My head boils.

Utopia and dystopia echo inside

There, stories get written in blood ink

Inscribing only anguish and void.

Truth is silent.

I cannot trust the abhorrent truth of my thoughts.

Oblivious, I still persuade myself,

To believe in it till the last instant

Quieting reason, rejecting instinct, lying.

Dreading friends, lovers, children, and parents.

My brain trembles under the weight of its insanity

My life crumbles as I stand motionless in awe.

“My worst enemy” Bard Jilena.

Nay’s nocturnal travelling had become more pleasant since her meeting with Carle. The boy had the bad habit of babbling with no end, but as she had nothing else to do, she listened to him patiently. Her dark thoughts about what was happening in Gite, her position as the potential last of the Legio, and her father, were pushed back deep into a corner of her mind where it didn’t torment her so much. She was comforted by the presence of this child turning adult.

Still, she felt distanced with the conversations and the voracious energy of her new travelling companion.

There was this heavy shadow over her, preventing her from enjoying this healthier dynamic.

She liked the boy’s stories, but barely if ever answered his questions.

She would have enjoyed joining him in his excitement. Maybe it was the anguish that brought the darkness, or maybe it was because she was always having an eye on her surroundings, but she could not.

A week after their first meeting, they arrived at the first village in the region of Striavie. According to Trinne’s map, Nay had walked 180 miles. She had had to walk slower since she was not alone anymore.

“Finally!” Carle exclaimed. The buildings were not visible from where they stood. The darkness was almost complete, clouds hiding the light of the stars. What let them know about their return to civilisation, was that the sandy road had given its place to a large, paved road.

“We’ll stop by tomorrow.” Nay announced.

“What? Why by Trayx would be doing that? There has to be an inn open, even at this hour.”

Nay shook her head.

“Adventurers arriving in the middle of the night, especially two women…at least in appearance, sorry… one of them wearing priest robes and the other armed to the teeth, it is way too unusual, and I want to stay unnoticed.”

Nay could not see the apprentice Truth-Teller’s expression, but his next sentence sounded suspicious.

“I understand about the two women, don’t worry, I’m used to it. What bothers me is that you act as if you really were being chased by a troop of Virnyl guards. I’m getting worried, do you really believe what you told me about the Angel? Should I worry about your sanity?”

Nay did not react to his provocations. Internally though, she swore, she was regretting her initial indifference of being too honest, even if it had been said as a joke. He was way smarter than other boys his age, and there was a chance he would realize she had manipulated him slightly.

“It’s less hot at night, and I don’t like being conspicuous, that’s all. We’ll arrive during the day, and you’ll wear one of my spare clothing.”

“I refuse to wear girl’s clothes.” The boy answered vehemently.

Nay looked at him, but could not see his face.

“…don’t worry about that, as you may have noticed, I wear pants.” In truth, Nay would have liked for him to wear the only truly feminine clothing that she owned. It was a skirt Trinne had placed there without her knowing, and, on the much smaller boy, it would have made a good dress. Her pants would look ridiculous on him. Still, she had felt his resolve. He seemed quite distressed about his feminine physique, no matter what he otherwise said.

“Fine then. I’d prefer a nice bed tonight as well, but you’re in charge. I’d still like it if you explained to me why you’re being so careful. Did you kill someone important?”

“No. Now shut-up and follow me.”

They left the road and walked in silence until they found a sole tree with tortuous roots and a large trunk. It wasn’t very tall, but enough to sit underneath.

“It shall do.” Nay declared.

Carle kept quiet one moment.

“How did you find a tree so quickly? It’s night and there is almost no vegetation around.”

Nay shrugged her shoulders and did not answer. She had no way of explaining to him that she had felt the Rreico of an old owl and followed him here. Nay started a little fire to cook. It wasn’t exactly safe, as the villagers may have seen the hues of the flames and come to investigate, but she was hungry.

“If I become a Teller one day, you know I’ll just ask the question and I’ll know everything about you and your secrets!” Nay looked at the boy. He was giving her an almost victorious smile. He was trying, quite badly, to get answers out of her.

She gave him one of Ra’fa’s special smiles.

“I’d have sold you to a circus well before that.”

Carle’s grand expression faltered, he gulped, then changed subjects.

“What are we eating?”

The next morning, Nay and Carle went to the village. Their night had not been interrupted by intrigued villagers, which meant that either they did not see the campfire, or that they just could not be bothered with it.

Once there, they followed the main road. It was the first time the young Legio saw Aka, a wood characterised by its colour, going from brown to amaranth. Every house here was built with it, and some had tiled roofs, but most had simple thatched ones. The architecture was new to her as well. Very tall, but with no ground floor windows. Except for the central building, the windows were without glass, just openings at the first and second floor. In total, there had to be twenty or so buildings. The central plaza even had a fountain, with a sculpture of a water serpent in the middle, where half a dozen women were currently washing clothing and talking quite loudly.

Nay had no idea how such a fountain could exist in such a remote and arid place.

Carle answered her unasked questions: “It is a Well from Canna.”

Her face must have betrayed her thoughts, she realized as she raised an eyebrow and looked at the boy.

“Sources created by God-Touched? I imagined it less…artistic.” She said.

“You should recognise them as a wandering knight, there is one in every village of the Imperatrix’ empire that has suffered from drought.

Nay did not say anything back to him. The village women had noticed them and were looking at them from the corner of their eyes. They picked their clothing back up as they now whispered between them, then left the premises.

“Well, what a freezing welc…” Carle began, but before finishing his sentence, he was interrupted by one of the women turning around to talk to them.

“The inn is there, travellers.” She pointed towards the central building with glass panels. “You are most welcome in Crumbs, mind Cedric, he likes to eat raw.” On that note, she left to join the other women.

Nay smiled. “Well, I find that a very charming welcome.”

“She was cute.” Carle admitted.

Nay looked at him again. “I didn’t notice, but if you say so. We’ll go to the inn, you’ve got money of your own, right? I’m not going to pay for you.”

Her travelling companion nodded, but not without adding: “Magpie.”

They went to the inn.

“Eat raw?” Nay wondered as she opened the door.

“Don’t ask me.” Carle answered as he followed her inside.

The place was rustic, everything was made from wood, floor, remarkably high ceiling and furniture, all in rough condition. There was a counter directly giving to the kitchen. On a plank of wood on top of it, was a menu, as well as an announcement board with a few parchments pinned on.

One of them showed in big bold letters: “No fires in the last 1000 days.”

The place was completely empty.

“Is there anyone there?” Carle shouted.

After a few seconds of silence, Nay decided to sit down at the back of the room. Once her back to the wall, she pulled out her flask, drank, and tried to relax a bit, closing her eyes.

If the ceiling had not been so high, there could easily have been three stories in this building, but Nay supposed it hade been done purposefully. It was cooler in bigger rooms, and this one was especially fresh. She could feel the Rreico of multiple people upstairs, and not counting herself and Carle, there were two more on the ground floor.

“Sorry, sorry, I’ve just woken up, travellers usually don’t come this early.” A large woman, in her fifties, arrived dressed in perfectly white clothing, a simple one-layered piece of clothing that showed her midriff, arms and legs.

The women outside had worn something similar, but with more brown-yellowish colours.

Carle, in what was beginning to become a habit of impertinence, talked with the innkeeper about the price and rooms, not considering Nay’s opinion at all.

His cheekiness did not really bother Nay, and she let him take charge.

She closed her eyes again.

She didn’t manage to shut everything off, and, with the fragments she got, she understood that there was one room left, with two simple beds. The innkeeper was renting it two times over the normal price, and Carle was trying to negotiate.

Nay could feel it would go badly: In the innkeeper’s Rreico was disgust and disdain. The young Legio had anticipated this: two women, in appearance at least, travelling with no escort, would be a problem in Striavie.

She sighed, re-opened her eyes, and stepped towards the counter.

“We’ll pay the normal price for a room, with an extra gold coin as an apology for the hour at which we arrive.” She announced.

“That will be six gold coins then.”

“Three.” Nay countered.

“Six. I’m not negotiating, it’s the price for you to stay here.”

“And I’m telling you, we’ll pay three.”

“It is my establishment, and, as far as I know, I’m the one deciding.”

“Do you know the law of equal cost?” Nay asked instead of debating further.

“…Of course.”

“Then what do you think will happen if I go ask the soldiers currently sleeping in your establishment how much they’re paying?”

The innkeeper gulped audibly. “I… by Trayx how do you know that…”

Carle was looking at the young woman with cloudy eyes with the same astonished expression as the innkeeper.

Nay continued: “What will happen when they realize their host is breaking the law of equal cost, and by doing so, renouncing the Imperatrix herself?”

“By Ja, fine, let us calm down. Three gold pieces. But I won’t cook for you, I have the right to refuse service.”

“Understood.” Nay acquiesced. She was currently seeing the kitchen behind the counter, and she felt no haste to taste what would be cooked in such a mess.

“But…” Carle began.

“Here is your key. If you lose it, it’ll be ten gold pieces. Sign this paper to prove your good faith.”

That time, Nay was taken aback.

“A signature?”

Carle came to her rescue. “I’ll do it.” He took the extended paper, scribbled something looking like his name scrunched together, then gave it back to the innkeeper.

She smiled and gave them the key. “It’s at the end of the corridor, up the stairs.”

She went back where she initially came out from, obviously not helping them with their luggage.

As they climbed the stairs, Carle started talking.

“How did you know that…”

“Shh. Not here, I don’t want to wake the soldiers and put them in a bad mood.”

“Oh.”

They reached the room. Considering the less than welcoming innkeeper and the state of the kitchen, Nay was quite happy with it. It was small, barely enough room to move between the two beds, but it was clean, well lit, and had a secondary room with a beautiful bathtub, empty of course, but asking to be filled with water. With the drinkable water fountain just in front of the building, a bath, even in cold water, would already please Nay tremendously.

Carle crashed on the closest bed, sighing in relief. “Jormun be praised!”

Nay went to the window. She would rather have had a view on the fountain plaza, but the horizon of the bare steppes growing endlessly in front of her was not exactly unpleasant to look at.

“So? How did you know soldiers were here?” Decidedly, when this boy had an idea in his head, it was stuck there.

“I won’t tell you that.” She had lived around soldiers so much, their Rreico had become unmistakable.

“I’ll uncover your secrets one day!”

“And when I’ll tell the circus that you’re a man, they’ll give me a very good price.”

Nay saw him grimace as he was still looking at the ceiling. She changed subjects.

“Anyway, what’s the story with the paper and signature?”

He looked at her. “Wow, it really is the beginning of your wandering knighthood. It’s a system put in place in Leïn’s inns, and apparently also in Striavie. It helps them with something, I don’t know what exactly.”

“Don’t they lose money in wasting all that paper?”

“Not really, in the capital printing machines have become quite performant in the last five years or so, and since they were invented in Striavie in the first place…”

“...It’s quite logical that it is used here as well, got it.” Nay finished for him. “I’ve never signed anything before though.”

“Not a problem, just find yourself a signature and keep it. You don’t need to know how to write, it can be anything.”

“I know how to write.” Nay answered, even though she knew perfectly well what would follow.

“Ah ha! You have been educated then, interesting.”

Nay did not respond, too tired to play the teenager’s game. “I’ll go fill the bathtub and our bottles. Unpack in the meantime.”

“I’d rather stay on the bed.”

“No bath for you in that case.”

“Don’t you want to get in with me?”

His overly interested tone gave no illusion to Nay about what he was thinking.

“No, not really. We will go one after the other. And If you think about peeking on me, I will know, and you will wear my skirt until the end of our trip together.”

On that note, she left the room, hearing him grumble as she closed the door.

Nay stopped in front of the inn’s entrance. She was carrying a full bucket of water, the first of a long series if she wanted to enjoy a bath. The reason why she stopped was simple. While she had filled her bottles and bucket at the fountain, the soldiers had woken up and seemed to be active in the large house. She had played it cool before when she first felt the military men’s Rreico, but in truth she was full of doubts. Were they here for her? No, she knew they were not Ducal guards; she did not recognize a single of their Rreico, and there were very few guards she had not met before. So, it was most likely Striavien officers, that would not know her. They would not have been warned about her yet.

But she could not be certain of that last part. A message could have been sent. She clenched the metallic handle of the bucket, and pushed the door open, looking towards the ground. She had guessed right, two Striavien officers were there, easily distinguishable through their ochre red uniform. They turned around to look who was getting inside.

Nay felt their surprise, but nothing else. They did not expect to see an armed stranger. She got up the staircase, crossing paths with two other officers there. She kept a low profile, and once more, she felt their surprise, and that was it. They let her pass freely.

When she entered the room, Carle was unpacking, with a lack of enthusiasm very characteristic of someone his age.

“If something gets dirty, you’ll wash it yourself.” She told him.

“Yeah, yeah.”

She emptied the bucket in the bathtub and put the filled bottles down on a table. The Rreico of the Striavien soldiers was everywhere. There only needed to be one aware of her situation for it all to go to hell.

“Would you rather fill up the bathtub?” She asked with little hope.

“No thanks.”

She sighed. It would be dumb to get out again, she would need to wait. While she was hesitating, Carle came closer to the bathtub.

“Oh! It’s a Jarulavien tub!” He exclaimed.

“Ah?”

“Look, there is a little oven on the side to warm the water up. We need some logs.”

Nay stared at the cubicle fixed on the bathtub. She had seen ones like it thousands of times before.

“By Ja, how did I miss that. I must really be tired.”

She would bath in warm water. Damned be the guards, she would risk it.

“If you could find something to start the fire, just, don’t get noticed by the officers too much, they’re awake.”

“Fine…” He groaned.

She and Carle exited the room.

“Where in Trayx am I going to find that…”

Nay shrugged her shoulders. “Ask the innkeeper?”

“Great.”

In only minutes, the inn had become notably noisier. As the Rreico had shown her, all the other people currently residing in the building were soldiers, with some even high-ranking officers.

Carle left for the counter, while she crossed the room with her empty bucket. For now, they only watched, but Nay knew she would be questioned about her weapons at some point. The good news was that no one seemed to recognize her.

She did the refilling three more times, but the fourth time she entered the inn, she was faced with a rather unusual scene.

“Kiddo, that’s not the truth!”

Those words made Nay prepare for the worst, but then she felt the Rreico, and it seemed friendly, and the slap on Carle’s back testified camaraderie and nothing else.

“I swear it’s true! She made them flee, all on her own!”

Oh no.

“She’s back.” Three soldiers sitting at a table turned around to look at her. At the end of the table, Carle was sitting with them, beer in hand.

She had been outside for exactly two minutes.

Swearing she would sell Carle at the first circus she came across; she approached the group with her most beautiful fake smile.

“Gentlemen.” She said.

“Gn’tlemen she says! Ha! Maybe it is a wandering knight. Well, with that kind of package, maybe we should call you a knightess?”

Examining their uniforms, she deduced they were young officers, probably still apprentices. The high-ranking ones had left already.

Nay kept her smile. “Is my young comrade bothering you?”

“Noooo, don’t worry sweetheart, we know it is a man, even considering he’s got no muscles at all. We won’t steal him from you. Want some help with that bucket?”

Nay looked at them more closely. The one talking had brown skin, but blond hair, typical from individuals with two different noble origins. The two others seemed relaxed and had the classic Striavie look, tall, brown skin and dark hair.

“It is nice of you to ask, but you are probably busy already, and I’m not afraid of a little exercise.”

“Considering your muscles, doesn’t surprise me.” He looked her over. “I’d love to stay longer, but as you said, we’re being drained till the last drop. T’was good meeting you, knightess. Guys, we’re on the move.”

Before they left, Nay could not stop herself from asking.

“Where are you going, exactly?”

The blonde turned around, surprised, and it was his neighbour, slightly smaller than him, who answered first.

“We and our troop are going to Gite.”

Nay’s arms trembled. She gripped her wrists to hide it.

“Oh? Why?” She asked as naturally as she could.

“Read the newspaper, you’ll know.” The man answered. And on those mysterious words, he left.

“Look at that! You made them flee! They were telling me important stuff, you know.” Carle pouted, then went to drink his beer.

She picked it out of his hands.

“Hey!”

“You’re way too young to drink all of that.” Then, very uncharacteristically, Nay gulped it down in one go. She grimaced as she felt the taste of bitterness and blandness on her tongue. “What’s a newspaper?”

Carle, looking angry, nonetheless answered. “It’s that.” He pointed towards a pile of papers on the counter. “I took two to start the fire. It’s a little book about the week’s news. It’s quite the craze in Leïn right now.”

“You’re burning paper!?” Her initial surprise was quickly replaced with something else.

The week’s news was written on it? Anxiety gripped her.

“Come on, I’ll help you with the water, a bit of exercise won’t hurt me either.” Carle said.

He and Nay went up to their room. After she emptied the bucket, he took it and went back out.

As he left her there, she looked upon the two crumbled newspapers on the ground next to the bathtub. She kneeled in front of one of them.

“Disappearance of a third Lesardo around Makaka!”

Nay had a demented smile until she realized she was looking at page three. If it was anything like the news panels in front of Adienha’s library, the first panel, here page, would be the most important one. She took the paper in her hand, clenched its corner, then turned it.

Her vision faltered; a broken whine escaped her lips.

“No, no, no…” She held her tears, the boy’s Rreico was coming back.

He grunted while opening the door. “Aw, it’s heavy. Get out of the way.”

She backed off without a word.

“Your turn!” He held out the bucket.

She took it and turned around before he could look at her. She was not sure what kind of expression she was currently making.

She had no idea how she reached the fountain, but once there, she had to sit down. Her breath was ragged, erratic. She looked upon the sandy ground, a mixture of red earth and gravel that seemingly hadn’t seen rain in centuries.

Trinne? Karmena? Her classmates at the Academy? She had read behind the lines, she knew. The Angel was there, had found her trace, almost ten years later, because Nay had used inhuman magic, unveiling the young Legio to the monster. She hadn’t only killed her friend Joanna, but maybe also Trinne, all those Ducal guards that she was almost friends with after all those duels, the women at the Soi…all those families…? There were so many children.

“Who said you could stop?”

The sentence, said by no one, echoed inside her head. She realized that she was currently having a panic attack. She could not let that happen; she was in hostile territory.

Trinne was not dead.

That certainty gave her strength. She filled the bucket and went back up to the room.