Archive of Our Own

The first stagecoach to come down from the Imperial highway since the world disintegrated rattled into Ragnor Bella in fine style, sparks flying as its wheels bounced over missing cobbles.

Jullanar was in the market square, relighting the lamps she kept hanging over the front windows of Elderflower Books. The evenings, or what passed for them, seemed to draw in early in this strange non-real not-quite-time; the liminal light reminded her irresistibly of a borderwood and the perils of an unexpected crossing between words. She was not the only one who set beacons out, and folk went from house to house roped together, or fumbled their way along the frontages in the mist. There were rumours of—well, there had certainly been accidents.

The weather was settling, at least. Her friends—those most able to find one another, and take the initiative—were beginning to find a way through more often. The Embroidery Circle, or so they had always called themselves; they met when they could, and did what they could, trying to make sure between them that every family in the town was provided for.

Jullanar herself had ransacked her shelves for any practical advice: how to make the most of limited provisions. What local plants were edible, and which could be used for other practical purposes. First aid. Field medicine. Making soaps and ensuring cleanliness without magic.

Other lessons she had learned first hand came in useful too. She had experience navigating in magically disordered spaces, and in thick fog and heavy snow. More than that: she had been taught how to light a fire, and make sure it stayed lit, in the dampest and least encouraging circumstances.

She had distributed every educational or entertaining book she could find to families with school-aged children. That expedition had been as perilous as any she had ever undertaken in debatable lands.

It helped in a way that she had no family of her own at home to tend to; she stopped and spent what time seemed necessary at the Landry’s, in support of her sister Lavinia, and beyond that was free to risk herself as she saw fit.

Lavinia, seeing the daggers she carried, had made some faint warning comment about the manners of Galderon. Jullanar had looked at her quizzically and, to her disappointment, her sister had subsided again at once.

She had made that trip again, and again, each time trying to circle out further into the outskirts of town. Each time coming back exhausted. It had seemed as though the nothingness would last forever.

And yet, the weather was settling. Had settled. And here was the postboy waving his bright hat and hollering for the pleasure of driving into town. “News! News! News of the worlds! Astandalas is gone! Ysthar destroyed!”

Jullanar ran, and saw others running, all gathering to meet the coach as it skidded to a halt.

They made a strangely clad group under the shadowy shape of the stone pillar by the fountain at the centre of town: citizenry wrapped against the cold and other dangers, staring pale faces under hoods and shawls, stumbling along against each other like ghosts walking. And yet here they were, in the square, seeing each other. And yet there was news, dark and disastrous enough to believe. Too much to take in, horror piled on horror.

She secured several copies of the paper to share in her bookshop, tucking them into the folds of her shawl. The words blurred as she glanced at them, the headlines nonsense, the first words echoing back and forth whenever she stopped to listen to the too-loud drumbeat of her own pulse in her ears: Ysthar destroyed. Astandalas gone.

Her feet carried her away across the cobbles. She staggered, nearly slipped, recovered herself leaning on the carved stone lip of the fountain. Tried to breathe.

The gates had gone dark, but not before the wizards tending them had glimpsed… She gulped for air. It must be a mistake. How could they know? Know for certain? The gates were gone, that was all; Ysthar was cut off, but that didn’t have to mean it was—that he was—

“Excuse me. Saya Thistlethwaite?”

She startled badly, only the papers in her arms preventing her hand going to the hilt of—oh. She blinked. It was the Charese merchant who had come with the coach, and he looked familiar.

Her voice seemed to come from far away, but she had control of it. “Yes, Sayo…Buchance?”

He stared at her with such blank concern that for a moment she thought she must have been mistaken. Then he smiled, nervous as always, and she knew. Yes, this was Benneret Buchance. His round, earnest face was almost unchanged. Perhaps a line or two had been added at the furrow of his brow, but nothing further.

Jullanar made herself return the smile. They had been working together, the last time he was in Ragnor Bella—before the catastrophe—to support young Lady Olive in her determination to clear her late husband’s name.

She had learned better than to let slip the truth of her own past to any but those she trusted absolutely. There had been three souls in this part of Alinor who knew—or rather, two in a nearby village and one who visited when he could.

He had been on Ysthar. He couldn’t—she lifted her chin against the tide. Her eyes burned.

If she had revealed herself to anybody else it might have been to Sayo Buchance or Lady Olive. But she hadn’t, and they hadn’t asked, and now Astandalas had shaken apart, and she had—she had lost—she cleared her throat. Swallowed again, against the lump. “You’ll be wanting the dower cottage on the Arguty estate,” she said.

He knew at once what that meant. “There’s been no word?”

“Unless you’ve brought it with you… No.”

He sighed and sagged and at that she could see more of how the broken magic had affected him. The way his expression dropped into wistfulness, without hope. It gave him an overcast, hangdog expression that she immediately revolted at; emotions and personalities had been thrown out as badly as every other part of life by this horrible endless nothingness, but Jullanar would be damned if she’d let it swallow them.

“You should go to her.”

He shook his head. “What can I offer—?”

Anger was a relief. She prodded the front of his fine woollen coat. “A friend! Which is what she needs. Don’t you go getting odd notions about her status, Sayo Buchance. Or money! You know as well as I do that she’s never cared for that.”

He looked down at her finger and up at her face. “But I wanted—?”

“You wanted to come riding back in with answers. You wanted to make everything right for her. Well, you can’t.” Jullanar realised her voice was rising, into the high fierce register that took her into battle. She caught herself. “You can’t,” she said, more quietly. “All you can do is be there and be yourself.”

He looked away, but just for a moment before his head turned she saw the flash of something in his eyes. “What if I’m not good enough?” He seemed to be asking the burnished shield at the top of the pillar above them, or the statue of Artorin Damara beyond it, or perhaps the lighted front of the bakery across the way.

This sort of practical advice had always been easy to give. “Only you and she can decide that. You won’t find out unless you ask.”

He grunted in acknowledgement. She followed his gaze. The stage coach had been led across the cobbles to its usual post, and the sacks of mail were being extracted and stacked beside it in a heap. There were people leading the horses away. The square was clearing around them, both of people and mist. It was growing unaccountably lighter.

When she looked back, Sayo Buchance was watching her face with an altogether too penetrating look. “Thank you,” he said, and then, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She shrugged helplessly, feeling her eyes sting again. She wasn’t ready to speak of it, not yet. Certainly not to someone who had never met—but Sayo Buchance knew that she had written to her husband for advice, of course. They had met because of it, when he came seeking anybody with connections that might be of use to a recently widowed woman under pressure from her late husband’s family.

Her husband would have come through for the Greenwings with answers if he could, though she had warned them that it wasn’t his department; she had a sense that the bureaucracy and the army seldom worked well together. But he had—he had had—a gift for understanding what was happening and making connections and she had had faith that he would write back with advice that would help.

She realised that she still believed that, in the same way she still expected F—other old friends to come riding through the Woods Noirell, two by two in company, the trees ringing with their laughter.

Foolish thoughts. It helped nobody, for her to break down in the market square.

“They’re making a mess of those mail sacks,” she said firmly, and started across the square towards the pile before Sayo Buchance had a chance to say anything else. News had to be shared, letters distributed, messages gathered for the coach’s onward journey. It was no good relying on the hapless local officials to help out.

Between Jullanar’s suggestions and Sayo Buchance’s willingness to repeat them until the town worthies listened, and despite the incoherent barked orders of the Chief Magistrate, the contents of the postbags found their way to Mrs. Henny the Post. The Embroidery Circle had been making their way back along the threads they had strung between the houses, as word filtered out, and were finding volunteers to sort and deliver them.

Patrolling the town and supporting its people might properly have been the duty of the local constabulary, but the Chief Constable had gone missing in the strange non-time. His deputy was the unfortunate Mr. Etaris whose clumsy attentions—and grasping mother—had put Jullanar in such a difficult spot the year she opened Elderflower Books.

The upside of her near-miss with Mr. Etaris was that Jullanar had found friends. Good friends, people she could trust with her name and her grief and her past. She missed Basil and Sara badly, but that at least was an ache she could let herself feel. They were close by (had been close by) before the magic failed, and if a coach could make it through the Arguty Forest then…

She scowled to herself. It was no good dwelling on those she had lost, not yet; there were tasks to do here, and so she was doing them.

She had never had any difficulty steering Mr. Etaris, in the absence of his mother. And Saya Etaris had, thankfully, spent every moment of this odd unreality lying up at home to avoid the chill in the air.

It was a busy, bustling afternoon such as Jullanar hadn’t seen since the magic of Astandalas failed. Everywhere she went she found the same mix of horror and relief.

The horror was easy to understand. Ragnor Bella had been a comfortable Astandalan town, happily provincial, neither remarkably wealthy nor particularly troubled, set a little back from the main roads and content to be overlooked. But it was fundamentally an Astandalan town and had been for centuries.

Astandalas, to her friends and family, was the source of, well, everything. Fashion and government, power and magic, opportunity and the sort of intriguing danger of sophistication that made an exciting backdrop for novels and plays. Astandalas was the centre, the heart of the Empire, the linchpin that held them all together and ensured their comfortable life could continue tomorrow much as it had yesterday and today.

The relief, she thought uncharitably, came from the realisation that the worst had happened and it hadn’t happened to them.

By the time the streets were fully dark and the coach party was being hosted and feasted in the Ragnor Arms, Jullanar was able to entirely honestly plead a pounding headache. She retreated to her shop, and then to the little flat above the shop, and then into bed, pulling the covers around her.

She cried.

The worst of it was that they had no way of knowing, not for sure. Astandalas was gone, there was no doubt of that. But all the certain news the papers had was of Alinor.

The university at Zabour was falling into the sea. Slowly and terribly, and nobody could approach it. Strange mists had risen around Nên Corovel, hiding the Lady’s isle from sight. In many places the magic had not merely stopped working, as in Ragnor Bella, but had ballooned or dissolved in monstrous ways.

The mages of Hastowel had lived a year and a day in agony, according to the sparse account in one small side column. Every one of them down to the youngest with the smallest scrap of power, until there came a terrible moment when all the flames evaporated at once. Their charred contents crumbled finally into dust; the papers didn’t say if they had been screaming still.

It wormed its way into her dreams: her old friends catching light, burning as living columns of screaming flame. Her husband falling away from her, into the shadows, his mouth open in a wordless cry of pain.

She woke, and cried, her head heavy with it, her eyes itching and red, the sorrow burning into anger, with the fury of losing again when she had already lost so much. She slept again, restlessly, and found she was following someone down the dark damp streets, chasing them faster and faster but never quite close enough to see more than—the flicker of a secretarial robe, the corner of a red mantle, the light gleaming off a blade—and then came a loud knocking sound, startling her so that she tripped and fell.

She landed, or felt that she landed, in her own bed. Pale light was filtering in past the curtains, bluish light that suggested it was still early. That suggested that the sun was rising, as it had not visibly risen for…

Her head still ached but her eyes were dry, as though the grief had burned out in her dreams. She knew better than to assume this was more than a temporary hollow place. The tears would be back.

She caught herself looking sharply at her reflection in the mirror as though daring them to show. She, the ninny who cried at every little thing, pale-faced and red-eyed, glaring with a brilliant ferocity of anger at the world.

It took her a few minutes to realise that it was Sayo Buchance who had woken her, hammering on her door. She leaned out of the window, shawl loosely wrapped round her shoulders, and saw that his usual neat presentation was ruffled with exertion, his tie loose, his face pink with uncharacteristic rage. “They’ve been in the dower cottage all this time!”

“A moment!” She called back, and it really was a moment; shifting into presentable clothes in time for a quick getaway was a skill that had saved her life more than once. Billowing blouse. Skirt round the waist. Hair knotted loosely; it was flyaway enough that she could get away with sweeping the long braid back under her shawl. As long as there were one or two smart surface details—the brooch pinned neatly at her breast, the pockets sewn neatly to the front of her skirt—people’s eyes would sketch in the other details.

Sayo Buchance barely glanced at her. He stamped heavily up and down between the bookshelves, more moved than she’d seen him in any other crisis. “That odious man and his odious wife! I believe they would have rejoiced if they both disappeared!”

It took several minutes to persuade him to sit down, and drink a medicinal brandy, and explain. When he did she buttoned herself firmly into her boots, swept half the contents of her kitchen into the closest basket, and pushed Sayo Buchance before her out the doors for a rapid march across Ragnor Bella.

Arguty Manor was one of the many large estates that had once dotted the countryside in this part of south Fiella. It was closer to Ragnor Bella than most, and it had still taken Sayo Buchance the best part of the day to get there and all the previous night to get back.

Jullanar somewhat wished he had managed to explain the strangeness of the distances before they left her bookshop; she would have added some form of corsetry if she had known there was a risk that a walk which took forty minutes under customary rules of time and space might extend to half a day. She had at least thought to add some small loaves to the top of her basket, which meant they had something to eat as they walked.

Sayo Buchance took his with an abstracted air and ate it carefully, brushing away the crumbs. He had taken the time to adjust his collar in the bookshop windows too, she noticed, and had retucked his shirt. Not that it helped much, with the starch melted out of it, his fine trousers all mud-besplattered, and visible sweat stains showing when he shot her a worried look and discreetly opened his jacket.

He looked, in fact, like a man who had given up worrying about all concerns other than his great and focused mission. It rather suited him.

Jullanar felt her spirits rise as they went. The sun had risen and this was a morning. The hedgerows were mostly bare, but it was the bareness of early spring. She saw sticky red and golden buds against the grey branches and small green spears sprouting in the hollows; then came over one small rise and found the opposite side of it bathed in pale sunlight and nodding with dozens of green and white snowdrops.

“By the Lady!” Sayo Buchance stopped in his tracks. “These weren’t here yesterday.”

He fell back a little to gather some. Jullanar hid her smile.

Arguty Manor stood on another low rise, under the eaves of the dark and dim Arguty Forest, looking out across rolling fields that had largely been turned over to sheep. The irregular craggy profile could be seen against the sky from as far away as the main road. Sayo Buchance stopped again at the turning, exclaiming at how much quicker and easier this journey had been.

She leaned on a fencepost and caught her breath. She was out of practice for this kind of walking, after all that stumbling in the dark.

The manor house was endearingly lopsided, considered from this view. Whoever had added those crenellations on the nearest wing must surely have been trying to echo the gothic fancy of the other. Jullanar wiped her forehead and considered their folly; neither spoke the same architectural language, and both were at odds with the low bulk and small windows of the fortified farmhouse at the centre.

Sayo Buchance exclaimed and took her basket. She let him take her arm too, on the long downward slope between the trees and scattered cottages. There was no sign of life, not even a flicker at a window.

There were more flowers, pale yellow primroses in the hollows and the green and white snowdrops on the rises. The scent of damp leaves and late-winter rot rose rich and incense-like around them. Dew silvered the lawns and formal hedges that marked the edge of the manor grounds; every yew was trimmed, every blade of grass neatly cut to length.

By silent agreement they skirted the formal gardens, though they did exchange glances as they passed the corner of wall and hedge where the clipped yew cast a deeper shadow. This was the place where Sayo Buchance had once stood watch for Sir Vorel’s carriage, while Jullanar and Lady Olive had slipped into the house and persuaded the servants to let them wait in the man’s study.

It had been a risk, but a calculated one. Most of the household had been more loyal to the late Sir Rinald than his brother, and Jullanar was good at judging sightlines. They had had less time than they hoped, but Sayo Buchance’s signal had gone unremarked and they had been ready with their cover story by the time Sir Vorel reached them.

“At least we got the letters,” she murmured.

He snorted and shook his head, but his fingers briefly gripped her arm. She hid her smile again. That escapade had been the moment when she realised that there was substance lurking behind his stiffly proper and shiny mercantile suits.

It took longer to get round to the dower cottage, choosing paths that were mostly out of sight from the windows at the back of Arguty Hall, but on the whole it was worth it to avoid the explanations and recriminations that might follow. Not that Jullanar would accept being thrown out of the Arguty estate, if it came to it.

The strange round tower at the back of the building had windows that couldn’t be avoided, but Lady Olive had explained, with a wry grin, that it had been designed to assist in regular exercise that Sir Vorel and his Lady Flora were highly unlikely to undertake.

They reached the fields on the far side without incident. Sayo Buchance pointed out a track that ran up through a narrow gap in the hedge. “They’ve been coming up here for supplies. Lady Olive said—” he shook his head. “He made them beg for scraps. At the kitchen door. Said there were more mouths to feed in the big house. Made her itemise everything in her pantry when she had her child eating weeds from the garden.” He dropped her arm and walked faster, following the track away from the house. “You remember young Jemis? Thinner than ever.” He stopped, suddenly, staring at his hand where it rested on the ridged bark of an oak he was passing. “Saya Thistlethwaite, I am not an angry person, but I believe I could hate that man.”

Jullanar, who had sped up to follow him, caught herself just before ploughing into his back. A dozen possible responses came to mind, soothing platitudes or dismissive reassurances or polite nothings.

Sayo Buchance’s brow was furrowed, his broad chest heaving, his clothes dishevelled, and her biggest basket was tucked incongruously under his arm. The little bundle of flowers he had picked so silently on the way was nodding over the back of the basket.

He cut a peculiar figure as far as Charese merchants went, but she knew righteous rage when she saw it, and passion too. “Lady Olive is lucky to have you.”

The grunt of dismissal he made was mannered and sharp and suited, no doubt, to a manufactory counting house. “I should have been here.”

“You came for her.” She put her hand on his arm. “The first to make it through the Arguty Forest since…the catastrophe.”

He shook his head again, pushed off the tree, and led the way along the final low ditch, stumping across the muddy patch where the path crossed the little stream without making any attempt to keep his feet dry.

The dower cottage was surrounded by its own garden, and that garden was full of golden spring. Jullanar stopped at the gate, her hand coming to her mouth, breathing in the green freshness of it. Long beds billowed with herbs. Beyond them, a great wave of brilliant yellow daffodils were trumpeting the sky, and a profusion of flowers budding out in starry whites and pinks.

It was all alive, humming with—yes, there were the hives standing proud at the end of the lawn, and fat black and gold bees gleamed like living jewels as they busied themselves between the plants.

Sayo Buchance stalked straight through it all and rapped on the cottage door. She blinked back her wonder, and her sudden tears, and scurried to catch up with him, lifting her skirts to stop them dragging in the dew.

A face appeared at the window, pale and indistinct behind the irregular diamonds of thick glass. It vanished again almost at once and the door opened, revealing a small boy with a walking stick gripped tightly in both hands and ready to swing.

“Hullo, Jemis.” Sayo Buchance had pulled out a handkerchief and was wiping his face. “Is your mother—Lady Olive!”

She swept up beside her son, her hand coming to rest on his shoulder. Jullanar took in the long blue dress, the elegant knot of her hair, the indefinable air of grace that this woman had always carried with her. It was tempered and sober now, and her large eyes were dark in her pale face.

“You’ll forgive us,” Lady Olive said gravely, “If we don’t invite you in.” She stepped back, tugging the boy with her.

Jullanar’s eyes flicked up, to the horseshoe nailed to the lintel, and down, to the narrow line of pale salt that ran unobtrusively across the threshold.

Sayo Buchance stepped past both unseeing. “Of course. Of course. Olive, are you—?”

Some of the stiffness left Lady Olive’s stance. “Benneret.”

Jemis’s wary expression had lifted too, although it was replaced by a deeply sceptical look. “Who are you?”

Lady Olive tore her eyes away from Sayo Buchance. “Jemis, darling, do you remember how we greet people—oh!” Her eyes were shining. “Saya Thistlethwaite!”

Jullanar had to smile, even though she could feel the thinness of Lady Olive’s shoulders as they embraced. The younger woman was trembling.

Somehow they made it through to the kitchen. Jullanar took back her basket and started unpacking it onto the table. Sayo Buchance picked up his little bundle of flowers and stood there staring at it awkwardly until Lady Olive clapped her hands and suggested Jemis take him to find a vase.

The two of them vanished into the hall. Lady Olive gave Jullanar a wry smile, “He’s gone the wrong way,” she said quietly, “they’re in the pantry.”

At least that gave them a minute or two to talk. “Why don’t you sit down?” Jullanar suggested, nodding at the rocking chair by the hearth.

Lady Olive sank into it with a sigh. “It’s really you? Of course it is.” There was a quiet creak as she sat back. “I’m sorry about Jemis. He’s—we’ve been alone too long.”

Jullanar felt her lips pinch down. “Sayo Buchance explained,” she said and nodded in the vague direction of Arguty Manor.

A tremor ran over Lady Olive’s delicate features. “Yes,” was all she said.

“We’ve been working together, in town.” Jullanar found a breadboard and set out the last few loaves that she’d had on hand that morning. “There’s flour here. The mill had stockpiles that couldn’t be sold, thank the Lady. Do you want me to warn him off?”

“Who? Oh! Benneret! No. It’s—that’s not necessary.” Lady Olive’s pale cheeks had pinked, but her attention was fixed on the bread.

Jullanar found a breadknife and sawed into one with more energy than was, perhaps, required. It nearly sent the smallest loaf spinning off the table.

Catch the anger. Channel it. She thought of P—of a friend, of control and deadly precision.

“Do you need us to have a word with Sir Vorel?”

Lady Olive shook her head. It seemed she was about to reply, but Jemis and Sayo Buchance bustled back into the room together, bearing an old chipped milk jug full of flowers with evident pride. “Oh, those are lovely! Well done, my sweet.”

Young Jemis held his hands behind his back and beamed at them, his small pointed face lit up with delight. Sayo Buchance’s features softened into something almost beautiful, Jullanar thought, when he smiled like that.

She passed the plate of buttered bread to Lady Olive, who took it with both hands, almost reverently, and laughed. “We should say the Lady’s grace.”

They solemnly did so and then sat down to eat together. Jullanar kept bustling. She had eggs, and dried meat. “Plenty of cheese, too. There are a surprising number of market gardens in town,” she told them, “and the Ragnor Arms turned over their stalls for cattle and their kitchen for a dairy. But we had to build a smokehouse for the meat, none of the coolboxes are working.”

“We’re lucky the stove here wasn’t arcane,” Lady Olive nodded at the back door. “And there’s plenty of coal; I’d had it laid in for a couple of winters, since…” She started to get up.

Jullanar made shooing motions. “You stay where you are and let me do something useful.” There was indeed plenty of coal in the scuttle. “The Astandalan magic’s gone out like a snuffed candle,” she told them, “but we’ve been lucky.”

That led, naturally enough, to news about the state of the world. Under Jemis’s brightly curious eye, both Jullanar and Sayo Buchance moderated as much as they could. “I would have brought a paper,” Jullanar said, at length, “But there aren’t many and I want to keep a few copies in Elderflower Books.”

“We’ll come and find you, now the ways are open,” Lady Olive promised. Her eyes were shining again, and this time she dabbed them with a handkerchief.

Sayo Buchance stood up suddenly. They all looked at him. His face was shining nearly as brightly as the buttons on his suit. “Olive, will you walk with me?”

The pink spots in her cheeks flushed darkly. “Of course, Benneret.” She rose too, her eyes not leaving his face as she said, “Jemis, please stay with Saya Thistlethwaite.”

Jemis’s suspicious expression was back and his small dark brows knit more tightly together as he watched his mother leave.

“Are you going to finish those eggs?”

He jerked his head back and scowled down at his plate instead. He was eating slowly on purpose, she realised with a pang. Drawing this out, as though he wasn’t sure when he’d get the chance again.

The pan clanked more loudly than intended as she thumped it down into the sink, and a small surge of water splashed onto the floor. “Oops,” she said out loud, hunting round for the towel.

“It’s by the fire,” Jemis told her, then hopped up and went and fetched it.

“Thank you.”

Through the wavy glass of the kitchen window she could see the blue of Lady Olive’s dress and the dark, sturdy shape of Sayo Buchance’s suit. They were strolling between the flowerbeds.

She couldn’t be sure, but she thought they might be holding hands.

Jemis cleared his plate thoroughly, if discreetly, picking the crumbs off one by one on his fingers until they were entirely gone. He studied it for a moment as if to make sure before he brought it over to the sink. Then, with a sidelong glance at her, he took hold of a spare towel and started to dry.

Her heart smote her. He was such a good boy.

She remembered enough of being…eight? Nine, perhaps?...that she knew better than to tell him so. “Thank you,” she said again, gravely, and then added, “You’ve been looking after your mother,” with a carefully judged and serious note of approval.

He nodded, and took another plate. They worked together in silence. When the cupboard door shut behind the last of the pans, she glanced out of the window again. The blue dress and the dark suit were turning around the same flowerbed for perhaps the fifth time.

Jemis had drifted over to the half-empty basket and was peering into it, rather like a cat investigating a newly opened parcel

“Do you want to help me put these things away?”

“They’re for us?” He had tucked his hands behind his back again. “Doesn’t the big house need…?”

“These are all for you,” she said, wishing again that Lady Olive had wanted her to take Sir Vorel to task.

She distracted herself by asking him questions as they put the goods away. He was older than she’d realised—“Nearly eleven!”—but added without prompting that though he was small his papa had promised that he would get bigger. Not as big as Roald though, he said with a sigh.

A further question revealed that Roald was the baron’s son and bigger than any of the boys their age at the kingschool, and stronger too, but that Jemis’s papa had taught him a trick for tripping big boys.

“And how did Roald react to that?” she asked, diverted.

Roald had thought it was brilliant and had, Jemis admitted, with a sigh that was older than his years, learned how to do it at once, just from watching. But Perry had forbidden them from practising on each other. Everybody did what Perry said.

“I’ve had friends like that,” she said, with sympathy.

This set Jemis to defending Perry, which he did with an energy and enthusiasm that brought his narrow face alive. There was something distinctly elfin about the cast of his features, almost impish when he smiled, and Jullanar felt that she understood better the reason for both the horseshoe and the salt.

They were seated at the table drinking a mint tisane together when Lady Olive and Sayo Buchance came clattering in again, still holding hands. They let go at once when both Jemis and Jullanar looked at them in surprise.

“Jemis?” Lady Olive said softly, “Come and talk with me, darling.”

The pair of them vanished into the next room. Jullanar raised her brows at Sayo Buchance, who beamed back at her. “She said yes!”

“Congratulations,” Jullanar got up again to put the kettle on. “There’s half a lardy Johns in the cupboard, do get it out and we’ll toast the pair of you.”

Sayo Buchance was starry eyed and uncharacteristically animated as he hunted for the fruit loaf. “I’ll bring more food,” he said, “I’m going back now to make arrangements…she wants to stay in Ragnor Bella until the Woods Noirell are passable again…”

Jullanar set out the teacups, firmly squashing the ache she felt at the mention of—but if the Arguty Forest could be crossed, then surely—though there were good reasons to think that the magic disruption might linger in the Woods longer than—and this wasn’t about her and her friends. She plucked another sprig of mint from the tray in the window and crushed the leaves into the mugs. “She has relatives there…?”

“Her grandmother, the Marchioness. Olive wants to ask—” he sighed, shoulder sagging. “She was disowned for marrying Greenwing, so I suppose—”

“What the Marchioness of the Woods Noirell thinks is neither here nor there.” Jullanar handed him a mug. “She’s not the one whose opinion matters.”

“It does to Olive.” Sayo Buchance sighed, but the smile was creeping back onto his face. “I’m going to find us a place in town. It’s safer, and Jemis deserves to see his friends more easily.”

“He’ll like that,” Jullanar said, thinking of the way the lad had grown animated talking about them. She would like it too; perhaps Lady Olive would join the Embroidery Circle.

More details burbled out of Sayo Buchance. Jullanar realised swiftly that her contributions were largely unnecessary for this conversation and restricted herself to appreciative nods. He was so happy, and so warm about it, and fiercely determined to do his best for both mother and son. She had no doubt that it would be a practical and devoted best, too.

(She tried not to think of another practical man whose face had lit up when he smiled, who had cheerfully offered to stand with her when she was the one who needed help.)

Lady Olive came back in with her arm around Jemis’s shoulder. They had both been crying, Jullanar thought, busying herself with mugs and kettle. She watched unobtrusively as Jemis pulled away from his mother and marched up to Sayo Buchance.

Sayo Buchance won another notch in her estimation by ponderously lowering himself down to the boy’s level. “Well, Jemis?”

“You will look after my mother, sir?”

Lady Olive met Jullanar’s eyes and pulled out her handkerchief again.

“I will do everything I can for both of you,” Sayo Buchance said gruffly.

Jemis gave him a long, inscrutable look. “Thank you, Sayo Buchance.” He made a small, old-fashioned bow. Sayo Buchance, caught out by the gesture, dipped his head awkwardly in response.

Then, as though that were everything that needed to be said, they stepped apart. Sayo Buchance hauled himself with an ungainly motion back to his feet, fished out his own handkerchief, and blew his nose loudly.

Jullanar was feeling a little teary-eyed herself, if she were honest. She sniffed hard and poured the kettle again.

They toasted Sayo Buchance and Lady Olive in hot mint and buttered lardy Johns. “We’ve been baking in big batches,” Jullanar said, when Lady Olive tried to protest the gift. “There are half a dozen scrap cakes every time. And the lard won’t last if we don’t use it.”

“I have an idea about that,” Sayo Buchance wiped his fingers. “There’s a trick with wire and waxed cloth I used to use when we were picnicking…” He shrugged. “A lot of places have been hungry, but not everywhere. There’s food to be had, if it will travel.”

“A good lardy Johns lasts nearly a week,” Jullanar said thoughtfully. “When we have weeks. And I’ve been stocking up on fruitcake when I can too. Those do much better.”

“A sterile jar and a good locking mechanism can—” Sayo Buchance caught himself. “I’m sorry.”

Lady Olive laughed, bright as birdsong. “Will you tell me all about it later?” She took his hand. “My noble knight, tilting at hunger itself.”

Jullanar looked down again and busied herself clearing the plates. There was nothing like another person’s romance, she reflected, to make one self-conscious.

Jemis handed her his mug and rolled his eyes. She stifled a laugh.

(When she had offered sappy compliments to her husband it had, every time, been a shared and splendid joke. The thought hurt, as though it were pressure reminding her of a splinter in her heart.)

After a long pause, the lovers let go of one another’s hands again. “Olive, will you be comfortable here? Will you stay with them, Saya Thistlethwaite? Just for tonight?”

She hadn’t expected that, but she saw the sense in it at once. They had no guarantee that the magical thaw would last, and there was every chance that the inhabitants of Arguty Manor would try to make trouble if they realised the dower cottage was accessible again. “Of course. Will you stop by the shop and leave a note in the window? Oh, and stick the paper up inside the glass if you can, so people can stop by and read the news.”

He took her keys, stepped aside with Lady Olive again for one last private conference, and then went striding along the field with a spring in his step.

Jullanar watched Lady Olive watching him go, and felt her last concern melt away. There was real affection there, she judged. This would be good for all of them.

Now that he was over his initial shyness, Jemis turned out to be a curious chatterbox, eager to drag this new person all over his small domain and point out its highlights and comforts. Jullanar let herself be dragged, guessing that Lady Olive might enjoy a chance to sit quietly while someone else listened to his enthusiasms and did their best to answer his questions about what had happened in town.

She couldn’t give him much of an update on the kingschool, nor on Dartington or how the Baron and his family had fared. She could and did talk about the books she had shared with the town’s children. He hung on her every word and then made her describe and re-describe her bookshop again and again until Lady Olive intervened to send him to wash his hands for dinner.

“He’s fond of books,” she said softly.

“He’s a dear lad.”

It started growing dark at about the time Jullanar would have expected around the spring equinox. The three of them went outside for the pleasure of seeing the sky still clear and the sun slipping down towards the West.

Later, when it was fully dark and Jemis had been firmly packed off to bed, Jullanar lit the fire and settled herself into the rocking chair. “So.”

“So.” Lady Olive put the last of the cutlery away, hesitated, then went to a high cupboard on the far wall and drew out a plain bottle. She poured two generous measures of amber liquid into cups and pushed one across to Jullanar. “Thank you for coming.”

Jullanar took it, admiring the irregular green glaze decoration. “That was all your Sayo Buchance,” she said, for the pleasure of seeing her friend blush again. “He was very insistent.” She took a sip, then another. It was superb whiskeyjack. She raised it. “Congratulations again.”

Lady Olive pulled out a chair and sat down, her hand cradling her own cup. She didn’t drink from it, not at once. “Thank you.”

It was cool enough that the warmth of the fire was welcome. Jullanar let the chair rock back, then forward. She wondered if she could find another like it for her little flat.

Whatever thoughts Lady Olive was pondering came to some conclusion. She blinked at the fire, took a drink from her cup, and said, “Jack would be happy for me.”

Jullanar hardly remembered Major Jakory Greenwing. He hadn’t been in Ragnor Bella often, and she was inherently inclined to avoid Astandalan soldiery for both personal and practical reasons. She murmured supportively all the same; Lady Olive ought to be right, if the man had truly loved her.

“Jemis doesn’t look like him. Not much.” Another sip. Lady Olive was staring at the fire, seeing—well, Jullanar could guess whom—in the depths of the flames. “Except when he smiles.”

“He had a lot to tell me about his papa,” Jullanar offered. All of it to Major Greenwing’s credit, too. “He loved him very much, I think.”

Lady Olive gave a soft sound and patted around again for her wet handkerchief, which she looked at in dismay.

“Here’s mine.”

“Thank you.” She wiped her face again. “You know how worried I’ve been about him. Before all… While the empire was still…” She waved a hand. “Sayo Buchance thinks there’s a chance we’ll hear. From the command at Eil, if not—”

“If not from Astandalas.” Jullanar said, levelly.

Lady Olive nearly dropped the handkerchief. “Oh Saya Thistlethwaite, I am so sorry for your loss.”

For a moment it was almost intolerable. This sympathy was all for her vanished husband, whom she had been wed to for a handful of years; her grief for him was tight as a corset round that hollow place inside, but it was only a fragment compounding into the greater swell of loss and loneliness.

Nobody was offering their condolences for her other, earlier losses, for the friends she had travelled with and fought alongside and known in every way it was possible to know another being. The friends of her heart.

She wished Sara was there. She was in no place to decide whether it was safe to explain, to let herself weep for them… The long habit of concealment let her scrub a hand across her face and swallow back the inappropriate emotions. “If you don’t mind, it’s easier not to…when I don’t know.”

“Of course,” Lady Olive’s tone was gentle, perhaps a little sad. Well, she would assume that Jullanar was talking only about one man, and that man known to have been in the Palace of Stars when Ysthar was laid waste.

Small mage lights were still mounted around this kitchen, the cheap ones that were common even in the humblest Alinorel houses. Nothing but tin and glass now, dark and useless without the imperial magic that had powered them. And yet there was something about the dower cottage, and the garden too—and there were other magics, not perhaps as reliable as Schooled Magic for the day-to-day, but no less essential to the worlds.

As if in answer to her thought, Lady Olive drew her shawl closer and said abruptly, “I have the gift of sight.”

Jullanar turned to look at her, surprised.

“I saw Jack,” she said, and in the shadows her face was white and ghostly, masklike. “Not—not long ago, now. Although how one can tell, in the endlessness—well. I saw his face, and I knew that he was dead.”

It was Jullanar’s turn to mouth the words, “I’m sorry,” and feel how wholly inadequate they were. Lady Olive gave no sign of acknowledgement. Her eyes were hooded and fixed on the flames.

“He was innocent,” she said. “My visions come as they will; I had hoped…I have never seen anything that might show what happened. But I know—I knew—Jack. He could no more betray a trust than I could—could risk Jemis to clear his name.”

They had been over this before, several times. The two letters, signed by two different senior officers, sharing two different accounts. Sir Vorel insisted that the first to arrive must be accurate, the one which stated that her husband had been shot running away from a court martial.

“You said…you’ve always believed that there was some threat…?”

“Yes.” Lady Olive glanced at the door which led towards the cottage bedrooms, her hands twisting the handkerchief in her lap. “Why all the lies, unless someone is determined to prevent him from inheriting?”

“Sir Vorel…?”

“Acting alone? That buffoon?”

That was another open question. Jullanar nodded and let herself rock again. Forward and back. “And so you need proof. And the Lady only knows what happens to your letter…”

Sir Vorel had proudly declared that he would write on Lady Olive’s behalf. It had taken several months for Lady Olive to be convinced that he hadn’t done so at all, and longer for Jullanar to persuade her that they needed to seize the original letters back. Lady Olive’s own plea for clarification had been sent barely a day before Alinor disintegrated.

“There’s a chance it will get through, I suppose.” Lady Olive put the handkerchief down and picked up her cup, turning it so the glaze gleamed in the firelight. “Should I write again?”

“There’d be no harm in it.” Jullanar finished her whiskeyjack and hauled herself out of the chair to take it to the sink. “You could write elsewhere, too?” She rummaged in the nearly-empty basket until she found a notebook and a pencil. “We know—” voice level, eyes dry “—we know that my letter won’t get a response. And what if something has happened to the army?” The soldiers of Astandalas were equipped and supported by their mages; if all this disturbance was the magic of the empire failing, then it might be concentrated in their camps. “You should at least appeal to the Lady too.”

“If her magic’s failed…?”

“I know.” It was impossible, but so was…everything. “There must be some other way to get news of the Seventh Army?”

They made a list: papers, schools that might keep records, local governments in Fiella or Ronde or Chare. Lady Olive finished her own whiskeyjack and recovered some animation as they talked.

“It will be easier when we’re living in town,” she said at last, looking at the list, and then crumpled it in her hand and started to cry in earnest. “I’ve been so afraid for him.”

Jullanar wrapped her in a blanket, and stoked the fire, and brought her hot mint and another slice of toasted lardy Johns, and pulled a chair close so that she could sit with an arm around her shoulders. “You’ve been alone too long,” she said, and then found that she was crying too, and laughed at it through her tears. “The pair of us!”

Lady Olive laughed too. “Another drink?” She suggested. “Jemis would be astonished. I haven’t…I haven’t wanted to drink alone.” She gripped Jullanar’s hand. “I’m so glad you came. Thank you.”

“We’ll keep him safe, Jullanar promised, “and clear your Jack’s name.” She gripped back, feeling an old familiar resolve that was—oh, she remembered this—spurred on by the promise of adventure. “If nothing comes of writing, I’ll go myself.”

The other woman looked at her sharply, eyes bright in the firelight. “Now there is an offer,” she said slowly, “that might shake the very halls of heaven.”

Jullanar met her eyes with a motion equally sharp, then let out her own breath slow and measured. “How long have you known?” she asked, very quiet.

“I stood at the window,” Lady Olive replied, “when you rode the high way.”

“To the golden city, the city of roses,” Jullanar completed. “That was you?”

It could have been. Of course it could have been. It simply had never occurred to her at all before now, not even as an idle speculation, in all the time she had known that Lady Olive was a daughter of the Woods Noirell.

“It was a clear night, when you came riding past.”

“The moon was bright,” Jullanar agreed, “Fitzroy said he saw the watcher clearly, when I challenged him.”

“He turned and looked straight at me.” Lady Olive was still speaking softly, as though awed. “His eyes were yellow, like a cat in the moonlight.”

It had all been so long ago. But it seemed, for the first time in fourteen years, as though it might not be so very far away.

“I miss them,” Jullanar told the fire.

Lady Olive had filled the cups again. “To absent friends.”

After they had drunk the toast she added, fiercely, “We will see them again. In the Lady’s country, if not before.”

Jullanar hummed a sound that could be taken for agreement. She had seen too much of the River of Stars to have absolute confidence in any of the gods; besides, none of her friends had more than vague courtesy to offer the Lady, who was not of their worlds.

But perhaps that didn’t matter; perhaps she was Jullanar of the Sea, a Woman of Character, and when she set her mind to finding them—in this life or another—she would.

She would.

Jullanar sat in near darkness after Lady Olive had retired, rocking slowly back and forth. The tears slid down slowly enough to dry on her cheeks as she watched the embers glow and fade. After a while she got up and moved the fire tidy so that the handle of the heavy iron poker was in easy reach.

The wind was loud in the eaves of the cottage that night, and there was laughter in it.

Nothing tried to cross the threshold. She tried not to be disappointed.

Sayo Buchance returned before noon the following day, with a cart and helpers, bringing news of lodging arranged in town. He went up to Arguty Manor himself, once his fiancé and her son and all their most precious belongings were safely out of the dower cottage, and came back with an uncharacteristically sour expression and Sir Vorel in tow.

Sir Vorel contrived single-handedly to cast a shadow over one of the first sparkling spring mornings anybody could remember for what felt like an eternity. He was desolate that his sister-in-law was leaving, when he considered himself—no, was—her protector and the head of her household. He drew her a few paces away from the group to plead the case; the words were inaudible from the cart but a gesture or two at Sayo Buchance and the tight-lipped fury on Lady Olive’s face told their own story.

He had no actual legal standing to issue commands, and Sayo Buchance had made his arrangements with an eye to every propriety, and the recent unpleasantness—as he insisted on putting it—made plain the value of living in town. Nevertheless Sir Vorel followed them down the hill and up the track, expostulating beyond the point of foolishness. When they left him, in the greenway near the main road, he actually shook his fist at them.

The cart slipped out of the Arguty estate and wobbled in and out of the potholes on the way to town. Jemis threw off the general gloom first and enlivened his mother’s day by scrambling over their belongings and surveying the country from a lofty, precarious perch.

Jullanar slipped off the footplate of the cart and fell back to walk with Sayo Buchance, who was still glaring at the hedgerows as though they had reneged on a business deal.

“That seemed a trifle…theatrical?”

He actually snorted. “That’s Sir Vorel. Glad enough to see the back of us, but he has to do the thing, as he would say, justice.”

“He’d use more words than that,” Jullanar said, slyly, and startled Sayo Buchance into a laugh.

“I suppose so. Well. We’re well rid of him—what is that boy up to now?”

Jemis had chosen to enliven proceedings by falling off the baggage; he had somehow twisted or bounced off the side of the coach into the nearest hedge because (he said) it looked softer than the ground.

By the time they had pulled him out and patched him up and got moving again the general gloom had lifted. They rolled into Ragnor Bella in fine style; the streets were full of sunshine and familiar faces, as though the town’s citizens were emerging from a long hibernation. Jullanar slipped away to find more friends who could help Lady Olive settle into the rooms Sayo Buchance had found for her and Jemis.

There was again so much to do, a flurry of introductions and welcomes and plans and—once Jemis’s friends appeared—over-excited children.

It was late again by the time Jullanar let herself back in at her own front door and made her way wearily up to her own small bedroom. She took off her boots and sat for a moment on the edge of the bed, wishing again that she had made the time to don corsetry the day before.

After a moment she got up and crossed to the wardrobe. She pushed coats and dresses aside, reached into the back—and, yes, there it was. A battered leather bag, well-cared for, the brass buckles stiff on the straps under her fingers.

It had always been temperamental, even for Fitzroy, and more so when it had been taken from him by force. At first she hadn’t dared open it, in case the magical signature was recognised. Then she had said to herself that she was keeping it for him in trust; it had helped her believe that he would come back again.

(He knew what she had planned to name her bookstore; he could find her easily if—if he wanted to. If he were alive. Sardeet had said that he would be back, that they would see one another again.)

(She had not expected to wait so long.)

It had never given her what she asked for, and so she didn’t ask. She reached in and—her fingers closed on the hilt of a sword.

She drew it out slowly, admiring the way the steel shone blue and white with evening.

Well.

It was a splendid, spangled thing to hold, in her cosy bedroom above Elderflower Books. Her feet moved, finding their stance. As the sword shifted the reflections glinted off the colours of the patchwork quilt, the grey of her dress, and the brass knobs of the bedstead.

She was crying again, grief rising more quietly now but no less fiercely. She had waited. She had done what she could. She was the practical one, the person who thought about other people.

The hilt felt right in her hand. The anger felt right in her soul.

She had a feeling that she might be going to petition the Lady.