Jeno is with her parents, for the afternoon, and Leah spends the time skimming through the books Wellen lent her. She finds notes he has written in the margins, but can’t decipher his handwriting – certainly not with her eyesight the way it is. One section pertains in particular to the exact history of the Contested Lands, written from the perspective of Volst, and she reads it voraciously, grateful to finally have some answers.

“Volst laid claim to the land dubbed “the Jun Province” during the Great Settling. It was lost three centuries ago, in war; Devad bent the rules of the Treaty which ended the war, and claimed the land, renaming it “East Devad.”

“Since then, few Devadiss families have successfully been able to hold control over any part of the so-called Contested Lands. No other nation has ever tried to infringe upon its resources or borders, for fear of inviting the wrath of both Volst and Devad.

“Most of the land has been left wild, with farmers either abandoning their homesteads once they become too isolated or forming mini-communities of mostly independent landowners, claiming no political power but nonetheless being self-governing in the absence of exterior government. Occasionally, individuals will rise up and claim sovereignty over their territory; these self-proclaimed nobles are seen as illegitimate by both nations, though only Devad has the authority to rebuke them.”

Leah finds only a little about Cheden’s history – an empire spanning not quite a thousand years, with a strong mythic history – and nothing at all about Algi’s or Nent’s. There is some information about the Nations of Bair, and what little there is, is laced with xenophobia and magic-fearing. ‘The peoples of Bair’…what exactly does that mean? Just from what I’ve seen here I know there’s ethnic diversity, but how common is it to see non-white people in Volst’s provinces? Well, that’s not entirely right; Vivitha and Kain are both from the provinces. Are white people the foreigners? Or are my distinctions entirely inaccurate and based on a geography that does not apply here? Much likelier to be that.

What about other forms of diversity? Religion, language? The whole region can’t all speak the same language. Seffon uses that weird dialect of English. I feel like people have mentioned that other-Leah speaks her own language…Algic? God I hope no-one ever tries to talk to me in it, I’d be screwed. She remembers how the last time she had memories come back to her from the skull spell, it was of giant spiders in a river in Bair, speaking an odd language she could not understand but almost felt she could speak. Was that Algic, or something else?

A sudden realisation hits her. If other-Leah doesn’t speak this dialect as a mother tongue, maybe her ‘dumbness’ is just language-trouble? They all seem surprised when I use long or uncommon words, but maybe it’s just that she doesn’t know this language very well. I hope it’s not just that…that’d be very pretentious of them, to not realise she was trying her best in her second language. Speaking of second languages…

She tests her tongue, and finds she is still capable of speaking French, and the few words of Spanish she has from ineffective high school classes and self-teaching. I’ll test them on Wellen when I return the books; he seems like he might know. The five might also, if they’re so well-travelled, but I’d rather not tip them off to anything suspicious.

Jeno returns late, and has to rush to dress for supper. Leah offers to help, and immediately regrets it; Jeno’s clothing is far more complicated than hers, and she fumbles endlessly over the gold-plated clasps and the hidden laces keeping everything in place. Jeno is patient with her fumbling, giggling at her exasperated comments.

“Why not just use buttons? How are you supposed to put this on by yourself?” Leah asks, attaching the gold-and-velvet link at the back of Jeno’s neck.

“I’ve been wearing these all my life; it’s easy once you know how.”

“You don’t have a lady’s maid?”

“In theory, yes, but only for the very complicated things. I could put something like this on in pitch darkness, if I had to.” Jeno turns to her with a mischievous smile. “Or take it off.”

Leah gives her a quick kiss then gestures to the door; they walk out together, falling into their appropriate paces, the image of propriety.

At the table, Jeno sits with Samson, as she has done the past few nights since the engagement was formally announced. They are acting very cute together – whispering and giggling and sharing glances – and both sets of parents seem to approve.

Leah tries to look neutral, or at most mildly approving of the match, but in general matches her expressions to those of her teammates, who all treat it like a normal, political marriage.

There is no briefing session this night, as the border has been quiet recently. Iris and Leah elbow each other in relief, and Meredith pointedly ignores them.

“I’m a little concerned,” Meredith admits to Leah after supper, as they wait at the door for Jeno. “It might also be that the question about the scrolls startled the Auzzos and Valerids. Iris assures me there was nothing suspect about the weapons, and Vivitha said the fletching of the arrows came from a type of duck found near the Shining Island, so it all checks out, but still…those missives bother me.”

Leah is grateful that she wasn’t the one who asked after all. There’s never going to be a better time to bring it up, though…and Meredith might have an idea how I should best go about reporting in the scroll I found, without getting in trouble. Before she can begin to ask, Jeno arrives at the large double-door. Meredith nods at her, then at Leah, and leaves them to walk back to her own rooms alone. Leah deflates a bit, but does not call her back.

Leah accompanies Jeno to their suite, and touches her hand gently at the door, just a brush, before sending her to bed.

Back in her rooms, she feels herself drifting into a smooth sleep the moment she gets under the covers. A dream hits her like a freight train.

*

Meredith and Iris puzzle over a map as Leah tends to the horses by a stream. Kain is futilely trying to teach Vivitha to walk quietly over the dead leaves of autumn, rimed with frost. Even Kain’s steps aren’t perfectly quiet, but Vivitha keeps stumbling and stepping on every hidden branch and gopher hole.

Beeswax shies away from something on the other side of the stream. Leah puts out her spear in a defensive position and steps across the stones to the other side, looking about. A shadow moves, about twenty metres away, and then something bolts towards her. She spins the spear around to face the oncoming force, hoping it will impale itself before it reaches her, but the incoming shape dissolves into mist before it hits the point of the spear.

She hears a commotion on the other side of the stream, and turns to see that her distraction has allowed her teammates to be surrounded by more shadowy shapes. Kain noticed first and has warned the others, going on the defensive, but there is only so much a rogue can do without the advantage of surprise.

One of the figures yells, and a hoard of magic-shrouded shapes pour out of the woods. As the others scramble for their weapons to defend themselves, Leah notices that about half of the figures seem to fade in and out of existence, never actually physically touching their opponents.

“Illusion!” she hears herself call out, trying to keep track of which figures are solid and which illusory. She ends up lost, and just stabs wildly at every opponent, inexpertly using her shield as a secondary weapon to try and double her chances of actually hitting one.

A thrown axe imbeds itself in her shield and she drops it, the extra weight making it unwieldy. She instead braces her shoulder and runs into the densest point of the fray, barrelling through two illusions before hitting something solid and knocking it off its feet. She ends up sprawled on top of an ordinary-looking man wearing some sort of guerrilla uniform, who struggles to get his wind back. Leah stomps on his throat as she stands back up and he convulses, not dead but unable to breathe without a miracle to heal him.

Another fighter has cut the horses loose; an unfamiliar black one bolts into the forest, but the others mill about, Maelstrom kicking at anything that approaches. One figure lies trampled to jam under her front hooves.

A horn call suddenly causes the remaining figures to fall back, melting into the woods. Leah takes the time to notice Iris swinging into Maelstrom’s saddle to give chase, Kain bleeding out from a leg gash, and Meredith administering first aid. Vivitha has come out from hiding and is finally able to shoot at their foes as they flee, her bow being useless in a crowded melee.

“We need to tell Herrets that the infestation wasn’t cleared.” Meredith says as she finishes trying up Kain’s leg. “Kain’s horse bolted, but she can’t ride like this anyway, she has to stay here. Vivi?”

Vivitha shakes her head. “I can’t protect her if they come back for an ambush.”

Meredith frowns. “Iris needs to come with me; she’s the only one the Lady trusts.”

Her eyes fall on Leah. Leah picks up her shield, the axe blade sticking fully through the wood, and discards it. Meredith reaches over to the man Leah knocked over, who is asphyxiating on his own tongue, and pulls a round wooden shield out of his limp hand. Leah takes it when she holds it out to her.

“We’ll be back within forty-eight hours.” Meredith looks like she’s saying goodbye for the last time.

“See you then,” Leah says defiantly. “We’ll be right here.”

Meredith mounts up to leave, Blither’s dappled gray coat even more pronounced in his youth. Iris returns empty-handed to accompany her, Vivitha following behind after collecting her expended arrows. Leah watches them disappear into the forest, and then listens to the interminable silence.

Kain whimpers, and Leah puts pressure above the injury. The cloth is bloodstained, but only slowly becomes more so. Leah looks at the relative stranger, and feels a calm certainty that the rogue will die before help returns. She also suspects that she will die too, if the ambushers return.

The man she knocked over finally rattles out a last breath, breaking the silence. She had thought him long dead. She approaches, and sees he is blue in the face, his hands frozen in place around a metal beaker with a cork. He didn’t have the strength to open it before dying, but it seems he was intent upon it.

“Last rites? A charm? A tot of rum to ease your going?” Leah sits down next to the corpse and pries the beaker away. She opens it and sniffs, smelling only a very faint aroma of fruit, overpowered by something distilled and herbal. “Bitters?” She chuckles, taking a tiny sip. The drink warms her to her very core, and eases her sore shoulder from where she had barrelled into the man to knock him down. Her hands tingle strangely; looking at her skinned and bleeding knuckles, she watches in awe as the skin re-grows, and the pain fades.

She had heard of healing potions, but thought they were very rare. Certainly they were in Volst and Algi. They are near the Nations of Bair, however, so she reflects that they might be more common here.

She returns to Kain, checking to make sure the forest is clear. Birds chirp familiar-yet-not tunes as she tilts Kain up and offers her a drink. The rogue accepts, unresisting but not entirely aware of what she is tasting. A few seconds pass, and the tenseness in her body melts away. Leah checks the leg bandages, and sees that the blood has stopped flowing so heavily. Removing them, she notices that the wound has shrunk from a seven-inch gash to a five-inch slice. Another sip and Leah watches as the flesh knits itself back together with a red glow, shrinking to a four-inch shallow cut. She also notices that the scar left behind is a brilliant red, slightly glowing – obviously magical.

In fear she takes the beaker away and corks it, hoping the effect will fade before the team returns. The worst has healed, and Kain will last that long at least without further help, and may even be able to defend herself minimally. Leah considers dumping the rest of the potion into the stream, then reconsiders and tucks it into her belongings, in case of a future emergency. There is only half a sip left, but even that might be enough to pull someone away from death one day.

So long as she can keep it hidden from the others.

*

Leah awakens only very slowly from this dream, still hearing some of the birdsong as she rises through the layers of sleep into wakefulness. Once again it is very early, before sunrise. At least this time I didn’t wake up screaming. More than that, this dream was actually more like a memory than disjointed flashes.

She sits up in bed, in the darkness, and dwells over what she saw. Everyone looked younger in the dream, and warrior-Leah hadn’t been able to do the shield bash that she can now. Kain had been much less stealthy, and her horse was not Carob. Leah realises that suddenly she knows the names of everyone’s horses, where before she had been struggling to match the horse to the rider, much less the name to the horse.

Getting up quietly and dressing for the day, she checks to make sure Jeno is still safely asleep in her bed. Reassured that nothing is out of place, she leaves to go train in the courtyard.

Once there, she finds that Iris is already up and practicing, with one of the stable-boys. As she draws nearer, Leah hears her calling directions to the boy, correcting his parries. The boy holds his wooden sword awkwardly but firmly, and seems competent enough. He notices Leah, and Iris notices his gaze shift. Iris turns, and excitedly beckons for her to join, to give the boy an example of how the move should work.

“I’m teaching him to disarm; that shouldn’t strain your ribs too much, should it?”

Yes, Leah thinks, but shakes her head. She takes up a practice sword, and follows Iris’s instructions, allowing herself to be disarmed three times. The third time hurts her wrist a bit, but Iris does not call for another. Leah passes the sword back to the boy, and sits back to watch them practice. The boy seems good. Better than I am, anyway. God, how embarrassing.

At sun-up, the boy rushes off to his chores with a quick thank you to the warriors for their training. Iris pats him on the back and sends him away with a grin, then turns back to Leah who watches it all with a curious expression.

“What?”

“My question exactly,” Leah says, jabbing her in the ribs when Iris sits down beside her.

Iris shrugs it off, taking a deep drink of water. “I train them for free, so long as they promise to take extra good care of Maelstrom and let me take her for midnight rides without telling anyone.”

Leah grins widely. “Oh? Midnight rides where? Not anywhere scandalous, or you wouldn’t tell me.”

Iris laughs. “To the port. I like to get in some time gambling with the sailors, to keep up on the gossip and get some extra silver. And I do always return with more silver than I left with, I make sure of that.”

“Well, I promise not to question your technique,” Leah says, and they both laugh it off.

“You should join me some time,” Iris says with a side-eye look. “You used to like the port. Spent a lot of time there before…” She knocks Leah on the head.

“Oh?” Leah says, running through her diary entries in her mind. “Well, I don’t know if I should be playing card games, if I’ve forgotten the rules. I already lost my whole change purse once in the past two weeks.”

Iris laughs, and passes her the canteen. “So what are you doing up so early?”

“Wellen tried more magic on me, to return my memories.”

Iris tenses up, but listens as Leah explains that she didn’t resist breathing in the fumes, that she tried to get as much as possible, and that it gave her a very vivid dream, possibly memory.

The two sit close on the wooden bench as Leah tells the story, Iris listening intently, growing more and more excited. Leah leaves out the part about the potion, but tells everything else.

Iris claps her hands once, at the end, eyes bright. “Yes! And when we found you, you were both totally okay, and Kain’s leg was only a little injured. Gods, we made fun of Meredith for a long time after that for how she had overreacted. ‘Oh, it was bleeding out! The cut was almost to the bone! It was longer than my hand!’ Pfft.” She leans back on the bench, legs swinging out in front of her, her grin wide. “Oh wow, that was early on, though. You had only just joined with us. Fuck, it might even have been your first campaign with the group.”

Leah dredges up a name from the dream. “Herrets? The Lady?”

Iris smiles with a reminiscent look. “Yes, Lord Herrets and his pretentious wife, the Lady Hor.”

Leah chokes on air. “Was that her real name?”

“No, we just called her that. She kept an entourage of young male guards to protect her. Her husband hired us specifically because she couldn’t sleep with any of us.”

Leah bites her tongue to keep from smiling.

Iris continues. “They needed to drive out a bandit infestation. Some of them were from Bair, and had magic, but Algi had no defensive magicians to drive them away, so they went with an elite team of fighters: us.”

Leah has gone stone-still. “Algi?”

“Hmm?”

“That was in Algi?” Leah’s voice cracks a bit.

Iris’s face falls. “Oh, Leah, I forget sometimes that you don’t remember anything…not even home…and when you do have these moments of clarity, it feels like you’ve come back to us, whole and intact, but then I remember that it’s only a small piece of you that has returned, and the rest is still lost…”

Kain emerges from the keep and greets them cheerfully, breaking the heartfelt mood that had started to build. Iris delightedly announces that another memory has returned to Leah, and they spend the time before breakfast recounting it, and then again when Meredith and Vivitha emerge.

The five go to breakfast cheerful, all feeling like Leah is making progress on the road to recovery. Leah rushes up to escort Jeno as she gets ready to descend, and finds Samson also waiting for her.

“Good morning, Talesh.” Samson says, very formally. Leah does a double-take.

“Good morning to you, Samson,” she replies confusedly.

Samson also seems confused.

Jeno opens the door, smiles to see Leah, and then freezes for a moment on seeing Samson. “Good morning, Samson. Leah.”

Both mutter a good morning back. After an awkward pause, Leah gestures for Jeno to lead the way, and falls into step behind her. Samson walks smoothly alongside Jeno, silent. In the dining hall they part ways and Leah rejoins her teammates.

“He said ‘good morning Talesh’ to me?” she whispers to Kain.

Kain nods reassuringly. “He was just being polite, don’t worry. He’s still just a kid; he wanted to make a good impression on Jeno.”

“He was using your last name as a sign of respect.” Meredith adds to this.

Leah’s eyebrows jump up in sudden realisation of the obvious. “Oohhhh.”

Meredith smirks. “Ah, you’d forgotten your last name until now. We never thought to mention it before?”

Leah shakes her head and shrugs it off, mixing the scrambled eggs with the bit of oatmeal that constitute today’s breakfast

“Well I hope you called him something respectful back,” Meredith says.

“Ummm…”

Meredith takes a deep breath, then waves the issue away with a hand. “What’s done is done. Call him ‘young Lord’ or ‘sir’ if he does it again.”

Leah takes a bite of breakfast, and pauses before chewing and swallowing. “Is it just me,” she says, “Or has the food gotten plainer over the past few days?”

Vivitha shrugs. “This is the food I grew up on; it tastes fine to me.”

Meredith pokes at the egg and oatmeal in her bowl, apparently not sharing Vivitha’s appetite for it. “Just a little short on spices, that’s all. Politically speaking, I don’t think they want to trade with Devad until they figure out that whole situation. Until then, Probesc provides salt and Algi provides mustard, if you can stomach the stuff. No offence, Leah.”

Leah perks up at this political mention, but before she can ask for more details Meredith has moved on to talking about potential strategies on approaching Seffon’s stronghold. Leah listens to this, more intently than usual.

“We have to be on the lookout for more of those sigil things that got Leah,” Meredith says at one point, and Leah raises an eyebrow. Meredith notices. “Oh, well, near as we can tell, you read an inscription and triggered some sort of sigil as we were going through the fortress. It knocked you unconscious and summoned the guards.”

“So, we had already gotten to the inside of the fortress when you lost me?”

The others look sad. “We would have taken you back with us. Iris tried to carry you, but…” Meredith trails off. Iris looks very guilty.

“I never asked what happened, I just wanted to know…” Leah tries to awkwardly backtrack.

Iris is looking intently at her food, eyes dark. “We were cornered in a hallway. There was a window. Kain jumped out like a grasshopper and scaled the wall, leaving a rope for us, but there’s no way I could have climbed down with you. I’d have fallen, or dropped you twenty metres, or both, and – ” she cuts off, and Leah notices that she is crying, stabbing her oatmeal with a spoon.

Leah puts a gentle hand on Iris’s shoulder. “You’ve been beating yourself up inside over leaving me there? All this time you’ve believed it was your fault?”

“It was!” Iris snaps. “From your first days as part of the group you’ve always trusted me so much, and that means the world to me, but when it most counted I let you down.”

People are starting to notice this scene, and Leah quietens her voice and takes Iris’s hand. “Don’t. You did the only sensible thing, and you came back to rescue me. You did everything that could have been asked of you. I didn’t suffer anything more than a bit of memory-loss, so it’s all okay. I’m grateful you didn’t risk your life unnecessarily trying to get me out of there.” Leah pauses. “I’m also grateful you didn’t drop me out of a tower window.”

Iris bursts out laughing at that, and draws many stares. Jeno looks down at them in confusion, dropping her perfect-future-Lady mask for a moment.

Leah keeps a hold of Iris’s hand comfortingly, and the meal continues, disrupted but everyone too polite to actually address the disruption.

Afterwards, Leah rushes happily to Wellen’s to report on the success of his magic at restoring her memory. He receives this news with fascination, especially the fact that this time the memory was clear and in order, not disjointed images and words.

“So I was wondering,” Leah continues, relying on his good mood, “If I could borrow another book from you, if you have it. One about languages.”

He seems surprised, but it doesn’t darken his mood. “Which languages?”

“Well, surely not everyone speaks the same dialect that we are speaking now.”

“No, Volsti is spoken in Volst, the provinces, and Bair. Devadiss is spoken in Devad. Algic and Nentish are, as I understand it, two dialects of the same language. Bair has a number of smaller languages and one major one, Bairish. Cheden has its own language, Ched, but they value multi-lingualism there, for trade purposes mainly.”

“What about the Jun province?”

“They speak Volsti, but an archaic form, that evolved along different lines than the common form. A bit of Devadiss influence, but mostly in the far west.”

“And are all these languages closely related?”

“Related?”

“As in, are there similarities? Shared words? Shared sentence structure?”

Wellen shakes his head. “You’ve really taken to the sciences since you came back here, you know? I’d almost call you a prodigy. I have to be careful what I say around you, because you’ll remember every detail and ask questions about it later.” Leah realises that passing under the radar is one of the advantages of appearing dumb, and regrets asking. Wellen does, however, answer. “Volsti and Devadiss are related, Algic and Nentish are related, and Ched is related to the southern languages of Bair, but deviated a long time ago. Those are the main connections within the Gulf. There are other nations, further off,” he says, “But trade rarely occurs beyond the core six lands of Bair, Cheden, Algi, Nent, Devad, and Volst.

Leah nods along, and carefully prepares her next question. “Now, this is going to sound like an odd question. I heard some languages in one of the memory-dreams, ones I couldn’t recognise. Do any of the ones we just talked about sound like this?”

She recites the sound the spiders made, and Wellen agrees that it’s a Bairish accent, but an unknown language. She then tries Spanish, and he shakes his head, baffled. She tries French, and he looks pensive, finally saying that the accent is somewhat Devadiss, somewhat Old Volsti. He gives her a book written in Old Volsti, and thumbing through it she sees that it has some similarities with the missive in her room, but is not exactly the same: she sees instances of the words “your” and “the,” which she clearly remembers the missive not having.

“Would you like to do another session, to regain more memories?” Wellen asks.

“I’d better wait between sessions, but thank you for all your help, I appreciate it so much. I wish I knew how to repay you…”

Wellen gets up and gives her a hug. She stands frozen, then returns the hug hesitantly.

“Friendship doesn’t come easily in Valerin to one who dabbles in the magics,” Wellen says. “And finding someone willing to talk with me about it – willing to listen to me ramble, more like – that’s a very fine thing.”

Leah pats his back and pulls away from the hug. “I have to return to Jeno, but I’ll be back tomorrow for another round of memory-magic, if you’re still willing.”

Wellen smiles warmly. “I very much am, and I’m excited to know what more you will remember.”

She returns to the keep, and looks for Jeno. She finds her with the Duke and Duchess, walking through the garden, where the last crocuses have just finished blooming. Jeno is saying something about spring arriving and brightening people’s spirits. When she spots Leah, she kneels down to pluck the last purple crocus and hand it to her.

“Isn’t this type from Algi?”

Leah freezes, recognizing the gay coding, but sees the girl’s parents are oblivious. “Yes,” Leah improvises. “Yes, I recognise it from my childhood.”

The Duke invites her to walk along with them, and she falls into step behind them. The family speaks in Ched, or so Leah assumes; it is a staccato language, with few rolling sounds and many hard stops.

She notices guards wearing the Auzzo colours of green, white, and gold, watching from the sides. Why aren’t they closer, somewhere more visible? Is it odd for me to have stepped forward when Jeno was with her parents? She says nothing, and hopes that it will pass.

Eventually the Duke and Duchess leave to take tea, and Jeno hangs behind a moment, asking Leah to accompany her to her room for something she’d forgotten.

“That wasn’t dangerous?” Leah asks, once they are in Jeno’s rooms. “The purple crocus?”

“That code doesn’t exist in Cheden, or if it does, it is very well-hidden. There was no chance they’d know what it meant.”

“But it was still a risk. And it’s not like you need to subtly tell me you’re into women.”

“I did it for the thrill, and because I never get tired of letting you know I want you.”

Leah cannot react before Jeno has reached a hand over the back of Leah’s thighs, tracing her fingers up. “Oh god,” Leah says, partially in surprise and partially at the sudden rush of heat in her core, and the desire to act on it. “Don’t do that without warning,” she says censoriously, and sweeps Jeno in for a kiss.

Jeno lingers in the kiss, her tongue prodding a bit at Leah’s lips, and Leah allows her to push further.

Leah’s hands wander of their own accord, and she has to focus not to muss Jeno’s hair or dress, though she still manages to get a hand up Jeno’s loose vest to trace the curve under her breasts.

They stop at the same time, breaking apart, flushed. “The tea,” Jeno says. “They’ll be expecting me.” Leah nods and steps away.

Jeno grabs the forgotten trinket – an opal hair pin from Samson – and rushes to leave, looking very distraught.

“Chin up,” Leah calls as she leaves, and Jeno looks back in confusion.

Leah walks over, and lifts Jeno’s chin, giving her a very gentle kiss. “Head held high. I’ll be here for you when you get back.”

Jeno leaves looking a bit more chipper, and Leah goes to her rooms to continue reading, and to cool her head. She presses the crocus in the pages of her diary, smiling like a goof.