Skiagraphia XVI

[teromain]

Title: Skiagraphia
Status: WIP
Word count: 20,258
Additional notes: As always, this chapter was available last month on my Patreon. This is the second to last chapter; the last chapter will go up first on my Patreon this month.
Thanks as always to my beta, radioredrafts!

[ XVI ]

We sent a pretty insistent message to Alief through Ket-me, basically telling her to get back here as fast as possible because new bad shit was going down on the oenclar side of things. Not in those words, but close enough. We didn’t want to sound desperate, just...urgent. It’d still take time for the message to get to her, and for Alief to get back here even if she dropped everything and showed up immediately. So now we were just...waiting. Doing nothing.

Normally this kind of thing bothered Keyd, but he seemed fine with sitting quietly in our room, not doing much of anything. He was probably in deep thinking mode, which was one of the few times he didn’t feel like he had to be up and doing five things at once. Instead, the whole thing was making me antsy and nervous

“Alan. What do you want to do, now?” Keyd caught my hand, slid his fingers up around my wrist to stop me from pacing back and forth in front of the couch in the main room. I stopped, but the restless nervous energy didn’t.

“I dunno. But if I don’t do something I’m gonna go fucking nuts. I should’ve gone with Rysa and them. It’s just—when Alief comes back, I know you and her are gonna work shit out fine together, I’m really not that useful at this point. Don’t give me that look, you know I wouldn’t be. I can’t do strategy and tactics and military shit like you can.”

“Well,” Keyd said, but couldn’t really argue. That really was Keyd’s job; I’d done my part with this. No matter how much he wanted me there, it wasn’t where I’d be the most useful. “It would have been dangerous, going with them.”

“Just as dangerous as it was for them,” I pointed out. “I just need to do something, you know? And don’t tell me I’ve already done enough.”

That got a smile out of him. He stood up, catching my other hand and tugging me to face him. “If you want to leave really, I won’t ask you to stay here. Where do you want to go?”

“Lahjenlehr,” I said, almost without thinking

“Brisnjja Kbet,” Keyd repeated, almost surprised. And then, “no, I see why. It has sense, to do that.”

“Not gonna tell me it’s too dangerous there?” I wasn’t even joking. It was what I’d expected.

Keyd shook his head. “It’s not...usual, that a war camp is safest. But I think now, that it is. How things are anywhere else, that’s the unsafe places. If Rysa, or Rhetylas or Ansadama, come back before Alief does, then you should go with them. If you still like.”

Because Keyd and I were stuck here until someone did come back. I’d never been able to open a rift, but now Keyd couldn’t either, and he’d’ve needed another person to help anyway. I hadn’t thought about that until just now.

“Did we plan this real well?” I said, and a sudden unexpected squeeze of panic got me right in the chest. What if something went wrong, what if no one could come back? What would we do then? “We kinda cut ourselves off, here.”

Keyd kinda made a face. “Maybe. But leaving, I can’t do that yet. So it’s not mattering, that I amn’t able to.”

“Amn’t? ” I said, laughing. “What kind of word is that?”

“A...wrong one?” Keyd offered. He held up his hands and made a little squishing motion. “The way your words shorten together, I don’t get the rules still.”

“Yeah, I don’t either,” I admitted. He’d tried to combine am and not, as far as I could tell. And I could see how that seemed like it should be a word. Honestly, I couldn’t tell him why it wasn’t. “Don’t worry, it’s adorable.”

Keyd wrinkled his nose. “Not how I’m wanting to sound,” he said.

“Well you only speak English with me, so I’m the only one who can understand how cute it is,” I said. “I gotta talk Isji to everyone, and sound like an idiot most of the time. Not cute at all.”

“Mm. True,” Keyd said, smiling.

“Hey.” I knocked him with my elbow. “Anyway. So, if they come back first, I’ll go with them. If Alief shows up first, I’ll come to the meeting with you. Sound good?”

And they would come back, I just had to keep telling myself not to worry about it. Ansa and Rhet had been going back and forth for days with no problem, so there was no reason anything should go wrong now.

“Good.” Keyd reached out a hand for me, and I took it and let him tug me down to sit next to him on the couch. Outside the wide windows, light sparkled off the ocean and the sky stretched smooth and blue down to meet it. A train had come in at the station and was just sitting there, a long sleek grey line under the arched glass and metal roof. The dark cliffside curved out into view to the left, deep green plants clinging to it bobbing around in the breeze. It was beautiful here, peaceful, and definitely time to leave.

#

Rhet and Ansa did come back first, and not real long after Keyd and I had talked about it. Maybe twenty or thirty minutes went by before they were knocking on the door, escorted by Ket-me who seemed a little overwhelmed. It was just them, no one else.

“Rysa is not with you?” Keyd said, definite worry in his voice.

“She went to Lojt, on her own. She said it would be easier that way,” Rhet said, lifting his hands in a helpless gesture. There was no way they really could have stopped her—Rysa usually did whatever she wanted, and she outranked both of them anyway.

“What did she plan to do there?”

“We assumed speak to other people that the three of you trust,” Ansa said, exchanging a look with her brother. “We spoke with Lahjenlehr ourselves. She seems willing to at least have a discussion about this...whole thing.”

“Good. You’ll take Alan back to Clarylon then,” Keyd said. “I need to remain here and wait for Alief.”

Rhet and Ansa looked at each other again, this time like they thought both of us had really lost it. “You mean, take him now?” Rhet asked.

“I want to meet Lahjenlehr,” I said. “I’m the only person who hasn’t, and it’s not like I’m always real popular here, even with people who support Keyd. I just wanna make sure she’s...cool. If she’s someone we’re trusting in general.”

“Ah,” Rhet said, which wasn’t the most encouraging response. Neither was the look he threw at Ansa.

“We can take you to her, of course,” Ansa said. “I...think she would probably speak to you.”

“If she won’t, then that’s another issue entirely,” Keyd said, suddenly sounding tired. Then he gave himself a little shake and set his shoulders. “If she is an ally, she would speak to anyone who is supportive of myself and those associated with me. In the interest of restoring some kind of order or stability, if nothing else.”

That actually sounded reasonable. Ranks and positions and official shit didn’t matter so much when the whole system was kind of falling apart thanks to the Worthies. Sure Lahjenlehr was a general, but right now who was she supposed to report to? Not Keyd, according to the Worthies, and not any of the guys behind the coup because none of them were really in charge or had any power at all. So nobody was actually authorizing her rank at this point.

“Oh, shit, before we go anywhere...hang on.” I turned around quick and headed back into the bedroom. I didn’t have much stuff with me, but I did have one thing, and I absolutely couldn’t forget it.

I had to get down on my hands and knees to feel around for it—it’d slid further under the bed somehow, or maybe I’d just pushed it further than I remembered—but finally my fingers closed around the metal tip of the leather sheath. I dragged Keyd’s sword out and stood up with it, the attached leather belt dangling down against my arms. Keyd was standing in the doorway, watching me. When he saw what I was holding, his face lit up in a gentle, happy way.

“Oh.” He moved a step forward. “You have it still.”

“Yeah. ‘course,” I said, holding onto it a little harder. Even though I’d almost lost the thing a couple fucking times in Uillad, I’d managed to get it all the way here. At some point I’d forgotten how bulky and unnatural it was to have hanging against my leg all the time, and I’d quit taking it off every other second. When Rysa and I had finally gotten to Pek Pet, to this room, and fallen asleep together, I hadn’t realized I was even still wearing it until I woke up again. Then I’d slid it under the bed.

Keyd was suddenly right in front of me, sliding his hands over mine on the sword and tilting it up. A sparkle of sunlight flashed over the swirls of the metal. This had been his dad’s. It was meaningful, especially here, where there were a lot of other traces of his dad’s influence and presence. Keyd flicked his eyes up to mine, pale blue and near translucent in the sunlight.

“Iaymat irad,” he said quietly, and then leaned down to kiss me. I breathed in and out slowly against his mouth and gripped the sword even tighter, while Keyd’s fingers closed firmly around mine. The kiss went on, not getting any deeper or more involved—just calm, slow and steady. We were still holding the sword between us, kinda awkward with our arms all folded up and crushed together, but it didn’t matter. It was just nice to have this moment. Not exactly a goodbye, just an I’ll see you later. And maybe be safe.

But we had people waiting on us. So we had to stop, go be responsible adults, and try to end a war.

“Okay.” I took a breath, held it until it burned, then let it out slow. Took another. Managed to step back from him, and his hands trailed off the sword. “Okay.”

“Okay… what?” Keyd echoed.

“I dunno, man. Just okay. I’m ready. Whatever happens.”

Keyd sighed, but it was a calm and steady sound, like he was centering himself. “Yes,” was all he said. But then, “be careful.”

“I always try,” I said, fixing the sword belt around my waist. Keyd helped adjust it so it sat the right way, and for once didn’t grope me while he was doing it, the way he did when he helped out with my clothes. I gave him a shorter, harder, and rougher kiss as thanks, and then went back out to Ansa and Rhet. Keyd stayed in the bedroom—I had a feeling he didn’t really want to watch me leave.

“Right, I’m ready,” I told them.

“By the way, Alan,” Ansa said, and when I turned to her she was peering at me. “What is that, on your face?”

“What?” I slapped a hand to my cheek, realized I’d forgot about the beard again. “Oh. It’s a beard.”

“Beard,” Rhet repeated in a heavy accent. Isji didn’t have a word for beard, so he had to say it in English.

“And it’s...hair,” Ansa said, leaning closer and squinting at my jaw. Instead of answering, I took her hand and pressed it flat to the side of my face. She got the strangest look on her face, kind of an confused excitement, like she couldn’t believe she was touching something so weird. “It is hair.” She rubbed her hand around a little. The oen mark in the middle of her palm gave off a slightly stronger hum when it was pressed right on my skin, but nowhere near as strong as it’d used to feel. “Not very soft.”

Rhet took this as an invitation to grope my face too. “Huh,” he said. “I knew there are races with...things like this. Beards. Never really seen one.” And he’d never seen me with more than about a day’s worth of stubble, which wasn’t even that noticeable because of how light it was. Rhet looked at Ansa, then back at me. “Not soft at all. Does Keydestas...like this?”

“Wow, dude,” I said, but this whole thing was so ridiculous that I just had to laugh. “Yeah, he does. He’s the reason I’ve got it right now.”

“Huh,” Rhet said again, now staring at my mouth like he was trying to understand how Keyd could possibly want to interact with it when there was scratchy hair everywhere.

“You’re not gonna try it out on me, man,” I said. “Find your own bearded alien to make out with.”

“Don’t worry,” Ansa said. “Other than me, I think you’re the only person my brother has ever met that he doesn’t want to kiss.”

“Hey,” Rhet said, going a splotchy red and yanking back. He wiped his hand off on his leg, like he was trying to brush away any suggestion he might be into me. I knew he wasn’t, and I wouldn’t’ve minded either way, so the idea was more funny than anything. Seeing Rhet get teased was already pretty funny. “That is not true.”

“It is,” Ansa whispered in my ear, but loud enough for Rhet to hear. Which just made him scowl and refuse to look at either of us. I had no idea if these two acted this weird on purpose to distract me when bad shit was going down, but they’d done it a couple of times by now, and it usually worked.

“Okay, we all done groping the alien now?” I said, and Ansa smirked at me.

“You are a very interesting alien,” she said. “And we don’t get to spend time with many.”

“You guys gotta get out more,” I suggested, and she laughed. Rhet mumbled something that I didn’t catch, but was probably snarky or grouchy. “Okay, seriously, we should get going.”

Rhet and Ansa put their hands together and forged a hole in the universe, or something, and in a couple seconds a wriggly oval hung in the air between them. I’d barely felt it. I was sort of getting used to not feeling this kind of thing all the time, but I still had a habit of bracing myself to feel it. Touching other people, rifts, energy being used—I still expected all the intense sensations that came with it all. I could feel it, but it was all real quiet and mild and if I wasn’t paying attention I could miss it.

“After you,” Ansa said to me then, and after checking to make sure Keyd’s sword was firmly attached to me, I stepped forward into the rift.

A tilting second of dizziness and a punch of freezing air later, and—no, the cold didn’t go away. It stayed, a sharp breeze whipping raw and harsh into my face, biting down into my skin. I couldn’t feel my damn nose almost instantly. Right, it was cold and winter in Clarylon, just when I’d been getting used to nice warm beach weather again.

“Oh, fuck me,” I muttered, yanking down my sleeves to pull them over my already frozen fingers. Rhet and Ansa popped out of the rift after me, and I felt it twist and collapse away behind us. Neither of them looked even slightly cold in their leather armor, even though the clothes they were wearing underneath looked a little heavier than usual. The ability to do just a little temperature spell right now would’ve been really nice.

Ansa held up her hands, flared a pale purple light out of the marks that covered her palms. Since it was pretty damn dark here, that was a useful trick. More subtle than the full-body glow these guys could do, too. She took the lead as we started walking silently together through the trees.

Black bare tree branches twisted together above our heads, the sky flat and dark grey and lightless. My breath steamed out of me like smoke off a fire, and every lungful of air I took felt like sucking in freezing needles. The grey rocky ground was covered in a layer of thin ice shards and frost, crunching under our feet and leaving wet melted footprints behind us. Everything looked slightly purple in the light from Ansa’s hands. After the bright beachy warmth of Pek Pet, this was miserable. I’d gotten used to cold and rain in Lojt, way more than I ever had in California, but frozen near-snow was a whole other level.

Either Rhet or Ansa noticed me shivering, because a hand touched down on my back and a feeling like smoke or light breath rushed over my skin, and then all the air around me felt a lot warmer. I remembered Keyd doing something like that to me forever ago, during those nights we’d sat together outside my apartment and I’d been so thin-skinned I couldn’t even handle sixty degree weather.

“Thanks,” I chattered out. All the bunched-up tightness the cold had locked into my muscles was already thawing, and I could move a little easier. “How much farther?”

“Not much,” Ansa said, keeping her eyes straight ahead on the trees in front of us. “We’re alongside the road.”

The supply road that ran from Lojt. I had no idea how she knew, because the forest looked the damn same in every direction, but she’d been stationed out here before Keyd had pulled her in for bodyguard duty and knew the area. After about thirty more steps, we climbed over the top of a slight hill, and the tops of a bunch of military tents came into view. They were all dark charcoal grey, nearly blending in with the rocky ground and thin black trees. I didn’t see any soldiers around at all.

We made our way down the slightly steeper other side of the hill and down into the camp. Suddenly, from one step to the next the temperature changed—from insanely cold to just unpleasantly cold. I remembered this from the last time I was here, the bubble of protective spells the soldiers had up. It was just way fucking colder here now than it’d been before, nearly a month ago.

“Exactly how much did you tell this general...lady...person?” I asked, before we could get too far into the camp. “An overview, all the details, somewhere in between?”

“Kbet Lahjenlehr,” Rhet said. I hadn’t forgotten her name, exactly, but it was hard to think through all this cold.

Ansa actually gave me an answer. “There are things happening in Lojt that are not reaching this camp, other than what we’ve told general Kbet ourselves. She knows about the government rebellion, but not the rumors about Keydestas being killed. That...didn’t seem necessary to say.”

I agreed. Even if Lahjenlehr didn’t believe it, it’d just add an extra bunch of confusion to this whole situation. It’d be easier to wait until she could see Keyd wasn’t dead before telling her some people might think he was, and how much Eldronrhet really wanted people to believe it. If we even told her at all.

“Do you think she’s gonna be into this?” I said. “I know you trust her, and she’s willing to talk about it, but do you think she’s willing to be part of this? If we need her to.”

“It’s hard to say,” Ansa replied. “I assume this is why you wanted to speak with her.”

“Yeah, it is, but...what would you guess? Like what am I heading into, here? I just want a heads up.”

“She is a general,” Ansa said, which told me nothing. Darban was a general, and Oredaiken was a general. They were nothing alike. I could only hope Lahjenlehr was more of a Darban-type general, but that was damn unlikely. Darban wasn’t exactly the norm around here. “And her strength is in war, not in politics.”

“This is both,” I pointed out, but Ansa only shrugged and didn’t say anything more.

We cut into the camp, heading kind of towards what seemed like maybe the middle of it. But it was hard to tell, with tents lined up in jagged rows between the trees, trying for straight lines but not really succeeding, and the darkness hiding how big the whole camp really was or how far it went in any direction. I had a feeling the actual valley was to our right, but wasn’t positive.

We came to a couple of larger tents all clumped together, and Rhet flipped back the door of one of them and let us all inside. This didn’t look like a tent anybody was living in; more like a supply or storage tent. Bags and crates cluttered up most of it, stacked up nearly to the ceiling and leaving only narrow rows for a single person to scoot down if they were looking for something in here. The temperature in here was kind of neutral, which felt like warmth to me.

“You two wait here,” Ansa said, while I rubbed at my arms and face to feel them again. “I’ll go get general Kbet.”

I didn’t ask why we couldn’t all go, but maybe it was less rude to bring her to us than all go barging in on her somewhere. Since nobody was around and everything was quiet, it had to be either really late or really early. “Okay,” I said instead. “We won’t go anywhere.”

Ansa disappeared from the doorway, and when I turned around Rhet was rummaging through a canvas sack that almost looked like a giant duffle bag. There were some words in Isji written on the side, but my brain was too frozen to make sense of them. Most of the things in there were labeled, actually. After a couple seconds, Rhet straightened up with a dark green bundle.

“This may help you a little,” he said, handing it to me. It unrolled itself in my hands, draping heavily down to the floor. It was a cloak, kind of like the one I’d had heading to Uillad, except thicker and lined with some kind of heavy dark wool. I didn’t see cold-weather stuff a lot with these guys. They had spells and entities to take care of most of that. But I was real glad to see anything that looked warm.

“Thanks.” I swung the cloak around my shoulders and closed it up at my neck with a heavy-duty silver clasp. It fell a little long on me, brushing the floor at my feet. It had a hood, and I pulled it up over my head.

“Hm. Looks strange with that beard,” Rhet said, eyeing me. The word came out in awkward English again.

I grinned at him, had to tease him a little. “You secretly like it, don’t you?”

Rhet went splotchy red. “Not at all.”

“You wanna touch it again?”

“Stop,” Rhet said, and turned his back to me. But I thought I’d seen him trying not to smile. I could’ve teased him more, but figured I could save it for later. Get him back for all the times he’d picked on me.

The tent flaps suddenly shoved aside and Ansa stuck her head back in. “Come on,” she said, motioning at me. “She’s coming.”

The cloak helped a little against the freezing air when Rhet and I left the tent, but I really didn’t want to hang around outside for long. And thankfully, I didn’t have to. It was only about thirty seconds later that I noticed somebody coming through the trees, managing to move almost noiselessly over the icy ground. They were carrying a dim lantern, just enough to light the ground in front of them. And, when they got much closer, enough to see her face by.

Kbet Lahjenlehr was tall even for a clar—she had to be almost Darban’s height—and built like she could smash a wall down with one good punch. And she wasn’t even wearing any armor, just some heavy layers of dark blue and coppery fabric with a wide leather belt. Her coarse hair was pulled back in a bun and all her features stood out strong and sharp in her broad face. Creases wrinkled in at the corners of her eyes and the edges of her mouth, and something that looked like a faded scar started at one temple and cut back into her hairline. Guessing ages with these people didn’t mean anything, but in human terms she looked around her mid-fifties.

Actually, she looked about the same age as Alief. But they gave off seriously different vibes. Alief always had this graceful and quiet power, like she had effortless control over everything, and this woman in front of me looked like pure rugged force, ready to take on anything that got thrown at her and beat it.

“I am general Kbet Lahjenlehr,” she said to me, in a low and kind of smokey voice that almost reminded me of Rysa. Just deeper. I heard the overlap of an Isji word under general, which always happened with ranks. “You are Alan.”

“Arvu mrij.” Even though she’d used frequency, I went for Isji. It usually made a better impression, or at least startled people into realizing I was a little more competent than they’d figured. “Heihaph jyannat.”

“Hm.” Lahjenlehr was definitely looking at me differently now, but I wasn’t sure if it was bad or good. Clar always took a while to figure out, and each of them was hard to read in a new way. I’d figured out Keyd, Rysa, most of my friends here, even Maedajon and Alief as much as I could, but this woman was a whole new blank sheet to fill in. And in not a lot of time, either.

“It seems strange that we haven’t met before,” Lahjenlehr said, going on ahead with frequency. “After all, I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Pretty much everyone has, would sound a hell of a lot like bragging, even if it wasn’t always a good thing that people had heard about me. “I’m not much of a soldier,” I said instead. I was gonna use Isji until I couldn’t anymore. “I don’t get to camps like this much.”

“You were here once before. Weeks ago. We did not see one another, but I knew you were here.” She said it like she always knew absolutely everything that happened in this camp, and I believed it.

“Yeah, I was. I came here to see Keydestas.” Remembered at the last second to use his full name. I’d come out here to basically yell at him for going into a war zone after he’d just been essentially handed a terminal diagnosis. I hadn’t stayed long, not long enough to meet anyone. Definitely not this woman.

Right then, snow started to fall. Little wispy fluffs swooped their way down to us through the dark and dead forest. Lahjenlehr turned her face upwards, and a few flakes landed in her eyelashes before she looked back at me. Then she was silent for a couple long seconds, just considering me calmly.

Then, “hm,” she said again, and while I was real good at interpreting Keyd’s hmm’s by now, I had no idea what hers meant. “We should speak. Elsewhere.” The second part she said after a really fast and almost missable glance around. But there wasn’t anybody else here except Rhet and Ansa, hovering a few feet away behind me. I could tell they were trying to act like they weren’t listening in.

I threw a glance at them both, trying to wordlessly ask is this a good idea?, and Rhet only shrugged one shoulder slightly at me. They didn’t seem worried. After all, this was the general Ansa had been serving under, one she trusted. I wasn’t exactly nervous about this, but again...this was a whole new person to figure out. When Lahjenlehr started walking and I headed after her, Rhet and Ansa followed along after us.

Snow swirled down harder now, dusting the tops of the tents and starting to coat the icy tree branches in a powdery white fluff. Even with the temperature spell on me, the cold seemed like it was seconds away from freezing my fingers and toes off. The frosted ground crunched and crackled under my feet, frozen twigs breaking like they were made of glass, while Lahjenlehr barely seemed to make a noise as she walked. The forest around us was empty and dark, and weird cracking noises echoed out of the trees. Even though there were hundreds of tents around us, I didn’t see any people. Maybe it was nighttime, and everyone was asleep.

Dozens of the trees in this forest had cracked at their bases and fallen over, showing dark splintery insides that looked just as dead as everything else. Some of them even had keeled over and yanked their roots out of the ground, which were now all dusted in ice and snow. A weird unsettling shiver ran through me, like a cold shock down my spine. Even if the clar got their world back...was this place even livable anymore? I’d ridden across miles and miles of dead and empty land with Kir and Hahd on the way to Uillad—most of the country looked like this. The clarbach lived here, but they had to grow food somewhere else, on other planets like the oenclar did. Things didn’t grow here; they only died.

We finally came to a stop in front of a tent that wasn’t much bigger than any of the other canvas tents that were lined up between the rows of thin trees. A hroen symbol was painted across the front, a design of arched loops that looked like it could’ve come out of a Spirograph pen. Lahjenlehr pushed aside the door flap and ducked inside. I almost went right in after her, and then had another thought.

“Hey, you know,” I said to Rhet and Ansa. “Maybe you should go back to Pek Pet. I know Keyd still has his meeting to get through, but...when he’s done, he’s gonna need to get out of there. He obviously can’t on his own.”

“We were thinking about that,” Ansa said, and then quieter and directly to me, “but, we wanted to make sure this went well.”

“Seems okay so far,” I said. And if it wasn’t, Rhet and Ansa being here wasn’t really gonna change much.

“We’ll go back for Keydestas, then,” Rhet said, giving me a pat on the shoulder. “We wouldn’t leave him there. That’s why we came back there in the first place earlier.”

“Thanks,” I said, and watched as they walked away together, back in the direction we’d come into the camp from, leaving a new line of melted footprints on the frosted ground.

I slipped inside the tent. It was pretty bare except a heap of blankets in a corner, a small folding desk which wasn’t much more than a board with folding legs, and an armor rack with a set of polished black armor arranged on it. Lahjenlehr had hung her lantern from a cord in the ceiling and had brightened it up just a little.

As soon as the door flaps fell back together I felt a couple spells go up, one right after another, like far-away faint pulses. I had to guess they were privacy spells, blocking out sound and keeping people from coming inside—the same kind of spells Keyd and I’d used to use whenever we got a spare second to mess around together.

Which really wasn’t something to be thinking about right now. I stood awkwardly just inside the doors while Lahjenlehr slid the small desk across the ground with her foot, pushing it to the middle of the tent. Then she settled herself down on one side of it, in a slow way that seemed kind of stiff and careful. I figured I was supposed to sit down to, so I did, with just the little desk-table in the middle of us. Compared to her the desk looked ridiculously tiny, and even sitting down she was nearly a head taller than me.

“I wouldn’t have assumed you could speak our language,” Lahjenlehr said first off. She was still using frequency, so maybe she didn’t trust that I actually could.

“I’m still learning,” I said, in Isji. I’d use it as much as I possibly could.

“You see your presence here as permanent, then.”

“I do. My...almost everything in my life is here now. I don’t want to leave.”

A tiny pause, and then, “because of agistar Raen.”

“Because of a lot of things.” Reluctantly, I gave up on Isji. I just didn’t speak it well enough to explain this. “I know I’m a foreigner, and that doesn’t win me a lot of points here. But what I’ve been able to do, the things I’ve helped Keyd do and change, and the things we could do...it means a lot. Where I come from, I wouldn’t’ve ever made a difference. I care about the oenclar, and that includes Keyd, but also a whole lot of other people, and what happens to all of you. I know I’ve done important things here, that I matter. Even with how hard it’s been.”

“An interesting thought,” Lahjenlehr said. She sounded intrigued by what I’d said, like she really was thinking about it. “Though, I had heard you are not exactly what we expect when we consider foreigners. You are on your own among us, adapting to our ways, in our world, rather than us being in yours and striving to find a common ground and understanding. Perhaps that difference is important, that we have no reason or motivation to accept you, and yet...quite a few have.”

“I did come here for Keyd,” I said. “But he’s not all of why I stayed.” It was always weird, talking about our relationship with other people, with no idea how they’d react, but I still went ahead and did it. “I love him, but that isn’t totally worth being hated by a lot of people and nearly getting killed on a regular basis. But leaving him would mean leaving my entire life, my friends here, most everything I care about, and I can’t do any of those things.”

“Hmm,” Lahjenlehr said, and folded her fingers together neatly on top of the little desk. For a few seconds she just looked at me, but it didn’t feel uncomfortable or awkward. Then she said, “Keydestas is an admirable soldier. He always has been, and though it is unusual to hear loyalty for him from someone not of our race, it isn’t particularly surprising. Perhaps the government does not like or trust him at the moment, but certainly many of our soldiers do. He has more support than he may think.”

“That’s what we’re hoping,” I said. Apparently we weren’t gonna talk about me anymore, and that was fine. “And it’s why we came to you.”

“Lieutenant Hrin and Esret said as much,” Lahjenlehr said. “That concerns me. There are no other generals you trust.”

It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway.

“We had to start with somebody,” I said. “And since a bunch of generals started this mess in the first place, yeah, it’s a little hard to trust any of them without some serious reasons to. Darban—Darbanyon is someone we trust, but...”

“He is injured, and arrested,” Lahjenlehr filled in. All right, so she knew that too. “You trust me because of Hrin and Esret.”

“And because Keyd agreed with them about you. And because you’re—” I faltered, hesitated. Keyd’s plan, the one about mutual forfeit, wasn’t for sure what was going to happen. Alief might have something else in mind, or she and Keyd might come up with something different. So telling Lahjenlehr that she was a key piece in an important position might not be true.

But Lahjenlehr narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “Something about me, here, is essential,” she said. “That is what you think.”

“I—yeah.” I had a feeling lying to her wouldn’t go over well. “But nothing’s for sure. I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“Hmm,” Lahjenlehr said, but it sounded like she wasn’t exactly sure she believed me.

“Keyd is trying to figure out a plan now,” I said. “That’s why we started telling people we trust about this. Because something’s gonna need to happen pretty soon, and we’ll need help doing it. And because of what the Worthies are doing, we really need people who support him.”

“I hold nothing against Keydestas,” Lahjenlehr said. “He may have done a few unusual things, but nothing I have any concern about. I’ve seen no change in his competence as a soldier, and some of his methods of leadership are simply a mark of someone young and inexperienced. We have had far less competent agistar, who were far older and more prepared to undertake the responsibilities, and yet did a much poorer job.”

She’d probably seen some of that in person. I knew real well by now that Maedajon’s dad had been super unpopular and had lived in the Worthies’ pocket most of the time. Nobody I’d ever talked to thought Maedestin had been anywhere close to a good agistar.

“Keyd’s trying his best,” I said. “He wants to do what’s best for the clar, all of the clar. He’s trying to do the right thing, despite what the government thinks.”

“Of course,” Lahjenlehr said. “There are just those who disagree on what the right thing, the best thing, is. It does not make either side wrong, just opposed to one another.”

“Yeah, well, those people are the ones who tried to kill him a few days ago. That’s pretty hardcore disagreeing.”

“I certainly don’t condone what the Worthies are doing,” Lahjenlehr said. “No good comes out of splintering our system like this, or doing it in such a hostile, extreme way. It casts no good light on them, even with their own supporters.”

“It was already like this,” I said. “Nobody gets to see into the government—I barely get to see it. But it’s been like this since Keyd became agistar. Before that, even. But the Worthies have been against him from the start. They just thought he was a lot weaker than he is.”

“I was on the ghereen myself once,” Lahjenlehr said, which both surprised me and didn’t. “A long time ago. But I left it, of my own will, because at the time there was hardly a purpose for it. The Worthies made all the decisions, through Maedestin. He was agistar then.”

Of course. “Yeah, I’ve heard of him.”

“The government was unbalanced then, as it is unbalanced now. But it was still whole. Perhaps because Maedestin’s weakness allowed it to be so. In between then and now, it has fractured beyond simply fixing. Much more needs to be done. What Keydestas announced to the council about restructuring the system was not unfounded, and many people understood that. And if he intends to make peace, then even bigger changes would be necessary.”

“Do you disagree with him? What he’s trying to do now, talking with the clarbach agistar to try and stop the war? Technically, that’s treason.”

Lahjenlehr was quiet for a while, her fingers laced together and her eyes staring straight into mine. In a much less intense way than I’d’ve expected. She was just looking, not expecting or doing anything, but just not breaking eye contact with me. Her eyes were a cool grey, bright even in the low light of the tent.

“Do you know how long I’ve been fighting this war?” she asked finally, and I shook my head. “Longer than your agistar has been alive. Longer, even, than his father was.”

Christ, how old did that make her? I had no idea how old Maedajon had been, but Keyd was sixty, so Maedajon’d had to be at least twice that old, if not more.

“You are wondering how long that is,” Lahjenlehr said, and I had to nod. “A hundred and forty-nine years.”

I couldn’t say a fucking word. My imagination wasn’t good enough to wrap around fighting a war for almost a hundred and fifty years.

“This seems like a long time to you.” Lahjenlehr didn’t really ask questions—she just said things like they were facts she already knew. So far she’d been right about everything.

“It does,” I said. She might not know about the differences in our lifespans or that in clar terms I was basically a child, but even to them that had to be a damn long time to be a soldier.

“I have seen many soldiers die, men and women who could have easily been myself. I have survived many things that perhaps should have killed me. Yet, I am still here. I bring much younger men and women into battle with me, under my command, and it is under my command that their lives end. Many soldiers who reach my age have long since stopped fighting, having seen too much of it, felt they have caused too much of it. It is a hard thing to bear; a long life full of deaths. Even I am unsure of why I am still here, other than that I cannot remember anything else, no other way of life. That is the way with many of us, even those who have not suffered this war as long as I have.”

Lahjenlehr drew in a slow breath, shifting slightly. “So you must understand. An end to the war is an end to our way of life. We are all built around it, live around it, die for it, pass it on to our children. No clar alive has known anything else but this war, and none of us who lost our home, who saw it become this—” Lahjenlehr gestured towards the slight part in the tent doors, the glimpse of black trees and flat grey sky outside, “—can let it go so easily. It has been our driving purpose, and even though your agistar has known it for his whole life, his life has not been long.”

I did see what she meant. Keyd’s age had always been a big strike against him, but this was the first time someone had actually described it in a way that made me get why. A hundred and fifty years of war versus thirty something years. Keyd didn’t know shit in comparison to her. It was like my one year of living with all of this versus Keyd’s whole lifetime.

“It isn’t that I am hesitant to end the war, or that I believe Keydestas’s intent to be wrong,” Lahjenlehr went on. “I am concerned about what happens afterwards. Our entire people have become a machine for war, feeding into it endlessly. Even those who do not fight help sustain our soldiers, encourage their sons and daughters to join the military, especially once we were forced to leave Clarylon. The war is personal, woven deep into each and every one of us. and unraveling it will not be so simple. Especially with an end to it as abrupt as this.”

“Isn’t that something to worry about when the war’s actually over?” I said. But again, I got her point. Even the oenclar who weren’t soldiers had been seriously affected by the war; it wasn’t as separate from them as it was for the clarbach. And this probably wouldn’t be a slow process—it’d be fast and sudden and yank the rug out from under everybody.

“Certainly. But without some attention paid to the future, and how we reach it, there may end up being something worse than what is happening in Lojt now. Peace is what everyone imagines, desires, but no one truly believes it can be reached. A safe endeavor to strive for, because it can never be recognized. Or, that’s what has been thought for a long time. We would not know what to do with peace if it came.”

“I guess you’d have to learn,” I said, because I had nothing else to say. Lahjenlehr was supportive of Keyd, but kind of disagreed with him about some things, but she hadn’t said she wouldn’t help if we needed her to. And she didn’t think peace was wrong, just that it’d be way harder to deal with than we thought. She might be right, but at least people wouldn’t die in peacetime. Probably.

Lahjenlehr was quiet for a while. Unlike with a lot of people I knew and had talked to, especially ones who were clarjja and really powerful in the military and socially, silence with her wasn’t awkward. It seemed like a natural pause where we each got a minute or so to think, and I didn’t feel like I had to start pouring nervous words into it. I looked down at my hands instead. My nails were ragged, chewed and bitten, and I didn’t remember doing that. My fingers were red and thick with cold. I stuck them back under my shirt.

“It is strange to think that it could end this way,” Lahjenehr said after another minute. “Not with fighting, or force, but through talking. Our races, we are not very good at talking to each other. Or understanding one another.”

“Yeah, that’s what they wanted me for,” I said. Or used me for. But I didn’t care I’d been manipulated, because it’d been for something good and that I would’ve fought for anyway.

Lahjenlehr smiled slightly. “So I have heard,” she said. “I’m sure you know very well that we don’t trust foreigners easily, if at all. This is the first time I have met or spoken with you, and yet…” She tilted her head slightly, gave me a thorough and searching look. “It doesn’t feel much different from speaking to someone of our race. Other than the way you speak, of course. Perhaps this is what has allowed your strange circumstances and the things you have accomplished. Not only that you have obviously attempted to adapt to us, but this ease of attitude you have about you. Very unlike Keydestas.”

I had to laugh. “Yeah, we’re...not real similar.”

Lahjenlehr made a little amused noise in her throat. “Similar enough,” she said. “Neither of you intimidate easily, you are both stubborn, and young, and idealistic. I lack the latter two things, and perhaps that makes me too set in my ways, too blind about the true possibilities of the future. After all, I have imagined peace for far longer than many people, and also imagined what might happen afterwards. But Keydestas believes in more possibilities, because he has not seen enough or had enough time to think otherwise. And you, from outside our race, certainly do.”

“Keyd believes what he does because he has the chance to do it, right now,” I said. “Believe me, he’s not actually that optimistic. If this situation hadn’t been thrown right in his lap, he never would’ve thought about it. He would have just fought the war like everyone before him. But this is an actual option, and he’d be a fucking idiot to pass it up. Sorry.”

“Sorry?” Lahjenlehr said, cocking an eyebrow at me.

I gestured vaguely with my elbow, since my hands were still bundled up in my clothes. “Uh, the swearing. I know it’s rude.”

Lahjenlehr made a huffing sound that might have been a laugh. “It’s difficult to offend me,” she said. “Certainly a single word won’t do it. You come to me with plans of treason and conspiring with the enemy, ask for my cooperation in it, and expect a word to be the thing I object to?”

I had to laugh. “Okay, when you put it like that.”

Lahjenlehr got to her feet suddenly, in the same careful way she’d sat down. I stood up too, nervously twisting my fingers into the hem of the cloak. It seemed like the conversation was over, and I wasn’t really sure how it’d gone.

“I have heard enough, for tonight,” Lahjenlehr said. “It’s certainly something I wish to spend time thinking about.”

“Right, sure. Makes sense.”

“It is very late at night, after all. Late enough that it must be early morning by now.”

So I’d been right about the time of day at least. On a planet that was constantly the same shade of dark ugly grey all the time, it was impossible to guess. I actually had no idea how the clar themselves told time. Although the area around Lojt, including this valley, had gotten a little lighter since a chunk of the military had occupied it, and especially once some civilians had moved back into carefully monitored areas of the city. But there still wasn’t any difference between daytime and nighttime.

Lahjenlehr and I left the tent. Honestly, I couldn't tell how well that had gone. Lahjenlehr hadn’t said yes or no to helping us out if we needed it. She wanted time to think about it, but it sounded like she just wanted to think about the situation in general. And if she was skittish about suddenly slamming peace down on everybody because of how militaristic the oenclar were in general, and how basically all their lives revolved around it...I guess I could understand it.

“There is one more thing,” Lahjenlehr said to me suddenly. “Someone we should both speak to, if only briefly.”

“All right,” I said, willing to basically do anything to get her more on our side. “Right now?”

“No reason not to,” she said, and turned right on her heel and headed off. I scrambled after her, but she didn’t go far. Only a few tents over, stopping in front of one that had another black crest on its door. Lahjenlehr didn’t bother with the scratchy thing; she just whapped her hand against the front of the tent, rippling the canvas in a decently loud smack. Someone came to the door almost immediately, like they hadn’t been asleep at all. A face peered out at us suspiciously, and then saw Lahjenlehr and sombered up.

“General,” he said, stepping outside. The guy wore his hair in a standard military cut and his clothes covered up any oen marks he had; there weren’t any on his face or neck. He looked younger than Lahjenlehr, maybe mid-forties. And he kinda seemed familiar. I couldn’t put a name or a place to where I’d seen him before, but it was most likely here.

“This is colonel Jesna Djanteskre,” Lahjenlehr said to me, and there was a name I’d have trouble with. It almost sounded like a tongue-twister that you’d fuck up if you said it more than about three times in a row.

“Someone you really trust, I hope,” I muttered, and the guy gave me a narrow look. Like how dare I second-guess a random person I’d never met before, being introduced to me by another person I’d never met before now.

“He is haikhij, and has served with me for many years,” Lahjenlehr said. I wasn’t gonna admit I had no idea what that word meant. “I do very little without including him, and if your agistar needs me, then he also needs Jesna.”

She kept calling Keyd my agistar, like he belonged just to me or like he wasn’t the agistar of literally everybody here. It was a weird thing to hear, and I wasn’t sure if I liked it. Especially in front of other people.

“Okay, all right,” I said, holding up my hands in a little surrender. “Look, you gotta understand that it’s real hard to know who to trust these days. We’re trusting you on the word of Ansa and Rhet, and now we have to trust other people on your word.” And right now it was just me. Me who had to decide to trust this Jesna guy or not.

I was suddenly reminded of when Oredaiken had pitched his idea of trying to double-agent the Worthies, and basically put just me in the position of telling him to do it. That had felt like a test, like he might have done it no matter what I’d said. But this felt like something real, and possibly dangerous. If I made the wrong move, I could fuck everything up. Get people killed. If this guy went running to the Worthies...

“You think I would betray my general?” this guy Jesna said, and he sounded slightly pissed off, which was actually a good sign. He had bright pale blue eyes, almost like Keyd’s.

“Dude, I don’t know you. I have no idea if you would or not. That’s what I’m saying.”

“I wouldn’t,” Jesna said, throwing a look toward Lahjenlehr. It was a real ‘back me up here!’ look, but Lahjenlehr was obviously gonna let us hash this out on our own. Jesna glared back at me. “Why am I the one seen as suspicious? You’re not even one of our people!”

“Yeah, I totally haven’t heard that before or anything,” I said, sighing. “Look, I’d ask you what you think about the Worthies, about all the shit these assholes are pulling that’s definitely not good for you all, but you could just lie about it. I don’t know anything about you, but you’ve obviously heard about me, and can decide if you think I’m actually trying to fuck everyone over or if I legitimately am trying to help. So yeah. You do have to prove yourself to me. Sorry.” I wasn’t sorry.

Jesna’s face went blank and slack, like he was trying to process that I’d actually said all that to him. Lahjenlehr had raised her eyebrows, but I had no idea which of us she was surprised at.

“Of course I’ve heard about you,” Jesna said after a few seconds. He still sounded mad as hell and working hard to not sound like that. He didn’t have as good a poker face as a lot of the clar I knew. “A foreigner that the agistar brought from another world to... dally with.”

“Mm, okay. So not real cool with the gay thing, got it.” I made a tick mark on an invisible piece of paper. “Anything else?”

Jesna opened and closed his mouth a few times, without making any words or sounds. I was making this dude furious. It would’ve been funny, except that I probably wasn’t scoring any points with Lahjenlehr either. All I wanted to know was if this guy would blab war plans all over the place or run to the Worthies, not his views on every damn social issue the oenclar had. So far he wasn’t making a real good impression.

“This is ridiculous,” Jesna muttered. “I don’t even know what any of this is about, and I’m being doubted in my loyalty!”

“I agree,” Lahjenlehr said, and I braced myself for getting scolded. “Jesna, you should understand that you are being tested because I am already trusted by this man and agistar Raen. They want my assistance, and I would like yours. As I always have. While I understand your resentment, this is not the time for it. Not when there are so few people to rely on.”

So shut up and get with it, is what I heard in what she was saying. She was definitely a no-nonsense kind of person, and I liked it.

“Am I right in thinking that this is related to the Worthies’... behavior, recently?” Jesna said. At least he was smart enough not to say anything out loud, even if no one was around. Nobody in this camp really knew what was going on back in Lojt, and it’d be way better if it stayed like that. I had to figure Jesna knew because Lahjenlehr knew.

“It is,” Lahjenlehr told him.

“Of course I have no part in that,” Jesna said, narrowing his eyes at me. “If that is what you’re thinking. I am not part of the council, nor have I ever served under one of those men. I have no interest for politics, and I have no connection to any of this. I have no reason to support a rebellion! We’re in the middle of a war, for our own land.”

Even if Jesna still sounded angry, he at least sounded sincere. And he’d said almost the same thing Rhet had to me, about this being the worst timing. “That’s all I wanted to hear,” I said. “Something reasonable.”

Jesna looked like he was about to say something else, but his eyes suddenly tracked up above my shoulder, focusing on something behind me.

“Alan.”

I knew it was Keyd even before I turned around. Rhet and Ansa had gotten him pretty quick, so his meeting with Alief must have been over already. The three of them were coming through the camp together, snow whirling around them, Ansa holding her little purple lights in her hands again. They made the color of Keyd’s hair look really strange, reflecting a kind of coppery reddish-purple.

“Glad you’re here,” I said, quiet and in English, as soon as Keyd was at my side.

“You, too.” Keyd’s hand slipped around the back of my neck, and he kissed me. It was just a quick peck, like a hello more than anything, but it still stunned the hell out of me. I wasn’t even sure if he realized what he’d done, if he’d just forgot we weren’t alone together, and that we were in the middle of a real touchy situation.

But no, he definitely knew what he was doing. I saw it in his eyes when he pulled back. And I guess we had decided to quit hiding this so much, because everybody knew, and pretending otherwise hadn’t gained us any points at all. But I hadn’t been ready for him to actually start acting so obviously different. Okay, I’d been ready, but just not expecting it. Not for another couple years, or however long it’d take Keyd to feel comfortable about it.

Lahjenlehr didn’t act like she’d seen anything unusual, but Jesna was kind of red in the ears and wasn’t looking at either of us. I already knew where he stood on the issue of me and Keyd, even though I really hadn’t asked for his opinion about it.

“Agistar Raen,” Lahjenlehr said, dipping her head toward Keyd. “Good to see you are well.”

“You also, general Kbet,” Keyd said. “And your injury?”

“Much improved.”

Injury. Maybe something that’d happened when the fight here had finally gone hot, while Kir and Hahd and I had been in Uillad. Lahjenlehr seemed fine, but I had noticed the careful and slow way she’d sat down on the tent floor earlier. She hadn’t really hidden it, but hadn’t mentioned anything was wrong, either. But I also hadn’t asked.

“I have been having an interesting discussion with your friend,” Lahjenlehr said then.

“I’m sure,” Keyd said, flicking a quick glance at me and almost smiling.

“It certainly says something about you, agistar, that you have such strong loyalty from a foreigner.” Lahjenlehr took a moment to look back and forth between us, like she was trying to figure out how we even worked. “Whatever the nature of your relationship, I doubt even your father could have earned such an allegiance.”

Keyd and I glanced at each other, both of us a little uncertain. Not exactly where I’d expected the conversation to go, but I guess I had just been defending and talking up Keyd to this woman for like an hour. And she didn’t think Maedajon could’ve buddied up to somebody who wasn’t oenclar? What exactly did she think the stuff with Alief was, then? Although the clarbach weren’t exactly foreigners. So maybe they didn’t count.

“I—” Keyd cleared his throat lightly and set his shoulders back. “Alan is not my subordinate or only a simple ally. Loyalty and allegiance are...unfitting words. The nature of our relationship relies on respect and trust. That’s what we have earned from each other.”

Hell yeah we have, I thought, but didn’t say anything. My face was a little warm from getting one of Keyd’s big passionate compliments in front of someone else, but I couldn’t really complain. It wasn’t as sappy as some of the stuff he’d said about me, since it really didn’t have anything to do with us being together. More about what was under that, why we were such a good team.

“Hm,” Lahjenlehr said. And then, “it is late, and any further discussions are better held in the morning. Unless you feel it is important to do so now.”

“As long as we begin early,” Keyd said. “Tomorrow is acceptable.”

“The same tent is available to you; it is unoccupied,” Lahjenlehr said, and Keyd nodded at her. He’d had a tent when he’d come out here before; I knew because I’d yelled at him a bunch in there about coming to a war zone when he was sick and dying. “I will see you early in the council tent.”

“Good,” Keyd said, and suddenly his hand was in mine and he was walking us away from everybody, deeper into the camp. Shadows and darkness crept in on us, and I really had no idea how Keyd knew where he was going. His hand was both cold and warm in mine; warm where our palms touched but cold everywhere else.

As soon as we were pretty far into the trees and out of sight, Keyd and I turned to each other. Snow still whisped around us in the cold air, ice crackling in the tree branches all around us. Keyd looked just about as cold as I did, his skin a splotchy red and a little shiver running through his shoulders.

“I know you want to hear about the meeting,” he said, smiling a little through chapped lips. “I’ll...summarize. Do you remember the idea I told you, about the mutual forfeit?”

“Yeah, of course.” Didn’t add that it was one of the reasons I’d really wanted to come here and meet Lahjenlehr for myself.

“Alief thought it was the best idea we could execute with such little time and few options, with things the way they are,” Keyd said, and even though he was trying to hide it, I could hear the pride in his voice. Hell, I was proud of him too. “A few differences, perhaps, but not many.”

“It made a lot of sense when you were telling me about it,” I said. “So, that’s really what’s gonna happen?”

Keyd nodded, letting out a slow breath as he did. It clouded out in white streams of air around his face. “She said it would take some time to arrange things on her side. But not that long. Tomorrow. There is...a plan.”

It took a few seconds for that to really sink in. “The war could end tomorrow.”

“It could start to end,” Keyd pointed out. “It can’t happen all at once.”

I knocked him lightly on the shoulder with a clumsy frozen arm. “Dude, you can be a little more optimistic. It’s okay.”

“Well.” Keyd’s forehead wrinkled up then smoothed out again. Snowflakes were melting in his hair, against his cheeks. “Maybe. It...I’m still understanding that this is real and truly happening. There’s still much that can go wrong, and we do need general Kbet to go along with it, but—”

“—but maybe don’t think about that part right now,” I said. I caught him by the wrist, reeled him in close. He let me do it, let out a soft breath when I put my arms around him and just held on. He felt just as cold as I was, his skin chilled anywhere we touched. “I’m sure we can make it happen, you and me.”

“I think so too,” Keyd said, and sounded like he really meant it.

#

Cold, stiff, and huddled up into a tight ball with my knees practically against my chest. That’s how I woke up. Also, alone. The inside of the tiny military tent Keyd and I’d been given was freezing, and cold prickled down into my hair and rippled goosebumps up on my scalp, the only part of me that wasn’t under blankets. I grumbled, tried to burrow deeper into them, and heard a chuckle from somewhere in the tent.

“‘rirkama,” a voice that wasn’t Keyd’s said.

“Ahhg, what?” I lifted just enough of my head up to see past the lump of blankets. Rhet was standing a few feet away. He was dressed in something like a long coat, and layers of heavy blue and brown fabric underneath, a short sword buckled at his side. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen him with a sword before, and couldn’t.

“What, how—early?” I managed, which was pretty good for waking up early and cold and confused. Rhet leaned down over me and poked at my temples, buzzing me back into frequency.

“Thought you wouldn’t want to miss the end of the war,” he said then, smirking at me. “Well, Keyd thought so. He sent me to get you, as he can’t come himself.”

“Oh.” I rubbed at one eye, stretching my other arm out behind my head and rolling my shoulders around. Then my slow sleep-and-cold sogged brain finally caught up with my ears, processed what Rhet had actually said. “Wait, what?”

“Keyd can’t be seen in this camp,” Rhet said, like I was a total moron. “Not only is it dangerous for him, but something about whatever he has planned means he can’t be known to be here. I thought you’d know this, he tells you more than anyone.”

“Hah, right,” I said. “Sure, maybe, but that doesn’t mean I know everything.”

“More than the rest of us, usually,” Rhet said. “Now stop talking, and get dressed. You still have more than enough time. Nothing’s going to happen without you.”

“Fucking better not,” I muttered, reaching for—well, all my clothes. Because I was naked, since that’s how Keyd and I had fallen asleep last night. Rhet seemed to remember that I wasn’t as casual about this stuff as the rest of them, and so he turned and sat with his back to the inside of the tent while I got dressed. Which wasn’t a lot better, since he was sitting in the damn doorway with the flap pushed mostly open, letting freezing air in and also giving anyone who might walk by a view. But the whole idea was bothering me less and less lately. In the scale of important shit and things that really mattered, someone getting an accidental eyeful barely even rated. And I was in the best shape I’d ever been in my life. It wasn’t that embarrassing.

Either I was getting used to the cold or it was warmer than before, but once I was dressed and trying to drape the cloak around my shoulders and head in a comfortable way, I didn’t feel like a such a miserable human popsicle. The tips of my fingers and nose still burned with cold and my joints were wrenched tight and stuff, but as soon as Rhet and I left the tent and started walking, everything slowly loosened up. My breath left my lungs in a stream of white clouds, and I stuffed my hands up under my shirt, flinching at the icy feel of my fingers against my bare stomach. The lower half of my face was actually getting some protection thanks to my short little beard.

There were plenty of people around now. Soldiers in leather armor and the same heavier fabric that Rhet was wearing, that Lahjenlehr had been wearing yesterday. But nobody had a cloak like mine. They were all clustered in little groups near their tents, talking in low voices, glancing around occasionally like they were constantly expecting something to happen. It was a war camp after all; they had to be on high alert even when nothing was going on. The clarbach were camped just across the valley, or had been last time I was here. I couldn’t feel them the same way I could before.

Nobody really looked at us as we passed by. Rhet managed to wind us through it in a way that avoided any obvious groups of soldiers without looking like we were avoiding them. The forest floor was covered in a thin icy layer of snow now, left over from the snowfall. Bare twigs and dark rocks jutted up through the smooth crisp whiteness, and the footprints we left behind were soggy, muddy, melting down to the ground. The dark dead tree branches were all covered in glittering ice, with clumps of snow resting on top.

I noticed a little group of people a couple dozen yards ahead of us, and Rhet angled us right towards them. It took me a second to recognize two of them as Ansa and Lahjenlehr, standing together with their backs to me. Then Ansa shifted slightly to the side and I saw Jesna too, holding a lantern and looking mildly doubtful. I was starting to think that was just what the guy’s face did naturally. Didn’t see Keyd, but he couldn’t exactly be standing out in the open. Part of me had expected Rysa to be here too, and it was a little worrying that she wasn’t. Ansa and Rhet had said she’d gone back to Lojt on her own, and that was even more worrying.

I saw Jesna say something but we were too far away to hear it, and both Ansa and Lahjenlehr turned to see us coming. Rhet and I crunched through more pure white snow until our steps started to overlap with other footprints, the ground turning into muddy icy slush in a pretty big area. It looked like a high traffic area for the camp, and Lahjenlehr and the others were standing off to one side of it.

Lahjenlehr gave me a kind of nod as a greeting. “The agistar is waiting for us,” she said, keeping her voice fairly quiet and getting straight into business.

Rhet glanced at Ansa then. “We should—” he started, and then didn’t seem to know what to say.

“You are aware of what is going on,” Lahjenlehr said, doing one of her not-a-question-but-answer-it-anyway things.

“We are,” Ansa said.

“Then you will also attend,” Lahjenlehr said. Rhet looked startled at that and kind of unsure, but Ansa just nodded. Rhet turned and muttered something to her, and she said something back, but by this point Lahjenlehr had already turned away and was walking further into the camp. Jesna was heading after her, so I followed them both and figured Ansa and Rhet would catch up.

Clearly not all of us were gonna fit in one of the tiny tents here; including Keyd there’d be six of us, and these tents barely held two people. But a little deeper into the camp was a bigger tent than all the other ones. About the size of the supply storage tents, but sitting on its own. Lahjenlehr got to the door first, held it open for the rest of us—which seemed weird, she was a general—so I was the second person to walk in, right after Jesna.

Keyd was already inside, pacing around near the far end. He was wearing a cloak too; dark brown lined with even darker wool. His head snapped up as soon as we trooped inside, and his eyes snapped right to me.

“I’m sorry, I had to come here before...when there was earliness,” he said to me in English. “When no one was awake. Can’t be seen, too much risk. I didn’t want to bother you, then.”

“I know. It’s all right,” I said. We’d gone to sleep all bundled together, since Keyd got cold just as easy as I did now, and by now I liked going to bed together better than waking up together. I was used to the second one not happening much, since Keyd was such a damn morning person normally.

Keyd nodded slightly, then turned to Lahjenlehr. “We need to discuss this as quickly as possible,” he said, sounding like plain unaccented English. So he was already in frequency. “There are...arrangements in place that do depend on your willing assistance. And I know you have questions you want answered, first.”

“I do,” Lahjenlehr said, and then gestured to...the ground. There was nothing in this tent at all, not even cushions like the bigger and fancier council tents. Just a plain floor, that we all settled down on. Lahjenlehr and Keyd sat across from each other. I ended up next to Keyd, and Jesna across from me. Rhet sat on Jesna’s other side, and then Ansa was across from him, next to me. It was a weird fucking group of people for sure, but I was always ending up with weird groups like this. Rhet and Ansa both looked kinda uncomfortable and anxious—they’d probably never been in a meeting like this before, but they did both deserve to be here. I still understood what it was like to feel out of your depth and out of place like that. Hell, I still felt that way now.

“So. Explain this plan that you and the clarbach agistar have decided on,” Lahjenlehr said, right off. She managed to get the sentence out pretty straight-forward, but she did snag a little on the words clarbach agistar. Like she couldn’t quite believe she was saying it.

“You’ll assemble your troops,” Keyd said. “Inform them that, under the agistar’s orders, you are forfeiting the Kitsa valley.”

Lahjenlehr made a small movement, a slight shift forward. “This will not be received well.”

“Not at all. But the ire can be directed at me, not at yourself. You are only following orders, after all. That would not be an unreasonable response to unexpectedly receiving such a command. Just do not argue it, or doubt it. I do not need any more undermining of my decisions. If there is frustration, that is understandable, but not mistrust or questioning.”

So he basically wanted her to pretend, or at least react the way she would’ve if she’d actually gotten a sudden order to give up the valley. She was getting the order still, but it wasn’t backed up by anybody else in the government or military but Keyd. She could probably choose to ignore it, if she wanted.

“And what reasoning would be behind this decision? Should anyone with the authority ask.” Lahjenlehr glanced, not subtly, towards Jesna. Even though he was in on this, she’d have other soldiers who weren’t, who probably had enough rank to ask why the hell something like this would happen.

“Our armies have been stalled here for months,” Keyd said at once, like he had a real answer prepared. “There has been one battle in all this time, weeks ago. There is no progress here. We are wasting forces, time, supplies, and energy by having so many of our soldiers simply sit here and do nothing. Forfeiting the area, by the agreed upon rules, will allow us to leave and build up a stronger defense in a more strategic area.”

“Believable enough reasons,” Lahjenlehr said, with a small nod. “Something no one would question immediately. Certainly enough to stall any issues for the moment.”

Keyd nodded. “The forfeit will be done as normal. And it will be truly legitimate—though my own status is uncertain at this time, yours is not. What you do will be recognized as real, especially by the clarbach. That cannot be undone by whatever power Eldronrhet and the others believe they have; they will have to confront the reality of it because the clarbach will react accordingly.”

“Naturally.” Lahjenlehr was taking this all calmly, like it was no big deal. But after the conversation we’d had, I still didn’t know if she would actually back us up. Right now she was just asking questions, getting a picture of the plan. Not agreeing.

“When we begin the forfeit, this is a signal to Alief—or, rather, to those she trusts who are in the proper positions to execute this. Like myself, her involvement must look more distant—that we are both required to deal with this situation, to deal with each other as a result. So as our emissary leaves this camp, one will be sent from the clarbach camp as well. Their troops will have been told a similar story; that they are to forfeit the Kitsa valley. They will have been preparing to do so as well, but it is us who will move first.

“Both emissaries will continue the forfeit—after all, there is no rule about what occurs when both sides begin to do so at the same time. Then, the situation becomes unclear. Who needs to leave, who does the valley belong to? Which forfeit is to be considered? Something of that magnitude and importance would need to be brought to the attention of the agistar. Both agistar. It would bring us into a meeting together, one that everyone is aware of. It would seem necessary that it occur—though still unusual—but not treasonous nor suspect. A legitimate interaction, during which we would take further steps.”

That was different from the original idea Keyd had told me about. Probably an idea of Alief’s. But it made sense to get Keyd and Alief publicly meeting, to come to the second decision to forfeit all of Clarylon in front of a whole bunch of people. I had no idea how either of them was gonna explain why they’d make such a giant leap to doing that, but it was something to worry about later.

“So it will need to appear as though you have contacted me after the forfeit, and after that my presence here won’t be questioned. Though it is still risky for me to reveal where I am. Especially if word gets back to Eldronrhet and the others in Lojt.” Keyd shifted, his leg pressing up against mine. “But that is, in fact, the intention. They must learn about the forfeit, though not immediately. This cannot be a small event, known only to those who are here. Everyone must know, or it will mean nothing.”

“And this is all so that you and this clarbach agistar may have an excuse to speak with one another, but in a situation where others are aware of it and it appears to have occurred without any possibly treasonous acts to arrange it,” Lahjenlehr said. “It seems a complicated approach.”

“The clarbach military does not work as ours does,” Keyd said, and for some reason glanced at me. “The most prominent leader of the military is not the agistar, and though he ultimately answers to her, she cannot act in the same manner I can. The man who commands their military is called Luar Asaed. Alief has described this man as a warmonger, eager for battles and victories against us. It is he that must be dealt carefully with, and who must believe that this is a real happenstance and not one arranged by his own agistar. Even the forfeit of the valley is something she would have difficulty arranging, as such a thing would usually be a tactical decision on Luar’s part.”

“So Alief must manipulate her own people into consulting her on a situation of her own doing,” Lahjenlehr said. “Hmm. If there were a simpler way, I assume it would be what you would do instead.”

“There are likely many simpler ways,” Keyd said. “ Eldronrhet and the other Worthies and generals have forced us into action with few options. In the way Alief must manipulate herself into being directly involved in this, I must use this situation to ensure my own position as agistar. What we plan here would be impossible to do, under any normal circumstances, and that is perhaps the strength of it. I would never have gained permission to even speak to Alief, let alone attempt to negotiate for peace, were I still dependent on the government for approval. I am working on my own, without the knowledge of the ghereen or the Worthies or anyone else, other than those who are here, and a few others who are not.”

Keyd paused, took a steadying breath, and then went on. “Alief has said she will only negotiate with me, and no one else. So if peace is to be found between our races, I have to be involved. She would not deal with Eldronrhet, or any of the other Worthies. Those are her terms. she recognizes only myself as agistar. So we create only two options for those who are in rebellion—choosing myself, or choosing war. I don’t hope to sway the Worthies themselves with this choice, rather those who support them.

“This is the same choice I offer you now. Any order I give you comes from me, and only from me. There is no legitimacy of the government’s support behind it. Following it could be seen as treason. Ignoring it would be a safer action, though as a result support a continuation of the war. I know it is not a simple or easy choice.”

“On the contrary,” Lahjenlehr said. “It is very simple. The results of the choice, however, are not. As I told your friend—” she glanced at me, and so did Keyd, “—I am skeptical. Not of peace itself, but what we will do with it. And what does this Alief want from it? Will her peace see us as a reunited people, made to live with one another in forced alliance? Or separated, as we were for so many years, suspicious and hateful of each other from afar?”

“I...we did not discuss that far,” Keyd admitted, uneasily. “We assumed achieving this much would be difficult enough.”

“Of course you don’t know. None of us truly do. No one can predict the outcome of something like this.” Lahjenlehr took one of her pauses, where she just sat and looked at Keyd—undemanding, neutral—for a long couple seconds. Then;

“You have always been a good soldier. Strong, loyal, respectful and attentive to both the soldiers you command and those you served under. As a leader...you may be young, and unsure of how to truly use your power nor how potent it is, but there is nothing in you that wants that power for its own sake. Your actions have always shown that you understand what the title of agistar means. The Worthies have shown far more of their own personal interests, no idea of what they intend for our people, if in fact they have any true plans for the power they intend to gain. Even their rebellion had no clear plan, if what I have heard of it is even half true. While their alliance fell apart, you managed to continue working in our people’s interests with few resources and no guarantee your efforts would come to any fruition.”

Lahjenlehr made a motion that was almost a shrug, a little movement in her shoulders. “Supporting you may be treason now, but it would only be considered that if you do not continue to lead our people. And no matter my thoughts on what peace would bring, there is nothing objectionable about you returning to your place as agistar. If this is how to bring that about, then that is what I will support. You have my cooperation in this, whatever you need me to do.”

“Thank you,” Keyd said, and his voice sounded a little raspy. I let out a slow breath, just now realizing that I’d been holding it for a long, long time. My lungs felt stretched, my chest aching from stale air burning uselessly in there. Lahjenlehr made me more anxious than Alief did, and until the very end I’d had no idea what she was going to say.

“This is why I wished colonel Jesna to be included in these plans,” Lahjenlehr said. “If I was ever to send a forfeit, it would be through him.”

“I am…willing to do this,” Jesna said, after hesitating. He’d been real quiet through this whole thing, and I’d actually forgotten about him. He didn’t look doubtful anymore; now he was staring around like we were all fucking nuts. “I have never heard of such a plan in all my years as a soldier. But perhaps that’s what is necessary. Certainly nothing else has won us this war, or gained us any advantage, gotten us closer to victory. I didn’t believe I would ever hear of any attempt at real peace in my lifetime. Even if this is foolish, and doesn’t work...perhaps the attempt alone is worth trying.”

“There is little to lose,” Lahjenlehr said. “In the worst possible scenario, the mutual forfeit is declared void, and we return to this exact situation we are in now.” She looked to Keyd. “You would remain overpowered by the Worthies, unable to regain your place. Peace would likely be impossible. The war would go on. Peace may be an uncertain future, but whatever it holds is better than several foolish men scrabbling for power with no thought to what it is doing to our people.”

“Thank you, general Kbet,” Keyd said again, and he lowered his head in what was definitely a bow. And stayed that way, his face almost parallel with the floor of the tent. After a few seconds, he took in a breath and looked like he was about to say something else, when there was kind of a weird whap sound outside the tent doors. It sounded like someone had slapped the side of the tent.

“General!” The person calling from outside sounded a little desperate and breathless. I actually wasn’t sure if it was a man or a woman. “General Kbet!”

Lahjenlehr turned towards the door slowly, her eyes narrowed. “I said this meeting was not to be disturbed,” she said, her voice carrying down the whole length of the tent. She must have taken the privacy spell down just for a second, so that whoever was outside could hear her. This made me fucking nervous, since all it’d take was the wrong person getting a look in here, seeing Keyd, telling the Worthies exactly where he fucking was. I shifted, trying to block Keyd from sight with my own body.

“Of course, I know,” said the slightly nervous voice at the door. “It’s only that General Shome is here, and he insists he must see you. Immediately.”

Keyd was suddenly up on his feet, but didn’t make a single noise. General Shome meant Oredaiken, who last we’d heard of had been missing and unheard of. Nobody knew what had happened to him after Eldronrhet had launched his coup. Lahjenlehr sent a sharp questioning glance towards Keyd, who just nodded. His throat rolled hard as he swallowed, and I stood up next to him, getting my hands on him and holding him still.

“Hey,” I said in a low voice. “Hey, it’s all right.”

Keyd didn’t say anything, but I could feel his nervous energy running tight under my hands, like a panicked animal. I got why. There were two options for what was going on here. One, Oredaiken had been hiding out like Keyd had until now, and had eventually decided out this camp was the best place to be. Or two, this was a big fucking trick. Nobody should know Keyd was here, or that any of us were here or what we were doing, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. But Oredaiken hadn’t asked for Keyd, he was asking for Lahjenlehr. If he was on the level, he probably didn’t even think Keyd was here. In the worst case, he’d heard and believed the rumors that Keyd was dead.

“Jesna,” Lahjenlehr said, and Jesna nodded. He went to the tent door and peeled one of the flaps back just enough to look out and talk with whoever was out there. I still caught the back of Keyd’s neck and bowed him down, pulling the hood of his cloak up over his head. The hood of mine was still up, so I just kept my back to the door and went on blocking Keyd with the rest of me.

“What are you doing?” Keyd near-whispered in English, kind of resisting and trying to straighten up again.

“Making sure no one sees you, and your really obvious hair,” I said. “You’re not supposed to be here. Or you’re dead. Remember?”

“...yes.” Keyd sighed, and hunched back down. “But, Oredaiken. If he’s here…”

“I know,” I muttered, close to his ear. “Maybe it’s okay. Maybe he’s fine. You trust him, right?”

“Of course,” Keyd said. “Of course. This just seems—”

I didn’t get to hear what it seemed, because there was kind of a scuffle at the tent door, like someone was trying to get in and someone else didn’t want to let them. But a whistle of wind came in at the door and a burst of cold air hit my back, and I saw someone shove past Jesna in the corner of my eye and come right inside.

“Lahjenlehr,” said Oredaiken’s rumbling voice, and he strode across the tent right towards her. I guess it was cool for him to call her by her first name; they were both generals, after all. He didn’t seem to notice anyone else in the tent or care we were there, or pay any attention to Jesna dogging his steps and looking upset. “What could possibly be so important that—”

Oredaiken stopped in mid-stride, and Jesna nearly ran into his back. He’d taken a quick glance around, and seen Keyd. Now they were staring at each other across the tent, Keyd still tense and strained under my hands, like a stretched rubber band.

“Keydestas,” Oredaiken said, and this constantly gruff and stoic guy sounded completely overwhelmed and grateful to see Keyd alive. He took a single step in our direction, then stopped again. He seemed completely unsure of what to do, how to process this. He obviously hadn’t expected Keyd to be here, hadn’t been looking for him.

“Marakion,” Keyd said softly, and nearly tripped over Rhet in his hurry to get across the tent and, unexpectedly, throw his arms around Oredaiken. Keyd rarely hugged anyone, other than Rysa and me, and Oredaiken was not a huggable-looking guy. But he and Keyd really grabbed onto each other hard, a tight intense squeeze of a hug that went on for a long, long time. I could only see Oredaiken’s face, his eyes squeezed shut and his jaw clenched tight like he was trying to hold back even more emotions than he was already letting show.

They never acted like it, but Oredaiken was about the closest thing to a father Keyd had now. Oredaiken had straight-up told me once that he thought of Keyd like a son. It hadn’t meant anything to me then, because they’d just been words. I’d never seen it. Not like this. But now...I could actually believe it.

“Your cousin, his wife, his child, are all safe,” Oredaiken said, when he and Keyd finally let go of each other. He was speaking Isji, so my brain had to work double-time to keep up and catch the general idea of what he was saying. “When I found out what the Worthies had planned, I had no time to do anything or warn anyone else. The only thing I could do was get to them. I took them to Nuam, apparently just before everything fell apart. They are with prince Taol, in hiding, and safe. I was there for some time as well.”

Keyd put his hands over his face and went still, just breathing slowly for a few long seconds. That was almost all of his living family right there, and Oredaiken had probably saved their lives.

“Lehdios aihachkar hrapre kahle,” Keyd said eventually, a tiny shake in his voice. Over the words I heard an echo of English, like radio channels overlapping, but nothing understandable.

“Ohrem najjre, lehdiet hrapre gael dejj,"’ Oredaiken said, making a curt gesture with his hand like he was shaking away a fly. But then he rested his hand on Keyd’s shoulder, partly around the back of his neck, drew him closer. “Hasn kintan, estara dshon kahle mrika.”

“You also, marakion,” Keyd managed a faint smile, put his hand on Oredaiken in the same place. It was a trusting gesture with soldiers, a really big deal. I didn’t think I’d ever seen them do it.

“I have been trying to locate you for some days now,” Oredaiken said then, suddenly in frequency. I’d understood most of the Isji stuff anyway—they were glad to see each other, to know that the other was safe, and Keyd was damn thankful about the rest of his family being safe too. I couldn’t complain too much about frequency with these big group meetings where everyone talked a lot and really fast, so I was glad he’d jumped into it.

“I only just arrived here myself,” Keyd said. “I’ve been...elsewhere. There’s been—” He hesitated, and I knew that he was debating about telling Oredaiken what’d been going on in the past few days. But we’d decided to let people we trusted know, and so finally Keyd said, “I assume you didn’t know about my father’s meetings.”

“Meetings,” Oredaiken repeated, not actually asking a question but still managing to sound like he expected an answer.

“With Alief. The clarbach agistar. For the past ten years.”

A tiny wrinkle showed up between Oredaiken’s eyebrows, and that was seriously all the reaction he had. “I was unaware of this.”

Keyd glanced at me, and flicked his eyes to Lahjenlehr, in a way that told me I was supposed to wrap this up while he clued Oredaiken in. Well, Christ. I could do that, but Keyd really needed to remember I wasn’t military, or government, and people only listened to me if they wanted to.

Luckily, Lahjenlehr was already ahead of both of us. She got to her feet, and this time I really noticed that it was her left side she was being careful with, like she didn’t want to bend her torso around too much. Even with magical entity help, injuries could take a while to heal, and the fight here hadn’t happened that long ago.

“I will need to report the order of the forfeit to my subordinates,” Lahjenlehr said, and she was definitely talking to me. “I assume you intend for this to occur as quickly as possible.”

“Alief said she’d have things arranged by today,” I said. I glanced at Keyd, but he and Oredaiken were in a quiet and serious involved conversation. “Keyd knows more details, but getting things together quick is probably a good idea. We have to get ahead of the Worthies on this before they do anything worse.”

Lahjenlehr gave me a single nod. “That, certainly, is a pressing concern. Jesna will begin making the necessary arrangements to perform the forfeit.”

Jesna sure didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded. When Lahjenlehr walked down the length of the tent and out the doors, he followed her. That left me, Rhet, and Ansa in here, with Keyd and Oredaiken still talking by themselves in the corner. Definitely didn’t want to bother them right now, and Keyd probably wasn’t gonna leave this tent for a while.

“That was exciting,” Ansa said then, sounding also gleeful. “I’ve never seen anything like that. Especially Keydestas—I didn’t think he could speak so much, or that well.”

“Mm-hm,” Rhet said distractedly, his hands jammed deep into the pockets of the coat-thing he was wearing.

“Glad you had fun, I’m still not used to it,” I muttered, rubbing at my forehead. I was sweaty and uncomfortably warm under my clothes, almost lightheaded. I wasn’t sure why this, out of all the serious and important things that’d happened recently, had got to me so bad. Maybe just because it was getting down to the wire, it wasn’t all just talk and ideas and secret meetings. This was real serious shit about to go down, that was going to affect everyone. The whole fucking world could change.

“Is this what things are usually like?” Ansa asked me. “In the government, I mean.”

“Nowhere near as productive, usually,” I said, and she smirked a little and didn’t look surprised. “But it’s just as stressful.”

#

Lahjenlehr got the word out about the order pretty damn quickly; within a few minutes I heard a group of soldiers talking in Isji as they trooped by outside the tent, caught a few of their choppy half-sentences.

“—finally something is happening—

“—not the best order—”

“—brings them closer to Lojt, if they take the valley—

So no one was super happy about it. Not surprising. The point wasn’t to make this look like a winning move, just a believable one. The important thing was that it was gonna happen at the same time the clarbach surrendered the valley. And then nobody would know what the hell to do.

I was alone in the council tent by this point. Oredaiken and Keyd had disappeared off together somewhere, Lahjenlehr and Jesna were long gone, and Ansa and Rhet had actually gone to subtly hang around with the other soldiers here, to listen in on reactions to the forfeit as they slowly trickled down through the ranks. It’d be good to get a decent idea about how people were taking a tiny surrender, when a much bigger one was coming.

Again, sitting and waiting here alone doing nothing made me antsy and nervous. I pulled the hood of the cloak as far as I could up over my head, and snuck out into the camp. I just wanted to look around, maybe try and listen in on people like Rhet and Ansa were doing, just do something. I headed to the left, where the trees thinned out a little and I could see more sky. It just looked a little more friendly over there.

It didn’t take long before the trees stopped entirely, and the whole landscape opened up. I’d found the edge of the camp, and the valley. It looked a hell of a lot different from last time. Now most of the valley floor was covered in patches of snow, dark rocky ground peeking through in places. The slopes of the valley walls and the craggy rock above them were also smothered in white, and a low fog curled through the couple of bare frosted trees. On the opposite side of the valley, I could see lights from the clarbach camp, little flickers of lanterns through the trees.

I just hoped everything over there was going as well as it was here.

As I was walking along just behind the treeline, I nearly tripped over something on the ground; a thick round beam of wood. It wasn’t coated in snow or ice, and it looked carved and polished and not like a random tree branch or log. And a dozen or so feet away, I saw a huge piece of fabric on the ground that wasn’t part of a tent. This had to be the banner Keyd had mentioned when he’d been telling me this idea; the banner that got taken out beyond the front lines and dropped on the ground to show surrender. Lahjenlehr had said something to Jesna about getting it ready—and here it was.

The whole thing was huge. It made sense, since it had to be seen from a distance, but I hadn’t expected something that was as tall as a football goalpost with a piece of fabric that was the width of a bedsheet and twice as long, made of thick canvas. It wasn’t white, like I’d been picturing, but beige with a red symbol neatly painted in the center. I’d never seen the symbol before, but red was usually the agistar color. The symbol was round, with a bunch of straight lines jutting inwards, a sort of stylized flare in the center, like a fire or maybe a bird or maybe nothing at all, just shapes. It stood out bright against the snow and even the slushy muddy footprints around it.

“One person can carry this, seriously?” I said to nobody, watching two soldiers tying up heavy twine to attach the banner to the top of the pole. They were at least twenty-five feet away from me, crouching on the ground, and I was standing at the bottom of the pole. The clar were big people, and pretty damn strong, but this was kind of ridiculous.

“It’s not meant to be an easy task,” said a voice right at my shoulder. I startled, turned around. Jesna stood behind me, frowning down at the banner. He couldn’t be looking forward to hauling that thing down into the valley by himself. “A surrender or a forfeit is not done easily, nor without great effort. Not something to be undertaken with ease.”

“So the banner is huge and heavy physically because surrendering is huge and heavy emotionally?” I said, not surprised at all. It sounded exactly like something the clar would do.

“I have never, in all my time as a soldier, carried one of these before,” Jesna said, pinning me with an I blame you kind of look. Then he dropped his voice, so he was practically muttering in my ear. “I only do so now because my general asks it of me. And because we are not truly admitting defeat. It is only part of something bigger.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

Jesna glanced around, and then gave me a disapproving look. “You should not be out here,” he said. “You are much too—” he reached up towards his face, spread his hand out like he was gonna cup his jaw, and wiggled his fingers, “—obvious. Most people do know that where you are, agistar Raen also tends to be. Most soldiers here are in favor of him, but there is the possibility that your location could be compromised.”

Right, the beard. Hiding my hair wouldn’t really disguise me anymore, since now my face was a giveaway. I really hoped Keyd was appreciating it.

“Right. Good point.” But I wanted to be involved with this, or if not actually involved, at least around. Keyd and I had made this happen, and I didn’t want to stay stuffed into a tent somewhere, hiding and having no idea what was going on. I’d already felt like that for the last couple days, having to hear about things going down in Lojt second or third-hand.

But I could at least get out of Jesna’s way. I turned around, and nearly smacked right into Oredaiken. The guy had been hovering right behind us—for how long, I had no fucking idea. He was looking at the banner too, back to his old familiar neutral expression.

“Keydestas has told me of everything,” he said, to me. I stood up a little straighter, tried to mimic a soldier posture. Oredaiken still hadn’t decided if he totally approved of me or not the last time we'd talked. Acting respectful couldn’t hurt. “What Maedajon was keeping secret, and what he had been intending to do with that secret for many years. What is being done now, how it came about. ”

He seemed to want an answer, so I said, “is that good?”

“Surprising,” Oredaiken said. “Though not as desperate an act as it might appear, despite the situation. Perhaps Maedajon was never able to fully realize what he was attempting, because it was meant to occur now. And Keydestas has already shown talent for realizing ideas conceived by his father, so perhaps this will be the same.

“I was not aware of Maedajon’s...efforts, with this,” he went on, after a pause. “I understand why he wouldn’t take the risk to tell anyone, but I feel as though I have contributed nothing to this. I would have assisted him, supported him, had I known. So I would carry the forfeit, if there are no objections to it.”

“Of course,” Jesna said, almost desperately. “You are welcome to it.”

Oredaiken gave him kind of a dirty look. And if it was obvious enough to read on his face, he had to be seriously disapproving. “This is not a failure, nor an action to consider shameful or a sign of weakness,” he said. “Sometimes a retreat is the best possible action. If you have not learned that, you have not seen nearly enough of war.”

Jesna set his jaw, but looked a little uncomfortable. “I would still prefer you carry the forfeit,” he mumbled. Then, more confidently, “it’s far more sensible for you, given your history with the late agistar.”

“Leave, then,” Oredaiken said, and Jesna got the hell out of there about as fast as possible, hurrying away without even a look back. It was good to know Oredaiken didn’t scare only me.

Oredaiken didn’t say anything for a while. The two soldiers had finished attaching the banner to the pole, and now were just standing nearby, maybe just keeping an eye on the thing. They weren’t paying much attention to me or Oredaiken, and I wasn’t really worried about them. Not when I had Oredaiken breathing down my neck like this, making me anxious.

I’d always thought of Oredaiken as being an older guy, just because he looked so stern and severe all the time, but he had to be around the same age Maedajon had been. So he was plenty fit and strong, he just had some weird shit going on with his oen marks because of being tied to Maedajon through antshil when he’d died. And that wouldn’t keep him from carrying a giant flagpole down into the valley. He was a bigger guy than Jesna was anyway. He also wanted to do it, which made a hell of a difference.

“This is better,” I blurted out, kind of without meaning to. But standing there with Oredaiken just made me nervous. “For you to do it. Keyd—I’m sure he’d agree.”

Oredaiken looked at me for a couple of long fucking seconds, absolutely nothing readable in his expression. And then: “I understand you were...invaluable, in creating this opportunity.”

I bet he understood that from Keyd. “In a way.”

“Keydestas always speaks highly of you. I did believe it was a blinded bias, deluded loyalty from a young man who had strong new feelings and no method of understanding or controlling them. That forcing your presence here was one more act of childish aggression against a society he felt had wronged him, and there was little other thought behind it.”

I just held my breath, waiting. I couldn’t think of anything to say, and I didn’t think Oredaiken wanted to hear anything from me anyway. None of that had been flattering, and keeping quiet was definitely the diplomatic reaction.

Oredaiken shifted slightly. “But, it would be...unfair, to place the blame for the current situation on you. While you did cause a disruption in multiple ways, and perhaps provided an excuse for the actions of Eldronrhet and his supporters, it was only that. Something to publicly object to that others would agree with, gaining sympathizers and supporters to something that has legitimate concerns, while beneath it all planning to betray all of our people with this rebellion.

“I also see that Keydestas’s inclusion of you in certain things was not simply him proving that he could. He truly values you as someone to advise him, as much as anyone else he chose for his gheret. And despite how unlikely it seems, you do appear to have our people’s best interests in mind, not only Keydestas’s, and have worked for them.”

It’d taken him that long to figure this out? Christ. But hell, I wasn’t gonna argue, since he was right.

“So...we’re good?” I said, trying not to sound too disbelieving.

Oredaiken managed to shrug without even moving. Something about the way he moved his head, twitched a few muscles in his face. “I imagine we will be acquainted with one another for a long time. It will be easier to be civil and decent in our interactions. If nothing else, Keydestas would appreciate such a thing.”

I really couldn’t ask for more. I’d never even hoped for that much. And Oredaiken didn’t sound like he really hated this idea, that he’d been worn down into it. Just that he’d finally realized what I’d had to realize too—that I wasn’t the cause of every problem and not everything was my fault. And also, that tolerating me would make Keyd happy.

“Sounds good to me,” I said. Without really thinking, I stuck my hand out to him. Oredaiken stared at it for a second, but right before I could feel stupid and take it back, he grabbed my fingers in a real hard grip. He didn’t really shake my hand, just squeezed it like he wanted to break all my fingers, and then let go.

“Where’s Keyd?” I asked, the only thing I could think of to say.

“Back in the council tent,” Oredaiken said, not sounding surprised at all that I’d asked. “He did seem to think you would be there still.”

And instead I’d taken off again. Well, I wasn’t real far away this time. “Thanks,” I said, and turned away from Oredaiken and the banner. I was pretty sure I could get back to the tent, since it stood out.

And in a few minutes, I’d found my way back to it. Keyd was inside, sitting near the back wall on the ground. With the cloak and his hair, he was just a big brown lump. He wasn’t doing much of anything, just looking down at his hands. He didn’t seem to notice I was there, and for at least a minute I just watched him. Thinking about everything it’d taken to get us here, all the things he’d managed to do, all the things he had ahead of him to get done. But at least he wasn’t alone, and neither was I.

“We should go see this happen,” I said, and Keyd glanced up quickly at me. “You really want to hide in a tent while this goes down?”

“...no,” Keyd said. “No, I don’t.” Something that was almost a smile twitched at his mouth, and he got to his feet, moved across the tent to me.

I grinned up at him. “I’d’ve been worried if you’d said anything else.”

Keyd huffed out a little laugh, hooked the clasp on his cloak together against his throat and then pulled the hood up over his head. Then he reached out and pulled mine further down over my forehead.

“We’ll still need to be careful,” he said. “For now. Stay out of sight.”

“So how’re we gonna see anything if we’re hiding?”

“I have an idea,” Keyd said. “Come on.”

We left the tent together, arm-to-arm and angled in towards each other against the cold. All the soldiers I’d seen hanging around in groups earlier were gone; the camp looked as empty as it had last night. Footprints everywhere, no people.

“Where’d everyone go?” I muttered, and Keyd nudged us to the left, back towards the valley. It didn’t take me long to see where everyone was. A mass of soldiers had piled up at the treeline, standing in tight little groups stretching for dozens and dozens of yards; all quiet, expectant, staring out into the valley. It couldn’t be everyone in this camp, but it was definitely most of them. Some of them had climbed up on rocks that spiked out of the ground, or clustered on the trunks of the bigger trees that had cracked and fallen over. They were just watching, nothing organized about it. Everyone was quiet and still, and all I could hear was Keyd’s quiet breathing next to me and the eerie cracking of ice from the trees. The forfeit had to be happening, right now.

Keyd’s hand slid into mine and suddenly he was pulling me along faster, towards the other side of the camp. Our footsteps sounded loud and slushy and obvious, but nobody turned around and looked at us. We moved through the entire camp to where the tents ended, the trees crowded closer together and the ground rougher and uneven. Rocky boulders jutted up out of the ground, and to our right the valley sloped even further up. The ground curved around, moving us towards the other valley wall and past the oenclar camp. On our left sat a big lumpy group of huge rocks that blocked our view of the camp, and Keyd stopped at one that rose up about even with his eye level.

“Here.” Keyd leaned down next to the bolder, laced his hands together and made a little step out of them.

“Seriously?” I muttered, but I still put a foot on his interlaced fingers and a hand on his shoulder, and Keyd hoisted me up onto the boulder. Once I’d hauled myself the rest of the way up, I stuck a hand down to Keyd and sorta pulled him up after me, while he mostly helped by kicking off footholds in the rock face.

The boulder jutted out right over a steep drop to the valley floor, nearly straight down, not the milder slope where the camp actually was. I really didn’t want to get too close to the edge, but it was wide enough for both me and Keyd to fit easily on. A rough wall of rock sat right at my shoulder, and if I leaned carefully around it I could actually see a bunch of the oenclar soldiers on the crest of the valley slope, watching and waiting. And in the other direction I could see the clarbach camp on the other side of the valley—lights from lanterns through the trees, thin streams of pale smoke from campfires against the darker sky.

“Oh yeah, much better,” I said. Well, whispered. Talking too loud seemed wrong. Keyd crouched next to me, our shoulders pressed together and our breath steaming out into the air. Below us, Oredaiken picked out a slow and deliberate path down the valley slope, leaving a dark trail of footprints behind him in the patches of snow. The banner wobbled back and forth, the pole sometimes swaying dangerously low to the ground. The wind whipped the banner in our direction, and carried the heavy sound of the fabric snapping against itself up to us. Other than the random and sudden cracks of ice up in the tree branches, the ripple of the banner and thin whistle of wind was all I could hear.

Oredaiken was about halfway down the side of the valley when something moved on the other side. A flicker in the trees. Keyd sucked in a breath, went real still beside me. Something white and person-shaped moved out of the dark trees, tiny and blurred at this distance. The valley wasn’t huge, but it was big enough. It took another second of squinting to see the other thing that’d come out from between the trees, high above the person’s head.

The clarbach forfeit banner was pale teal, completely plain. And instead of a rectangle, the fabric was a long triangle like the world’s biggest pennant. Otherwise, they looked pretty similar. Both gigantic and awkward, big enough to be seen from a distance and recognized, and now being lugged down the rocky valley slopes by a single soldier.

At my side, Keyd let out a deep shaky breath and suddenly leaned into me, hard, almost all his weight crashing against my side. I wobbled, braced a hand on the rock to keep us both up. But I knew what he’d been thinking; the same thing I had. There’d been a chance, a tiny chance that Alief couldn’t pull the right strings to make this happen, just because of the way the clarbach military worked. If she couldn’t arrange the forfeit, then Keyd would’ve just given up this valley for nothing, and might've lost a hell of a lot of support.

When I craned around the side of the rock Keyd and I were on, I could see some of the nearest soldiers at the treeline. Not their faces or expressions, we were too far away for that, but at least where they were looking and doing. Most of them seemed to be totally focused on Oredaiken, who was much further down now, almost to the valley floor. But then someone raised their arm, pointed across the valley, towards the clarbach soldier. Then other soldiers were pointing, looking around at each other, harsh whispers breaking out in startled bursts.

Oredaiken and the banner stopped once he got to the valley floor and probably noticed the other banner for himself. So did the clarbach soldier. For a few seconds, neither of them moved. The beige oenclar banner flapped hard in the wind, the heavy snap of fabric in the wind carrying up to us on the valley crest. Oredaiken knew that this was going to happen, and the clarbach soldier had to also, but it still had to be real damn strange for both of them. Keyd had said a forfeit at the same time had never happened before. But both of their orders were to surrender, and everybody watching knew that, so it only made sense for them to keep going.

The clarbach soldier was the first to start moving again; I could tell by the way the teal banner started weaving back and forth, swaying around like a drunken stick figure as the soldier struggled along with it. A second or two later, Oredaiken and his banner started up again too. Keyd kept a hard grip on me as all this was happening, probably not realizing he was doing it. His fingers dug deep into my arm, almost painful.

Oredaiken and the clarbach soldier didn’t get that close to each other. There was still a couple hundred yards between them when Oredaiken came to a stop, and a few seconds later the clarbach soldier stopped too. I could see his (or her, could be a her) armor now, a pale greyish outline against the rocky valley floor, still partly blended in with the patches of snow.

However it happened—if they could somehow see each other well enough to do it, or even’d managed to exchange a couple of words—the banners dropped at the same time. It almost looked like slow motion, the huge poles swooping down to the ground and trailing the fluttering banners behind them. The echo of wood against rock rolled out and up the valley walls. Then everything was still. Nothing moved or breathed in the valley for what felt like eternity. Even the wind had stopped. Oredaiken and the clarbach soldier didn’t move.

Then voices suddenly broke out on the crest of the valley hill, shattering through the silence in a jumble of confused mutters and exclamations and noise. Nothing sounded like anger, just confusion and surprise. Which was exactly what we’d hoped would happen. I couldn’t catch any real words, since we were too far away, but it really seemed like nobody knew what the hell had happened or what was supposed to happen now. They were seeing something that hadn’t happened before.

Keyd suddenly buried his face against my shoulder, making little noises that were either laughing or something else. I managed to get an arm around him, squeezing his shoulder and leaned my head against him.

“Hey,” I said, talking against his hair and ruffling it with my breath. The hood of his cloak had fallen back. I managed to get an arm around his shoulders. “It happened. It happened, it really happened. Christ.”

The reality was hitting me hard, like it’d probably hit Keyd about thirty seconds ago. What this really meant. There was a hell of a lot more to be done after this, even harder and more complicated and delicate things that’d really come down to how Keyd and Alief handled it and sold it to their people, but something had started. Something that couldn’t be undone, especially by the Worthies.

Keyd straightened up, keeping his grip on me but staring back out into the valley. He was smiling, a shaky relieved expression that looked half disbelieving and half amazed. His nose and cheeks were red from the cold and his breath streamed out in white curls, the wind blowing it away behind us.

“It happened,” he said. “And now the true work begins.”

Previous chapter | Chapter list | Next chapter