Archive of Our Own

A sword forged of starlight in the Moon Lady's realm was, unfortunately, somewhat conspicuous to wear openly in Ragnor Bella.

No decorous matron of the town went armed, or not visibly, or not in any way that had to be acknowledged. Not even the allowably eccentric variety of matron, who kept a bookshop and lived alone in the small flat above it, whose husband was a Very Important Official in Astandalas the Golden itself, and whose erraticisms were therefore all subsumed into a haze of reflected respectability.

Not even a widow.

Her hat pins were entirely deniable, and so was the sharpened knitting needle. She kept the sword hanging on the inside of the wardrobe door, half-hidden by a battered old leather bag. The gorgeously chased and painted scabbard concealed most of the shine of the blade.

It taunted her every morning when she made her toilette, but she couldn't leave yet. Not until she was sure her friends here would be safe.

The sky was bright and blue again, the weather growing dependable, and the roads more travelled. Not that many people came, other than those passing through with the mail coaches, but then Ragnor Bella had never been much of a destination.

Those who did brought word of the empty countryside where farms and hamlets and whole villages had vanished into the mist and left only ruins behind. As grim as that was, there was equal talk of recovery. The luckier farms, those closer to town, were expanding into the good tilled earth. As long as the weather held there was hope of a year of good harvests.

The cost of food was falling, but not far or fast enough to keep the pinched worry from many faces. Jullanar and her friends teamed up with the stolid and persistent Sayo Buchance to fill and refill and distribute the cunning jars he had created with every type of preserved food, since the magical coldboxes and stasis lockers had stopped working.

The problem had galvanised him. He grew absorbed in the perfection and distribution of the sealing mechanism, and kept writing to his Charese trading house for funds and assistance. What started as evenings tucked into the spare bedroom of his apartment became a series of demonstrations in the back room of the Ragnor Arms.

"He's sold his house in Chare," his fiancée, Lady Olive, told Jullanar one evening. Her eyes were sparkling.

Jullanar had to smile. They were a few hard months away from the dark time when the broken magic had shrouded every part of Ragnor Bella in strange staticky nothingness that made any short walk a perilous adventure. It warmed her to know that her friend had found happiness on the other side of grief. "Have you been looking at homes, then?"

Lady Olive had a merry laugh, the kind that made people on the other side of the dining room look up, smile, and look away. "My rooms will do well enough for the three of us! No, he's buying an old barn, and a glass furnace, and wages for six men for six months."

Jullanar clapped her hands together. "He's found a distributor!"

They toasted Benneret Buchance's success in pale fruit cider and talked of future plans. The wedding would take place as soon as his family could make it through from Chare; or if that still seemed far away they would wed quietly in the autumn either way, and celebrate later when the roads were more secure.

"And... your mother the Marchioness?"

Lady Olive shook her head, with a grimace. "She wants me to come back to the Woods and forget all this foolishness. I'd go to speak with her, only..."

"You're worried about Jemis." Jullanar was fond of Lady Olive’s son, who on his father’s side was the rightful heir of Arguty Manor—if his father's name could be cleared.

Given the tangle of circumstances that had led to the estate passing to his uncle, Sir Vorel, it was entirely reasonable of Lady Olive to want to keep Jemis close. And Jemis himself had that touch of the fae about him, a characteristic that might make any mother anxious about travelling with her son into a fairy wood. Particularly when the entire world was slowly recovering from an unimaginable magical catastrophe.

Jullanar’s own grief was waiting for her in her bookshop, as soon as the door closed behind her. Her candle lantern flickered, casting strange shadows at angles across the shelves. Here, at the end of the day, the shutters were drawn and she was truly alone—the door locked behind her, and the long day closing. She blew out the candle without lighting any lamps, taking refuge in familiar shadows. There was a high-backed armchair in the back room near the stove, which she could curl into like a girl with her legs tucked up. It reminded her, nearly, of what it was like to be held when she cried.

She was happy for her friends. Lady Olive’s troubles had started before the Astandalan magic failed. Her husband’s death, the accusations of his treachery, the loss of the child she had been carrying, the hostility of his relatives… And all this time, her fear and watchfulness for Jemis. She deserved support, and love, and a brighter future. Sayo Buchance had worked so hard to help her, and was pouring himself just as hard into this project of easing hunger. He might express it in stolid and undramatic terms, but she had seen enough of him to know what moved his heart.

They were good people and Jullanar would stand with them, at least until their wedding, and she would not trouble them with her vapours. Lady Olive knew her past, even if it was scarcely safe to discuss in a public dining room. She would see them safe that far, and then…

She hadn’t let herself think too hard about the ‘and then’. The sword was waiting, but… Even crossing Ragnor Bella could be complicated, still; Jullanar had been woolgathering the other day and had found herself cutting through the same short alleyway four separate times without turning round. And Jemis and his friends swore that a street on the other side of town had grown tired of being taken for granted and slid off into the heavens, although none of them was able to explain which street it had been.

“Best not to talk about that.” Sayo Buchance had shaken his head. “Smacks of magic.”

‘Magic’ was fast becoming a dirty word. Jullanar could understand why. Until the disaster, which the papers referred to as the Fall of Astandalas, magic had been a known and consistent part of most people’s lives. It heated the stove and kept the lights on; it bound the gates open and the Empire together; it was a civilising force, Schooled and tamed and predictable.

She had learned better long ago, when wild magic had been the free and colourful eruption of friendship and adventure into her life. She had once dreamed of being able to share that delight with her family.

Their horror at the merest hint of her outlawry had long been a barrier, but she had thought a long respectable life might set that to rest. That seemed impossible now. She couldn’t raise the subject as she helped Lavinia clear broken glass after a wild dreamer crashed through into her tidy living room. She saw the grim line of her sister’s mouth, the disgust that was hardly a veil over the fear, and she shrank from making the attempt. To Lavinia, and increasingly to merchants like Sayo Buchance and to local gentry like the Baron and all the society of Ragnor Bella (such as it was), magic was a threat.

How small she had become, she thought drearily, and wiped her face, and wondered whether she should force herself out of the chair and up the stairs to wash and go to bed properly. If only P— if only someone were here to shake her out of her, her funk.

The suspicion of magic might have been partly why messages passed so slowly in and out of the notorious Woods Noirell. She had had two notes from the Bee at the Border, both in Basil’s short and practical style. He and Sara and Clio had survived, but Sara was ill. He advised against a visit, at least until things were…

Everybody advised against travel. Jullanar was doing good work here. She knew—it was plain—that the good citizenry would be horrified to know she was concealing a sword made from starlight.

She cried herself out. Tears didn’t last, and neither did the ugly blank emptiness they left behind. Tomorrow would come and she would face it better for creaking her way up the stairs and into bed.

Tomorrow came, and another tomorrow, and a tomorrow after that.

The only reliable correspondence Jullanar had received since the Fall was, to her astonishment, from her suppliers. Alinor might have turned upside down, but books were still being printed and shipped for her to sell, and the townsfolk were still coming to buy them.

There was the spark of a heroic idea in that, in the intransigence of the universities and the stubbornness of an educated people in devouring the written word. F—her friend might have written a song about it, and she could almost hear K—her husband dissecting the idea, bringing her flight of fancy up against his practical knowledge and plumbing it for better policy.

Missing them was an ache in her bones; it flared, sometimes, when the weather changed. It wrapped her closely in the golden autumn days, when a perfect summer broke and gave way to changeable winds and whirling leaves.

The harvest had been a good one; the Marchioness remained intransigent; it was unclear when travel would be safe again. Sayo and Saya Buchance were married in the midst of a fire of red and orange foliage, on a day bathed in autumn sunshine as clear and rich as the honey of the Woods Noirell.

Jullanar distracted herself from her loneliness by keeping Jemis close. He took her arm with a gallant air, and cut a fine if petite figure in his dark green suit. Despite its style, which was Charese and businesslike in honour of his new stepfather, he contrived to wear the rounded hat at an unexpectedly rakish angle.

He was another one who deserved a better life, she thought. There was more colour in his face after a few months of better meals, but there was still something reticent about his unchildlike courtesy. His expression was serious as he followed his mother up the aisle, and his bows to his new stepfather were painfully formal. It was a relief, all told, when young Roald Ragnor peacocked up to them after the ceremony and needled him into a game of tag.

Sayo Buchance had received a series of orders for his newly patented self-sealing jars and boxes, and stinted on nothing. The wedding breakfast took place at the Ragnor Arms and was open to everyone; there were tables set up in the market square outside offering food and drinks to those passing by.

Jullanar took her slice of cake out to the benches by the fountain so that she could watch the boys at their game. It didn’t seem likely to end in a dunking, although with Roald in this contrary mood one never really knew.

Her own dress was green too, the same dark colour that Lady Olive had chosen for those standing with her. The skirt was chased with rose leaves in an interlocking pattern, a wreath without a bloom. She finished her cake, brushed the crumbs into the fountain, and then ran her fingers over the fabric, watching Sir Vorel and Lady Flora make an early exit. Olive had come out onto the step to see them off; everybody was wearing fixed smiles, so it didn’t look as though any intervention was needed.

Jemis flopped down next to her with a sigh that was bigger than he was. His shirt collar had come part-open and one end of his pale yellow cravat was slipping out of it. His hat was missing, although a glance across the square showed her that his friends were taking turns to don it and take it off at one another.

“Mama says you’re going to ask the Lady what happened.” He was frowning at his uncle. She couldn’t blame him.

She also couldn’t lie, not to him. “I’m going to enquire after her letters,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll get to see the Lady. They say the only petitioners getting into Nên Corovel are those in urgent need of the Halls of Healing.”

He nodded, his frown tightening. “I want to go with you.”

The laugh was startled out of her, but she regretted it at once. His small shoulders hunched defensively. “Oh, Jemis, I’m sorry my dear. Of course you do.” She met his eyes steadily as he looked up again. “I understand. If it was my father—”

“Why can’t I go?” He demanded. “I’m eleven! And I can ride, Papa taught me, and sneak and scout and play Poacher, and—”

“Skills any adventurer would envy.” She put an arm round his shoulders. “Jemis, your mother needs you here.”

“She’s got Sayo Buchance,” he muttered. Another sideways glance showed her that his cheeks were wet with tears.

“Sayo Buchance is making your mama very happy,” she said gently, “But they both need you too. I—” she swallowed. “Nobody needs me here. So I can go.”

“Oh.” He swiped his sleeve across his face, almost angrily, but didn’t say anything else.

She had no idea what to add, but she felt she had to say something. “Sayo Buchance has asked Suzanne to manage for Elderflower Books while I’m away.”

A short pause. Jemis stared at his feet. “She’s very organised.”

“Mmhmm.” Suzanne Hadley had originally been recruited to put together the books for Sayo Buchance’s new enterprise. It was typically generous that he was willing to lend her services to keep Jullanar’s shop afloat while she was away.

Jullanar had visited his lawyers, after learning about that, and was leaving paperwork in place to transfer ownership of the shop to the Buchance family if she failed to return.

“It would make me feel better,” she said carefully, “if I knew somebody were there to help her. Somebody less organised, maybe, but who loved my books.”

Jemis did love visiting the shop. He had dropped by often enough to have a favourite chair, and she had redone the whole children’s corner—and expanded it—on the strength of his advice. He looked up at her now with wary interest.

She grinned at him. “Will you write to me, now and then, and let me know how it’s going?” He nodded, apparently mollified. “I’ll write to you, too,” she promised. “Or send word when I can.”

He pulled away from her and stood up. “I will look after Elderflower Books, Saya Thistlethwaite,” he promised, with that odd solemnity that came over him sometimes.

It was broken almost immediately by a thump and the brim of his dark green hat, which Master Roald Ragnor dropped on his head and tugged down over his eyes. Jemis’s outraged shout at this was much more in keeping with his age.

“Perry says it’s missing you!” the Baron’s son announced, then dodged away before Jemis could grab him.

Jullanar watched as the pair of them tore back across the square, feeling her resolve sharpening into decision. There must be some way to get to the Rainbow-Girt Isle, and she would find it.

The mail coach passed through Ragnor Bella so early the following morning that the first and lightest frost of the season was still forming on the windows. Jullanar felt a superstitious disinclination to open Fitzroy’s bag again, until she had done justice to its first gift. She packed lightly therefore: a change of clothes, her daggers, the sword wrapped up in its scabbard and tucked in with a blanket roll as though it were a staff. The hilt was plain enough, fortunately, though beautiful with all the elegance that Masseo’s perfection of his craft could bestow.

She hesitated over the climbing gear, but it was worth having. The lockpicks slid into her crafting bag without a second thought; on reflection she added the first couple of squares of a crochet blanket she had started with Lady Olive in mind. It was good to have something to do with her hands.

Her bundle slung easily across her shoulders. It was larger than a woman travelling alone might be expected to carry, but not enough to disconcert the coachman who helped her into the carriage.

She had forgotten how easy it was to simply go. There were no other passengers and at least two hours remaining until the sun would rise, but her original intention of tucking into a corner and falling asleep was undermined by an undeniable and growing excitement. The coach rattled up and down. She cracked the window open an inch or so to let the crisp cold air slide in across her cheeks.

They rattled down through the town and over the bridge and then they were crossing fields, all black mysteries in the night. The light from the carriage lanterns picked out fences and hedges and trees, eerily isolated from one another and vanishing into the general gloom as they passed. She almost didn’t recognise the turning that led to Arguty Manor and, by the time she realised where they were, they had plunged in between the trunks of Arguty Forest.

The coachman had set a steady pace. It would take the best part of a day and a night to reach the staging inn outside Yrchester; the fast post horses could make it in half that time, but they took no passengers and Jullanar had no reason to bribe or bully her way into that sort of haste. Besides, it would hardly be in keeping with the life and habits of the respectable Saya Thistlethwaite.

It was unexpected, therefore, when the coach skidded to a shaky halt between the old tree trunks, as the grey-green light of early dawn was still filtering softly between the leaves. Jullanar started out of a doze as the dawn chorus broke up into a series of screeches, as though they had surprised a small army of blue jays.

There were voices outside. She eased the window open slightly further, but they were up near the horses’ heads and the angle was too acute for her to see what was happening.

She drew back in to consider her options, her heart pattering with excitement. It seemed unlikely that anybody stopping the mail coach at this time in the morning in the middle of the Arguty Forest was there to make small talk. And even a stately Alinorel matron could defend herself, couldn’t she?

Her bundle was on the floor beside her seat. She placed one hand on the hilt of the sword and the other on the door.

It swung open before she could reach it, revealing the coachman, looking worried.

A woman about the same age as Jullanar was standing a couple of ells behind him, a bow in her hand. The arrow was, at that moment, pointing down at the leaf litter under her feet.

“I’m sorry, Mrs Thistlethwaite. The lady wanted to see my passenger.”

The bowwoman peered past him. “Just the one woman?”

Jullanar slid closer to the door so that she would be visible in the light, pulling her bundle with her. “Yes?”

The bowwoman grunted. “Good. No mail sacks in there?”

“Only me and my dunnage,” Jullanar agreed cheerfully. “If we’re stopping, can I come out and sit with you for a bit? Only I can’t seem to sleep and it’s too dark in here for crochet…” She drew out her crafting bag and held it up in demonstration, hooking the rest of her bundle over her shoulder.

The coachman looked briefly panicked, but the bowwoman laughed. “All yours, madam,” she said. “We won’t keep you long.”

Jullanar was too experienced in this kind of escapade to be annoyed at how quickly the crochet seemed to put her fellow outlaws off their guard. A couple of them glanced at her bag as she scrambled up beside the coachman’s seat, but none of them asked to look in it. She propped it against her legs so that the sword hilt showed as nothing more than an upright stick of metal, then wrapped her skein of wool around it and kept working on the next blanket square.

The gang were chiefly interested in the mail sacks, but it was a discriminating interest. They unstacked them from the back of the carriage and handed them down a line to a small folding table between the trees, then began to go through them. They worked swiftly, their breath hanging mistily in the cool air.

Jullanar was glad of the heavy blanket the coachman had left on his seat. After a moment she fished out a pair of fingerless gloves, too.

She had travelled too widely to share her fellow Alinorel citizens’ innocence about the potential for senseless violence in members of her own gender. She didn’t feel any particular threat here, however. The bowwoman seemed to be in charge, but she wasn’t barking orders. The whole group was working confidently and quickly together. The coachman, she couldn’t help but notice, was leaning against the side of his vehicle and smoking a pipe.

She was careful all the same to avoid looking too obviously and too closely at what was happening at that table. From the corner of her eye as she pretended to puzzle over her pattern she could see that bundles of letters were being spread out, skimmed through, and tied up again to go back into their sacks. No envelopes were slit open and nothing was being read but the addresses.

Some letters were, however, being slid aside. A small pile built up at the end of the table. So.

Jullanar had finished the first square and was casting on the second when the bowwoman approached her. “Good morning,” she said, with the briefest of glances up from counting her stitches.

“Good morning.” The bowwoman sounded amused. “You’re a brave one, to be travelling alone.”

“I’ve nothing much for thieves,” Jullanar lied calmly, folding her yarn between her hands and giving the woman her full attention. The bowwoman was sturdy, tall, and well-muscled. She was wearing masculine clothing, plain and dun-coloured and entirely correct: breeches, shirt, and a heavy coat. It emphasised both the strength of her shoulders and the familiarity of her stance.

Female Alinorel officers in the Army of Astandalas were—had been—held to a more relaxed standard in their manner of dress than their civilian sisters. “Which division?” Jullanar asked, as politely as she might have enquired after any of Lavinia’s friends.

The other woman’s heavy auburn brows raised in appreciation. “It hardly matters now. The Empire can’t pay us, so we make our own way. It was that or starve.”

“By intercepting the post?” Jullanar kept any hint of an accusation out of her tone.

She was rewarded with half a shrug. “A letter or two. By commission, only.”

“I see.” Jullanar hesitated, but she had little to lose by asking. “And if I were curious as to the fate of a certain letter, or two, you would no doubt have conveniently forgotten those commissions?”

“Aye.” The woman folded her arms. “Are you asking?”

“I doubt I have the coin to buy out your commissions.” Another lie; Sayo Buchance had been too generous. Better not to get waylaid here, though, and certainly better not to give this gang any reason to warn anybody who might have requested Lady Olive’s letters be intercepted.

The outlaw accepted this with a nod. “It’s been a pleasure, Mrs Thistlethwaite. We won’t delay you in the cold much longer.”

“Thank you, Ms…?”

That won a laugh. “Myrta. Myrta the Hand. If you ever find that coin, write to me. Or if you need it, let me know; I could use another courier.”

She strode away, leaving Jullanar to watch the mail sacks being loaded back into the coach with a military energy and precision.

The coachman climbed warily up beside her and touched the horses lightly with his whip. The bandit at their head loosened his hold and they were off again. Jullanar turned her head and caught one unsteady glimpse of Myrta the Hand and her gang vanishing into the trees.

It was hard to imagine Sir Vorel having either the gumption or the nerve to make contact with a band of outlaws, though he certainly had the money for it. Lady Olive suspected that he wasn’t acting alone, and Jullanar tended to agree. She could imagine him conveniently ignoring, or even concealing, facts that might deny him the chance to seize his brother’s inheritance. She couldn’t quite picture him having the courage to fake a letter from one of Major Greenwing’s senior officers himself, nor the foresight to think of intercepting Lady Olive’s appeal.

The old Arguty oaks rolled past. The road was boggy with disuse but not in as bad a state as it might be.

Myrta the Hand had spoken of commissions in the plural, and her gang had separated out what looked like a small stack of messages. It was admittedly a less distasteful way of surviving than extorting food from isolated farmsteads, and no doubt more lucrative than robbing the few travellers who made it into the woods.

Jullanar’s fingers were too cold to bend properly by the time they reached the far side of the forest. She secured a hot drink thankfully at the next inn and retreated inside the carriage.

No further adventures disturbed her fitful sleep. She made herself disembark to refresh herself and stretch her legs at the great postal office in Yrchester. There was a wariness in the town, even among the workers sorting the mail, which discouraged casual conversation. It unsettled her enough to keep the window open as they left, watching the peopled countryside give way to empty fields.

It was a dispiriting journey. The solid Astandalan highway climbed up from arable land to sheep country, and then to open heath under striped grey skies that threatened rain. All the way they kept passing stone walls that were coming apart, wooden sheds cracked with rot, and fields overgrown with spiny weeds. The bare wild lands came as a relief, if only because the collapse was less evident there.

The parcel post took a breather at Grightmere’s Cross, waiting to meet the mail coming down from Rondé before the final leg of its journey along the coast to Orio City. Jullanar was feeling her age, and also her lack of recent travel, and she staggered into the inn and put down the coin for a room with a tub.

The water had to be heated in batches over the fire, which made the experience less luxurious than it would have been in Astandalan days when it could be made to run hot from the tap. It was worth it; Jullanar felt so much better that she ventured down to the taproom for dinner.

An unfamiliar inn, a fire in the hearth, a journey ahead of her. It was almost possible, sitting at her corner table and chewing on the passable autumn stew, to believe that nothing much had changed at all. That her friends were upstairs waiting for Fitzroy to finish his bath, or had wandered off to explore the town and would be swinging back in any moment with a new joke or a warning or an unexpected quest.

It would have been admittedly unusual for a coach inn on an Astandalan highway to host only two parties of travellers, and one of them the regular mail run. The other was a small group, too: a young woman in a plain travelling dress not unlike Jullanar’s; a lean-faced man with duelling scars who gave her a careful once-over as she came in; and a dark and wiry older man who was too absorbed in whatever he was writing to look up.

She entertained herself while she ate considering their possible pasts and futures. The young woman was the most dangerous, obviously, as the easiest to overlook. The duellist’s eyes were sharper than his casual manner suggested, and so she had to assume he was concealing further skills. The man who was writing was the most interesting: his clothing was as neat and non-descript as that of his companions, but his back was straight and his frown stern and his complexion was dark enough to suggest pure Shaian aristocrat.

She finished her stew and sipped her remaining ale thoughtfully, looking at the fire so that she could pretend not to notice the glances that the other party occasionally sent her way. They wanted to talk more, she thought, but her presence was discouraging them.

The older man’s hair looked like a regulation cut. Were these more unpaid soldiers, perhaps travelling as mercenaries?

The outer door swung open. For a moment her heart leaped, as though she was expecting—but no, it was just two fresh-faced young men, pink with cold. They marched straight up to the other table without noticing her, and saluted. “General!”

The old man—the general—gave them a scorching look. The duellist and the young woman both pointedly looked away from her. The two soldiers, for soldiers they must be, lowered their voices at once but kept talking.

Jullanar kept sipping her drink and waited for them to finish. The general nodded, handed over a sheaf of papers, and accepted another salute. The young men marched out again.

She finished her drink. The young woman and the duellist resumed their card game. The general folded his hands behind his head and shut his eyes, to all appearances falling asleep.

“Good evening,” he said, before she was five paces from him. The other two looked up, their expressions unfriendly.

“Good evening,” she replied, and made a small courtesy. “I—sir, I couldn’t help overhearing how they addressed you. I wondered if I might beg a moment of your time?”

He grunted. “Pull up a chair.”

She did so, making sure to give the other two an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, sir, but am I right in thinking that you are an officer in the Astandalan army?”

“Hmp. What of it?”

That wasn’t a denial. She gave him her best nervous smile. “I was wondering if you knew how a petition might reach the Lady, sir.”

The nerves were, alas, not entirely feigned. She was, after all, still a wanted woman. She was fairly sure she could escape from the three of them if need be, but that would leave her on the run across the moors on foot, in this frost.

The general sat up again and studied her with cool interest. He was a short man, lightly built and heavily scarred. A fighting officer then, however good his family. She tried not to look at his hands, which were gnarled as though they had recovered from a terrible injury.

“Nên Corovel is closed to petitioners, ma’am.”

That was what she had read in the paper. “Then where should I go?” She asked. “A friend of mine—an officer’s widow—is trying to clarify what happened when her husband died. I said I would try to find out where to ask, since I was travelling to Orio City. She has written, but fears that the letters may have been…mislaid.”

“They do take letters, or so I hear.” The general shrugged. “I’d suggest she tries again. You could send one from Orio City on her behalf?”

“The post has been shocking lately,” the duellist put in, shaking his head.

They were wary, all three of them. Jullanar knew better than to push her luck. “Thank you, I will.”

Their eyes stayed on her as she left the taproom. She slipped up to bed with a peculiar sense of lightness. How strange, how strange, to spend the better part of twenty years in demure camouflage as Mrs Thistlethwaite, and then to find—she made sure that the hilt of the sword was in easy reach from her bed, and sank into better sleep than she’d had in years.

Orio City was shockingly squalid. The streets were overcast with a fog heavier than anything she remembered. It seemed to cling to the buildings, nuzzling down round them like a great creature settling thick fur down over the rooftops.

Jullanar had had plenty of time on the mail coach to decide what to do. She kept to the main thoroughfares, sweeping her skirt out of the muck as best she could and trying not to breathe too deeply in the foul air. Every so often she saw beacons in the mist, great flames rising from squat shapes like barrels, but somehow no matter where they started out they never grew any closer as she walked towards them. It reminded her of the worst of the difficult times in Ragnor Bella, the sickening uncertainty of all the spaces around her.

She hadn’t wanted to stay in the coach inn, but by the time she found a decent enough alternative she was already regretting it. The rooms cost more than she expected, and were smaller and dirtier too.

She changed quickly and wrote the short letter that she had felt too travel sick to write on the coach. It set out Lady Olive’s predicament in as few words as possible; she did her best to imply that Lady Olive was ignorant of its being written, for what protection that might offer.

It was pure paranoia that set her to leaving the building the less orthodox way, together with the enticing thickness of the fog. Her arms and shoulders protested at the exercise long before she reached the ground. She had to stop in the alley beside the inn and lean against the wall with her hands on her knees until her head stopped swimming. Damian would scowl one of his beautiful scowls, she thought, and set her a circuit to complete every evening.

She tied the climbing spikes back into her bundle and slung it tightly across her back, grateful that at least she had left her heavy woollen dress in her room. The soft breeches made it far easier to move, and the light skirt slung over them could be loosened as needed to hang down and conceal her indiscretion. It worked well enough when she went in to post the letter; nobody gave her a second glance, despite the bright yellow paper she had stuck across the envelope.

She hovered in the small writing room long enough to note which sack her letter dropped into, then made her way painfully and with many quiet grunts of exertion back up onto the rooftops of the warehouses behind the post office.

The fog sidled up around her as she watched the back door, leaving her cold and clammy as the heat of her exertion seeped away. Sacks came and went again, mostly on small handcarts that bumped noisily through the detritus in the street. None of the people pulling them moved very fast, giving her plenty of time to make out the stamps on each bag.

It seemed to take an interminably long time before the sack that came out was the one she was waiting for. The person pulling its cart was shorter and wider than most, shrouded in a heavy cloak like the others, and, thankfully, wearing a bright orange cap.

Jullanar hauled herself along the rooftops to follow them. Along the back street. Along another. A stop at the corner to offload a handful of letters into a box. That gave her a bad moment, as she scrambled over the lip of the next building just in time to look down, but she was fairly sure that none of them were the yellow one she was watching for.

She had to slide uncomfortably down the side of the last warehouse and cross the street so that she could follow on foot. The mail cart trundled down the other side; when it stopped again she found she had no energy left to make another attempt at the rooftop, not with her bundle heavy on her back and her lungs tight with unfamiliar effort.

Her yellow letter didn’t appear at the next corner either, nor at the stop three streets after that. Then the cart turned down an alley and Jullanar had to cross back towards it, doing her best to dawdle to conceal her intent without moving too slowly and losing her quarry.

The alleyway zig-zagged between irregularly shaped buildings. The first section was empty so she ran, her feet splashing unpleasantly in the stinking mud. She made herself slow and look carefully round the corner before pelting any further along, and was immediately glad that she had.

The alleyway opened out here into a small square place surrounded by high brick walls. The postal worker was standing almost in the middle of it, leafing through a bundle of letters. Beyond them—she drew in a breath. A tall man, with duelling scars on his cheeks, and a short wiry one with close-cropped hair.

Jullanar pulled back, trying not to whip her head fast enough to catch their eyes, though her heart was hammering. She tugged her bundle round far enough to get her hand to the hilt of her sword, half turning to work it loose.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the edge of a blade sweeping the other way.

There was a whistling in her ears as her own weapon hissed out into her hand. She ducked, feeling as though she was moving in slow motion, then hammered the pommel back up against the torso of the person who had crept up behind her. They fell back and, in similar dreamlike slowness, she turned the blade to slash at the face of the second person who had been pushing past her.

They cursed, dodged, and shoved. She stumbled into her first attacker. The second ignored her and lunged around the corner.

Everything seemed to speed up again. Jullanar whipped her sword down, the needle of starlight slicing bright through the shadows. Her first attacker cursed and dropped their weapon, reaching clumsily for her with their other hand. She stabbed them in the neck, shuffling backwards not quite in time to avoid the spray of blood.

Someone shouted. Jullanar turned and slid round the corner, sword en garde, blinking away a sting of sweat to try to make sense of what she could see.

The postal worker was on the ground, clinging to their cart with both hands. She couldn’t immediately tell if they were injured. The duellist had slid in front of the general, whose back was against the wall. The general had a light between his hands and was muttering something—Astandalan war magic, from the acrid smell of it, but dimmer and less effective than Jullanar had ever seen it.

One attacker lay dead already in front of them. Two others were approaching the duellist cautiously, spread apart to split his attention.

Two could play at that game. Jullanar shouted, giving them the choice between watching the duellist or turning to face her. The attacker furthest from her looked back, his eyes widening. Her sword shivered as she laughed at him.

The distraction gave the duellist the opening he needed. He slid sideways like a snake, his weapon dancing in one of those complex twists that Damian had always enjoyed so much. The general, uncovered, lifted his hands and flung his spell.

The attacker who had looked at her gasped as his weapon clattered out of his hand, then looked entirely astonished as the duellist finished the motion by thumping him firmly on the head. The general’s magic struck the other attacker as he fell, snapping round their arms and legs and pulling them together.

Jullanar had been hit with that spell before, or something very like it, and remembered the way it had clenched like an invisible spring crushing her whole body to stillness so that she crashed to the ground. This version, feebler as it was, still had the power to knock the man in front of her off balance. It was enough; she reached his side in time to take advantage, and smashed him unscientifically in the face with her pommel before he had a chance to recover. He slumped to the ground.

The general pushed off from the wall, his hand pressed to his side, and she realised he was injured. He was staring at her.

Jullanar looked from him to the duellist, who was checking the unconscious bodies on the floor, to the unfortunate mail worker in the orange hat.

The postal worker met her gaze with a look of pure horror. Then their eyes rolled up, and they fainted dead away.

She started to laugh. She couldn’t help it. Her face felt red and hot, her sword hilt was sweaty in her hand, and there was blood on her blade. She gripped it tightly, caught the incredulous look from the general, and laughed harder, gulping in great whoops of air, her eyes streaming.

On some level she knew this was a form of panic, but that knowledge didn’t help. She was fairly sure she had killed a man. What would the Embroidery Circle say?

(They were allies in all things, and their chief shared hobby involved a lot of stabbing. They would understand.)

She stumbled across to the nearest wall and leaned against it, trying to control her breathing. The duellist came back round the corner, dragging the body.

The wild humour drained out of her, leaving her breathing hard and shaking with reaction. She fumbled in her shawl for her handkerchief, then wiped her face, and then mechanically started to clean her blade with it. “My apologies.”

“None… needed.” The general was examining the cut in his side. It was bleeding, but not too hard.

As the duellist was occupied checking the dead and unconscious corpses for—she didn’t look too closely, she had never enjoyed this part—Jullanar took it on herself to dig in her pack for her canister of water and offer it to him. “I’ve got a scarf in here if you want to bind it up?”

The general shook his head. “It’ll do. We’d better get out of here.”

“Nothing that identifies them,” the duellist stood up, dusting off his hands. “You know what that means.” He and the general shared a look. “I’ll get our friend here clear, if you want to take the lady with you, sir.”

“The lady?” The general snorted. “You’ve got eyes, same as me. Madam, I believe the price on your head is—”

“Irrelevant, surely, with Astandalas gone.” It wasn’t, of course, not as long as the Lady’s writ ran through Alinor, and soldiers of Astandalas served her still. She could see the general was thinking the same thing. Inspiration struck. “If you arrest me, will you take me to Nên Corovel?”

“At this present moment,” the duellist said, “you are not in the shape to arrest anybody, sir. And deplorable though the lady might be, she just came to our aid, and I do not believe her dishonourable. And the Indrillines will react as soon as their assassins fail to return. Sooner, if they had some way of watching, which we’ve suspected—”

The general waved an acknowledging arm. “You’ve made your point. Give me the letters, then. Madam, if you’ll trust me so far as to take cover together, perhaps we could continue this discussion under more, hmm, salubrious circumstances?”

She knew her old friend had noble connections of some kind; his profile was close enough to the imperial one to be recognisable from all the coins. She had met many other high-born Shaian men and women who reminded her of him slightly one way or another. This general was in another category; the build was all wrong, but It was unfair how much he looked like Fitzroy when he smiled like that.

She sheathed her sword and followed him.

There was a hidden door in one of the brick walls. It melted out of the brickwork at a whispered word, and opened when the general pressed his fingers to it.

The warehouse interior was cavernous, dusty, and evidently disused. The general led her across it into a maze of corridors and back passages. He walked fast for someone who was limping, and gestured her into silence the one time she tried to speak.

Then, abruptly, he pulled her to a halt. “Door to the street,” he breathed. “Nonchalant from here.”

She nodded, bracing herself. He held out an arm and, once she took it, pushed the door open.

After the hush of the passages, even the subdued bustle of a side road in heavy fog hit her like a wall of sound. They strolled out together at a casual pace. She could feel the dampness at the side of his coat, but he had positioned her to hide most of it. “I must look a sight,” she murmured.

“Not too bad,” he assured her, equally quietly.

She had lost all track of where they were, so it came as a surprise when the road came up between the houses and stopped at the edge of the sea. The general led her along a stone promenade which ran by the water’s edge. To their right the big houses of a well-to-do neighbourhood loomed in the fog; to their left everything cut away into a pale depth like the heart of a cloud. She could hear waves licking at the base of the wall, out of sight below them.

Evening was drawing in. Lights began to spring on in some of the houses. The great metal lanterns stood at intervals along the shore, their glass bulbs empty and almost invisible against the darkening sky. The general was moving more slowly, leaning on her for support. “Not… far now.”

Then there were steps, cut down through the stone wall, leading to a sheltered dock below. The general stopped, pressed his hand against a patch of stone that looked to her like any other patch of stone, and opened the door that shimmered into view under his fingers.

He let go of her hand, walked unsteadily into the room, and cast a small faint light to hover above them. “There are lucifers somewhere—”

“Sit down,” she ordered, and strode to the mantelpiece. The small box of lucifers came readily to hand. There were candles. She lit two, her hand shaking only slightly, and then knelt down at the hearth to lay a fire.

The mage light winked out behind her. “Thank you. Ma’am, may I have a name?”

Not ‘what is your name?’ Hmm. “Jullanar,” she said, hauling herself to her feet and looking around the little room with a speculative eye.

It was a safe room. A tiny kitchen area, a table and several chairs, a couple of long couches that could double as beds. Cupboards. A hook above the fire, and a kettle in the sink.

“A common name,” the general said, thoughtfully. “Although there are many who find it…magnificent.”

“Thank you.” She didn’t like the way his voice was halting. They both needed to warm up. She filled the kettle and hung it on the hook, then pulled out her bag and hunted for that scarf.

When she found it and turned to him he was studying her, his face held a little to one side, his smile quizzical. “My name,” he said, “is General Prince Benneret Halioren. But I go by Ben.”

The name had a ring that she felt she should recognise, but she was too shaken to explore that. “Ben, then. May I?”

He shifted obediently to let her take a closer look at his side. “There are clothes in one of the cupboards. By the hearth. Ouch!”

“It’s not that bad,” she said, without apology, “But it needs cleaning, or it’ll fester.”

They both needed cleaning. With a familiarity that had once been second nature to her, Jullanar stripped out of her stinking clothes and donned the loose comfortable dress that she found in the cupboard. She found a selection of tisanes, unlabelled, and made them both a hot dark drink that tasted faintly of liquorice. She used some of the water to dab herself as clean as possible and more to clean Ben’s wound, pressing the long loose flap of skin tightly against his side and binding it there.

By the time everything was settled to her satisfaction the little room was warm and fuggy. She placed her elbows firmly on the table, lifted her mug in both hands, and looked at him over the top of it. “I appreciate the courtesy about my name.”

That grin made his face look surprisingly boyish. “I appreciated your intervention against the assassins.”

Touché. She lifted her mug in a salute, which he returned.

“I have to admit to some curiosity, however, as to your business with the Lady.”

Jullanar nodded, her mind flashing back to the letters she had been—

She remembered, all of a sudden, where she had heard that name before. “Wait. Are you the General Benneret Halioren who commanded the Sixth Division of the Seventh Army?”

He inclined his head. “Your servant, Jullanar.”

She gripped her mug with both hands. “Then—Ben, you’re the man I was looking for. I’ve come on behalf of Lady Olive, who was married to a Major—”

“Jack Greenwing!” He leaned forward, looking intent. “Is she the friend…? I am sorry the letter was so short; I couldn’t write it myself, my hands were badly—” he lifted one as if in illustration, and Jullanar saw the damage she had noted before.

“You wrote that letter,” she said, numbly. “The second letter.”

“Second—?”

She was gripping her mug so hard that the knuckles were standing out white on each side. “Lady Olive received a letter over three years ago now, informing her of her husband’s death.” She lifted her hand to stop him from speaking again. “Informing her that he was shot in the back, fleeing from the summons to a court martial, having betrayed the fortress at Loe.”

“What?!”

“Two months later,” she said tightly, “A second letter arrived. Under your name, assuring her that he had died heroically on a scouting mission across the border.”

Ben had gone ashen, the way Fitzroy used to when he was truly shaken. “That was my letter, yes. Jack Greenwing saved my life; I had been captured by the Stone Speakers, tortured…” His gnarled hands pressed against the table. “I didn’t fully recover until this summer, and I thought of travelling to pay my respects to Lady Olive in person, but then I was summoned by the Lady to act as her advisor… I had no idea. Who signed the other letter?”

She searched his face for a moment, then sighed. “A Lady Norcell of Westmoor.”

“But that’s impossible,” he said, grimly. “Lady Norcell was captured with me, and killed by the Stone Speakers. That letter came from a dead woman.”

If the mist was disconcerting when she was walking along the sea wall, that was nothing to the queasy discomfort of riding through it in a boat small enough to lurch with the uncertain swell.

Salt spray lashed over the prow, stinging her cheeks. Jullanar wrapped her borrowed cloak more tightly round her shoulder. It was some kind of oilskin, lined with fur, and it was almost heavy enough to keep her warm.

Ben was a huddled figure beside her, his side the closest thing she had to a source of heat. The wind thrummed against the waves, skimming pale foam off the top and sending it flying.

He had promised her safe passage, without pressure to share more than her given name. She judged his grief and anger on the Greenwings’ behalf to be genuine—and if he was planning to denounce her, well, she had confronted greater risks for less personal causes.

“Three notches starboard,” the watcher hunched at the prow shouted.

“Three notches starboard!” The helm acknowledged, bringing the tiller around. The notches were carved into a bow of wood fastened beneath it, which shifted of its own accord to counter the magic with which the Lady had hidden the Rainbow-Girt Isle.

Only the Lady’s will and blessing permitted that resonance to work; the slightest antipathy to her magic and the helm would shift quietly out of true, sending a boat irretrievably off course. If they were lucky, those who tried to mimic the working would be spun out into the open ocean. The unlucky would crash back against the rocks.

Jullanar was almost too cold and drained to care. She watched wordlessly as the small crew handled their boat. It was easier than looking out into blankness, and remembering the bleak emptiness that ate the world after the Fall.

The sail had been reduced and reduced as the wind rose, until it was more reminiscent of a postage stamp. Her bundle was tucked in under her legs; jolting her with every new lift of the boat.

Nên Corovel thrust all at once out of the night and the mist, a huge bulk of rock in what seemed like a maelstrom of hissing water. Their boat lifted and dropped with a lurch that shook them all, lifted and dropped again, and then—with many shouted imprecations—the sail was dragged down, and the mast was unshipped so quickly it was hard to follow—and they were shooting in on the ebb of a wave, in through a small tunnel carved in the side of the rock.

One final rush, and the boom of the water hitting the cliffs, and a surge running past behind them, pushing the boat forward to slide out into a wide and uncannily silent harbour hidden in a cave at the base of the rock.

The keel scrunched on sand that was grey in the odd bluish light. Mage lights, Jullanar realised, kept dim to avoid any glimmer running back through the long tunnel as a hint for navigators. After so long being pounded by the sea, the silence had an audible texture all of its own.

They stopped to catch their breath at the top of a long stone stair that seemed to be carved from the living rock. Jullanar was glad to have left the oilskin coats in the boat; her bag was heavy enough. She shifted it across her back.

Ben leaned against the rock, looking as weary as she felt. “Your weapons,” he said, and held out his hand.

“Of course.” The daggers were easy to slide out, from her boot, from her belt, from her shawl. She drew the sword from her bundle more slowly. Even sheathed, it had something of that echo of starlight about it. She held it by the top of the scabbard for a heartbeat, steeling herself to let go.

He took it gently, with all the reverence she could have wished. “Your faith honours me, ma’am,” he said, with grave appreciation. “I will carry it on my person and return it to you when you leave this Isle.”

She nodded, too exhausted to say anything else. Either he was trustworthy, or…If this were some elaborate scheme, she had far more to fear than merely the loss of her sword. Even a sword forged from starlight in the dark forests of the Moon’s country.

She hadn’t mentioned Fitzroy’s bag, which might or might not strike him as a weapon but which she certainly regarded as one. Even if it only gave her a massive jar of olives, well, she could do some damage with crockery.

The magic was functioning on Nên Corovel. The bath was blissful.

The Lady’s palace was a beautiful place, all pillared galleries and pale courtyards open to the sun. There were gardens, blooming with rippling waves of wildflowers. There were towers as delicate as confectionery that gleamed as white in the sun as if they were truly made of sugar.

Jullanar slept long and deeply and woke to find that all her soiled clothes were clean and dry and neatly hanging on a rail. Magic again, the kind of magic that the richest and most powerful Astandalans always had in their households. Fitzroy had tried to imitate it from time to time, with mixed and often hilarious results.

Kip had reported that the Palace of Stars was similarly full of magical assistance, but that most of the highest nobles actually preferred to use human attendants as a sign of their wealth.

It hurt to think those names, but that pain was better than the stifled agony of not being able to think them. She dressed herself in her plain grey wool, tucked her best patterned shawl around her shoulders, and sank down in the padded silk chair to have a little cry.

The Lady was refusing all petitioners. Ben had debriefed her in front of several other advisors, each of whom had thanked her for the news she brought with increasingly troubled expressions. She couldn’t blame them; there were no doubt many possible explanations for the false letter from a dead officer, but none that came to mind were innocent.

“There’s some plot or treachery afoot.” Ben had been very much the Prince General, standing stiffly in his formal robes at the head of the room. “That letter was sent by someone who knew our command structure—and knew that it would arrive first, or was well placed to ensure that it did. The bandits in Arguty Forest…”

Jullanar had taken her leave and left them to discuss it, knowing that they wouldn’t speak openly in her presence. For Lady Olive it would be enough to have her husband’s vindication, to restore Jemis’s inheritance. She had learned what she needed to learn, and all that remained was to find out what Ben—and the Lady—intended to do about it.

As if in answer to the thought, there came a knock at the door. “Jullanar? Will you walk with me?”

“Of course.”

He led her down through the guest wing of the palace and out across the wide courtyard at its centre. There was a tree growing there, seemingly out of the marble slabs, its trunk wide and twisted with age, its branches broad and sagging.

“Excuse me—General Ben, excuse me?”

The accent was purest, roundest Shaian aristocrat. The noble who strode to intercept them suited it so perfectly that Jullanar wanted to applaud; he looked like the portrait of a great Astandalan from a children’s book. He dismissed her in one scornful glance. “General Ben, I understand Lady Jessamine is still refusing to—”

Ben looked pained. “One moment,” he told her, and stepped aside with the man.

Jullanar let her feet carry her a few paces across to examine the inexplicable tree, and incidentally within earshot of their conversation. “I can assure you,” the man snapped, “the Sun-on-Earth has empowered me to—well, if the Lady won’t negotiate for her world, perhaps there is someone I can speak with…?”

“Lady Jessamine judges Alinor unready for further negotiations with Zunidh,” Ben said firmly, the moment he got a word in edgewise. “I’m sure my fellow councillors have said the same—”

“But there is so much we could learn from one another!”

“I don’t disagree, your lordship, but I am hardly best placed to—”

“Solaara has the fruits of several hundred years of study and understanding to share, Prince General, and it is a tragedy that I am still making my case in the corridors having been here so many months—”

“Lord Odal, I can only apologise, but I was speaking with the lady.” Ben didn’t raise his voice, but he delivered this with such shattering poise that Lord Odal bowed and withdrew.

Ben took her arm. “This way,” he said, and set off faster than was strictly necessary.

They passed through another archway and reached one of the wide spiralling gardens at the edge of the palace. From here the shimmering walls fell away below them into a dizzying confusion of shifting spray. If you looked out, rather than down, it was like standing on a mountaintop. The fog spread like a bank of low cloud below them in all directions, brilliant to the point of blinding in the sun.

“Who was that?” she asked, as soon as she was sure they were entirely out of earshot.

“The Zuni ambassador.” Ben snorted. “Can understand why they wanted him here instead of there.”

“From Zunidh? But…he was talking about the Sun-on-Earth?”

“Ah, yes.” Ben sobered. “This isn’t a secret, but it’s not widely known.” He stopped, one hand on the wide white balustrade, staring out across the billows of shining cloud. “The Lady Jessamine’s been put in a difficult position. She’s…limited, currently, in the ways she can act in the world.” He sighed. “We’re at war, Jullanar. Not openly, thank all the gods, but…” He turned back to her. “Every enemy the Lady has come crawling out of the woodwork when Astandalas crashed down. And many of our friends went silent, or—we have reason to doubt them.”

Jullanar leaned on the balustrade and looked up at the shimmering towers of the palace, so flooded with sunlight. The other name for this place was, she remembered, the Summer Isle. “The Indrillines?”

“Among others. There are pirates in the Northern Ocean, strange conspiracies moving in several places—your news is unsettling, too—and it’s not entirely clear whether Chare, or Rondé, or even Orio City are content to accept the Lady’s rule in the absence of her Emperor. Not to mention somewhere like Ghilousette, which seems to be taking against magic entirely.”

Jullanar felt unexpectedly parochial. The political consequences of the Fall had hardly even occurred to her. “But Lord Odal mentioned the Lord Emperor?”

“Ah. Yes.” Ben grimaced. “It turns out that the Palace of Stars was shaken loose from Astandalas in the Fall. It landed on Zunidh somehow—courtiers and priest-wizards and Lord Emperor and all.”

“It—it wasn’t destroyed?”

“Apparently not.” Ben spread his hands. “The Emperor lives, which is surely a blessing…but Lady Jessamine is treading carefully. Doesn’t want to send to him for help if she can avoid it. Foolishness.”

Jullanar hardly heard him. Her eyes were swimming. “My—someone very dear to me was in the Palace of Stars,” she said, in a dry croaking voice she hardly recognised as her own. There was a pillar nearby. She reached for it, shut her eyes, and leaned her forehead to the cool smooth surface of the stone.

When she came back to herself, Ben was talking. “...should know. I’ll ask him to speak with you; he’s always accusing us of keeping him from the everyday life of Alinor, so he should be willing. The gates aren’t fully stabilised yet, of course, but he’ll know where that’s up to.”

She swayed back upright, distantly aware of the dampness on her cheeks. Ben patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “Bad business, all of it,” he said, which was so close to what her father might have said that she smiled a wobbly smile, almost in spite of herself.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “There was something you wanted to tell me, I think? Before we met Lord Odal?”

He coughed. “Yes. Well, the Lady can’t show her hand, not beyond Nên Corovel. Not for some time yet. But it’d be the most natural thing in the world for me to seek a leave of absence and look into what happened to Major Greenwing’s widow. If you’ll take me back to Ragnor Bella, I wager I’ll be able to clarify a few things for the good people there.”

Jullanar was glad she had found her composure. “Oh, yes please! Lady Olive will be entirely relieved. She’s been so worried for Jemis—”

“Jack’s lad?” Ben took her arm again. “I’ve heard so many stories about him.”

She found herself laughing, and telling him some more. By the time they had strolled slowly around the perimeter of the palace and reached the passage leading to Jullanar’s rooms again, her smile was almost natural.

Ben was as good as his word. Lord Odal sent a messenger to fetch her, at her earliest convenience, before the hour was out. This was a young woman from his entourage wearing a tunic emblazoned with the tiger of Zunidh, full of a cheeful curiosity. “You’ve come from South Fiellan? That’s a…barony?”

“A region in the duchy of Fiellan,” Jullanar told her. “Near the Woods Noirell, which you might have heard of?”

The woman actually clapped her hands. “Where the famous honey came from! Yes, yes, I hope we get to visit! When Lady Jessamine is ready to open her borders more, that is.” She added conscientiously. “Imagine going to the Woods Noirell!”

Jullanar did her best to make some sort of coherent reply, but she was having to concentrate to hear anything at all over the rat-tat-tat of her own pulse. The ambassadorial party from Zunidh had been given their own tower, and had freely decorated it to reflect their home world. Jullanar took in nothing but a blurred impression of bright colours. She forced herself to make attentive noises, and to greet Lord Odal as courteously as she could.

Lord Odal was evidently making some effort on his own part. He bowed in the courtly style. Jullanar had learned it, when the Red Company decided to pay a visit to the Palace of Stars—Fitzroy had taught them all, laughing and talking more nonsense than ever. She was too flustered to return it now, but she managed an awkward Alinorel courtesy and sat with something approaching grace in the chair he waved her into.

“Thank you, my lord,” she said, somewhat breathlessly, and then had no idea at all where to begin. Her mind seemed to be one whole shaking question mark, without any questions to slide in behind it.

“The Prince General advised me earnestly to speak with you, Saya…?”

“Thistlethwaite,” she said, and then bit her tongue. It was too late to call the name back, but the shock of letting it slip brought her back into herself. She cleared her throat. “He told me that you had come from the Palace of Stars?”

He smiled smugly, giving her a little half-bow in his seat. “I have that honour, madam.”

“I heard it was destroyed on Ysthar?”

He shook his head. “Not at all! No, as I understand it, the Palace did used to stand in Astandalas the Golden, but it came home to Zunidh in the Fall.”

She definitely wasn’t wrong about the smugness, but… “As you understand it?”

Lord Odal made a grandly dismissive gesture. “That was all before my time. Though I understand it’s only been a few years here. Got one of my secretaries working on a report. And you’re from South Fiellan, I think, in Rondé? How long has it been for you?”

“Nearly three years,” she said, numbly. “How—how long has it been on Zunidh?”

He laughed as though this was a splendid joke. “Depends where you’re standing, my dear. The Palace of Stars reckons on, hmmm, seven centuries. Or maybe seven and a half, depending on which wizard you catch in the morning.”

“Seven and a half centuries?” She whispered, feeling the world slip loose around her again.

“If you count the hundred years of the Glorious One’s sleep,” he told her, with the air of one making a small but punctilious correction.

“A hundred years?” The horror must have been plain in her words.

“A strange time they say. Hmm, my dear Saya Thistlethwaite…is that a common name in these parts?”

“Oh, yes, very,” she said, since that might be the best chance she got to contain the damage.

“Ah, well, yes, my dear Saya Thistlethwaite, Lady Jessamine tells me that the Fall of Astandalas has broken the magic of Alinor.”

Jullanar nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

He was still smiling, as though explaining something to a small child. “On Zunidh, the Fall broke time.”

She hardly understood his explanation after that. They had been lucky indeed, that the Palace of Stars brought the Sun-on-Earth to Zunidh. The Lord of Ten Thousand Titles had graciously taken on the mantle of Lord of Zunidh too, and had worked tirelessly to unite the peoples of that world and restore the damage. He seemed to have managed to do this for far longer than any human being should be able to work at anything, although she supposed that might have been his successors.

“But—what happened to the rest of the Palace? To the people who lived there?”

Lord Odal looked surprised at the interruption, but he handled it with the same superficial pomposity. “Ahem, well, yes. It was Silverheart, which I believe you still celebrate here? A winter festival. So there weren’t many people in the Palace. Some of ‘em were killed when the Collian Wing collapsed, they say, and others went missing afterwards…” he shook his head. “It was a dangerous time, with the Lord Emperor asleep. One or two are still around.”

“After seven and a half centuries?”

He looked pained. “The Ouranatha tell us not to think about time. Another drink, Saya Thistlethwaite? Tell me, are the Thistlethwaites associated with any noble family, to your knowledge?”

“No thank you. No,” she said, grateful that he was at least reverting to the snobbery that Kip used to say was endemic in the Palace of Stars, instead of enquiring after her first name. Perhaps she would get out of this without him making that connection at all. “We’re all as common as muck, I’m afraid,” she added brightly.

His smile went a little strained, no doubt as he tried to figure out an appropriately ambassadorial response to that. “Tell me,” she said, with a malicious echo of his tone, “where is the gate to Zunidh now?”

“Yrchester,” he said promptly, and far less grandiosely. “Both my mages are there, since the Lady Jessamine was against sending any of hers. They tell me it’s a natural gate, swinging in and out on some sort of rhythm. We should of course have a permanent outpost there, but until relations are normalised between the worlds.” He lifted a hand as if to appeal to the gods. Or possibly to the Emperor; plenty of these old-school nobles took their overlord for a god.

Jullanar had been too close to Emperor Eritanyr to put any credence in that religion. A gate to Zunidh, however…

“General Ben is escorting me back to Ragnor Bella,” she told him, “We’ll be passing through Yrchester. If you have any messages…? I’m a private citizen,” she added encouragingly, “so I’m free to do you a favour.”

He brightened. “Well, in that case…how very kind of you.”

She had to take a third drink, two small biscuits, and another round of babble about the splendours of modern Zunidh before she got out of the room, but it was worth it.

One or two. One or two were still alive. It happened on Silverheart—of course it happened on Silverheart—and Kip had been going to that party, he had written—but if there was a chance, any chance at all—

The crew of the small boat looked rather impressed when Ben returned her weapons, one by one.

A Prince General was permitted to commandeer the courier horses used by the mail service. Jullanar had forgotten how uncomfortable it was to ride post to post; in recent years her time on horseback had been infrequent and generally side-saddle. She gritted her teeth and thought about all the ways she had forgotten what adventuring could be like, which was at least better than thinking about the Palace of Stars.

Letters sent by the express service would be passed on to fresh riders several times over the distance they covered in the first twelve hours. Jullanar envied them. She more or less fell off her fifth horse in the stableyard in Yrchester and dragged herself up to a bedroom, and then clawed her way out of bed midmorning the following day to find that Ben had gone to see if he could find the local garrison.

The innkeeper, thankfully, was able to provide a mug of strong coffee and a sinfully sugary pastry. Jullanar hobbled her way back up to her room, feeling almost human again, and wrote Ben a quick note of her own. Then she wrapped everything she owned up into her bundle, slung it onto her back, and carried Lord Odal’s packet out to find his mages.

It was a chilly grey day, the sort that seemed expressly made so that the flame of the autumn leaves could blaze more brightly against the drab background. It took her several missed turnings to find the right street, but at least the streets here were only somewhat smelly and any mists rising from the river had long since dissipated.

There was nothing dramatic to mark the gate to Zunidh, just a shabby shed and a bare patch of ground that looked entirely unremarkable. Jullanar knocked briskly, and the door swung open to reveal a young man who looked even more bleary than she felt. “Wass ‘at?”

“Are you the Zuni wizards?” She demanded.

“We’re not s’posed t’ say,” a second young man had shambled up behind the first. They were both wearing the tunic and breeches arrangement that she had seen on other members of the Zuni ambassador’s party, and both had loose grey robes that might, if she squinted, remind her of the glittering majesty of the Emperor’s priest-wizards in Astandalas. Neither seemed to be entirely sober.

She held out the packet. “From Lord Odal.”

“Dispatches!” They both straightened up, as though suddenly under observation.

Jullanar swallowed the temptation to smile. “Where should I put them?”

That won her an invitation inside. The shed was less rickety than it appeared; the smell was, unfortunately, worse than she had expected. The wizards, once they had both seen that the seal was genuinely Lord Odal’s, introduced themselves as Wa and Mollaeon.

They both spoke with the same cut-glass accent as Lord Odal, but neither looked Shaian in the slightest. Jullanar’s curiosity was piqued.

“Oh, we’re both from the Palace,” Wa pulled his hair back as he spoke, which seemed to be a nervous habit. From his sideways glances, she thought he might have sobered up faster than his fellow, and might be more aware of the squalor of his surroundings.

“‘S hard to say how long I’ve been there,” Mollaeon agreed. “Th’accent goes first of course.”

“Do you want to step outside, ma’am?” Wa opened the back door.

She followed him gratefully. “Is this where the gate opens?”

“Up against that wall.” Mollaeon nodded. “It last opened—” he yawned, “nearly six months ago. Sorry. Seems to be on a cycle, dunno how long.”

Jullanar shifted her bag carefully round onto her back. The wizards had led her outside but seemed unsure what to do next. Both were looking at her.

“What happens when the gate opens?”

Wa shrugged. “Nothing much, as far as we know. Huma was here last time, she had long enough to get through it before—” another yawn. “Before it closed again. But then she came back the other way and landed in a bog, somewhere over thataway.” He waved.

“So, when this gate opens,” she said, “it looks something like a bar of purple light? And then a haze on the ground, and it expands—”

“Yes, exactly—wait—”

Both wizards, almost as one, turned on the spot. “By the Emperor’s balls,” Mollaeon whispered. “Nearly six months.”

Jullanar gripped the strap of her bag. “I’ve left a note for my companion at the post inn,” she said. “Prince General Benneret Halioren. He’ll likely follow me here.” She stepped towards the light, her heart fluttering wildly within her. “If he does…” She swallowed. “Ask him to tell Lady Olive that I’ve gone looking for some old friends.”

The light flared around her, the magic sliding past with a familiar shivering sensation. She breathed, for a moment, pure brilliance.

Alinor winked out of existence behind her, without further ceremony.

When she opened her eyes, she was standing on Zunidh.