'Ach, people're always telling us no' tae do things,' said Rob Anybody. 'That's how we ken what's the most interestin' things tae do!' -- Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

After the first two days the gossip about Mirio and Lian's supposed engagement mostly died down. Somehow or other word got out that Abi was a notorious troublemaker -- which was true -- and that led to the rumour that she'd probably eloped with Lian herself -- which was so far from the truth that Mirio found it a real struggle to keep a straight face. That rumour was widely believed in the court. Mirio almost felt sorry for Abi. Almost.

Unfortunately that rumour was not believed in Seroyawa. As far as his father knew, he really was engaged to Lian, who really was going to come back at some point and ask to marry him. Mirio had never gotten so many angry letters from various relatives in his life. Most of them covered the same topics: it was stupid for Mirio to get engaged to someone after knowing them for at most a month, who was Lian anyway, how could Mirio debase himself by marrying a common foreigner from gods alone knew where...

It was almost enough to make Mirio want to marry Lian just to spite them.

He amused himself by imagining the wedding when he had nothing else to do -- and now that his cousins had gone back to their usual hobby of backstabbing each other and it was best for Mirio's physical and mental health to stay far away from them, he often had nothing else to do. Mainly he imagined the absolute nightmare it would be.

Possibility number one: no one told Raivíth who Lian really was. That would leave them with Mirio's family snubbing Lian as an upstart commoner and possibly a gold digger planning to use Mirio as a meal ticket. Not to mention how they would treat Mirio himself. He wasn't particularly popular with his extended family. They would show up to the wedding, of course, and behave impeccably in public. But the minute Lian set foot in Seroyawa he'd be subjected to all the spite and vitriol the royal court was capable of.

To say nothing of how the ordinary people would react. If news reached them -- and it would if this so-called engagement lasted much longer; Mirio knew better than to hope the papers wouldn't get wind of it somehow -- it would cause the biggest uproar since Great-Aunt Irodori broke up with her fiancé and eloped with a minstrel right before her wedding. Both Mirio and Lian would become the most talked about and least liked people in Seroyawa.

Add to that mess the chaos it would cause in Gengxin -- would Lian be allowed to stay as Zi Yao's doctor? Highly unlikely, and what would happen to Zi Yao then? -- and just thinking about it made Mirio want to run away and become a hermit living on a mountaintop.

Possibility number two: they did tell Raivíth who Lian really was. All of possibility one would still happen, with the added scandal of Lian being a disgraced prince, a murderer, and a dark magician. Someone was bound to suggest that Lian had cast a spell on Mirio, and it would all probably end with Lian being arrested again.

No, there was no way this fiasco ended well for any of them, and it was all Abi's fault. And yet, even as he thought of all those terrible outcomes, Mirio found himself also thinking about what it would be like to be married to Lian.

He knew he would have to marry someone at some point. The most likely candidate was a foreign royal. A few decades ago his father had considered arranging a marriage between him and a daughter of the Sultan of Ulurtah, and before that a potential spouse had been a prince of Kaxet'i. A grandson of the Empress of Saoridhlém would be a perfectly acceptable spouse -- in theory. And at least Mirio knew and liked Lian.

Setting aside other people's opinions, the only problem Mirio could see in this hypothetical marriage would be the question of physical intimacy. He didn't want it with anyone and he could never marry someone who did want it. That would be unfair to both of them and it would doom the marriage before it began. But did Lian want it? It wasn't the sort of subject that ever came up in conversation. All Mirio could say was that Lian had never shown any interest in men or women. Nor had he ever mentioned any former lovers.

In the highly unlikely event that Lian was like Mirio and didn't want intimacy, maybe a marriage between them would work out well. Mirio was shocked to catch himself thinking that he wouldn't actually mind being married to Lian at all.

Damn you, Abihira! he thought angrily, as if she was personally to blame for this. I'm going to throw you in the nearest river when you get back!

Running away to a mountaintop looked more and more appealing.

Abi could count on one hand the number of people whose dreams she wanted to get stuck in. Well, "wanted" was the wrong word. She didn't want to get stuck in anyone's dreams. But if she had to choose, she'd pick Kiriyuki, Mirio or Irímé. She knew all of them well enough that unwanted telepathy, although annoying and awkward, would also provide new and exciting blackmail material that would make up for the awkwardness. Ilaran was another matter. She'd known him for... was it really less than two months? And in that time she'd been forced to learn more about him than she'd learnt about some of her siblings. She'd already seen a far-too-large number of his memories; she did not want to see his dreams too.

At first she didn't realise where she was. Everything was a confusing mixture of light and shadows. She blinked twice. The world resolved itself into a clearing in a forest. She lay on the grass staring up at the bright blue sky. Huge trees surrounded the clearing, indistinct in the way all things were in dreams. Abi had vague memories that weren't her own of climbing those trees as a child. Behind them she caught glimpses of a castle that seemed simultaneously close and far away.

It took her a minute to realise this wasn't her dream, and another minute to realise she wasn't alone. She groaned internally. Not again!

"I'm sorry about this," she said wearily. "I'll find some way to fix it. After I deal with everything else, I mean."

Ilaran winced. "Please don't. Don't even try. You'd only make it worse, or undo the telepathy and do something equally bad."

Abi had to admit he had a point. "Why do you think this is happening? I'm starting to think it's Death punishing me for necromancy, but I don't know why you're being dragged into it."

Ilaran shrugged. He was lying on the grass a short distance away with one arm draped over his eyes to block out the light. "I don't know and honestly I'd rather not think about it. I was trying to sleep when you woke me earlier, and if I don't get some sleep soon I might very well murder the first person to annoy me tomorrow."

Abi fell silent. She managed to keep her mouth shut for well over ten minutes. But she thought the whole time, and finally she couldn't suppress the urge to speak again. "You said you knew who the spaceship belonged to. Who?"

"I don't know," Ilaran said. "I just suspect it has something to do with Haliran."

"Haliran? But she's in prison." And good riddance, too. Abi regretted many things she'd done recently, but breaking Haliran's arm wasn't one of them.

"She was. She escaped and I have no doubt she's planning to kill me. Probably Siarvin too, for that matter. A walking corpse is exactly the sort of thing she'd like to get her hands on."

Abi pictured the devastation that would ensue if Haliran set that corpse loose in Saoridhlém. She promptly wished she hadn't. "We've got to do something about her!"

"I've sent out a warning about the spaceship. I don't suppose you know how to track each of your creations?"

She'd never even thought of that. "I'm not sure if they count as my creations any more. They've been wandering around on their own for a long time. And no, I don't. I'll ask Lian if he knows."

Abi didn't know when or how she finally managed to fall asleep. It was a surprise when she opened her eyes and discovered the forest and Ilaran had vanished. Well, Ilaran had vanished physically. She could still sense his presence at the back of her mind.

She realised three things almost simultaneously. One, it was morning. Two, she was still a phoenix. Three, the street below was full of people gawking at her.

Abi didn't know whether to be glad or horrified. On the one hand, she finally knew there were survivors. On the other, no one liked to be watched while they were sleeping. And it was disconcerting to discover her phoenix form didn't have instincts to warn her when people approached. Any of them could have shot at her and she wouldn't have had any warning.

Cameras flashed. Abi suddenly knew exactly how Irímé had felt while trapped in his dragon form. She spread her wings. The crowd gave an excited "Oooooohh!" More cameras flashed. Abi took off. A disconcerting number of excited cheers followed her as she soared over the building.

Better check how many survivors there are and how many are injured, she thought.

She banked and circled round. As she passed over the street she was greeted with more cheers. No one had ever reacted to her appearance like this before. She found she didn't like it at all.

About forty adults and twenty children, she counted. No one injured. At the side of one building was a cellar door propped open and with other people peering out of it. That explained where the survivors had been hiding and why she hadn't seen any. People pointed up at her and turned to their friends as if they wanted to make sure they weren't the only one seeing this.

In this form Abi couldn't explain why she was here or that they soon wouldn't have to worry about the monsters any more. She tried to say a friendly "Good morning", but a phoenix's vocal cords and beak weren't designed for complicated sounds. All she managed was a high-pitched trill.

The people gasped. She clearly heard someone shout, "It's going to sing!"

Oh no, Abi thought with a groan. The mythological rilluinaslis was supposed to have the second most beautiful song of any living creature[1]. She had an unpleasant suspicion that her song, on the other hand, would be as melodious as a crow's.

She wheeled round and flew away before they insisted on her singing for them.

In the daylight it wasn't as easy to find her way back as she'd thought. Abi still didn't know where the spaceport was in comparison to the city centre, or which side of the city she was on. She flew higher than she'd ever flown before, even higher than she'd gone on her first flight, until she could see the entire city spread out beneath her and looking like more like a board game than a real place.

Off to the right she spotted the distinctive domed glass roof of the spaceport outside the main city. With a flap of her wings she shot towards it much faster than she expected. Then she briefly got distracted by zooming around in circles, excited to discover how fast she could fly.

As she approached the spaceport she saw that Irímé wasn't guarding the gate any more. It was closed so nothing could get in. Three small dots moved around the paved area beside the port. She drew nearer and they resolved themselves into Lian, Irímé and Shizuki playing some sort of game. They stopped to watch her as she landed.

As soon as Abi turned back into her immortal form a small figure barrelled into her. She yelped and stumbled back.

The figure turned out to be Shizuki, who gave her a hug and asked excitedly, "What happened? Did you see any monsters? Did you kill them all?"

Irímé gave Abi a downright frosty look. "Where were you all night?"

Abi tried to disentangle herself from Shizuki. She failed. He hung on like a limpet. "I got lost so I slept on a building's roof. Something very strange happened last night."

Lian and Irímé both looked horrified.

Lian asked warily, "Strange as in 'all the monsters are gone'? Or strange as in 'they're now impervious to fire'?"

"Neither, but closer to the second than the first."