Leah’s head is completely clear within moments after the dizzy spell, but she is still shaken. In her mind, there is no doubt she heard her own world, however briefly. The implications are staggering, and the temptation to reach out and grab the rings nearly overwhelming. How did I never realise before? What was so important here? How could I not have noticed how much I miss home? They must be worrying about me so much.

Seffon stores the rings away, and Leah deflates a bit. He seems concerned for her well-being, looking at her sharply as she dwells on the sounds she just barely heard.

“Some fresh air,” he says with confidence. “You’ve been inside too much. It’s not good for the heart.”

Leah nods, not quite paying attention. The two leave, trailed by a pair of guards, and head through tunnels that Leah does not recognise at first, until suddenly they are at the front doors and exiting into the courtyard with the fountain.

Seffon talks all the way about how this is a good sign, and maybe he will be able to identify the exact cause, and how this is the first step towards identifying how it happened, and then when, and then where her new mind came from, and then how to get the old one back. Leah is not listening to his rambling. She is trying to remember the sound of traffic, but finds it hard to bring it to mind.

They walk slowly around the perimeter, in the shaded path between the hold and the wall. There are extra guards in the watchtowers, but no more than normal on the walls, though the angle makes it hard to be sure.

“As for how we ought to proceed for right now…” Seffon is saying; Leah snaps back to the present moment and listens. “My specialty is the domain of enchantment, the branch concerning the influencing of people’s actions and decisions, though I’m also a capable hand at certain divinations and conjurations. A medically-trained magic-user might have better luck with you. It might actually have been very helpful to have that resourceful hedge-wizard with us for advice…your fellow, in Valerin.”

Leah is surprised to hear him bring up Wellen. “Really? He didn’t know all that much, it seemed to me. Certainly nothing so impressive as what I’ve seen here.”

Seffon scoffs. “Oh, I admire anyone who practices magic in Volst. They walk such a fine line. For him to have learned the spells and gathered the ingredients he had, he must have been either very lucky or very respected.”

“I never got the impression he was respected.”

Seffon raises an eyebrow and waits, interested.

Leah shrugs. “Lonely, mostly. He’d never had the chance to perform so much magic before I came along, he said. I was so relieved to have someone who could teach me about the rules of this world, without asking questions, that I spent more time with him than almost anyone else in Valerin. By the end of it, he said he was so happy to have me as a student that he – ” She trails off, remembering him seeing her in jail.

Seffon waits, then changes tack. “You were his student? You wanted to learn magic from him?”

“I didn’t entirely understand what magic was, at the time. Mostly I wanted to learn history, politics, law.”

“Oh?”

“Well, I had no way of knowing what was normal in this strange new world. I didn’t want to accidentally give myself away by not knowing that it was illegal for a commoner to wear silver, or to wink in public, or to whistle in front of nobility, or whatever other strange rules they might have.”

Seffon laughs. “That seems…wise, yet ridiculously over-cautious.”

“Maybe, but I learned many important things through that research. Without him I never would have known about the taboo for spilling alcohol on a nation’s symbols, and knowing that was how I realised the complexity of the Volst-Enterlan situation, that one time with the wine-stained missive.”

Seffon tenses up slightly at that. Leah realises she has just told this powerful man that his neighbours slighted his nation and name in a grievous way. Oh geez. Um. Don’t shoot the messenger?

There is no immediate repercussion, so she takes the risk to push the conversation forward. “I take it that’s a taboo here, too?” At his affirmative nod, she continues. “Are most of the laws in place here the same as in Valerin?”

“Every region of the Enterlan is somewhat different. In the part I control, yes, some. We are so close to Valerin still, physically and genealogically. What little Devadiss law made its way out here, my family has taken apart, by and large. Some Volst laws we have abandoned, however, as being outdated and bigoted.”

“Oh?” Leah tries not to sound too eager.

“The prohibitions related to religion have been discarded, by and large, and many of the civil laws about land inheritance and education we have re-written.”

“Oh.” She tries not to sound too disappointed.

Seffon continues on, explaining. “Volst’s rules about inheritance state that the first child enrolled in a school gets to inherit, the logic being they will be most prepared for the responsibilities. However, it leads to colleges where admissions are determined by whether the teachers benefit from a certain child or other taking over their neighbour’s homestead, or whether they want to marry their child to the eventual owner of a neighbouring estate and thus require the proper gender for the match.”

Leah sighs internally at ‘proper gender,’ reading between the lines.

“The system in the Enterlan is based instead on the more neutral principle of age, where children are raised together with their cousins, to encourage positive connections between them all,” Seffon explains, starting to sound a little proud. “The eldest of the group will inherit and decide on marriages for all their cousins, placing them in appropriately distant cities, though the further away one goes the less likely those cities are to follow the same principles.”

Leah nods along. “Are your nieces and nephews here? Well, I guess I should ask first if you have any.”

“No, I have none.” He offers nothing further.

They have walked a fair distance around the Hold, briefly stepping indoors to pass through a narrow wing, and from there towards an outdoor garden area where another gateway through the guarding wall leads to a road heading further west. The spring weather is warming, and the gardens are rife with seedlings, vines, and a surprising diversity of orchids.

A variety of pheasants wander the garden, eating pest insects and scratching up weeds between the rows of plants. Bright feathers and wattles adorn many, and some have ridiculously long or fluffy tails. Leah stops to admire the garden, both its birds and its plants, and Seffon humours her. The gardeners seem unsettled by her presence.

Some orchids have long bean-pod-type structures hanging from them, and Leah realises this must be vanilla. “Do you grow your own food?” Leah asks, looking doubtfully at the gardens; some of it is edible, but the quantity is far too meagre.

“We do; beyond the walls. This is the Hold’s private garden, mostly for herbal or medicinal plants. The more intense agriculture happens outside the walls.” They continue onward, heading south towards the raised passage that attaches Seffon’s tower to the rest of the hold, past which lie the stables.

Approaching the foot of the tower, Leah feels the hairs on the back of her neck raise, and her eyes are drawn suddenly towards the shadows of that passage.

She opens her mouth to speak; before she can even decide how to verbalise her sudden strange feeling, two daggers fly out of the darkness towards them. Her left arm flies up uselessly, shield-less, and the first dagger imbeds itself deeply in her flesh, stopped in its path towards Seffon. The second continues, but too high, and only nicks Seffon on the shoulder.

She clutches her arm and falls to a knee, watching as a lone fighter starts running out of the shadows with another two daggers drawn. She starts to rise, but the two guards trailing them step forward and draw short-swords.

In a blur, the fighting commences. Leah gets to her feet and turns to look behind herself, immediately, to confirm that they are not about to be flanked. Whoa. That seems like an unusually astute move on my part, for an untrained fighter. Who taught me that? There is no time to dwell on it, however. Confirming they are not about to be swarmed, she turns back to the active battle. The oncoming assailant disarms one guard and pushes in towards Leah and Seffon. Leah goes to advance, then notices movement from Seffon.

He has taken a few steps back and is casting, a focused look on his face. A swirl of red energy is spiralling out from his right hand, which is holding a gem hanging from his bracelet. He mutters something in an unidentifiable language, and the swirl solidifies into a sizzling cord of energy that then uncoils and goes to wrap around the attacker.

The attacker flips and dodges, closing fast. Leah puts a shoulder down and calculates an intercept course. Barely ten feet of running and she hits the man squarely in the belly, knocking him off his feet and tumbling over him. She tries to hold him down, bare handed, and he arches his back to push her off, slicing her along the gut as she goes – the suede stops most of it, but she still feels the flaps cling wetly to her skin, warm with fresh blood.

The man stands up, but apparently the delay was enough. Seffon finishes casting another spell; Leah turns just in time to see him draw his hand down slowly, eyes and fingertips glowing blue. The man on the ground screams for a split second then falls silent, encased in ice.

Very suddenly, the fight is over.

Seffon drops something from his hand – a piece of white coral, Leah thinks – and staggers for a moment, raising his hand to his bleeding shoulder. Leah goes to stand up and help him, but the guards are both at his side faster. Making a wobbly effort to push off the ground, Leah yelps as she suddenly feels the dagger wedged between her forearm bones.

Adrenaline gone, pain arrives. Seffon gives orders to the guards who have come swarming out, including sending the two nearest to help Leah. One goes to remove the dagger.

“No! No, don’t, it’s keeping me from bleeding out, don’t touch it.”

Neither speaks Volsti, and they ignore her attempts to bat their hands away. Seffon hears, however, and catches the guards in time to stop them.

He himself approaches, bringing out from a pocket at his side a dried and strangely coiled green stem from a plant, the flower unopened. He dips his finger in her blood to draw a rune on each side of the wound, then slices a sliver from the stem using the dagger currently in her arm. He sticks the sliver into the wound, then slowly pulls out the dagger.

Blood wells up, but Leah thinks it’s much less than there ought to be. One of the newly arrived guards, with what appears to be a medical kit, takes out bandages and begins binding the wound.

“There’s one on my chest,” she slurs. “I’m not sure how deep it is.”

She hears them discussing in Olues, and Seffon lays a hand gently along her ribs to check for the wound. “Barely a scrape. Not an intentional cut on his part,” Seffon finally announces. “The arm we’ll go take care of now.”

“The man…”

“They’ll burn him with the others.” Seffon’s face is hard.

“No…”

Leah leans over and shuffles back towards the frozen corpse. Seffon accompanies her and looks over the man.

“An advance guard from the Cheden force they stopped earlier today. Possibly not the only one…” He turns and gives orders to the other guards, presumably to search the area for more.

Leah picks up the knife that was pulled from her arm, and compares it with the other two clenched in the man’s fists and the fourth, retrieved from the garden by a very shaken young gardener-boy. She turns them all over, examining them. Seffon watches her do so, seeing that she has realised something.

“These aren’t at all like the dagger Jeno gave me. They’re longer, and narrower, and they have this sort of ridge along the middle…” She hefts one. “Heavier, too.”

Seffon takes ones and calls over a guardswoman – a high-ranking one, by her armour – and they both examine them more closely. “You’re right,” Seffon muses. “These are a mainland style, southern. You can find them anywhere from Devad to Welleslass.”

The guardswoman says something, and Seffon translates. “The handle; it’s antler, not bone. There are no antlered animals on the island of Cheden.” He takes another look at Leah. “This can wait; we need to treat that arm.”

Seffon grabs her shoulders and lifts her, then hands her off to the guardswoman and another guard. “Lutenan Adan will take you in; I’ll be there shortly.” He then turns and strides back to the Hold, accompanied by two guards, once again looking steely.

*

Leah is walked in and laid down on a fabric cot in a second-floor room. Looking around, she identifies it as a small hospital of sorts, with shelves of bottles, a fireplace for boiling water, and a large wooden rack with white cloths drying on it. Large windows with hand-sized panels of glass let in much light, and the roof is high, with exposed wood beams.

The cot is a wood frame with cloth stretched taught within. Leah lies back on it, staring up, hurting but not in agony. A few minutes pass, during which the guards stand watch over her.

A woman enters, with curly brown hair and tanned skin. Other than that Leah can’t focus enough to see. She looks down at Leah’s arm and sees that blood has started soaking through generously.

“Th baum has already uorn auf; pu presữ aun e.”

The junior guard grabs the bandaged arm and squeezes. Leah yelps.

The woman comes closer and adjusts the man’s grip, and the pressure stops stinging quite so much. “Ly tha. Nau meuvnau.”

Up close, Leah sees her more clearly; long lithe arms, large gold eyes, a low nose-bridge, and slender ears with solid bars of hematite in the lobes. The woman tucks her hair behind an ear, revealing a pointed tip.

“Oh what, elves?” Leah murmurs with a weak smile, then passes out.

*

Her eyes fly open suddenly, and she sits straight upright. Sunlight still fills the room, but at a different angle than before, she thinks. She can’t tell the time that has passed since her arrival.

Voices beside her stop; Seffon, sitting on a cot with his jacket beside him, and the woman from before, stitching the cut on his shoulder with silk thread. His head jerks up when Leah moves, and he winces, a fresh trail of blood leaking from the cut. The woman – doctor? – gently slaps his arm with the back of her hand and he holds still with a sore smirk.

“You were right.”

Leah looks around, getting her bearings, then takes another look at the woman. Her hair is tied back now, and she is wearing loose un-dyed linen clothing. Her limbs are indeed longer and narrower than Leah is used to seeing, and yet not model-like in their proportions. A few more seconds of looking confirms that it’s mostly in fact the woman’s palms, forearms, heels, and calves that seem longer.

A half-glance confirms that her ears are, indeed, pointed. A more careful glance at her face, in profile, shows her skull to be longer, and her nose bridge quite under-developed.

Leah can’t decide if this is a medical condition or a different species, but considering her conversation with Seffon from a couple days previously, she bets on the latter.

“Right about what?” she asks, rubbing her eyes.

“None of the assailants were wearing the traditional Cheden dagger. Their armour was Cheden in design, but didn’t exactly match any known ducal or margravate style. We’re not so sure now – ” He winces as the doctor finishes tying off a knot and tugs the silk secure. “We’re not sure they were in fact from Cheden.”

“Then where else?”

“That’s our next question.”

The woman steps away to clean the needle over a candle flame, and Seffon shrugs back into his jacket.

“How many were there, total?” Leah asks.

“Six were killed on the approach, and we’ve only found the one in the nearby area, but a scout team found tracks that suggested another is still hidden in the woods, or possibly returned to report failure.”

“Failure?”

“Well, they were not trying to infiltrate just to observe.” Seffon leans forward slightly, still sitting on the low cot.

The doctor rinses the needle in clear alcohol and stores it in a case. Leah can’t help but watch the woman – a different species?! – but tries not to be caught.

Leah turns back to Seffon. “Assassins?”

“Are the five assassins?” he asks, and Leah leans back with an insulted look. “I don’t mean to accuse! It was not your team’s main objective, and it wasn’t necessarily this team’s either. However, admit that if your team had gotten the chance to kill me, that first time, they would have taken it. It would have been within the parameters of their contract.”

Leah chews her lip. “Yes. They would have believed it would stop the conflict. Absolutely.”

Seffon considers her carefully, then smiles a bit. “And today, you, member of the five, saved my life.”

She hesitates. “Well…”

Seffon gestures to her bandaged arm, which still aches but dully. His face then falls. “Why would you do that? You’ve been here seeking my help, and certainly you have reason to hate the Valerids and Auzzos, but that doesn’t mean you had reason to care about my safety. I suppose if I’d died you’d be stuck here…” He considers this, apparently realising he’d stumbled across the probable answer to his question.

“I didn’t decide to do it. No offence, but I’m not sure I’d die for you.”

Seffon smirks a bit.

“It was muscle memory. I even knew something was wrong before the attack…just a premonition of sorts, a split second warning, instincts. I can’t remember clearly now, it went so fast…”

“Well I still owe you my safety.”

“Let’s not keep a record of our debts; it implies I’m going to stay here long enough to cash them in.”

Seffon openly laughs, then stands to go. The doctor returns and checks the scratch on Leah’s chest. Only when she registers the touch of skin on skin does Leah realise that at some point during her rest her top had been removed.

She reaches up to cover herself, but finds that a cotton contraption a bit like a sports bra or a dudou has already been wrapped around her for decency. The doctor catches the motion, and grins cheekily.

“Yu’ll understan tha e uas nesesary,” she says.

Leah nods, trying not to stare too openly at the woman’s face. Seffon has already moved on to testing his shoulder mobility, and doesn’t seem to have noticed Leah’s embarrassment.

Leah looks down and sees that the cut has been stitched shut, and runs along all her ribs until just under her right breast. Looking down also reminds her of the ugly scar on her belly, and the mostly healed cracked ribs from so early in her time here.

“You have magical healing here?” she asks, laying back down in the cot as the doctor gently pushes her back by the shoulders.

“Magical and mundane. We rarely have to utilise the more powerful spells, but when we do Sewheil is the best we have.” Seffon thinks, then smirks. “This is the second time today I’ve wished I could talk to your fellow, Uellen.”

When he pronounces it like that, Leah’s mind suddenly dredges up a memory of a name – Llewelyn – and she realises that possibly even the strangest names she’s encountered here might indeed have ties to old British names and pronunciations. All these connections, all these English-related names, both the language and the country…how frustrating, that the least believable part of this whole world is that they somehow arrived at English without ever having the influence of French or German!

Leah drags her mind back to the present. “I remember a few of the spells he used, when I cracked my ribs. Not well enough to perform them, but…”

Seffon shakes his head before she can finish. “Not unless you want to have ribs growing out of your forearm. Medical magics are not a trifling matter.”

“No, I was not a fan of Annihilation, I don’t need to live it in real life.”

Seffon blanks out at the reference, but presses onwards. “Well, I’ll leave you in Sewheil’s care. I’ll keep you apprised on anything we learn about the Cheden-imitators. If you think of anything, about the Duke and Duchess’s guards you saw in Valerin, or anything you might have overheard them say, please share it.”

Leah nods and settles back on the cot.

With a careless wave of her hand, the doctor snuffs the candle by pulling the flickering flame into her cupped palm, carrying it back to the fireplace and dumping it on the logs, where it disappears into the general glow.

Leah’s eyes are wide, but neither Seffon nor the doctor seem to notice.

“I’ll have them prepare a new room for you, for when you’re recovered,” Seffon continues as he leaves. “Perhaps a window, if we can manage it?”

Leah shakes her head to clear it. “Yes. Yes. Thank you.” Seffon nods, half-looking back at her, nods also to the doctor, and leaves.