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“Well,” said Krile, “that was certainly an adventure, wasn’t it?”
Alphinaud nodded politely, as he was wont to do, but nobody else gave Krile much attention at all. Alisaie was down at the bow with Erenville, M’ren was polishing his sword, and Wuk Lamat—for whom Krile had begun the conversation in the first place—had her head between her knees.
“I hate ships,” she muttered at a register she clearly thought was under her breath.
“If you’re going to be Dawnservant,” called Erenville, “you’re going to be sailing quite often.”
Wuk Lamat groaned. “I’ll have people for that,” she grumbled. “And better boats. That don’t rock so much.”
“All boats rock. This is actually fairly sedate, in comparison.”
Wuk Lamat moaned, sinking deeper into her seasick crouch.
Krile did have to agree with Erenville: the punuity was pulling their little barge along at a stately pace. If she closed her eyes, she could feel the rocking, but even then it was barely noticeable. Then again, Krile had been sailing back and forth between Sharlayan and the Isle of Val most of her life.
“Ugh, I need to distract myself.” Wuk Lamat sat up, eyes quickly scanning the rest of the passengers. To no one’s surprise, she zeroed in on M’ren, who was still languidly cleaning his greatsword.
“Where’d you get that?” she asked.
M’ren paused, oilcloth halfway up the ebony ridges of his blade. “This? I had it forged by a… well, friend, I guess. It’s a replica of one of the blades of Queen Gunnhildr of Bozja.”
Wuk Lamat looked like she only recognized half of those words. “Is that why it glows? It looked really cool when you killed that bug thing.”
M’ren smiled, while Krile heard a derisive “‘bug thing’” from Erenville’s direction. “Well, it glows because it has been infused with the tormented memories of dead warriors, liberated from their immortal shackles in exchange for powering up my sword. And it does look really cool.”
Alphinaud looked over his shoulder at Krile, who shrugged.
“It’s just a right pain to clean,” M’ren went on, pulling the cloth up around the base of the blade and off with a flourish. “So many crevices. Anyway.” There was a flash of light and the greatsword vanished. In its place he held a basket, out of which he pulled a nastily sharp needle. “Alphinaud, come here. There’s a rip in your jacket.”
“He can just take off his jacket,” Alisaie barked from the helm as Alphinaud got up. Glaring at his sister, Alphinaud did just take his jacket off and hand it to M’ren, though he sat down a little closer than before.
“How’d you do that?” asked Wuk Lamat.
“What, thread a needle with one hand?”
She shook her head, and promptly regretted it. “No,” she replied once she seemed a little less green in the gills, “the thing with your sword. Where it vanished. And then, you know, you had that basket.”
Alphinaud opened his mouth, but M’ren beat him to it. “Soul crystals.”
“Soul crystals?”
Alphinaud opened his mouth a second time, but was beaten to the punch again. “Old spell for passing down skills and abilities from generation to generation of fighters. One perk is getting to store your weapons and equipment in them, if you want.” He held up one, a little blue crystal, and then he was holding a beaten-up book in the hand that had held the needle a moment before.
“Ilanga,” he called, and a beautiful little fairy winked into existence. She waved to Krile and Alphinaud, who had seen her many times before, and bowed to Wuk Lamat, whose eyes were round as saucers. “Enkosi, sithandwa,” M’ren said, and the fairy disappeared. There was another flash, and M’ren held the needle once again.
He picked up Alphinaud’s jacket from where he’d set it on his lap and frowned. “Your mother paid artisans I would consider to be tolerably skilled quite a great deal of money to make this jacket. I don’t understand how you keep putting holes in it.” He flipped it inside out and set to sewing.
“It’s because he moves so slow,” Alisaie called from the prow.
“I have had to reattach your sleeves six times since arriving in Tulliyolal,” M’ren retorted without even looking at her, “I don’t want to hear a peep out of you.”
Alisaie muttered mutinously.
“That’s a peep, Leveilleur.”
“So you sew things?”
“Yes,” said M’ren, popping out the claw on his pinky and scything through his thread. “Sometimes.”
Krile thought that was a particularly vague way of saying he was one of the Weaver’s Guild’s most highly sought-out artisans, and had personally stitched the outfits for Kugane’s highest-rated dance troupe. Alphinaud also clearly thought so, since he immediately informed Wuk Lamat as much.
“This needs patching,” M’ren said, ignoring how Wuk Lamat stared at him with even greater interest. There was another flash and he was holding leatherworker’s tools. “I’ll try to keep the colour consistent on the outside, but there will be some off patches under the lining.”
“That’s fine,” said Alphinaud, who’d wear a burlap sack if M’ren told him to.
“You work with leather too?” asked Wuk Lamat, seeming to forget she was seasick as she leaned forward to watch M’ren’s nimble hands.
“Yes,” said M’ren, slicing through a spare piece of leather he’d fetched from his bag. “Sometimes.”
Krile remembered when she heard that M’ren had put together a showcase for Fen-Yll, the most exclusive leatherworkers in the realm. Y’shtola had seemed unimpressed, but Y’shtola would wear a burlap sack if she thought she could get away with it.
Wuk Lamat grinned eagerly. “What else can you do?”
M’ren shrugged. “Cook.” He’d won the Dellemont D’or. “Fish.” He’d caught the Beast of Brewer’s Beacon. “Smith, occasionally.” He’d started a school for goldsmiths and designed the line of miniature orchestrions that were currently on back order throughout Ul’dah.
“Wow,” said Wuk Lamat. “You must really like working with your hands.”
M’ren paused, an odd look on his face—as though nobody had ever put that idea to him before. “It keeps me busy,” he said eventually, getting back to stitching Alphinaud’s jacket with practiced hands.
Wuk Lamat nodded, obviously more interested than ever. Her enthusiasm was rather uplifting, actually. “Did your parents teach you?”
A frisson went across the boat. Well, went across everyone but Wuk Lamat, who was the only one of them that had not been thoroughly trained out of asking M’ren questions about his private life. Erenville also hadn’t been told as much, but he was a mite more insightful than the Third Promise.
M’ren surprised them all. “No,” he said, “my parents were hunters. I joined the guilds in Eorzea. They taught me.”
Krile let out a sigh of relief. They were still trapped on a tiny boat with each other for the next couple hours; it would be almost intolerable if M’ren turned icy. But Wuk Lamat was still curious.
“‘Were’?” she repeated. “Did you lose them? I’m sorry.”
Krile’s breath caught again, while the twins’ heads whipped towards each other.
M’ren clucked his tongue before answering. “My father is dead, yes. But my mother is fine. Just retired.”
That was more than Krile had ever heard M’ren say about his family, and she’d known him for years. It was clearly the same for Alphinaud and Alisaie, the way their faces tightened. But wasn’t M’razh Nunh still alive? Surely the Resistance would have told them if he’d died?
If M’ren was hoping his breadcrumb answers would spook away Wuk Lamat, he was sorely mistaken. “Oh, yeah? Do you have any siblings?”
“A sister,” he replied, ignorant or uncaring of the way the twins were openly gawking at each other. Krile supposed that, nosy as they were, this was the first time they were hearing of M’ren’s sister. But, again, they had met M’naago. And M’ren had oodles of sisters; every Mi’qote did. “She’s, oh, fifteen now, I think.”
M’naago was twenty-two. Hm.
“Is she as talented as you are?”
M’ren laughed, turning Alphinaud’s sleeve inside out with a quick motion. “She’s pretty good with a bow, but she’s got a ways to go. Not like you three. Very impressive, is Zoraal Ja. And Koana, he’s… interesting.”
Ooh, clever turnaround, if a bit unfair. Wuk Lamat obviously felt inferior to her older brothers, but M’ren’s comment did succeed in distracting her from her line of questioning.
She chewed at her lips for a second before plastering a big smile on her face. “They sure are!” she agreed, slapping her knee. Then a thought came to her, and she looked at M’ren again. “Those friends of yours, with Koana. Are they tough? If we fought, could you win?”
Krile was thinking of a polite way to say “yes, but they’re quite skilled, so don’t get presumptuous” when M’ren snorted.
He snorted.
Every pair of eyes locked onto him as he stretched his sewing arm out to its full length, the dark thread barely visible against the lush jungle behind him. “I could easily beat Urianger,” he declared, oblivious to their stares. “Thancred, with difficulty. The two of them together?” He paused, tapping his fingers along Alphinaud’s sleeve. “I suppose that depends on how good in combat your brother is. Plus, you’ve got Krile and the twins, and you’re no slouch either. If it came down to it, we’d win.”
“You think I’m good in a fight?” asked Wuk Lamat, hiding her glee poorly.
“A good leader is more than the axe she swings,” called Erenville.
“Nobody asked you!” she barked back at him, while M’ren chuckled. She turned back around, a little less preening, and considered him again. “So, your friends. Erenville says you all saved the world. Is that true?”
“Yes,” said M’ren, at the same time as Alphinaud said “We saved all of reality!”, Alisaie said “That’s selling it short”, and Krile said “Several times, in fact.”
Wuk Lamat blinked. Krile expected her next question to be something about saving reality or ‘several times’, but she grinned playfully and asked: “Who’s the toughest?”
“M’ren,” said Krile and the twins, without hesitating. M’ren smiled politely at Wuk Lamat and shrugged.
“Okay then, but besides you. Who’s the next toughest? Can they take you in a fight?”
Again, M’ren didn’t even pause to think. “Estinien. He’d give me a run for my money.”
“Is that the big guy with the spear that was sparring with my father?”
“Sure is.” M’ren picked at some piece of lint only he could see. “I could take him, but probably not without being stabbed a bunch.”
Wuk Lamat nodded sagely. Clearly she agreed, based on what she’d seen of Estinien’s fighting style.
“And who’d be second?” asked Alisaie with forced casualness, belied by the fact that she’d climbed up from the helm specifically to ask him that question.
“Depends.”
Alphinaud peered at him with that same forced casualness. “Depends on what?”
“Depends on the circumstances. If it were just a pure contest of skill, G’raha. If we’re talking us as we are now, Thancred.”
“And then?”
M’ren stopped sewing, his eyebrows furrowing as he realized he’d been caught in a bit of a trap. He put Alphinaud’s jacket down. “Tell you what: why don’t you two put together the ranking of the toughest Scions and I’ll tell you if I agree.”
Alphinaud and Alisaie immediately put their heads together and started arguing. M’ren rolled his eyes. “Two quick caveats: you gotta include Lyse and Ryne, and you can’t put each other last.”
The muttering got louder. M’ren gave a dead little smile. “That’s that settled, then.”
He went back to his sewing, humming a little tune while the twins (and Wuk Lamat, who’d eagerly joined them) debated the various strengths and weaknesses of the Scions. Krile sat there in silence, a traitorous little thought slowly pervading its way through her brain.
She was sitting closest to M’ren on the barge, so when she had been so overcome by self-doubt as to speak, she knew only he’d be able to hear her.
“Where would I fit in this… ranking?” she whispered.
Surprising her, M’ren put down his sewing and gave her a hard look. “Is that a question you really want an answer to, Krile?”
She found she couldn’t meet his eye. “It’s simply that… I know I haven’t been a particularly useful combatant in a very long time, and while I have taken up pictomancy to bridge that gap, you also practice that school of magic, and for longer, and I worry that even with all my effort, I might prove a detriment to—”
“Let’s be very clear,” M’ren said, sharp but quiet. “You are not a detriment. Even if you couldn’t fight worth a damn.” He pointed at Alphinaud and Alisaie, who were now gesticulating wildly at each other. “The only reason those two are still breathing is because you spent the better part of six months working like a madwoman to keep them alive.”
“I… suppose.”
“Suppose nothing,” said M’ren, “it’s the truth. And while, yes, I have been a pictomancer longer, I haven’t put nearly as much time into it as you have. In a pure contest of pictomancy, you are my superior.”
Krile found she couldn’t quite take his words as gospel. “But if you—”
M’ren glared over at her. “If we just threw down right here, I’d knock you on your tiny ass, yes, but that’s not the point. Your worth isn’t measured by your ability to kill things.” He picked Alphinaud’s jacket back up and stabbed down his needle with a particularly violent motion. “Wish mine wasn’t either.”
“Oh, M’ren!” Krile gasped, sidling over to put her hand on his knee. “Nobody thinks of you like that.”
M’ren shot her a flat look. “I am here explicitly because I am good at fighting.”
She couldn’t really argue with that. “Well, um… And your repertoire of high-profile political connections?”
“Ooh, messenger boy can also carve up your enemies like a Starlight ham. I’m a double threat.”
“Now, I am particularly confident that nobody thinks of you like that.”
M’ren held her eye for a second, before looking away and chuckling softly. “Okay, fair enough.”
They sat in companionable silence for a while, but another thought gnawed at Krile until she felt compelled to share it once more. “M’ren, are you alright?”
He looked down at her. There were a thousand conversations that went unsaid as they held each other’s gaze, memories that floated to the forefront. Krile remembered his blow-up at the other Scions after returning from Ultima Thule, how he’d told them he never wanted to see them again. She remembered hearing from Y’shtola about the disastrous undercover mission she’d gone on with M’ren and G’raha, and why the two of them barely looked at each other anymore. She remembered his acid words to Krile herself, about how she’d let Zenos devour the Mothercrystal in a last ditch effort to save them all.
“You did save all of reality,” he’d said, barely looking at her, “but I almost died. I guess you have to decide what that’s worth.”
She remembered how he’d vanished for months, only returning once Y’shtola and G’raha had gotten themselves wrapped up in their mysterious voidgate and desperately needed his support. And all the moments since, where he’d moved through life as though none of it mattered, as though he was being pulled to and fro by the waves.
“I’m fine,” he said, shutting down her questioning with a half-hearted shrug. “It’s actually kind of nice, helping Wuk Lamat restart festivals and fetch llamas and whatever. Beats killing things.”
“I suppose,” said Krile, but she wouldn’t push. She didn’t think she had any right to.
“Well, I’m really happy to have you,” said Wuk Lamat, shuffling herself over to join their conversation without having to get up and risk vomiting. “You know so many things! And there’s been plenty of opportunities for adventure, right?” She nudged M’ren playfully with her elbow. “Just like I promised!”
M’ren cocked his head. As always, Krile was unsure what he would do next. “Wuk Lamat, I’m gonna level with you, I don’t really care about the adventuring. I’ll help you become Dawnservant to the best of my ability, because that’s what you hired me for, but I’m not really champing at the bit to see the highs and lows of Tural. That’s not why I came.”
Wuk Lamat seemed a little put out, but she bounced back with ease. “I get it. You must have had your fill of adventure saving the world six times, or whatever it was Krile said. I’m just glad you’re here at all.” She crossed her arms and nodded. And then, another question. “But why are you here, if the adventuring didn’t call to you?”
“Krile asked me to,” M’ren said simply, going back to his sewing like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“What?” whispered Krile.
“Aw, you two must be such good friends!” said Wuk Lamat, giving Krile a hearty slap on the back that would have sent her flying into the river had M’ren not shot out a hand and grabbed her hood. “Oh, whoops! Sorry, Krile, I forgot how light you are.”
“You’re also graceless as a newborn alpaca,” called Erenville, earning himself another round of Wuk Lamat sputtering and steaming
Krile, heart fluttering from her near swim in the fetid river waters, looked up at M’ren, who had an impenetrable expression. “Is that it?” she asked, letting him manhandle her back to a safe seat. “You really came all this way because I asked you?”
“Yes,” he said, as though that was that. Krile thought about her grandfather, and the letter, and the Isle of Val, and Eureka, and how she’d nearly gotten M’ren killed, and—then M’ren kept talking. “Well, mostly. Also, I think Erenville is fine as hell, and I thought doing this might endear me to him.”
“M’ren!” Krile gasped, trying hard not to giggle, while Wuk Lamat sputtered and steamed some more.
“Erenville?!” she gasped. “But he’s such a wet blanket!”
“Hardly,” Erenville muttered, but Krile could see his face was shining.
“You came all the way to Tural for him?!”
M’ren winked at Krile. “I am a sucker for a pretty face.”
Wuk Lamat looked like they’d just served her curdled milk, while Erenville had turned around to face the yoke, ears twitching.
“We have the list,” Alphinaud announced, stepping over to the three of them. Alisaie stood just behind him, glowering past the line of trees. Clearly, she’d come off worse in their discussion.
“What?” M’ren blinked, having evidently forgotten the task he’d set for them.
“The list,” Alphinaud repeated, holding aloft a piece of scrap paper. “Of the combat prowess of the Scions, in order, including Ryne and Lyse but not Papalymo or Moenbryda.”
“Ah, yes,” said M’ren, taking the list in hand. Without turning his head, or even doing anything more laborious than rotating his wrist, he threw it in the river.
The twins nearly screeched. “We worked hard on that!”
“You didn’t even read it!” Alisaie scolded him.
“Didn’t care for the handwriting.”
She spun on Alphinaud. “That’s your fault, you flowery-handed, pomp-and-circumstance-loving—” Alphinaud immediately started bickering back with her, all the way back over to his pack as they pulled out another piece of paper and started again.
“Do you, ahem, ever plan on reading their work?” Krile asked, making the valiant effort to not laugh out loud.
M’ren scoffed. “What am I, their dad? I’ve got better things to do.”
Krile looked at him askance. “...Like mend their clothing?”
“Shut up, Krile.”