Kajsa awoke one morning with a clarity of mind. The fatigue of recovery had loosened from her throat and let her rise up to declare, “I am hungry.”

The maid on duty to help her rushed to inform Lucius, who had already risen before the frogs. He listened, and declared, “Well, get her some food.” But, as is so often the case, first reactions hardly contain the complexity of the situation. While the manor had a chef on hand, procured from one of the restaurants at great expense, it was the larder that struggled. Lucius had known that the locals were hesitant to do business with him and his employees, but not the full extent. Rumor had spread through Aliston that those who cooperated with the tyrant would face the reprisal of the spirit.

At first they had raised prices. They had feigned short supply. When they started saying, “No,” the chef had hidden the problem as best he could. When he emerged–a greasy fellow who kept a thin mustache–with nothing more than bread, lumps of butter, and weak tea, Lucius began to see through his deceptions. He wanted nothing more than to throw open the doors of the larder, to pour out the man’s purse and, if necessary, imprison him.

Kajsa was seated with him, however. She wore a simple blue dress of tough fabric, a kind that no noblewoman would ever touch but fit the alchemist perfectly. “The town has changed,” she commented, working some of the warm bread in her hand to melt the butter. She looked across the garden to the sprawl of rooftops beyond, of which some had been improved and some knocked down.

Lucius had been responsible for most of those changes, and yet the patchwork construction had evolved too gradually for him to pick apart. “How so?” he asked, peering at the sediment within his tea. When he glanced to the kitchen door, the chef fled.

“The noise is different,” she said, and popped her meager breakfast into her mouth. After a moment of chewing, she swallowed and said, “I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it reminds me of a Vassish city now.”

“Aliston is a Vassish city. Has been for years.”

“No, it was conquered by Vassermark but it itself wasn’t Vassish. You know as well as I they hardly pay taxes. They don’t levy soldiers. The only thing of value is the gold mine, and that’s staffed by imported prisoners. The city had its own life to it and now… it’s like there isn’t as much talking.”

Lucius picked at his own bread and shrugged. Half his mind roamed through the city as he thought about what he could do to get her a proper meal. “Perhaps they talk less because they’re working more.”

“Would you tell me about your hometown, Lucius?”

He froze, his mind at once snapped back to the moment. He glanced over at the girl who had been one of his first friends. “Hartpass?” he asked, referring to the diminutive city the Solhart family ruled from. “What would you like to know about it?”

She sipped her tea and closed her eyes. “Tell me about the festivals, if you would. I grew up very far from Hartpass, the culture a bit different.”

He scratched his chin, picking at his uneven stubble.(1) “Well, there’s Heartbreaker’s Day.”

Kajsa rolled her eyes. “Everyone has Heartbreaker’s Day.”

He winced and dug through his memories. I had given him quite a primer on the Solhart domain, but there are always limits. Talking about his alleged hometown was like wading through a swamp and hoping to not kick a branch. “The biggest other holiday is the Night of Lights,” he said after a moment. “Mostly a drinking and feasting holiday after the harvest. For children and adults, they pitch tents and break open beers and everyone gorges themselves at communal tables. But, for adolescents, for those just coming of age, they’re the ones given the lights.”

She sat silent, raptured with his words and soaking them in without a single counterword.

“You see, the kids have to be put to bed, but as part of the festival, teenagers and the such are given candles right as the sun goes down and they have to keep them lit until dawn and aren’t allowed in the tents–there’s a follow up celebration at breakfast.”

Kajsa tilted her head. “What happens if the candle goes out?”

He glanced around and leaned in conspiratorially, “Most of them do. Especially in colder years. Snow can really make it hard. The kids aren’t told anything about this, but the adults don’t measure the wick or anything. So long as they show up with it lit, all’s good. Some of the smaller towns leave a lantern out for teens coming back with unlit candles. The only way you can fail is if you don’t realize that. Just about everyone figures out that as long as they stick with their friends, they can just keep re-lighting each other's candles all night.”

She planted her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands. “And did you do this?”

He hesitated. “Of course. Just before the war.”

“With all the other kids?”

“Well, I had a few friends along as guards, but it would be rather shameful of my family to waive something like that, you know?”

“Hmm, that’s strange, because I could have sworn the first forays through Giordana were over a year ago, in the middle of summer.”

For a moment, he was paralyzed by recalculating his forged backstory. When the war against Giordana had begun, he and I were skirmishing against Drachenreich while he failed to learn the tongue. “Has it been that long? It must have been two years ago then.”

“That’s a big time difference to get long.”

“You know how seasons are in Giordana, don’t you? Warm and then hot. You can barely tell.”

“When did you get your stigmata?”

“When I was nearly killed at Puerto Faro. The rebels cut my head off. Didn’t I tell you this?”

“You did,” she agreed, and sat back in her chair, still looking at him. “It must be the fever speaking, all those dreams and polluted sleep. I’m mixing you up with someone I used to know with the same stigmata.”

He nearly choked. “That’s rare indeed. Did he go off to become a knight?”

“I don’t know what happened to him. I never saw him again after the Ashe family took him in. He was an annoying little twerp the elder sisters of my temple kept foisting onto me because I was young… but he was a smart kid. It’s a real shame his life was ruined by losing an arm young.”

Lucius stole a look into her eyes and found her not wistful, reminiscing in memory, but staring directly at him. He looked back out to the city vista and said, “Then he must have had a different stigmata. I would grow an arm back, if losing my head was anything to go by. These things happen, even the rarest of abilities can have similar stigmata recorded. Some say that every single stigmata in the world is unique, and it’s a folly of our own making that we try to name them simply because they’re similar.”

Silence gripped the two of them, and each quietly finished their simple breakfast. She pushed the matter no further, and eventually brought up her need to return to the processing of the gold ore. Lucius promised her constant protection, as he then had the recruits to do so, and she accepted without fuss. Their small talk waned and wrapped up with a promise that dinner would be better.

Lucius saw to it personally, and brought Lamdo with him into town. He had the steward rattle off the list of problems the city faced as he moved from one store to the next. For most things, he left it to the direction of the more experienced governor, as he was quite comfortable with having scared the man into more studious action. Between each consultation(2), he stopped at grocers, fish mongers, farmers, and spice crafters. Each and every one of them tried to make excuses about why they couldn’t sell to him. They claimed rotten food. They said everything had already been purchased by others. Some outright said they had been threatened on the matter.

When Lucius saw weakness, he pressed the merchant and in private stores he worked out from them a list of names and places. This he passed on to the town guard and warned them they wouldn’t be getting much sleep that night.

One of the last gave him a cryptic warning alongside a basket of half-ripe tomatoes. “The shadows you’re looking for live out of the temple, m’lord. They’ve been given passage. You might be able to go in there and kill them all, yes, but you’ll be cursed and I won’t be saying more about that.”

Lucius took the warning with a nod, made a mental note of the man’s store, and took his things and his business back to his manor. Lamdo was dismissed to carry out his instructions and Lexa was called for to discuss what the temple was. If she didn’t know, the twins would be sent to round the man up for a more detailed discussion.

Lexa was not the first to arrive.

While Lucius stirred a cast iron pan with crackling bacon, the room rich with the scent of tomatoes and peppers as butter thawed beside scallops, Kajsa slipped in. She was unfazed by the aroma, encouraged by their isolation, and made her presence known. The moment he met her gaze, she asked, “The Solhart family doesn’t put their children through the Night of Lights. I know because I was there last season trying to work for them. The whole family is too busy talking business. So, I have to ask, are you Jarnpojke?”

He hadn’t been raised by an acting troupe for nothing. “That’s a ridiculous question,” he responded.

“Is it? The kid I knew was taken in by the Ashe family, but left Jarnmark with a Royal Engineer. He’d be your age, and he wouldn’t know much about the Solharts. In fact, he was half-raised by actors and taught their tricks, he’d know exactly how to behave like a noble as if he had been one. And most importantly, he’d actually care that I had been hurt. He’d sit at my bed side and he’d cook me dinner. Any real noble wouldn’t have given me a second thought!”

Weeks of suspicion came bursting out of her as tears. When she finally gave the thoughts life, they almost overwhelmed her.

Lucius should have denied it then. Had he stood his ground she likely would have never brought it up again. But, alas, he was young and still prone to mistakes. He set the pan off the fire and crossed the kitchen, taking Kajsa into a silent embrace as he held her to his chest and waited for the cry to subside.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” she demanded, clinging to his shirt.

“Because I’m not Jarnpojke,” he said, smoothing her hair. “Not anymore.”

Puberty had not yet blessed him with a proper beard and yet he kept hoping it would grow in. I would have told him to mind his shaving better, but the women around him didn’t mind the fuzz. The matters of rulership are far more varied but also more trivial than a commoner imagines. There were issues of fights between soldiers and citizens, reports of stolen sheep, street side speakers insulting him, and so on. As a rule, he sided with his soldiers, and when the matter was between citizens, he sided with the poorer claimant unless evidence made justice obvious. The nay-sayers were permitted not because they helped his rule but because he wanted to pass discontent over to his successor.