in the Astral Sea, and no one else knew it was a threat, how did we?”

“Well,” she says slowly, studying her wine with a careful nonchalance, and he knows she’s going to be engaging in one of her half-truths again. “Cad was getting visions of it for a while. And Vokodo- anyone tell you about it? Big psychic critter in Rumblecusp, fake god, fun times. Anyway, when we killed it, we got hit with a psychic blast, turns out it was from the Astral Sea and it came to our plane after Cognouza- that’s the name of the city- chased it out.”

“No wonder we received so little help, with a threat as ill-defined as that.”

“Yeah, okay, dick,” Beauregard snaps back, and it’s fair, it’s earned, Bren is trying to draw out that temper. She groans, rolls her head back on her shoulders. “Fine. But don’t let it fuck anything up, okay? We’ve been- it’s not fair to judge him for something he has no control over, something he didn’t even do. So just don’t.”

For a long, sickening moment, Bren wonders if the him in question is Essek, if he put his treason out there so easily in order to distract from a much larger sin. “Who?”

“You talked to Kingsley, right?” she asks, and Bren almost sags with relief. “They tell you anything about their past?”

“They used to be Mollymauk.” He thinks for a moment- a single sentence, a throwaway line that he had not paid much attention to and wouldn’t even remember except he remembers everything. “And someone else, someone not worth bothering about.”

“Lucien,” Beauregard says, and there is hatred in that name. “Lucien was the original owner of the body. He died during some ritual and it like.” She makes a gesture, a fist exploding out into an outspread hand. “Shattered him, somehow. He crawled out of his own grave as Mollymauk, and when Molly died Lucien’s friends brought him back as Lucien. He told us about Cognouza and the Somnovem. That’s how we knew the world was in danger- the guy trying to destroy it straight-up told us.”

Bren considers that. No, he won’t be holding Kingsley to blame for something they did not themself do, but it fills in a few gaps. “How is he Kingsley now, then? Is there a chance Lucien will come back?”

“The Wildmother,” Beauregard says simply, and Bren glances at her. “Yeah, I know. But Caduceus asked her, and he’s apparently her favorite person of all time, so she gave us Molly back, kind of. No idea what’ll happen when Kingsley dies, that’s on the Wildmother.”

Bren nods. No wonder Fjord had been so insistent that the issue had not been in Caduceus’ connection to the Wildmother. He would not entertain the idea either, if he had known.

“So anyway,” Beauregard says again. “That’s the worst of it. I mean, we did a bunch of other things, all varying degrees of stupid, but that’s the big one.”

“And we split up after that?” Bren asks.

“Pretty much. Cad was home and with his family and he wanted to spend some time with them, and Veth went home to her family, and you and I had the whole Ikithon thing to deal with.”

That sparks something. Bren shifts his weight, stirring to attention. “And there was a trial? A public one?”

“A trial, yeah, and it was public in that people knew about it. The public wasn’t allowed in to watch, if that’s what you mean.”

“So there would be a transcript,” Bren says, and Beauregard stirs as well, sudden interest sparking in her eyes.

“Had a court reporter and everything. The Soul should have a copy of the transcription, I’ll see if we can get our hands on it tomorrow.”

The door nearly jumps off its hinges as a fist pounds against it. In a single move that aptly demonstrates her monk speed, Beauregard sweeps both steins and the wine bottle between two casks, then turns and puts her back against the gap to block sight of it.

“What?” she calls as she’s doing this, and Bren opens his mouth to remind her-

“Marquesian brandy!” the bartender barks through the closed door. “Second shelf, ten paces back, top row. You’re in luck, it’s a bottle.”

“Shit,” Beauregard says, and scrambles to go get the brandy. Bren takes his stein back while she’s gone and finishes off the dregs of wine in it. There’s too much wine in the bottle still for him to chug it all, and he idly wonders how many allowances the Chateau will allow them to take in Marion’s name.

She returns with a bottle- a big bottle, really, but still manageable for one person- and the bartender opens the door for her when she kicks it a few times, just as Bren is getting there to open it for her. He takes the bottle, slants a look at the two of them, and closes the door again. Bren thinks but doesn’t say- fuck no- that he had expected to see them wearing far less clothing. More of Caleb seeping through- distaste and amusement in equal measure, as Beauregard clearly realizes the same thing and pulls a scandalized face.

“Will Astrid be watching for you to return?” he asks, to move the subject along.

“Hm.” She lets him steer them away from that, frowning as she thinks. “Probably. We can split up, one wizard Teleports to the house, one to the Archive, and then we never have to go outside. Jester’ll have to go with you if you’re going to the house.”

“The Archive has its own sigils?” Soul Z, Soul R- they probably have an entire network, and a number of them are in his spellbook.

“Yeah, dude, we- hah.” A smile, quick and pained. “We need to let them know we’re coming first, and no horses. But they’ll let us in no problem.”

“No horses...?”

“We’ll sort it out tomorrow,” she says, waving his question away. He’s getting used to that- another story they don’t have time to tell, or is too embarrassing to go into detail.

There is another knock at the door, and Beauregard groans theatrically and spins around to open if. “Fucking what?” she demands, then her demeanor changes entirely as she sidesteps to make room. “Shit, get in here before he gets back.”

Jester slithers into the room and Beauregard peers out suspiciously before shutting the door behind her. “What are we doing?” she asks, clearly sensing mischief and wanting to partake.

Beauregard sweeps over to her wine hidey-hole and takes the bottle out to show her. “Lionett wine,” she says. “Haven’t decided if I’m gonna pay for it yet. Want some?”

She offers like she knows the answer already, and sure enough Jester shakes her head and gives a no thanks that Beauregard shrugs off as the inevitable outcome. She pours herself some more, offers the last of the bottle to Bren, and sips. “So what’s up?”

“We ordered more food for the ship but Orly says it won’t get to the Nein Heroez until tomorrow morning, so if you’re going to the ship tonight you should probably eat here first,” Jester says, a quick rambling in one breath. She has a small pouch full of something that looks like hard candies- they had swung by the market as well, apparently. She offers one to Bren and he takes it carefully. It smells sharp, and tastes earthy and almost spicy when he puts it on his tongue, not an unpleasant flavor but one that takes acclimating to. “Root beer,” Jester tells him, like that will mean anything to him.

“Actually,” Beauregard says. “Since you’re here. You going to Rexxentrum tomorrow? We’re thinking we need to split up, so Essek’s probably taking me to the archive and Caleb’s going to his house.”

“Sure,” she says with a shrug, busy prying apart two candies that have melted together slightly. “Fjord wants to go too, and Cad- here, Cay-leb.”

He holds out his hand by rote, and she drops a leather satchel into it. When he loosens the drawstrings and takes a whiff, he smells flowers, leaves, perfumey tea-smell. Enough for an entire pot, if he feels so inclined.

“The Finney family,” Jester reports. “Cad said to give it to you, that it’ll help settle your mind.”

“The Finney family?” Bren echoes.

“Dead people tea,” Beauregard tells him solemnly. He pauses a moment, waiting for the punchline, but it never comes.

Ah, well, Caduceus had mentioned living in a graveyard. If nothing comes of this trip to Rexxentrum, he might see if they can head up to the Blooming Grove soon, he’s getting to be ravenously curious about the place.

“Cad’s gonna go home tomorrow, so he can talk to his family about this,” Jester continues, and Bren stirs.

“How is he going home?”

“Word of Recall, yo,” Jester chirps, like that should explain anything. He’s heard of it, a powerful divine spell- but that is the extent of his knowledge. He has never been one for divinity. “He lives in a temple to the Wildmother so he can just.” She makes a pfft noise and flicks her fingers. “It’s only one-way, though, so he won’t be able to come back until you or Essek goes and gets him.”

“Can it wait another day?” Bren asks, already knowing what’s going to happen, and sure enough-

Flick of the wrist. “Hi Cad! Caleb wants to know if you can wait another day before you go home, ‘cause they’re gonna burn a lot of magic tomorrow-”

“Done,” Bren interrupts, and she snaps her mouth shut. That isn’t the reason he wanted it to wait, but he doubts Caduceus will mind either way.

“He says no problem,” Jester tells him a moment later, and pops another candy in her mouth.

“Imagine if you knew Sending,” Beauregard says to him as she pours herself the last of the wine.

“Is there a reason I don’t?” he asks. He’s been wondering- there’s a lot of people for Caleb to keep in contact with, after all, and under normal circumstances they’re apparently scattered to the four winds.

“Because you’re a stubborn ass and we made too big a deal about it so you refused out of pettiness,” she says lightly, and Bren bites his lower lip and looks away. Another argument he hasn’t had with her. He’s still trying to readjust after the revelation that they are siblings in all but blood, and looking at their interactions through that lens, he can see now that she’s not so much being antagonistic as she is being a bratty little sister. Sibling squabbles seem to be the basis of their relationship.

“But I have Sending and everyone loves to hear from me,” Jester says, fully aware that she is stretching the truth to the breaking point and not caring. “Now are we leaving?”

Beauregard holds up one finger while chugging the last of the wine. She blows out a deep exhale once she’s done and wipes her mouth off with the back of her wrist.

“If anyone asks, it was empty when we got in here,” she says as she puts the bottle back where she found it.

“Okay,” Jester says, a little pityingly, and turns to the door.

The bartender is back from wherever he went when they shuffle out one by one, Beauregard last with her head high and a defiant look in her eye. He ignores them, and closes the door once they’re out, and Bren watches as Jester slides a couple of coins into his hand as he passes her. The crowd has grown now that the afternoon is fading into the dinner hours, and several hopeful gazes rise periodically to the balconies above.

“I’m gonna go see if Mama wants to eat dinner with us,” Jester says. “Did you want to come?”

“Sure,” Beauregard says.

“Ah, no thanks,” Bren says quietly. “I think I will take dinner upstairs in the room with the balcony. Gretchen was scared by the storm earlier, I want to spend some time with her.” Some time alone, to process.

“Cool. We’ll head back to the Nein Heroez just before sunset?” Beauregard offers, and Bren nods to her.

Jester catches Bren’s hand for a moment, folds his fingers down against his palm, then lets him go and turns to hook her arm into Beauregard’s and leads her away towards the stairs. Bren lets them get a comfortable distance away, then follows.

The room is comfortingly quiet, after all the activity of before. It’s not as overwhelming now as it was in the start, and he doesn’t know if he’s getting used to it or if they’re making an effort to be less- well, just less. He opens his hand, looking at the object Jester had pressed into it- another of her candies, of course.

He sets it down on the table, and the tea satchel beside it, and studies both for a long moment. Then he turns to search the room for a cup, and makes himself some tea.

He looks at his spellbook again, once he’s settled.

Gretchen deigns to grace him with her presence so he sits on the bed, boots left by the door, legs stretched out in front of him and a purring cat draped over his knees. The teacup sits on the bedside table, a lovely delicate blend that helps him focus through the melancholy that wants to settle over him.

Haste, Slow, Enlarge. Leomund’s Tiny Hut and even, much farther back, something marked simply as the Tower, a complicated spell with pages of notes and calculations. Transmogrification as well, a spell that looks very homebrewed, notes about goblins and halflings in the margins. He cannot even begin to guess what the dunamantic spells Essek had given him will do. And there- the first spell that was not in his spellbook before he woke up in Caleb Widogast’s life- Message.

He has devoted as much of his time, his focus on spells to help others as he has spells to defend himself, and it had started as early as the time between meeting Veth and meeting the rest of the Nein.

He leans forward and pets Gretchen, earning himself an increase in purr volume and paws kneading against his calf, claws pricking lightly at his skin through the fabric of his pants. He rubs a thumb over her crumpled ear and tries to envision Essek with a handful of calico kitten, possibly bleeding at the eye, probably filthy and in desperate need of a bath. Had he brought her there knowing there was a good chance she would die? Did he simply see a cat and bring it to someone he knew who needed a cat, uncaring of her injuries? He could have just as easily taken her to one of the clerics, why Caleb?

She turns her head, rolling into his hand, pressing into his fingers for a better angle. For a moment there is a touch-memory sensation of a much smaller head in his hands, dirt crusting fur into stiff little spikes, mewling cries echoing in his ears-

He jerks away, breath caught, and Gretchen turns her head again to complain at him. He reaches for her again immediately, and feels only the adult cat under his hands. And he knows, with a steady certainty that hadn’t existed moments ago, that Essek brought her to Caleb to heal him as much as her. To give him the opportunity to be sitting here now, with this living thing pressed against him, and know that he saved her. That the hands that once brought only destruction and ruin had instead bestowed life.

“These are good people, schatz,” he tells her quietly, like she didn’t know. And they are, as much as Beauregard might laugh the idea off- they have a war criminal now, but the way Essek described his own crimes, he was so far removed from the suffering he caused- he had not done it himself. The lives lost are his burden to bear but he never had literal blood on his hands. Not like Bren.

Is Caleb really so much better than him? They know what he has done, and accept it- has he found a way to accept it? Would that he could be Caleb Widogast again, so sure of his place in this group, with these people. But he’s not, and that’s the whole problem.

A Volstrucker-in-training in his classroom. The instant revulsion Bren had felt- he feels sick, still. Not just at the danger he had invited in, exposed the other students and himself to- but the sheer disgust, the immediate recognition and loathing, both for that boy and himself. He would never, never, let that boy into his classroom. Does that make Caleb a soft-hearted fool, or Bren a cold-hearted coward?

A soft knock comes at the door after a long while, and Bren gets up to open it, ignoring Gretchen’s protest. It’s a server, balancing three plates on a tray held over her head, which she brings down so he can see. A salad on one plate, a fat cut of steak with roasted potatoes on the other, and a small dish of fatty cut-offs for Gretchen. He takes them with a murmured thanks, turns down the offer of alcohol and asks for more water to be sent up, and nudges the door closed behind her with a foot when she leaves. He’ll have to tip her when she brings the water up, which means he’ll have to figure out how much to give her.

Gretchen, of course, smells the food and is already weaving between his ankles as he heads over to the table, doing her best to trip him so that she gets to have all of it. He puts her plate on the ground nearby and sets his own food on the table, staring down at it. It’s the nicest meal he’s had since- his last state dinner as a student of Ikithon’s, probably. He doubts even Caleb eats this well on a regular basis.

He has no appetite, and picks at the food, and feeds the steak in tiny shreds to Gretchen who happily accepts it as dessert after her dinner.

He makes more tea, goes out onto the balcony, watches the sun crawl towards the ocean, and waits for whatever revelations tomorrow brings.

An hour before sunset, Jester barges into his head again. He’s getting used to her generous use of Sending, so much so that it merely makes him smile instead of flinch.

“Cay-leb! Beau’s waiting downstairs for you, you guys are going back to the ship, right? Tell Orly we’ll be back tomorrow. Oh- Beau knows who-”

who Orly is, might have been the last part of that. “Thank you, Jester. I'll be down in a minute,” he says simply, and lets the magic fade away before he gets to his feet.

He heads out into the hallway and is about to head down the stairs when a familiar voice calls out, “oh good, someone’s here. Come over here and make yourself useful.”

Bren hesitates, then turns and follows the beckoning voice, down the hallway to the right and into one of Marion’s private rooms, catching a brief glimpse of the tip of a tail disappearing through the doorway as he rounds the corner. This one is a dressing room, if the closets and wardrobes and makeup table is anything to go by. There are a few pieces of clothing scattered around, draped across various surfaces- and in the middle of all of it, standing in front of a three-faced mirror stand, Kingsley Tealeaf is twisting awkwardly around, trying to do up the lacings on the back of the dress they are wearing.

“Magic man,” he says with a smile.

“Pirate king,” Bren greets in reply. “Does Marion know about this?”

“Of course she does. She even helped pick out which one flatters my coloring best. We who have unusual skin tones have to be a bit more careful than you boring beige folk.” They leave off fussing with the laces and turn so their back is to Bren. “Help a gentle out, will you?”

The dress they have chosen is a relatively simple one, considering the wardrobe they were choosing from. Deep goldenrod yellow, hints of a sunshine yellow shimmer in the fabric as the wearer moves- it would not flatter Marion’s skin tone, Bren thinks as he approaches, and wonders if Kingsley is a frequent visitor to the Chateau.

Bren is slow and unpracticed with the lacings- his mother had had his father to help her dress, and Astrid would never wear clothing that required an escape strategy. He pulls too tight at first, and gets lovingly snapped at, and adjusts accordingly. The lacing is not meant to function as support, per se, but rather decoration, leaving plenty of skin showing and drawing the eye to the deep plunge of the back of the dress, deep enough that there does not need to be any sort of second opening in the skirt for the tiefling’s tail. As soon as he realizes this, he picks it up much faster and weaves the lacings through their catches appropriately. Kingsley’s back is as heavily tattooed as his front, but nowhere near as scarred down past the expanse of his shoulders.

Kingsley does their makeup as Bren works, goldenrod lip paint and bronze eyeshadow. “Her husband returned home early and surprised her while I was getting dressed,” they say as they work. “Cruelly abandoned me to do up my own lacings.”

“What would you have done if no one had come up?” Bren asks, lightly curious, mostly because he thinks he already knows the answer.

“Gone downstairs as is, of course,” Kingsley says with a sly grin, and that is exactly what Bren thought they’d say. “But now you’re here.”

“You are not worried about Volstrucker?” Bren asks. He’s gotten the sense that Kingsley is only adjacent to the Nein, not truly a part of it, allowed in on fondness for who he used to be.

Kingsley tilts their head back with a smile that sends chills down Bren’s spine, opens their mouth and says something in words that are not words, more hissing and snarling, and it lodges in Bren’s mind, the very sound of it crawling along his skin- there is fire beneath Bren’s skin, liquid fire pouring into his veins like poison, fire he does not command, burning him-

“No, darling,” Kingsley says a moment, an eternity, later. Bren realizes he has dropped the laces and is leaning sideways against one of the mirrors, Kingsley holding onto the other side to keep it steady. He still burns but the pain is fading. “I’m not worried. The previous tenants left me some fun tricks to keep myself safe with.”

No apology, no remorse. Bren breathes until his hands are steady and goes back to his lacing, lesson learned.

He ties the lacings into a bow just above the base of the tail, as commanded, and steps back. They do make for a stunning sight, he has to give them that. “You have plans for tonight?” He has to clear his throat twice for the whole sentence to make it out, and his throat still feels like he’d been breathing in smoke.

“Oh, just hang around and see what happens.” They have a series of moon charms on their left horn, and they chime softly when Kingsley dips their head. They brought their own makeup, Bren sees, watching as they load it back up into a bag and set it on the pile of what must be the clothes they came here in. “It’s been a week or two since Marion gave a performance, they’re getting restless.”

“I wish them luck,” Bren says wryly, and Kingsley snorts viciously.

“That’s all I needed,” they say a moment later, waving at him dismissively. Bren hesitates instead of leaving, stepping back so he isn’t so close. This will be… not well received, probably, but he needs to ask, and Kingsley clearly loves to flirt with boundaries so hopefully this will not go as poorly as possible.

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” he says, before he can think better of it.

“Only if you don’t mind how I answer it,” Kingsley replies, a flirt at first. Then he looks at Bren, and heaves a sigh too deep for the dress he’s wearing. “Who told you?”

“Told me?” Bren echoes.

“About the other one. I know that look, wizard, one part fear, two parts pity.”

Ah. “Beauregard.”

“Eh.” Kingsley tilts their head in a sort of shrug. “Could be worse. Not surprising, they’ve been trying to do this slowly and she doesn’t have the patience for that. So what’s your question?”

They’re bracing themself, flirtatious and smarmy and tense, tail tip flicking back and forth. They don’t want to talk about Lucien, which is fair.

“You said you disappointed them by waking up as someone else.” He leans back against a dresser behind him. “Would you go back to being Mollymauk, if you could?”

“Back to Molly?” The question clearly catches him off-guard, and he almost starts to bite at his lip as he thinks before remembering and turning to check his lip paint in the mirror. He turns back and steps away from the mirror stand, rising up on tiptoes and giving a small spin to watch how the dress moves around him. “Honestly? No.”

Bren lets out the breath he’d been holding. He doesn't know if he likes that answer.

“But here’s the thing, Bren,” Kingsley continues, rolling his name across their forked tongue like it’s a delicacy. “I love Molly like a brother I never met. He made me possible- he made friends who loved him enough to command a goddess to give me life in the hopes of bringing him back, and I am grateful for that. But going back to Molly is just that- going back.” They reach up and unpin their hair, shaking it down from the bun they’d been wearing it in. There are white streaks in it. “So between Bren whatever-your-last-name-is and Caleb Widogast, which one is the Molly?”

“Ermendrud,” Bren says quietly, the gut-punch of his name lessened by the apathy behind it- Kingsley failed to use his last name to demonstrate that they don’t know it. Kingsley clucks their tongue and pats Bren’s cheek with one hand.

“I’ve heard it. I won’t remember it this time either.” They return to the mirror to fuss with their hair some more. “In fairness, your situation and mine aren’t that similar. I am a special case. Keep that in mind, before you go making any decisions based on my advice.”

Well. Fairly asked, and he was warned that he might not like the answer. Although honestly, he can’t tell if he likes it, only that it sits uneasily within him. He does not like the idea of Bren Ermendrud being a hurdle to overcome- at the same time, he is aware that the way he is, is not good.

“Thank you, Kingsley,” he says quietly, and the tiefling hums a note in acknowledgement, busy pinning their hair up into a fancier style. They are barefoot, the dress just short enough to show it. They will break hearts tonight.

“Good luck hunting, magic man,” Kingsley replies, meeting his gaze in a mirror and flashing him a fangy grin. The itching on Bren’s shoulder is back again, and he stares at Kingsley’s reflection, searching for someone he can’t even remember.

“And to you,” he says.

And then he leaves, before someone needs to come fetch him, and rubs his arms under his sleeves until the fire is banked once more.

Chapter Text

He is the first to wake up in the morning; Jester and Fjord and Veth spent the night at Veth’s house, Caduceus was on the ship but still awake by the time Bren called it a night, and he’s not entirely sure Essek actually sleeps, and therefore does not wake up. Beauregard and Yasha had reunited after dark, Yasha with her bold white wings in a comet-streak flight over the city. They had been lovingly banished to a forward cabin, well away from the rest of the quarters, because nobody here wants to be hearin’ that, according to Orly. Who, as it turns out, is a tortle, a fantastic character with one eye and whorling glittering tattoos and bagpipes set into his shell, which he happily regaled them with when Beauregard prompted him.

He roams the ship aimlessly for an hour or so, the crew on watch glancing at him when he moves past them but otherwise alone. The sun rises late here in Nicodranas, blocked by the mountains to the east, and the people are slow to greet the new day too. There are few dock hands on the shore and the shops that are visible from the foredeck are all shuttered and closed. Even the fishing boats have yet to return to shore with their daily hauls.

Then, as the sun is finally bleeding over the mountains, there comes a whistle from the docks below. Bren heads over to the railing and sees Fjord standing where the ladder would unroll, should Bren think himself capable of unraveling it. He’s carrying a bag full of something, and Jester is leaning against him, face mushed against his bicep, and in turn Veth is pressed against her hip. Both look mostly asleep still, and likely to fall over if Fjord moves an inch.

“Brought breakfast,” he calls up, switching the bag to the hand not attached to the arm Jester is leaning against and holding it up in offering.

Bren sidesteps and lets the approaching crewmember send the ladder down, and goes to rouse the others while Fjord tries to figure out how to navigate a rope ladder with one hand carrying breakfast and the other being used as a pillow. Essek is indeed awake, and is coming up on deck even as Bren heads down, and Caduceus is awake and opens his door when Bren knocks. Beauregard and Yasha are not awake, and Bren knocks on their door until Beauregard yells at him to fuck off, advice he gladly takes.

They all eventually meet up in what Bren is informed is the galley, the ship’s dining room. Caduceus hands out teacups and Fjord hands out boxes of food, and they eat in relative silence, mostly still too much asleep to have any sort of coherent conversation. Yasha finishes first and spends the rest of the time braiding hair, Beauregard’s into a single long whip-like braid, then starts weaving dozens of small braids into her own windswept mane, tying in a handful of colored ribbons that look very much like the ones Beauregard had gotten the day before at the market. She does Jester’s hair as well, when the tiefling lays her head on Yasha’s forearm.

“So who’s going where?” Fjord asks when the food is mostly gone.

“Caleb’s house or Archive,” Beauregard says, and swallows another chug of tea.

“I have tea with Yussa this afternoon, so I think I’ll stay here,” Caduceus says.

“Oh, good idea,” Fjord says. “He likes you best out of all of us, butter him up.”

“Remind him of who pulled his ass out of the Happy Fun Ball and Cognouza-”

“Don’t do that,” Fjord interrupts Beauregard. “Just get him in a good mood, please, I’m pretty sure by this point he’s considering changing that circle of his.”

“Can he do that?” Jester asks, looking first at Bren- sitting almost directly opposite her- then Essek- to her immediate left.

“Yes,” Essek says. “But it would require a significant amount of work and resources, both magical and monetary. I don’t think we’ve annoyed him that much.”

yet, he does not say, but it rings in the air anyways.

Bren clears his throat in the silence that follows. “Why was he in Cognouza?” He certainly seems to trust them, and be trusted in turn, but he clearly isn’t in the inner circle.

“Stupid wizard shit,” Beauregard says simply, and- sadly, that is a believable explanation.

“Well,” Veth says, “I’m going with Caleb.”

“Me too then,” Jester says.

Beauregard looks to Fjord and Yasha. “You two coming with me and Essek?” she asks, and then brightens as something occurs to her and starts nudging Yasha with her elbow. “Babe. Babe. We can use their training ring.”

Yasha perks up and then, oddly, looks to Essek with a hopeful expression.

“Yes,” he says without looking up from his spellbook, which he had summoned while the discussion was going on around him, and Yasha grins at whatever concession he is allowing her. “I will cast Haste on you.”

“It’s the fish market all over again,” Fjord mutters.

“You two had better not beat each other up too much ‘cause I’m not healing you today,” Jester adds, and Veth coughs pointedly.

“Meet back here tonight, if we don’t meet up sooner?” Beauregard asks Bren, ignoring Fjord and Jester entirely. “Don’t leave the house unless it’s an emergency, no loud noises, no fires or lights, try to avoid any windows- we don’t want anyone knowing we’re there.”

That should be easy enough to do- the house had thick curtains that were drawn in every room but the back-facing sitting room windows. Caleb takes his privacy seriously.

“Hey,” Fjord adds, looking at Caduceus, who has swapped seats with Yasha and is holding very still while she ties a beetle-green ribbon into a braid. She is responsible for the metal and wood beads in his hair, Bren realizes, watching as she threads a flat iron-colored chunk of metal onto the braid to help tie it off. “Disguise when you’re in the city, all right?”

“All right,” Caduceus agrees. The tail end of a curl brushes his ear as Yasha works, and the ear flicks like a fly-bitten cow.

“Are we ready?” Jester asks, looking to Veth and then Bren. When she gets no protest, she stands up. “We have a special area prepared for Teleport circles because last time you were complaining about gapping between the boards.”

Bren hesitates as Veth rises, and glances at Essek. “You have the circle for the Cobalt Soul?” he asks.

“Of course,” Essek replies, still not looking up. He has been even more quiet than usual since their return from Rexxentrum yesterday, and Bren does not know his moods well enough to even begin guessing at what may be bothering him. His half-hearted attempt at drawing the drow out a failure, Bren can do nothing but leave the table and follow Jester.

She takes them to a forward cabin, a larger storage space that currently sits empty, and there is indeed a single, large sheet of a stiff tarp-like fabric pinned across the floor. It’s scuffed from crates resting on it and being dragged across it, but the weave is tight and the cloth sturdy, and when Bren pulls a piece of chalk from his component pouch and tests it, it draws well on the surface. So he sets to drawing the circle to the Rexxentrum house.

“What are we looking for? When we get there?” Veth asks as he works.

“Anything out of place,” Jester says. They stand in silence for a moment. “Have you been there lately?”

“Not since the housewarming party we had for him. You?”

“Same.”

Bren looks over his shoulder and finds both of them watching him with quiescent frowns. Clearly they are not the best people to be going on this venture, himself included. He doesn’t want to interrupt something, but, “if we need Yasha-?”

Essek would be best, of course, since he lives there, even if only half the time. He could draw the circle for Beauregard without going through it himself, and accompany Bren to the house. But then getting back would turn into a massive problem, one of those river-crossing riddles used to baffle children- you have a fox and a dog and a chicken, somehow, and a river that you need to cross with a raft that can only carry one animal at a time, except it is a monk and two wizards and a cleric and a city that cannot be safely crossed at all. Not to mention that he hadn’t volunteered, hadn’t pointed out this flaw in their plan himself. He had been there yesterday, searching through Caleb’s stuff to find the one lead there was. There is nothing else to find in that house, his silence says, but he will let them waste their time looking for themselves.

At Bren’s suggestion, there is a flicker of shared doubt across their faces. Then Veth shores up, her chin rising haughtily. “No, we don’t need her. We’re the smart ones anyway, we’ll figure it out without them.”

“Yeah,” cheers Jester, one of the smart ones, who five minutes ago had been force-feeding pieces of donut to a weasel.

He goes back to drawing the circle- finding out what happened to him is not his main goal for today, after all. Kingsley’s words are still dragging over him, worn through skin now and scraping across raw nerve, and he wants- he needs-

He would like to understand Caleb, as he truly is, not as the Mighty Nein sees him. They aren’t telling him all of it- they can’t be, even in his best moments Bren cannot imagine ever becoming a person who lives so freely of the burdens his actions have placed upon him. He doesn’t believe that they are lying to him, but rather softening some unkindnesses- which is fine, he knows who to go to for the uglier truths, if he can’t figure them out for himself.

The spell connects and the circle flares to life before him, and he sits back on his heels and looks down at it with no small amount of pride. The removal of the threat of Ikithon has granted him so much room to just breathe, and a thousand small pleasures keep catching him by surprise- this is powerful magic, and Ikithon did not teach it to him, did not stain it with his touch.

“How are we getting back?” he asks as he stands up. He has prepared Teleport itself, of course, but- he would rather not. There is no place in Nicodranas he feels comfortable enough with yet for familiarity to serve as an anchor, and besides- the circle is structured. There is far less chance of something going wrong.

“We’ll go to Tidepeak,” Jester says with a dismissive shrug.

“Maybe not Tidepeak,” Veth says carefully. “We might need to be on Yussa’s good side.”

“Fine, we’ll teleport to the Archive and meet up with the others. Are we ready?” And with that, Jester steps over the circle and vanishes with a lightning-snap flare of blue magic. Veth sighs and follows, and Bren looks back only once, to the empty doorway behind him, and then follows.

The basement is dark, of course- the curtains upstairs all drawn, the door probably closed. As soon as Bren steps through, the circle flickers and dies and takes its lightning-blue light with it, and he has just enough time to see Veth give him a wide-eyed glance before they are plunged into blackness. He summons his Dancing Lights immediately, then drops four down to one after a moment’s thought. Beauregard’s warning has him feeling a little paranoid.

“Give me a minute,” Veth orders, and hitches up the hood on her cloak as she heads upstairs, and she- fades, somehow, blends into the background a little better, her colors dulled down and her movement not as eye-catching. She opens the door a hair, listens, creeps out and mostly closes the door behind her. Bren and Jester stand together at the bottom of the stairs, watching and waiting for her return. He would have said he wasn’t worried and trusted the security of the house, but the longer Veth takes to reappear, the more anxious he feels-

She yanks the door back open so suddenly they both startle violently, scaring a jerk out of Veth in turn. “Curtains are closed,” she reports, eyeing them warily.

“Thank you, Veth,” Bren says, mostly needing to steady himself with rote pleasantries after that tense moment, and heads up the stairs towards her.

The house is silent, of course. Bren looks it over with fresh eyes- when he had last been here, he had thought all this stage dressing for whatever lie he was living, and had left this place expecting never to return. But now he sees the life he had built here- two armchairs, one piled with pillows and blankets, easily removed obstacles that nevertheless discourage the notion that a second person lives here. Four chairs at the kitchen table, because there are four sides and because his closest friend is married. Books in Undercommon in the library- entirely feasible that a wizard like himself, who spent time in the Dynasty and made it onto the Bright Queen’s good side, would have those resources at hand. One bed, of course. No spare clothes for Essek- does he carry his own laundry with him wherever he goes? Does he wear Caleb’s clothes while he’s here?

The library seems to be the focal point of the house, so Bren goes there, heading up the spiral staircase to the second floor, brushing his fingertips over the railing in a way that seems unthinkingly familiar. This place is a gold mine of repressed memories, mindless habits and muscle memory- his feet know the exact number of steps to take, and he finds himself stepping over an especially vocal board in the hallway that Veth does not manage to avoid.

“I’m gonna grab you some spare clothes,” Jester tells him, and Bren glances back at her and nods. Perhaps he ought to feel a little violated, should want to tell her to keep out of his laundry, he’ll do it himself. But there is too much of a disconnect.

He goes into the library, Veth on his heels still. She makes an unhappy noise as she looks around. The room is in gentle disarray, a stack of books on the table by the couch, his desk in the corner a mess. If there is an organizational system in place on these shelves, he cannot discern it.

“How are we supposed to find anything in this?” she asks as she paces over to the couch and picks up one of the books on the table. Bren looks at it for a moment, curious- a book on local folklore, unlikely to be relevant.

“You know Caleb better than anyone, ja?” he asks, and looks back at her. She watches him with a narrow gaze, eyes sharp like knives. “Look for what we will not think to.”

It keeps her busy- it makes her feel better. She leaves the library, heads downstairs on nearly-silent feet. Bren goes over to the desk once she’s gone.

Someone had clearly been here, sorted through the papers on top and then tried to put everything back the way they found it. Bren sits down and picks up the book still sitting open right in front of him- a Transmutation textbook, the primer. He reads the notes in the margins this time. Sorts through the papers on the desk- schedules for when the next semester starts, lesson plans, order forms for new textbooks. Letters to Professor Widogast from former students, to Caleb from Reani and someone named Calliana, to the Mighty Nein from a Watchmaster out of Alfield and a Starosta in Zadash. He reads them all, and sets some of them aside to confirm handwriting with Jester or Veth, and explores further.

In the drawers, there are candles and a matchbook, pearls rolling around freely when he pulls the drawer open, scissors, spare ink and pens, a handful of silver and copper and even a few gold coins. No meaningless trinkets, only practical materials. He finds himself taking out the journal Beauregard had given him yesterday, the one Caleb kept for his school notes, and dropping it into the open drawer and pushing it shut, all without a single intention of doing so. A well-ingrained habit, apparently, he thinks as he opens the drawer again and takes the journal back out to set it on top of the textbook.

One item on the desk does not belong: a letter opener, sitting plainly in the middle of the piles of papers and books, no base to sheathe its sharp point and prevent him from stabbing himself accidentally. He picks it up as well, but this time the unconscious programming does not kick in, and he searches the drawers until he finds the base and caps it.

Jester comes and goes while he’s exploring, idle and bored with it, clearly not used to sitting still and waiting. Veth returns as well, but she perches on the couch and waits with lizard patience. Bren considers her for a moment, then picks up the magic frame.

“Where did this come from?” he asks. It is a neat piece of magic, after all, and neither he nor Essek are enchanters.

“Jester,” Veth says. “She got one for all of us. She did the art, Pumat Sol did the enchanting.”

“Pumat Sol?” Bren echoes.

“Pumats Sol? I never know what to call him. He’s a shopkeeper in Zadash. He made Jester’s haversack- the pink one she brought? And your component pouch.” She pads over to the shelf and slides the folklore book into an empty space, with no apparent regard for any sorting system. “He works with the Assembly, but he also helped us fight Obann, so.” And she shrugs.

Bren looks at the frame again. It has a significant number of pictures to cycle through, he hasn’t seen any repeats yet. Now that he has names and personalities to put to faces, he can see the emotion behind each captured moment, each image chosen. Beauregard sitting on top of a rock sticking out over crashing waves, meditating. Veth with the tip of her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth as she works at unpicking a lock on a chest. Fjord on the deck of a ship, recognizable only by his silhouette as he stands in a hero’s pose with sword in hand, facing the crashing waves as something large and scaly rears up out of the water. Caduceus in an old building, moss and vines creeping through a broken window. Jester and Veth at a market stall with a drow shopkeeper, clearly engaging in a spirited debate over the price of whatever they are buying, a drawing done in a different hand than the rest.

He sets the frame aside and looks the desk over again. Aside from that one indulgence, Caleb seems oddly divorced from sentiment- the papers are mostly work-related, the books interesting but equally pragmatic. He doesn’t know what happened to the journal he was keeping for his parents, and doesn’t want to ask, and stands up and circles the room instead, searching for a single familiar piece of straw amidst the haystack. Still nothing- it’s gone, no trace.

He heads into the bedroom and finds a similar lack of emotional depth- clothing, furniture. No art here, no knickknacks, no trinkets from their travels. Downstairs, Veth his faithful shadow the whole way, into the sitting room. There are cushions for Gretchen to use as beds, tasteful but impersonal art pieces on the walls. Some small things on the table, on shelves, nothing Bren would have picked out himself. A dried flower pressed between two pieces of glass, a wind-up metal toy, a fossilized seashell. Bren is not the sort to hold onto things, has never had the security or a space being solely his that he could leave something in a place and trust it will be there whenever he comes back. Everything that has any meaning to him has to be small enough to carry on him wherever he goes. It seems Caleb, for all his luxuries, has not broken this habit.

Jester is in the kitchen, fussing around, making noise. Bren follows the noise of her and finds her sorting through his pantry.

“Don’t tell Essek,” she orders as soon as she spots him. “He’ll yell at me if he knows I’m moving things around in here.” She emerges a moment later with the jar of cat food, which she tucks into the obnoxiously pink haversack she had brought with her. “It’s just gonna go bad here anyways,” she adds, watching Bren watch her.

It probably won’t, but it gives her something to do, so he gives her a nod and turns away. “There is, uh,” he says as he walks back into the sitting room. “Not a lot here.”

Veth glances around the room and frowns, like she doesn’t understand his point. And from her perspective, there isn’t one- there are plenty of things around, books and cushions and comfortable furniture and spell components and pens and tools. He picks up the wind-up toy- a frog with jointed hind legs, probably to leap with should someone turn the key- and shows it to her. “Is this from Luc?”

“One of your students,” Veth tells him.

The frog is coated with a fine layer of dust. It has not jumped in a while. He puts it back and heads back upstairs without a word, leaving the ladies to destroy Essek’s organization to their liking. Into the library again, where Caleb probably spends the majority of his time when Essek isn’t home. He picks up the journal again, idle curiosity, and flips to one of the earliest pages. He traces his fingers down the columns of initials, wondering if the original owner of the frog is in these pages.

His fingers rise over an odd bump under the page, and he pauses. Flips the pages back until he’s at the very start- the opposite end of the book to where they’ve all been looking, three years back in time by the dates on the top of the page. Perhaps a bit further, except- the very first page has been taken out. Removed with near-surgical precision, cut free at the binding, only one small shred at the very bottom remaining, where Caleb had most likely gotten impatient and torn it free instead. Bren traces his fingers over it again, feeling the slight rise from that leftover piece of page.

Then he sits down, sets the journal open on the desk in front of him, and digs into the drawer. He takes the letter opener to the next page in the journal, tracing its sharp tip against the page at the binding, gently and slowly cutting it free. The tension of holding the page taut so it doesn’t wrinkle causes it to tear free at the end, leaving another little stub to match the one he had felt.

He puts the journal and the letter opener aside and sorts through the papers on the desk again, a quick search this time instead of a thorough inspection. He then flips through the textbook that had been on the desk, turns it so its pages are facing down and holds it by either cover and gives it a good shake to dislodge anything that may be tucked between the pages, and- nothing.

It might not be anything important. Caleb might have spilled something on it, might have removed it for privacy reasons. He might have removed it years ago, it could be a coincidence that the letter opener was on the desk. Except-

we would have literally nothing if I had let you get away with never writing anything down, and Beauregard calling Caleb petty over his refusal to learn Sending, all those bickering little arguments they’ve clearly had, all the concessions he has made to her and vice versa- it’s important, Beauregard won this one, Caleb wouldn’t have crossed her-

Something slides into place, a slow and quiet understanding, a soft oh that clicks into place in the back of his mind.

He dips two fingers into his component pouch- because Caleb still carries that with him, still keeps everything he values close- thinks paper. He takes out the paper that materializes in his grip and unfolds it, reads the initials marching down the page, the grades, the student notes. The date at the top puts it as the first page in the journal, the one that is missing.

There are three names written at the bottom where several rows were empty, full names, the writing heavy and sloppy as if the writer was in a hurry. It is not Bren’s- Caleb’s- writing.

He closes his eyes, tries to imagine watching a hand fly over the page- probably grabbed the journal because it was convenient, a missing page would be noticed from most other books-

-he is standing at the desk, and turns to face the boy sitting on the couch, wide eyes in a worried face, what happens if they find you, and he thinks, clear as crystal- i need to get this to beauregard, followed by but only after i-

“Caleb?”

“I told him to go to the Cobalt Soul,” Bren says, his voice soft and sounding very far away.

“Who?” Veth comes over to him, rises up on her toes and steadies herself with a hand on his hip as she peers at the paper in his hands. “What’s that?”

“Bernard. Wieder. I told him to go to the Cobalt Soul, if anything were to happen to me.”

Veth drops back flat onto her feet and stares up at him. “You remember that?”

He looks at her, sees the raw hope on her face, and nods once.

“Are you- what else do you- get down here,” she orders, yanking on his elbow, and he drops to his knees in a barely-controlled fall that rattles his bones a little, then sits back on his heels. Veth studies him for a moment, and whatever she sees makes her shut back down, hope and elation folded neatly away behind determination. “What else do you remember?”

“Gretchen, as a kitten,” he says. “And now this.” He shows her the page. “I remember Bernard writing this, and telling him to go to the Soul.”

Veth turns to the doorway, takes a deep breath- catches herself before Bren can remind her, looks back to him and says simply, “wait,” then turns and bolts out of the room, hissing for Jester the entire way. Bren studies the paper while she’s gone, the names on it, none he knows.

He had thought that he needed to get this to Beauregard- but he hadn’t actually done it, had done something entirely different instead. Had that been on the same day as the fight he cannot remember? but only after i- after what?

He hadn’t told her about Wieder either. Perhaps this had just been a continuation of whatever instinct guided that choice. One last thing to do, before admitting to her exactly how badly he’d fucked up and had to face the consequences of that. He understands that compulsion to push away, to keep at arm’s distance while he deals with his own problems, which are ugly and bloody and run too deep for him to ever get it all rooted out. He does not want to show off the ugliest parts of himself, even if it means getting help to fix them.

There are feet on the stairs, Jester approaching just shy of a run, Veth presumably with her but much quieter. They logjam briefly in the doorway before Veth makes an impatient noise and steps back so Jester can slip through and dart over to Bren, sliding in next to him on her own knees.

“Veth says you remembered something!” she says, grabbing his arm in excitement before remembering that she’s supposed to be more careful with him and letting go again.

“Two things,” Veth says, merciless.

“Cay-leb!” Jester doesn’t quite wail, but she clearly means it, tail thumping against the floorboards like an irritated cat’s. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“It was nothing,” Bren says, ducking unhappily under the guilt. He should not feel bad for this. “It was a moment of Gretchen as a kitten.”

“And now this,” Jester says, flicking the corner of the paper he’s holding with a finger. “The spell they used might be failing, Caleb!”

“What were you saying about the Soul?” Veth adds.

“We should try Restoration again,” Jester continues, and Bren rears back away from her, rolling up to his feet and backing off before he can even decide to move.

“No,” he says- and to his surprise, Jester bounces up to her feet as well, pointing at him.

“See? That! That has to be something too!”

He doesn’t know who she’s talking to, what conversation she’s trying to pick up. Neither does Veth, who stares blankly at her for a moment before turning back to Bren.

“You said something about the Soul,” she repeats, impatient now.

“I told Wieder to go there if something happened-”

“Beau!” Jester interrupts, so excited she’s tripping over her own words as she speaks. “Caleb remembered something, he sent Wieder to the Soul! He’s got a list of names- do you think they’re Scourgers?” she asks Bren.

Veth gasps suddenly, dramatically. “It was a trap!” she says, clearly feeding off of Jester’s energy. She pivots on the spot and points at Bren. “He gave you just enough information for you to think you could trust him-”

“-and led you to an ambush!” Jester finishes for her. Then she looks back at the empty air and says, “we’re on our-” stops, makes an impatient noise, gestures again. “We’re on our way there so tell us where you are so we can find you! Also sorry if I’m interrupting you and Yasha having-”

“Done,” Bren says, and there is the customary pause as she waits for the response. When she starts talking again, she’s slower, calmer.

“She sounded kinda out of breath,” Jester explains, in spite of no one asking. “She says they’re in the training pits but they’ll meet us at Beau’s office, so let’s go.”

She troops out of the library, leaving Veth and Bren alone. Veth looks at him again, her own fervor cooled a little, and says awkwardly, “If you’re not ready to leave yet.”

“No,” Bren says. “There’s nothing here.” Nothing that can tell him something he doesn’t already know, at least. Caleb has chosen to surround himself with people, rather than things.

“Then let’s go,” Veth says, touching his arm to draw him along as she walks towards the door, and he follows without looking back.

The circle in Bren’s spellbook is listed as Soul R, which he is told is the proper one, so he takes them there. They end up in a stone-walled room on a permanent circle, a staircase leading up just ahead of them and doors set in a circle around them with labels on them- Zadash, Port Damali, Vasselheim. Jester spins on the spot to look around, then gasps sharply and reaches out to seize Bren with one hand and Veth with the other.

“We didn’t tell them we were coming,” she says, tail lashing. “Don’t use magic, they shoot you for that.”

“You are fine, Miss Lavorre,” a voice says, creaky and ancient, as someone comes down the stairs. An old half-orc shuffles into view and peers at them with open resignation. He is wearing blue robes- Cobalt blue, Bren supposes- as is the young man who follows him down. “Expositor Lionett informed us of your arrival.” The half-orc looks to the young man. “Take them to her office, would you?”

So they are led upstairs- with one last cheery thanks, Archivist Kathedoc! from Jester, which earns her a long-suffering sigh from the half-orc- and through the hallways of what must be the Cobalt Soul Archive. Bren is expecting- well, he doesn’t really know what he’s expecting, no one has bothered to explain the Soul to him beyond the references to the work they’ve done. A secret organization, perhaps, or known only in certain circles. Certainly Bren has never heard of them before meeting Beauregard, although the use of the word archive stirs something, a teenage memory of blue domes and plans that never came to fruition to slip away for a day and sneak inside.

It is a library, a learning center, he realizes as they walk through the building. The library takes up most of the space easily, the rest wrapped around it like ivy climbing a tree, offices and quiet reading rooms and resting rooms with comfortable couches and tea satchels, all offshoots of long hallways that curve around the outer walls of the library. There are people constantly around, many in Cobalt blues, some civilians, almost always with books or scrolls. One or two are in outfits similar to Beauregard’s- monks, Bren thinks as he watches them walk past with the same elegant economy of movement, all restrained speed and grace. They recognize the three of them, and give nods of greeting and smiles of varying degrees of warmth. Bren doesn’t know how he’s supposed to respond, how much they know, so he nods back and keeps his gaze locked ahead and wishes Jester were taller so he could hide behind her better.

Their guide takes them upstairs twice, then deposits them outside a closed door and retreats with a quick bow to them. Jester is barging in already, opening the door even as she knocks on it, and Beauregard is on the other side, reaching out as though to help open the door, or perhaps usher them in. She barely waits for the door to close behind Veth before turning on Bren.

“You remember something?”

“Two things!” Jester says triumphantly. They are all clustered right around the door, and Bren retreats back against it as the women fail to back up a little to give each other space. Thankfully there is no sign of Essek or Yasha or Fjord- the office is barely big enough for the four of them, although that could just be because he’s put himself in a small room with three loud personalities.

“He has a list of names-”

“-just of the cat but that’s two times he’s remembered something-”

“-it’s probably a list of Scourgers and I’d bet they’re the ones that attacked him-”

“-the spell is failing, we might not even need to do anything-”

“-the kid gave him those names it’s gotta be a trap-”

“-won’t even let me try to cast Restoration on him-”

“-he sent Wieder here-”

Beauregard’s gaze bounces back and forth between them, expertly keeping track of the barrage. At this point she whistles sharply, interrupting, although Jester gets one more sulky should ask Cad to do it since he’s everyone’s favorite out before falling silent.

“First of all,” Beauregard says, and points at Jester. “You are everyone’s favorite, and you know it, so don’t start that. You,” and she turns to Bren. “You sent Wieder here?”

“I told him to go to the Cobalt Soul if something were to happen to me,” Bren says, then gestures at himself, indicating- well, something definitely happened to him.

Beauregard shoos him aside and opens the door, heading out into the hallway. She calls out to someone, her voice echoing through the hallway but her actual words indistinguishable, and Bren peers through the doorway to watch as someone approaches her and she speaks to them for a moment. Her robes are not the ones she has been wearing around Nicodranas, the color and drape of it different, neat embroidery decorating the back of it. A symbol of her station, most likely, as the person she is speaking to is wearing plain blue robes. They nod to something she says and turn and hurry away, and she spins around and comes back to her office in quick strides.

“I probably would’ve heard about it yesterday if he was here,” she says. “But he could be hiding in the library, it’s fucking huge, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear someone could be living in there for a few days without us knowing about it.”

“You think he actually would come here?” Veth asks. “It was a trap! He got what he wanted, why risk coming back?”

“Covering all my bases,” Beauregard protests. “It doesn’t hurt anything to check, and if he’s not here then we know he’s either dead or part of this.” She turns to Bren and sticks a hand out, and he passes over the list after a moment’s delay. She unfolds the paper and frowns at the names on it, pacing back over to her desk and perching on one corner. “Know any of these names?”

“No,” he says. A moment later she looks up at Jester and Veth, who both shake their heads.

“Wonder if Astrid has this yet,” she mutters to herself, and it’s-

It stings. It shouldn’t, because it shouldn’t be a betrayal for Caleb to keep something from her, and it wasn’t Bren who made that choice anyway. But the blade hits home, and he winces, feeling the cut of it tear at the fragile threads binding him to these people.

“I don’t think so,” he says, annoyed at himself for sounding remorseful about it. “The memory, I- Caleb was thinking that he needed to get that to you.”

but only after i- he doesn’t mention that part. He hopes Caleb’s first response to getting this information had not been to go straight to Astrid. From everything he knows, Astrid went on to become a full Volstrucker, and only repented because- what, because Ikithon was brought down? Did she even want the Volstrucker program ended, or did Caleb and Beauregard and the Cobalt Soul just not give her any choice in the matter?

“What do you remember?” Beauregard asks him, sharp and sudden, a snake striking at prey. Bren nods to the paper in her hands.

“A flash of him writing that, nothing more.”

“You see him?” she asks, and he nods. Pale skin, big brown eyes and wheat-chaff-blond hair, long enough to curl fetchingly against his neck. He provides this description, and Beauregard chews it over for a moment.

“I could try drawing him,” Jester offers.

“Nah, that’ll be enough, we don’t have that many people we don’t know on sight running around,” Beauregard says. “And remember- baby Scourger. Dude was only three weeks into training.”

“We might want to consider telling Astrid,” Veth says, totally out of nowhere, and all three of them stare at her in shock. She shrugs, un-self-conscious. “We’ve already talked about this, we can’t Scry with names alone. She’s the best one to have more information on them.”

“I can try Scrying with just their names,” Jester offers. Beauregard circles her desk and pulls out a blank piece of paper and starts writing on it. Copying the names, Bren sees, and confirms it a moment later when she hands the original back to him. “It probably won’t work, but I can try.” She brightens a little. “I can make it like a Divine Intervention! Artie’s kinda bad at those because, you know, he’s not a real god.”

“That mai tai that one time was pretty divine,” Beauregard says wistfully.

Bren considers this for a moment, then decides not to ask any questions. Some things are best left a mystery.

“But if it’s just, like, taking a spell he taught me and juicing it up? He might be able to do that.” Jester peers over her shoulder into the hood of her cloak. If Sprinkle the divine weasel has anything to say about it, Bren doesn’t hear it.

“Sure, give it a shot,” Beauregard says, gesturing around. “Do we need to clear out, or go get you candles, or something?”

“No, I just need to pray,” Jester says, and looks around. “I’m not gonna do it here, I’m gonna- let’s figure out what we’re doing first, and then I’ll try.” She’s losing steam as she talks, clearly losing faith in her idea.

“And Astrid?” Veth pushes. She’s short enough that it’s easy to literally speak over her.

“Last resort,” Beauregard says instantly. “If we find absolutely nothing else. We don’t even know that these are Scourgers, we just have three names, probably aliases- we need to check them against all our records, probably all of Caleb’s considering they’re not above coming at him through the Academy-”

“Paperwork,” Bren translates.

“Lot of crosschecking and I-dotting and T-crossing,” Beauregard agrees. Both Jester and Veth are already looking bored, unsurprisingly. “And then we can ask Astrid, ‘cause you know if we go to her, she’ll just pretend she needs to look into it and find them herself and we’ll never hear anything about it again.”

And if the goal is vengeance, rather than just removing the threat- and Bren had already promised he won’t stand in the way of that- then having Astrid swoop in and take it out of their hands is exactly what they don’t want.

“Okay,” Veth says, quietly mutinous. She, at least, seems less concerned about the how and more about the make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“We need to talk to the others,” Jester says, and looks around. “Not a lot of room in here.”

“Yeah, I’m never here,” Beauregard agrees. “We can get a private room downstairs to talk. You three wanna go grab the others? I need to.” And she gestures with her copy of the list.

“Library?” Jester asks, and Veth looks at her, then at Beauregard.

“We’re gonna get banned again,” she predicts grimly, and Beauregard grimaces.

“Just- no yelling, okay? They don’t like that. And no random magic and all that shit, you know what I mean, don’t make me talk like a goddamn authority figure, it makes me itch.”

“Got it,” Jester says firmly, and Bren knows she’s going to start something, just to be contrary.

Beauregard sighs, defeated, and Jester smiles once before opening the door and heading out, her mood clearly buoyed. Veth follows, and Bren lingers in the doorway and watches Beauregard for a moment.

“You think it’s wearing off?” she asks suddenly, looking at Bren with a guarded expression. “The amnesia spell?”

“I don’t know,” Bren says quietly. Two incidents does not a total failure make- in both instances, he’d been imagining a specific scenario and the memory followed. Hard to call that a failure. More like seepage, like ink bleeding through one page into the next.

Someone knocks on the door frame, and Bren turns to find the same person Beauregard had spoken to earlier in the hallway, trying not to look like they’d walked in on a conversation they know has nothing to do with them. Beauregard straightens up immediately, shifting away from Beau and into Expositor Lionett.

“Hang on,” she orders, and looks at Bren.

“Good luck,” he says, well aware of the irony, and ducks past the other person. He closes the door behind him as he leaves and heads down the hallway. It should be easy enough to find the library, considering the size of it, although he does linger a few steps away from the office, staring at the floor and just- thinking. Spinning his wheels, getting nowhere. This is happening faster than he had expected, and apparently without his say in the matter at all- he hasn’t even decided if he wants to go back to- go forward to-

He takes a deep breath, steps away from the wall he’d been leaning against. This thing is already in motion, the best he can do is try to keep up with it.

So he goes to find his friends.