Therefore do not bend, Ancalimë. Once bend a little and they will bend you further until you are bowed down. Sink your roots into the rock, and face the wind, though it blow away all your leaves. -- J. R. R. Tolkien, Unfinished Tales

"Kiriyuki?"

The sea serpent hissed. Kitri stepped back. Irímé put himself in front of Abi, glaring up at the creature as if its existence was a personal slight. What use he thought he would be if it did decide to attack, probably not even he could have said.

Kitri was never sure of what happened next. It was a blur with only a few seconds of nightmarish clarity. The sea serpent lunged forward. Kitri leapt away. Irímé grabbed Abi's arm and tried to pull her out of harm's way. Water splashed everywhere, on the path, on the serpent, on Kitri herself. She couldn't see Abi or Irímé. For one awful minute it looked like the sea serpent had climbed onto the path.

Under the circumstances Kitri's thoughts were not at all coherent and hardly helped her understanding of the situation. No no nonononono how can it do that it doesn't even have arms--

Then suddenly the serpent was gone. In its place was a young woman, a Seroyawan from her appearance, her hair and clothes dripping wet. Kitri was briefly distracted by the silver embroidery on her long black outer robe. For a minute it looked less like embroidery and more like... scales...

Irímé's well-meaning assistance only got himself and Abi in the perfect spot to be drenched by an even larger wave than the one that hit Kitri. The two of them were so busy grumbling and bickering that they were paying no attention at all to their surroundings. Kitri tried to speak. It was most unfair that right now she was soaked to the skin but her mouth was bone dry.

While she was still trying to remember how to speak, the... sea serpent? Being? Woman? Just trying to decide how to refer to her was giving Kitri a headache! Whatever she was, she burst into a long and clearly angry monologue in an unfamiliar language. Abi's expression grew more and more outraged with each word. Minutes ticked by and the woman still didn't run out of things to say.

At last Abi's patience ran out.

"You didn't have to save me! I was in no danger!" she snapped.

The strange woman glared at her. In understandable but oddly-accented Saoridhin she said, "Are you sure? Then why do you smell of dark magic?"

It took a great deal of self-control -- and a lingering healthy dose of fear -- to stop Kitri telling the woman all about Abi's latest escapades. Irímé opened his mouth, caught Abi's eye, and closed it again.

The woman continued without letting Abi get a word in edgewise. Unfortunately she went back to speaking in her own language. Kitri and Irímé exchanged awkward looks. It was never pleasant to be caught in the middle of an argument. When the argument was in a language they spoke then there was some entertainment to be derived from it. But no one could find anything interesting in such a lengthy spiel when they didn't understand a word.

Abi interrupted in the same strange language. She and the woman yelled at each other for at least ten minutes. Well, Abi yelled. Her friend -- or so Kitri assumed; clearly they knew each other, and no one would travel miles to find a stranger or an enemy -- didn't actually raise her voice. She didn't have to. The scorn in her voice could have turned milk sour.

This continued for so long that Kitri began to seriously wonder if Abi had forgotten her and Irímé's existence. She took a step back. Then another. And another. She waved to get Irímé's attention, then gestured emphatically for him to follow. He looked uncertainly at Abi. She remained blissfully unaware of his existence. With a shrug he slipped past her.

Kitri set off down the path, feeling absurdly like a small child evading a lecture. Irímé followed more slowly. He kept stopping to look back at the still-raging argument with the air of a mother hen worrying about an especially stupid chick. Before long he'd fallen so far behind Kitri that she couldn't see him any more.

Unlike him she wasn't overly concerned for Abi's safety. A woman who started a small-scale zombie apocalypse could face a sea serpent alone.

But just in case, perhaps she should warn Abi's parents about what was happening.

"I don't believe it," Abi grumbled in Seroyawan. "You came all this way, without permission, just because you and Mirio thought I'm too stupid to be left on my own?"

Kiriyuki snorted. "You? Worried about doing anything without permission? The hypocrisy is astounding. I came here because I knew you'd make a fool of yourself if you were left unattended. And you are left unattended," she insisted, ignoring Abi's protests. "In spite of Mirio's clumsy attempts no one in your family truly knows what sort of things you meddle with."

If it wasn't beneath her dignity -- and if it wouldn't have confirmed Kiriyuki's certainty she was little more than a foolish child -- Abi would have pouted. "I don't meddle. I know exactly what I'm doing. Why do I have to keep saying that?"

Kiriyuki raised an eyebrow. "Oh, so you knew what you were doing when you called up the spirits of the damned[1]."

The memory of that unfortunate incident still made Abi blush to the roots of her hair. "They weren't the spirits of the damned. They were fire pixies."

"They howled like the damned," Kiriyuki said grimly.

Unfortunately she was right. Late one evening Abi had just wanted to light the fire without the bother of getting out of bed or calling a servant. So she cast a spell she'd recently created and hadn't yet tested. The first clue something had gone wrong was the chorus of agonised wails.

Those screams filled every corner of the palace and beyond. People on the outskirts of the city grabbed their weapons and prepared to defend themselves from whatever was making that horrific noise. The emperor's guards ran to protect him. The empress tried desperately to keep order as her ladies-in-waiting screamed and fought each other over hiding places. Mirio barricaded his younger siblings into the nursery and waited outside the door, drawn sword in hand, for the attack he thought was coming. Kiriyuki, just back from a fishing trip, heard the noise down at the seaside. She grabbed the first weapon to hand -- an old boat hook abandoned on the dock by a careless fisherman -- and hurried to the palace, fully convinced a massacre was in progress.

By the time everyone knew they were in no immediate danger, they all jumped to the wrong conclusion. A quick glance at the small bird-shaped fireballs darting around the palace and screaming at the tops of their lungs would convince anyone that these weren't really ghosts. Alas, no one was thinking clearly. Not even Abi. Certainly not when that infernal racket went on and on without end.

It took twenty priests, a small battalion of nuns, and some very discreet attempts at necromancy on Abi's behalf before they collectively realised they'd misjudged the situation. The emperor called on a group of naturalists who specialised in fire elementals. Within hours the palace was completely pixie-free. Slightly singed and definitely the worse for wear, but mercifully silent for the first time in days.

Most of the royal court still didn't know what had happened. When asked the soothsayers looked very wise and ascribed it to ominous signs in the sky and accumulated ill-fortune.

Kiriyuki and Mirio had no doubt of who was responsible. Abi avoided them as if they were wailing ghosts themselves for months afterward.

She had never tried casting spells inside the palace again. Not until she was absolutely sure of what they did and how to reverse them.

Even now, all these years later, the thought of those few horrible days sent a chill down Abi's spine.

Kiriyuki continued speaking, unaware or uncaring of the painful memories her words had dredged up. "I heard about that other fiasco. Something about the walking dead crawling out of their graves. What did you do?"

"That was an accident," Abi protested.

She had to admit it was a threadbare excuse. Kiriyuki looked as disapproving as Kitri had.

"Well, I'm going to make sure there are no similar accidents," she announced with the air of a tutor faced with an especially unpromising pupil. "If you can prove within two weeks that you can raise the dead safely and control what you call up, I won't mention a word about your necromancy to your parents. If not, they'll hear all about it."

"You-- You-- That's blackmail!"

Kiriyuki nodded. "Consider it payback for the grey hairs you've given me over the years."

You don't have any grey hairs, Abi wanted to snipe. A thought occurred to her before she opened her mouth.

"Wait a minute! You can't just invite yourself to my parents' home without sending any notice! You'll have to inform the empress, and then the whole thing will get back to your parents, and they'll be furious about it, and Grandmother will learn you aren't supposed to be here..."

A wild image of Seroyawa and Saoridhlém going to war over Kiriyuki's unwanted visit popped into Abi's mind. For a minute she didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Kiriyuki, damn her, wasn't the slightest bit perturbed. "I thought about that on the way here. I'll say I was so worried about you--" She was interrupted by a thoroughly scornful scoff from Abi. She pretended she hadn't heard, "--that I just couldn't rest until I knew you were safe. And I'm going to stay to put the fear of the gods in your fiancé, as any good older sister would."

It took a great deal of restraint not to shriek with laughter. "You? A good older sister?"

Once again Kiriyuki ignored her. "I'll apologise and be as prim and proper as they expect me to be. If you don't raise hell -- literally -- in two weeks I'll go home and not make a fuss."

Sure you will, Abi thought, already making plans to wake the dead at the first opportunity. "You'd better come home and start explaining right away. Goodness knows what story Irímé and Kitri have told by now."

Ilaran wasn't surprised to hear he'd been barred from Haliran's house. Truth be told he was more surprised it had taken her so long. He added another sin for which she would pay to his mental list and continued planning her downfall.

In his rooms he'd set up a small shrine to his god. Contrary to popular belief he hadn't learnt about Ziem-čiabu-nișe[2] from his mother. Years ago he'd met a very strange traveller while hunting a monster that had killed half a village. She'd helped him kill the monster then accompanied him for part of the journey home. Along the way she'd told him many strange stories and swore all of them were true. But the one that struck him the most was her story of the god she worshipped. He had meant well but he made terrible mistakes, so he was thrown out of heaven. Now he wandered the world wearing a veil, too ashamed to show his face, and tried to make amends by doing good and ensuring the wicked were punished.

Gods of any sort were never popular with Ilaran. They had failed him too many times for him to believe they had any power. But the story of that wandering god stayed with him after all these years.

It was a change to find a god who didn't ask for worship. It was a comfort to think there was a deity out there, even an exiled and forgotten one, who still cared for the living, mortal and immortal alike. He knew it was just a story. Yet it was a story that was more encouraging than a thousand realities.

When he'd finished the shrine he'd set up a chessboard in front of it. An onlooker would assume a pair of amateurs had deserted it in the middle of the game. There were only six pieces left on it. Three were arrayed in a semi-circle in front of a fourth. In the process they disregarded all known rules of chess, for the beleaguered piece was a rook and the three pieces in front were all knights. Behind the rook were two pawns placed on opposite corners of the board.

Ilaran looked at the chessboard for a long time. At last he leant over and moved the rook forward another space, so it was immediately in front of the three knights. He took another knight out of the box and set it behind the three already there.

Any of his household back in Tananerl would have had no difficulty deciphering the message. It wasn't a chess game at all. It was a battle plan.