The Hold is beautiful, she supposes begrudgingly. She didn’t really get the opportunity to be a tourist when she first arrived, considering she spent most of the time sneaking from shadow to shadow at the front of the five.

Two local guards and Kain are accompanying her on this little trip – just for some fresh air, and to confirm that she really is back home, and that time really has passed, and that this is all really…real.

She shakes her head a bit, a distracted frown on her face.

The halls are decorated with semi-religious artworks; mainly paintings, but a few spiral stairwells throughout the Hold have alcoves in the walls that contain nearly human-sized sculptures. Some Leah recognises vaguely as being similar to things she’d seen around Valerin and Volst, but they differ greatly from the religious iconography she grew up with. Those around her room, all featuring the so-called Green Giver or harvest goddess, portray her as being a busty, broad-hipped, maternal figure. Leah resists the urge to vandalise them and draw the goddess properly.

I know I’m being unreasonable. I feel like I deserve to be a little unreasonable, though. She realises she is scowling, and schools her expression back to neutrality. Absent-mindedly she pulls her hair away from her face, and is surprised by how light it feels at this length.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Leah looks down at Kain, who waits oh-so patiently for an answer. “About what?”

“About what happened on the other side.”

“Other side?” Leah smirks blandly. “You make it sound like I died.”

Kain rubs Leah’s arm and continues to walk alongside her in silence.

They emerge into a sunny day. A small garden with a chaotic mix of herbs and flowers and potted shrubs fills the gap between the Hold and the wall. Leah considers the wall carefully; how it had seemed so imposing, how Meredith and Iris had come up with the plan for crossing it unseen, how Kain had executed their plan, how Leah and Vivitha had covered their rear until they were all safely past the walls of the building within – and then Leah had switched to the front, ready to take the brunt of whatever hit them, the rest of her team shielded by her body. Her heart beats a little faster, remembering the adrenaline and fear. It is not a good feeling.

“Was this where we came in by, the first time?” Leah asks.

Kain looks around carefully. “It looks different in full light, and with everything blooming and leafed out like this. I think we were more towards the south, though.”

Leah looks over her shoulder to the tower, standing separate from the Hold, an elegant stone walkway connecting it to the main building. “That’s a security risk.”

“Hmm?”

She points to the ivy vines climbing the base of the tower, the stone pillars, the path below them. “That’s a security risk. It would be easy for someone to hide there. It’s in shadow absolutely any time of day. It’s pretty, but it’s dumb.”

“Takes one to know one.” Kain elbows her in the ribs, and Leah grins. The move is familiar, as is the teasing implied by it. “Leah said – ” Kain cuts herself off when Leah turns to glare at her. “The other Leah said she thought you weren’t as dumb as you pretended to be, sometimes. She thought you knew more than you let on.”

“Hmm.” Leah says nothing else.

They stand a little ways away from their guards, leaning against the stone wall of the Hold. Pheasants scratch at the dirt at their feet. One especially gaudy male passes by Leah and flicks his tail feathers against her shins; when she bends down to touch them he lets out a warning call and darts away.

“Is there anything you’d like to have answered?” Kain asks.

Leah straightens back up and looks out over the garden, breathing deeply. The clear air is familiar and crisp, not at all like the dust-choked warm air of the city, but even so the smells are wrong; none of the flax and mustard flowers of Algi, not even the marigolds of Bair or the wildflowers of Volst. A rack of orchids leans against one wall, with a fabric awning protecting them from direct sunlight while still giving them abundant ambient light. An unfamiliar butterfly takes off from one of them and jitters through the air, sporadic and directionless, finally ascending over the wall.

“Leah?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you have any questions?”

Leah draws her gaze away from the butterfly and back to her old teammate at her side. “No. She explained things pretty well.”

“Fair enough; although, you weren’t asleep for very long…”

“I hope not,” Leah mutters. “I was at work when I fell asleep.”

“Huh?”

Leah jerks her head over her shoulder. “Back in the other world. I was at work. Must have fallen asleep in the storeroom. Well, better that than at the counter.”

Kain giggles. “Well, that’s her mess to clean up. Only fair.”

Leah is back to frowning. “Oh?”

“That she has to deal with the consequences of you falling asleep at work. I mean, she did all of this in our world.” Kain gestures vaguely. “Then she left, and you’re here to make the best of it. Not really fair, for either of you.”

“No, it isn’t.” Leah winces as soon as she finishes saying it.

“Leah?”

Leah turns to walk back inside, and the two guards flinch to almost draw their weapons. She glares at them with the deepest contempt she can muster until they stand down. “Where’s Bee?”

Kain points to the stables not far from them. “She was in there, last I heard.”

“Can I see her?”

“I…”

Leah turns to the guards. “Can I see my horse?”

Both guards blink in matching confusion until one tentatively repeats her sentence in Old West Volsti. “Yõ hors? Ua abou hẽ?”

“Horse,” Leah repeats. “Horse. My horse. Beeswax.”

The guard says something too quickly for Leah to follow, but the tone seems to suggest that her request is understood, and rejected. Leah nods once, turns away from them, and starts walking to the stables anyway.

Kain calls after her once, and Leah can hear the guards rushing to catch her. She does not run, but she makes her strides as long as she can without hurrying.

One finally catches her arm at the elbow, gently. When she shakes his grip free, he grabs her again, more firmly.

“Why not?” Leah spits, rounding on the man with her eyes narrowed. “Why can’t I see her?” The man flinches back from her face, to her immense satisfaction.

“Leah, it’s okay, we’ll ask Lord Seffon. I know you just want to see Bee and make sure she’s okay, but you have to understand that they don’t trust you as much as they trusted her.” Kain’s tone is reassuring, but her words just add insult to injury, and Leah’s patience snaps.

She raises her fingers to her lips and lets out two short, shrieking whistles.

For a second nothing happens, besides the people nearby wincing at the sound. Then there is a sound of splintering wood from within the stables, and of people yelling, and of hooves clopping.

A second after that, a palomino mare erupts through the door and runs to the source of the whistles.

Leah feels her heart shudder at the familiar sight, and with no hesitation at all jumps up onto a nearby pot and from there to the horse’s back, slithering into place against the sleek hide, grabbing the white mane with shaking fingers.

“Leah!” Kain has her hands on her hips, as though scolding a child.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” Leah says, guiding the horse with a squeeze of her knees, turning the mare towards the gate. Two sharp whistles have always meant great danger, ever since she was first training with Bee, and the mare is tensed up, ready to lash out at whatever threat presents itself first. Kain knows this, and is keeping well clear of the horse’s hooves.

They begin to ride towards the gate, which is being closed by a few nervous-looking militiamen. Pheasants scatter before them, wide brown wings kicking up dust in the midday heat as they flutter. A much larger dust cloud follows behind Beeswax’s hooves.

Just as suddenly as the horse began her sprint, she stops. Beeswax stands in between the Hold and the wall, kicking at the dirt, tossing her head, ears pricked as though listening. Leah sits motionless, struck dumb by the horse’s behaviour, then turns to look back at the group.

A man in red walks out from the door, a faint silver glow around his hand. Leah squints, and confirms that this appears to be the same face she saw the night before – making this the pretender-lord, she realises bitterly.

Looking again at Beeswax, Leah can see a faint echo of that silvery light around the mare’s head, and swirling in her pale eyes. Anger boils up within Leah, and she swings her leg over and dismounts.

“Sir?” she calls out, voice dripping with sarcasm.

Lord Seffon stares her down, unimpressed. “That was your whistle, I presume?”

“I wasn’t calling you.”

His eyes narrow.

Kain takes a few steps closer. “Leah, what’s wrong?”

Leah smiles at her warmly, forcing it to look as sweet as possible. “Nothing, Kain. I just wanted to go for a ride. Clear my head, you know. Lots of things to readjust to, wanted to start with something familiar.”

“Until we are certain there were no side-effects from the switch, it might not be a good idea for you to go haring off alone – ”

“I didn’t realise I had sworn fealty to you, sir,” Leah says, cutting him off. “Or did she?”

Lord Seffon’s expression does not change. “It is for your health, Miss Talesh. If you go into the forest and fall unconscious from your mare without warning, who will know? How long will it take us to find you?”

Leah turns back to the mare and pets the white-and-grey speckled nose. “Let her go.”

“Pardon?”

Leah gestures at the silvery light. “You’re doing this. Let her go.”

The Lord whispers something and waves his hand, and the light around both it and the horse dissipates. Beeswax immediately returns to being skittish and on-guard; Leah soothes her with a few whispered words in Algic.

“I will not adjust as quickly as you all seem to think, sir,” Leah says, still petting Beeswax’s nose. “And considering that I am the only person who’s ever gone through what I’ve gone through, I think I am best qualified for saying what is and is not essential to my readjusting to life in this world.”

Kain approaches and puts a hand on Leah’s shoulder; Leah, by force of will alone, does not shrug it off. “It’s going to take time,” the rogue says, her short flop of black hair coated with dust. “And we want to help. I’ve really missed you, Leah. Even when we thought we got you back, it didn’t stop hurting. There were a few days where we thought you might have died from that trap, and when you fell…we didn’t even get to say goodbye to you.”

Leah leans her face into Beeswax’s neck and shoulder, trying to hide her back-stabbing watering eyes.

“It’s good to know you’re okay, and that even when you were away from us you weren’t hurting or in danger. That’s all we cared about, when you were gone; whether you were hurting. I know it’s just part of the job, but that doesn’t make it easy.”

Leah breathes in deeply, and rubs her face on her sleeve. “It’s a shitty job.”

“It’s not glorious and it’s often not rewarding,” Kain says with a grin, trying to peer around Leah’s arm to see her face. Leah shifts it to keep her eyes hidden, then realises how pathetically obvious she is being and drops her arms to her sides, sniffling roughly. “But we’re doing good work, with good people, for a good cause.”

“Heh. Are we?” The words fall flat from her lips.

Kain takes her hand, and Leah lets it lie limp in her grasp. “We try. Someone has to.”

Leah flinches. “I know. I didn’t spend three years of my life doing this for the fun of it.” She takes a steadying breath. “Fine. I’ll stay in my room, out of the way, until we’re sure nothing bad will happen to me as a result of your magic body-swapping.”

She turns to walk back into the Hold. Lord Seffon opens his mouth as though to say something, and Leah holds up a hand to his face before he can make a sound. “I don’t need to hear it, sir,” she says, exhausted. “I’m not in the right headspace to listen to anything you have to say.”

He frowns and watches her walk past. Once she reaches the door, and almost feels confident in being able to make it back to her room without further incident, he speaks. “Ask, if you need anything.”

Leah tilts her heads and bites her tongue on any response. Focused and silent, she walks through the halls back to her room, her feet seeming to know the path better than her mind does.

*

Lunch is a strange thin soup of bone broth with a poached egg, bean sprouts, and spicy oil floating on the top. The tall, rancid-smelling beverage that accompanies it is left untouched, but Leah takes the soup and sits by the window, sipping it.

She is left mostly undisturbed. The pebbled glass offers no clear view of the scenes beyond, other than a vague blue of sky and a vague grey of roofs and walls, with a blur of green where they meet. Occasionally a guard or a servant will pass by, to collect the dishes or offer her company or ask if she needs anything.

Leah’s eyes remain affixed to the window and the blurry scene beyond.

Eventually she rummages through the drawers, hoping for a weapon to practice with, or something to whittle, maybe. If all else fails I can carve the bedposts. Put in some proper iconography of the goddesses. They can’t get mad at me for destruction of property if it’s divine.

Instead she finds her diary.

At first she doesn’t recognise it, but once she does she returns to the window sill and reads it with a sort of nostalgia.

All that hiding…making notes about potential friends and safe places and secret passages…complaining about work…missing people…

She reaches the more recent entries and sighs to read them. Suspicions, fears, angst. I guess that’s what I’ve got ahead of me now.

Hey now. Not necessarily. Cheden has backed away, for the time, and if apparently Kain and Jeno are allowed to be a couple here, maybe I’ll be able to –

Nope! Shit fuck, now I’m thinking about Gloria. Change the subject, change the subject, change the subject –

War. Eschen actually was planning something. Well, I may not like Miss Armande that much, but I’ve got to hand it to her that she’s stubborn and clever. Not only that, but she managed to get Jeno out of the way of it all. I owe her for that. Or, maybe I don’t, considering that she slept with the girl, in spite of how hard I worked not to.

Sort of sucks, having spent so many weeks refusing the company of a beautiful woman, and then she swoops in and within the first few days…

And then it took me so long to actually start dating again, and when I did she swoops in there too and takes that from me…

Fuck, I’m thinking about Gloria again.

Wait, what’s this?

Leah had been turning the pages absently, not really reading, but suddenly a long block of text catches her eye. Reading through, she sees it is economic and political data about the various nations of the Gulf; exports, military, government. The handwriting is quite neater than the rest of the journal.

At the very end is a paragraph.

“Hello, Leah. Sorry for having read your diary and writing all this weird stuff in it, and also for any mistakes I’ve made in upholding your life. I’m doing my best. I hope that someday I’ll find my way home, and wherever or whatever you are, you can take over for me here.”

A gossamer-thin pressed crocus, the deep purple of the petals faded from dryness, rests between the last pages. Leah stares at the whole, face blank. She sucks her teeth and closes the book, tossing it back to the dresser.

She goes back to staring out the window, and tries to keep her mind as empty as possible.

*

In the evening, drained despite having barely moved all day, Leah nonetheless runs through her exercises. Her body feels slightly weaker than it used to, though still stronger than her body in Joinsburg. I guess she didn’t realise that muscle like this takes maintenance; she used it when she needed it, but ignored it when she didn’t. Lazy woman. Leaving me with the job of getting it back in shape again. I bet she’s going to undo all the progress I made on her body, too.

Did I tell her about the wrestling classes? I don’t want that money to go to waste, but if she doesn’t realise it’s on her schedule…

Leah starts doing the strange torso-presses that Jen had shown her. In her original body, they are comically easy, and for a second she feels a comforting rush of familiarity.

This is nice. I like being in shape. I like that my body can do pretty much anything I tell it to do.

What else do I like about this place?

She looks around at the dark walls, the cool air of evening radiating off of them. The clothes she wears – linen and wool, warm and heavy and strong – are a comforting weight on her body, and they lack the scratchy tags at the back of the neck that all of her wardrobe in Joinsburg had had. She continues to exercise as she thinks.

There were so many things I wanted to bring back here. What were they? I stopped paying attention, at some point. Probably about when I decided I didn’t especially want to come back. Well, now I’m here. So what were they?

Wrestling. I wanted to bring back the idea of competitive fighting sports without weapons, pain, or injury. I think Iris might be into that.

What else? Liquor stores. Heh, that might be a fun retirement plan; I could be a shop-keep. Train horses on the side. Keep a hive of bees. A garden with mustard flowers. Take in shipments of wine and hard alcohol from every nation, offer the widest variety of any store in…

Where would I be? Where would I retire to?

She takes off her now-sweaty clothes, her muscles warm and sore. Splashing herself with cool water from the washbasin and drying off with a towel from the dresser, she settles into the bed for the night, despite the early hour.

I never really thought I’d live long enough to retire. I wanted to…but I never really believed I would. Turning up in Quebec was my one chance of a retirement.

I guess…Kain will probably end up taking me back to Valerin, eventually. Meredith’s got a full-time posting, she won’t want to leave that. Iris will probably be itching to travel, and Vivitha won’t want to be left alone. We could be just us four. ‘The four.’

God, no.

So then, would I retire to Valerin? They just underwent a couple major battles, there are probably many job openings. Ugh, what a macabre thought. Come on, Leah.

Well, it’s a macabre life.

She rolls around under the sheets. The sun has almost set, but supper hasn’t arrived yet.

I don’t especially want food right now. I want…

She rolls around again, then throws the covers off and stares at the ceiling angrily.

I’m not a helpless fucking child. If this is where I end up, I’m not going to cry about it. It’s done with. I’m back. And yes, there are things I would have liked to do in Quebec, but there are still things I can do here. I could tend a farm along the Stasse vai. I could track down the Ie Hossai faire, if they’re still touring. I could go elope with Nedies and become a privateer if I wanted to, there’s nothing stopping me.

Nedies.

Gloria…

With a sour expression, Leah pulls the covers back up and curls onto her side, hugging the pillow.

I don’t need to decide right now. I can’t decide right now, and I shouldn’t. It’s still too new. Not brand-new, but even so. No decision I could make now would be responsible or reasonable. I need to re-adapt.

It’s going to be exhausting, though.

Footsteps pause outside her door, and someone knocks. “No,” Leah calls out.

The person seems to hesitate for a moment; the shadows under the door show that they stand there for a few seconds, shuffling, before finally backing away. The footsteps continue down the hall and fade.

Not now. I can’t do this now. Put it off until morning. It’s going to suck, but what can I do about it? Just find the path. Just keep moving.

She hums a quick prayer-song, as a force of habit, but trails off before finishing, remembering how off all the images had looked in the paintings. Somehow, even Joinsburg had felt closer to Algi than this place does – or maybe she just isn’t in a very divine mood. Normally she’d push through that sort of a block, but not today.

Her eyelids feel heavy, and her sore limbs seem to sink into the mattress. Barely having made the decision to give up and rest, she already feels sleep creeping up on her. Without fighting it, she lets it sweep her up.