Can You Believe This??

There you are, standing there, loving me

Throné was, understandably, quite eager to follow after Mira after hearing what had happened, but Castti implored her to wait for just one evening.

“We know where Lostseed is and she doesn’t. With the ship we can outpace her,” Castti urged, which was true. “And we can’t set sail again without giving the crew a night of rest. Let’s stay one night in Wellgrove and go out again in the morning. We can stay with Alrond. Even without Partitio here, he’s always happy to have guests.”

So much time traveling with Castti had dulled any impulse Throné had once had to disagree with her. She didn’t like to cause a fight if she could avoid it in the first place, and even less with Castti, who almost always produced good results when let to work unopposed and as often or not delivered the same and as stubbornly when opposed. Besides, she was right on every point, even that of the eccentric noble Alrond, who would host them even with Partitio absent, busy setting things aright on the island previously owned by his new business partner Roque (insane. The man was insane.)

So Throné told the elderly guard that she knew without a doubt where Mira was and would help him recover her, but they needed a night of rest first. He agreed and they made a pact to meet at dawn to travel. Castti and Throné bade him well and walked on.

Walking through the autumn-red lanes of Wellgrove with Castti was odd for several reasons. The most pressing was that Throné had just gotten used to being surrounded by company and now, she suddenly wasn’t. A couple of unpleasant occurrences had convinced several of their previous travelling companions to stay with Partitio and recuperate for a short time, including Osvald, gods bless him, as he did everything in his power to not think about the daughter he had left behind, and Agnea, who had been nigh-unable to resist the siren call of unleashing her superstar presence on the tightly-wound and overworked forces of the Roque Corporation. Hikari, meanwhile, was somewhat busy being the King of Ku, a title that certainly hadn’t seemed real to Throné until she had seen him on a throne. As far as she knew Temenos was still with him, reading, researching, nursing his internal wounds.

Ochette had been with them, until she simply wasn’t. It happened. She would show up.

For a while they had been travelling with Agena’s travelling theater friends, and some accompanying knights or mercenaries, and the crew of the ship, but for the first time in a long time almost everyone had filtered away to this or to that and now Throné was walking up a steep, winding hill under whispering trees beside Castti Florenz alone, who had a little smile on her face and a little strain in the corners of her eyes.

Throné found that she wasn’t sure what to say, and besides they had both long established that they enjoyed silent company.

They approached Alrond’s manor a little after dark, which they did not anticipate being a problem as he kept eccentric hours. The gardens of the grounds, gone grassy as autumn wilted the flowers and invigorated the berry-bearing bushes and silver-tipped reeds, were neatly arranged and cleared of falling leaves by a now-absent crew of workers. Only a few golden willow leaves floated down the glassy stream on their delicately curved backs, and the sound of crickets trilled from within the shade of hedges and ivy vines.

When Throné saw there was one person still awake and about, she assumed it was the lord of the house himself (about whom the first thing people learned was often that he did not really sleep). Castti shouted a hello so that they did not alarm him, but as he walked out from under the glow of the electric lantern that hung beside Alrond’s door, they say it was not the lord of the house but his manservant, Misha.

Still this was not odd, so they continued their approach. Throné had expected Misha to take a minute to recognize them as Partitio’s companions, but the fastidious butler had better recall that that. He remembered both names and faces immediately, and welcomed them in. Castti thanked him and they followed him inside, past the glow of captured lightning and into the comfortable, moonlit dimness of the cavernous manor.

“I’m sorry to call so late,” Castti said.

“Not at all,” Misha said, taking their bags so smoothly that there wasn’t really a good time to resist. “That means I’ll have some company for dinner.”

Castti and Throné shared a brief look. Sharing brief looks was well-nigh half of their communication, as both were stellar at the rapid assessment of threats, rudeness, discomfort, and any other manner of untoward attempt that all it took was a glance to know if they had come to the same conclusion and whether they were tolerating this or not. In this case, they both silently agreed that something in Misha’s tone was weird, but that they weren’t poking into it for now. With a flick of Throné’s eyes she said that, yes, she heard that too, and Castti barely quirked her eyebrows to let it go for the time being.

Once stripped of bags and dusty over-layers, they followed the politely chattering butler into his pantry and took whatever he handed them. In the kitchen, he already had a mixed salad half-prepared, made of thick autumn greens and cold snow peas and cut up leftover roast, and it took short work to multiply that into a meal large enough for three and fit for royalty.

By the time Castti was carrying bowls and Throné cups and a pitcher of fresh apple cider to the table, Misha, with his arms around the earthenware bowl of salad, had already slipped from his posh working accent to a rather rougher one.

“No, you would think, but no one dares to impose,” he said, setting the heavy dish down delicately at one end of the long table. “Alrond even offers to house travelling merchants all the time, but they’d rather stay in town. In the end it’s better. They strike up talk with locals and some of them even choose to stay. Inn’s closer, the walk up the hill is a bit of a trek.”

“It is, but it’s so beautiful,” Castti smiled. She reached for her chair, but Misha was there with suspicious speed to pull it out for her. Barely missing a beat, she continued, “the fall color right now is incredible. I think I’d go up and down at nights just for the walk.”

“Please don’t,” Throné said when Misha reached for her chair, and he didn’t. She seated herself, saying, “I’m good for down, but I could do without up.”

“I’ve told you that you need to replace your shoes,” Castti reminded her. “Those have terrible arch support. That wears on you after a while.”

“I haven’t seen anyone my size and with good taste in a while,” Throné smiled.

Misha, to his credit, chuckled. Throné had suspected he grew up more hardscrabble than he looked now, and that casual laugh confirmed it for her. “You can just ask! Alrond would be happy to get you something.”

“If he wants to help, he can have one of his shops stock a storefront of boots for small women, and staff it with the burliest guards he has, just to make it interesting,” Throné smiled.

“Throné!” Castti laughed. “If he does it with the intent of letting you take one, isn’t it really the same thing as just accepting a gift?”

“It’s just not the same if I don’t get it myself,” Throné sighed. “It’s like getting a birthday gift without any bows or wrapping.”

“I’ll let him know! He’ll love it,” Misha promised. “But you said you had to head out early in the morning.”

“Ah.” Throné’s eyes fell back down to the table when she was reminded. “That we do.”

Castti looked at Throné again, at the uneven ends of her thick hair curved over one downcast eye. She focused on putting her salad together, but her mind was still on Throné. She had learned so much about healing on their journey together, healing the body and the heart. Yet when faced with the knowledge of what Throné had learned in Lostseed, she felt she still had much more to learn.

She knew Throné wished that no one had witnessed her horrific meeting with Claude, both what he said to her and the desperate struggle that followed. Castti could not quite wish herself that she hadn’t seen it, not when she imagined Throné being alone with that knowledge.

“I hope we don’t miss Alrond completely,” Castti said, passing Throné a bowl of roasted nuts. “He’s always lovely company.”

“I hope I don’t either!” said Misha, and Throné and Castti’s eyes snapped to each other again.

That was nearly the same tone of voice that had first alerted them that something was off, and about the same subject—the absent master of the house. What was Misha doing here alone, when it seemed he hadn’t expected to be?

“I hope nothing happened,” asked Castti.

For a moment, a single spark of anger flickered in Misha’s eyes. It puffed out in smoke immediately, and he let out a heavy sigh. “I hope so too,” he said. “I think he’s just been up to some trickery again, but…”

“What makes you think that?” Throné asked, and passed him the bowl of nuts.

He took it, and passed it between his hands a few times, visibly considering. “He always gets into these phases, especially when he’s having more trouble sleeping,” he began. “It comes and goes. But lately he’s been absent every night, and half the day as well. I know he’s working, the shopkeepers always tell me they saw him, but it seems like I can never find him unless he wants to be found. He dodges the subject and—to be frank I rarely ask him pressing questions. He’ll find a way to wiggle out of it if he wants to.”

“His strength is certainly his energy and enthusiasm,” Castti began, “so I’m not surprised sometimes he just can’t get himself to stop. Are you sure he isn’t just working all night?”

“Yes. He’s hiding something from me. I suppose that sounds like a baseless accusation, but I can tell,” Misha insisted as he stabbed a forkful of leaves dripping with green herb dressing. “He’s up to something, and he doesn’t want me to find out.”

Throné looked at Castti again. Castti was visibly still considering her words, so Throné said, “What, do you think he’s cheating on you or something?”

Misha startled so badly he dropped his fork. Castti gasped, sounding offended and almost hiding her smile. “Throné!”

“Just kidding,” Throné laughed.

“What a thing to accuse him of!” Castti said, turning away from Misha so he couldn’t see her suppressing laughter.

“No, I’m sure it’s—not—” Misha fumbled with his words and rucked his previously perfectly smoothed hair away from his forehead. “I’m sure he’s not doing anything bad. Or, that is, I’m sure he doesn’t think he’s doing anything bad. His intentions are always good. His execution, however, varies.”

“You’re worried about him,” Castti supplied.

“Yes,” Misha continued, and with another sigh he was fully settled again after his shock. “Boundless wealth can get you out of most scrapes, so he has gotten used to scraping by a little too close. I know he’s not a child, but still…”

“He can be remarkably childish,” said Throné, still with a smile.

“Sometimes,” Misha admitted tersely.

“Well, speaking for myself, and—honestly for Throné as well—I won’t be asleep for quite a while anyway. I was planning on taking another walk around before I headed to bed, and I wouldn’t mind trying to spot your absent employer while I was out.”

“I—” Misha began.

“Are we going to spy on him? I want to spy on him,” Throné said brightly, immediately perking up.

“Well—” Misha tried to interrupt.

“All I want to do is take a walk around town,” Castti defended herself. “And buy you some new shoes.”

“No.”

“I figure that I cannot avoid about hearing all about Alrond’s latest exploits while I’m out; and running into him too would be good fortune,” Castti finished.

Throné smiled. “We’re going to spy on him for you,” she told Misha.

“Well,” Misha said, and after a moment of consideration, “that doesn’t make you different from the average scrivener, I suppose.”

“You must have such trouble with them!” Castti realized.

“Oh, yes. If you get Alrond’s ear, you’ll get something eye-catching to publish. Yet another talent he has. He doesn’t care if you’re an old friend or a stranger, he intended to tell you what he had on his mind already anyway. It doesn’t really matter what they publish, because Alrond isn’t going to be ashamed no matter what.”

Castti was almost certain that he usually titled him rather than calling him by his name. Then again, he was at home right now. “Well, once we’ve cleaned up, we’ll go see if we can find anything out for you.”

“And buy Ms. Throné some shoes,” Misha said.

“No,” Throné snapped.

--

“They’re lovely,” Throné grumbled under her breath.

Castti beamed. They were lovely; Throné’s favored dour black, but freshly inked and shined, taller than her last set and firmer, with much better arch support and thicker soles. Despite being solid they weren’t too stiff, and the laces were shiny and ribbon-like, tied into cute little bows.

“You paid too much.”

“Nonsense. I barely paid any leaf at all,” Castti argued, which was true. The cobbler had been interested in her supplies and they had made an exchange bargain. The only leaf she had handed him was as a tip after the trade had been completed and she saw how well they fit Throné. “You can go take something off of him if you like.”

“It’s not the same,” Throné complained, and stomped away in her lovely new boots.

After a few pleasant good-byes, Castti followed. Alrond’s market—department store, that is—was very exciting at night, barely less packed than it was during the day, full of stalls frying up fresh treats or selling glasses of local wine and mead (and you could keep the glass!). Entertainers stood at the lamplit square just outside, and the autumn breeze, though chill, could not full penetrate the warmth of the laughing crowd.

Throné had picked up some rumors that she was beginning to synthesize into a reasonable and likely innocuous explanation of events.  As she walked she started piecing them together; Alrond was certainly disguising himself to go out among the rabble, and it seemed he was just interested in mingling with commoners without anyone knowing who he was. It all seemed innocent, but she couldn’t count out the possibility that he was using the alter ego for something less savory quite yet.

“I honestly think it’s sweet,” Castti said once she caught back up with her.

“What’s sweet?”

“How Alrond’s picking up around town.”

Throné pondered. “That’s your conclusion?”

“The gentleman outside the store said he saw a stranger picking up trash. As a primary activity, that is.”

“Hm. Not impossible,” Throné admitted. “Though why would he go out of his way to do something like pick up trash?”

“Well…” Castti held up her fingers to count off on them. “Misha told us he had been getting a lot of attention from scriveners, so he may be dressing down just to avoid them. He also had a fastidious attention to detail, so it’s possible be started going out to do something else and ended up just picking up trash whenever he saw it. Everyone says that he practically cannot sit still. And he’s invested in his new store, so he’ll want to make it look as good as possible. Besides, I think we can all agree that Alrond is… odd.”

“What? No! All of my friends would sail across the continent to pay eighty billion leaves to a maniac to buy his train company whenever they felt like it. That was Friday night for us,” Throné said.

Castti giggled. Her giggling was an airy thing, a nearly-suppressed shaking of her chest. Throné smiled. “He does seem to enjoy the occasional odd activity.”

“Which was why he and Partitio hit it off right away. I do miss him,” Castti said.

“Incredibly useful man,” Throné agreed. “I’ve known less helpful shepherd dogs.”

“Stop,” Castti smiled. She knew that Throné’s verbal disrespect almost always betrayed personal fondness. She never had much to say about those she disliked. “What would he say if he could hear you?”

“He would bark,” Throné replied immediately and confidently.

Castti laughed so hard she had to stop in the road, braced against a streetlight. Throné watched her and smiled. Eventually, she straightened up and, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, said, “Throné, I shall also miss you terribly once you move on.”

“Oh,” said Throné.

Castti began walking again, watching the darkened road under her feet, her cheeks flushed pink. “Now, I wonder something,” she said.

“Yes?” Throné asked, finding herself suddenly anxious for the question.

“What did you mean by your joke about Alrond ‘cheating’ on Misha?” she asked, her tone light and quizzical, yet off in a way Throné found subtle but detectable. “Do you think that’s the situation?”

Throné settled somewhat, though not completely. The subject had, unavoidably, come up; they had both spent the better part of a year walking, eating, sleeping, and fighting with Temenos ‘Aelfric’s Favorite Little Queer’ Mistral, after all. Still, even though she knew Castti better than this, Throné could not quiet a little quivering doubt that she was only being professionally compassionate and polite about this subject as well. “Not really,” Throné admitted. “I was mostly teasing Misha. When we were talking to him, I thought, ‘I think he has a crush on him.’ I can’t tell you exactly what it was, just how he speaks about him. But Misha is proper, my bet is that if he does feel that way, he’s kept it to himself. I was just trying to bully him a little.”

“You really hit the mark! Didn’t you see how he jumped?”

“Ha ha. I rather think I did find a nerve.”

“But that’s so unusual, because I thought the same thing, but about Alrond.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. The last time I saw the two of them interacting with each other, on Roque’s Island—rather, Partitio’s Island—”

“Ugh.”

“Yes, as I was watching them, I thought, ‘I think that Alrond has a crush on his butler, but he’s chosen not to say anything about it,’” Castti explained. “I couldn’t tell you what it was, something about the particular kind of soft fondness he has for him, in his voice, and his face. It’s unusual delicacy for Lord Alrond, but even very rough people will find caution in them when it comes to matters of the heart.”

“Such matters can cause even very rough people to know fear,” Throné said, looking at Castti’s face and then away.

Castti hummed agreement. She was thinking, for example, of the change that came over Osvald when he spoke about his daughter, or the nearly-disastrous tumult of love and grief that had split Hikari from his companions, or the terrified passion which had left Throné without parents or forebears, or of Eir’s Apothecaries’ complete failure to do anything about Trousseau when they first had a chance.

“But I wonder, then,” Throné finally said, “Could both be true?”

“What, that they have feelings for each other that neither have admitted? It happens, sometimes, though less often than romance novels seem to think.”

“…Do you read romance novels?” Throné asked.

Castti paused. “Do I?” she asked.

“Oh no.”

“I don’t remember reading any romances. But I would have to know that was the case to say that. Perhaps I knew someone who did?”

“It’s fine, Castti.”

“No, now I’m curious,” Castti said, and verbally picked at her fragmented reminiscences all the way back to Alrond’s manor, observing one sharp edge or another, examining the glitter, as Throné sighed and reminded her she couldn’t possibly know herself.

Romances. Castti thought of someone’s clean-cut fingernails holding a book open, the feeling of warmth. But whose?

--

It was quite late by the time they arrived back at Alrond’s manor, and the moon was high. Misha came out when he saw them walking up with steaming cups of chocolate in both hands. He ushered them inside, where a huge fire, scented with cinnamon sticks and cardamom pods, was crackling in a hearth that filled the whole lower level with heat. Misha rolled up his sleeves, added logs and shuffled the half-burnt ones around with a silver poker as he listened to what the travelers have learned.

“I understand now,” he said, simply, once they both finished.

“Do you?” Castti asked. Both her hands were clutching the now half-empty mug, and she had taken down her hair from its usual bun to a tail on the back of her neck. Throné had noticed that she had started rubbing her neck and shoulders at the end of the day.

Misha stood, observing the fire poker, its blackened edge. “I do. There’s nothing to be worried about, except perhaps the fact that he isn’t getting any sleep. This is exactly like him, in fact it’s one of his quintessential activities: he’s picking up trash.”

“Yes, that was the conclusion I came to,” Castti replied cautiously.

Misha smiled, a wry smile. He produced a cloth and began to clean the fire-poker. “That was the exact activity he was engaged in when he met me. He’s quite fond of it. I don’t know if it’s the fascination with the mundane, even the disgusting, that so many of his rarified class shares. They’re interested in the discomfort that they did not have to endure.

“I don’t begrudge him it. Everyone is interested in what they never had. That is how he first found me, in the refuse. I was picking up salvage to sell. I couldn’t get a job; there were hardly any to go around, back then, and because my mother wasn’t born a woman of this town there are those who look down on her. Still I was born here, and have always called it home, and I love it. Alrond is no small part of the reason why I do,” he confessed, the heat of the fire darkening his cheeks.

“You think of yourself as trash that he picked up,” Throné realized.

“I do,” Misha said, though there was no recrimination in his tone. “We had nothing and he changed that. Because he chose to pay me an absolutely unreasonable sum—no, don’t ask—even while I was still learning the job, my mother’s life changed completely. Once I had the money I could work to fix the things I didn’t like, help clean up the town so that everyone could see it sparkle like I did. Even the parts they wanted to discredit as too low for them. I’m accused of being a neat freak all the time, can you believe that?”

“No,” Throné lied.

Misha smiled. “The thing is that I promise you that Alrond does not think of it as trash. If he saw a soiled diaper lying out, the rind of an orange, and eggshell, a dead bird, he would see cloth that needs cleaned, good fertilizer, and a poor little bird. He has clean eyes. He sees things as purer than they are. That has been part of the problem for a while, I now see. He failed to see the problems as they were, because… because he just loved his town so much, and exactly as it was. And, again, his frame of reference for what destitution feels like is poor.”

“Some would think it… odd that Wellgrove has a feudal lord that runs everything in the modern day,” Throné commented.

“Well,” Misha said, and looked away for a moment. “Well, yes, I know it’s not common everywhere. But I believe that they are jealous, and wish that they had an Alrond.”

Castti and Throné both laughed. Misha continued defending himself through the laugher, his cheeks darkening further. “I know that it can go badly! But Alrond isn’t like that. Nor were his parents. There’s a reason the institution survived here when it didn’t in other places. Alrond loves Wellgrove as much as I do. He’s always cared for everyone. He doesn’t think of anyone as trash, in fact he likes everyone so much he will fail to notice obvious flaws or problems that need fixed. But I’m rambling,” he admitted, and it wasn’t clear whether it was the heat of the fire or a tint of embarrassment that made his cheeks flush. “I’ll make you both some more chocolate—no, please, let me. I like to give back what I can; not everyone finds their home as young as I did, and the least I can do it try to spread that good fortune around.”

--

When Alrond came home, Misha gently confronted him. Alrond admitted to the scheme with an absolute lack of shame, and said everything that Misha had said he would say: it wasn’t trash. Nothing in his beautiful Wellgrove was trash. He was hunting for treasure, just like Misha. And Misha too told the same story, but more gently, even, than the version he had told Throné and Castti.

Then, unbelievably, even though it was the middle of the night, they went out to hunt for more treasure together. Misha assured the travelers that they could simply stay in the house and go to bed, there was no problem. He advised them to stay downstairs where the fire would keep the rooms warmer, and to feel free to lock the doors, since he and Alrond had keys to get back in.

The travelers gladly took them up on the offer, watching flummoxed as the men ran eagerly into the night, ready to clean up the streets they loved so well.

“I can’t believe he complained over Alrond not getting sleep,” Castti said, hands on her hips.

“I have a feeling neither of them get much sleep at all,” Throné responded.

“Throné,” Castti reprimanded.

“Castti.”

Castti smiled and shook her head. “I, for one, am going to get as much sleep as I can before tomorrow,” she said, turning around to head in.

“Let’s.”

They went inside and locked behind them, then returned to the ground floor guest room which, like Misha promised, was plenty warm despite the settling chill outside. They gratefully got out of their travel-clothes and into sleep-clothes; so much time on the road had banished any hesitance about changing around each other. There was a single bed, but it was very large. They had shared much smaller beds, sometimes with Agnea and Ochette, when in small towns or packed road-inns. The bed in Alrond’s guest room had a thick, warm, burgundy comforter and extra sheets beneath which smelled only slightly dusty, a personal hearth which Castti filled with coals, and a window that could be shuttered with a heavy curtain so it was almost as dark as a moonless night inside. The travelers settled into opposite sides of it, and its feather-stuffed bulk rustled and settled to let them in, so soft it was like the whole thing was melting around them.

“Good night,” Castti said.

“Good night,” Throné said.

It was going to be a little while until either of them slept and they both knew it. Castti struggled to quiet her whirring thoughts and Throné found it nearly impossible to sleep in an unfamiliar environment, where every creak and rustle sent a shock of fear through her. Often the both of them would lay awake listening to the others sleep for a while, or, if all the travelers slept around a fire in the wilderness, they sat up with a restless Hikari, cleaning and cleaning his blades and speaking in hushed voices around embers that burned lower and lower.

Still, despite uneasiness, despite concerns about the next day, despite crickets and the creaking of an old, august house, both drifted off to sleep, cocooned by the warmth of the bed and the darkness of the shuttered room.

Then they woke again, mere hours before down, when a sudden, sharp noise startled both of them up in an instant.

A door closed, and there was the sound of muffled voices. One more time, that sharp noise; it was Alrond, Castti realized, trying to stifle his laughter.

She felt Throné sitting up in bed, and heard her breathe. It was too dark to see her, but she knew the sudden noise had caused her to sit up with a knife clenched in her hand. Equally, Throné was aware that it had startled Castti awake, though she now lied clutched around a pillow, curled into a ball like a pill-bug. Throné was too inured to attack to sleep through a sudden noise, and Castti too used to getting up when she heard a cough or a shout for help.

So they were both slowly unclenching and calming their breaths when the two men grew close enough for them to faintly hear Misha hiss, “can you please quiet down. We have guests.”

Castti had known it was them, but still, hearing the butler’s voice made her shoulders relax and her teeth unclench. She heard the very quiet clink of Throné setting her knife back down on the bedside table.

Alrond apologized through his giggles, and then defended himself: “you were the one who made me laugh!”

Misha did something that made him laugh again, and then they could both hear when Misha covered Alrond’s mouth with his hand.

Castti couldn’t help but smile. She snuggled her face into the pillow she had just been lying on, and felt her own warmth. She heard Throné softly sigh. She felt, for a moment, a squirming but pleasant sensation in her stomach, a little, animal delight at the warmth of the bed, at how it shook when Throné shifted her weight to lie back down. Her eyes had adjusted enough that she could see Throné’s outline, a closer, warmer darkness.

She heard Misha hiss something else, but now her ears were stoppered enough that she couldn’t hear what. As Throné adjusted, her hand brushed Castti’s arm, which Castti liked. She heard Alrond reply, the high notes of his tenor voice jumping above the hush to be heard. Throné settled down next to her, for a moment lifting the comforter so that the cooler air poured back in and prickled at Castti’s skin.

Castti heard—a little hum? She couldn’t tell. There was a set of indefinite noises, which she immediately focused on, trying to pick out notes of pain. She had slept by so many bedsides where the slightest noise was her only forewarning that a patient was about to choke, or seize, or vomit on her, and in fact once woke up to someone who had gone nearly immobile, could not make noise, and had been reduced to tapping the bedframe as hard as they could to wake her. Mere seconds saved their life. Since she could not quite define what those noises were, she focused intently among them; was there pain in that little whisper, was that a moan? Did that inflection denote that something had suddenly gone wrong?

She heard Alrond half-groan some words and began to groggily sit up. Throné had, too, and then they both heard him distinctly say “oh, yes.”

Castti’s mouth opened in shock. The pieces fell into place as suddenly as a tree struck by lightning inconveniences a road. The next high, quiet gasp she heard was absolutely undeniable.

She could now see well enough that she could catch Throné’s eyes across the bed. They had, she believed, the same expression.

She heard Misha grumble something, but could not quite parse it. Alrond replied with a completely parsable “What’s wrong with here?”

“What’s wrong with here is that we have guests here, Al, and if you do not get to the bed I will haul you there.”

“Would you?” Alrond asked, delighted. The sounds that followed may, in fact, have been Misha hauling him there, all the way up the beautiful hardwood staircase.

Castti and Throné both, through the skin of their teeth and so many collected years of experience in hiding quietly, managed to wait until they heard the sound of a door closing upstairs before they mutually collapsed into gasping giggles. Castti could feel Throné’s shaking laughter as she struggled to keep it inside and not make so much noise the men could hear them upstairs… despite their involvement.

Castti herself was gasping into her palm. She bent over herself and stifled a wheeze with the soft comforter.

“Castti,” Throné said, her voice wavering with delight.

“Yes?” Castti crackled.

“I don’t believe—I don’t think that the situation is—I don’t think either of them are hiding their feelings out of respect for their professional relationship,” Throné wheezed.

“No, I don’t believe they are,” Castti responded alike.

“I think they’re pretty aware of each other’s feelings!”

“I hope so!” Castti laughed. “Oh, dear. No, I think in retrospect we have witnessed them both trying very hard to not make the situation uncomfortable for anyone else. But I rather say both gentlemen know where they stand.”

“Or sit, or lay down.”

“Throné!”

“What do you think they just left to do?”

Castti covered Throné’s mouth with her hands. Really, she was only slightly embarrassed, and still laughing. Throné knew she wasn’t prudish; she was practical and no-nonsense, yes, but in the moment the real problem was that if she laughed too hard she would start gasping, which was rather high-pitched and sharp and might alert the men upstairs.

They both laid back down and giggling intermittently for a few minutes. Throné held down a few good one-liners until Castti had mostly settled down and could take them without convulsions. They slept and, when a chill dawn found the cracks between the window and the blinds hey couldn’t find last night, awoke again, finding themselves curled into each other to preserve last night’s warmth.

--

Original Note:

Hello and welcome!! Thanks for stopping by and checking this one out!

In essence, this fic is Castti and Throné going through different character epilogues that Felt Gay to me. A lot of the characters and ships will only show up in one chapter, because of the nature of the story. Main ship is Castti/Throné and the rest are sort of chapter features >u< For that reason I'll be tagging them as I upload chapters so people who want something in chapter five aren't waiting for however long it takes me to get there.

I'm 'rewriting' these next chapter epilogues in the sense that I’m adding to them and adjusting slightly, but when I run into a scene that I want to play just like it did in the game, I’ll skip or gloss over it. So it’s best if you’ve finished all those epilogues before jumping in here. Basically, as I was playing all those quests, I played three in a row that made me think 'damn, that was gay', and then I started writing.

Chapter title is a classic lyric from a very classic musical. As I was writing this I noticed how many of the relationships I would be covering had larger age differences than I expected them to, and pulling in an original May/December romance felt appropriate to start things out. On that note, it’s mentioned in the text later, but I always prefer my JRPG quests be long in-game so everyone here is already a year or two older than their stated canon ages, which is how old they were at the beginning of their journeys.

...I'm also being really lazy about POV. It's sort of traded back and forth between Castti and Throné. Sorry if that's confusing!! OK that's all.

--

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I never realized large, monopolizing corporations could be such a force for good in the world!

“Well, I’ll be,” Partitio said, dropping six or seven thick gold rings into a jewelry dish made of one half of a pearly seashell, itself gilded on the inside. The gleams of light that flashed on their curves as they clattered were reflected in Throné’s black eyes, which were as wide as tea saucers.

He shrugged off a shining, fringe-edged leather coat and then replaced it with subtle leather armor. In appearance it was not too different from the flashy coat he had had on before, but Castti could see the thick reinforcement on its underside before he pulled it snug against his silk black shirt and gold-lined collar. Nearly invisible knuckle-dusters and a hidden knife completed the look.

What he did not drop in a dish or divest over the back of a chair was his signature cheer. The process of disrobing and re-arming was done without any grimness or anxiety; he had happily welcomed his old traveling companions and now dressed appropriately for their company. If Castti and Throné were here, how the hell did he know he wouldn’t be duking it out with someone’s adoptive father or former student?

“I would never’ve guessed,” he continued, finishing off the impromptu wardrobe change by replacing his hat. “’Course some gentlemen just prefer to keep things private-like. Alrond being such a public figure, I’m sure they don’t neither of them need nosy questions about their private lives. Not when there’s better business to talk about!”

“Their relationship doesn’t bother you?” Castti asked. It was more pointed than she would usually be, but she had learned to adjust her speech with Partitio. He had been raised in a culture where blunt honesty was polite and appreciated it better than tact.

“Not in the least! Alrond isn’t like a shop boss. There are times when you just can’t do a workplace relationship, there’s nothing for it. But they’ve got a different situation there. Help yourself, Throné.”

Castti whipped her head around with a gentle glare, expecting to see Throné shifting through the little mound of golden rings Partitio had dropped from his hands. Instead, she saw Throné reaching into the tall, glass jar of hard candies, her fingers slipping between red cinnamon hearts and yellow-speckled candy strawberries to grasp a winding green and pink sugar ribbon.

Throné froze. “Oh,” she said. “Uh. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. I got it for the kids, but everyone likes them,” he said, and in the time it took him to say that Throné had picked the jar clean of her eight favorite candies and neatly replaced the lid.

“I think it would be more of an issue in the sort of structure you have,” Castti said, settling back into the lovely, cushioned chair Partitio had provided her and wrapping her hands around the porcelain cup of coffee.

“Definitely,” Partitio agreed. “Well, I’m trying to change that a little, make it all more home-like. The way Roque had it, folks weren’t even friends, let alone in a place to consider settling down with someone. Doesn’t make sense when you’ve built the whole system on competition. But that antique set-up they have in the Timberain Kingdom lends itself a little better to building a home with someone even if you met on the job.”

“Come to think of it, I noticed that Misha was the only one who lived with him full-time,” Castti mused. “Alrond employs both household staff and gardeners, but only Misha lives with him… and Misha even has family in town.”

“Mmm-hmm,” said Partitio, as if that was all that needed to be said. “I should’ve known it in the first place, like, considering Misha travels around with him.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, he’s a butler, not a valet, ain’t he?”

“A valet?”

“Well, that is that a valet is a personal manservant, right, a gentleman who stays with the gentleman. A butler is the chief of household staff and stays with the house. It seemed like Alrond was mixing the roles of butler and valet up, something a man with his blood has no cause to do, and that really should’ve told me everything I needed to know in the first place. Why in tarnation would you have your butler sail across the continent with you unless you just liked him? I didn’t think much of it is all.”

“Oh!” said Castti, who had not known any of that. “Yes, Alrond refers to him as a butler, but he does appear to do both.”

“I bet he does,” said Throné, leaning slightly in front of Castti.

“Oh, Throné,” Castti sighed. She looked down to see what Throné was doing and caught her placing a striped lozenge she had had pinched in her fingers on the table in front of Castti. There were now four candied in front of her, jewel-toned and sweet-smelling. While Castti had been talking to Partitio, Throné had silently sorted through her ‘stolen’ candies and given Castti half.

Castti felt her cheeks flushing. She resisted the urge to cover her smile. “Is it proving difficult to ease the strain between workers who used to be rivals?” she asked Partitio. “The stress of the workplace aside, there are other factors that I imagine make marrying two businesses rather difficult.”

“Sure are,” Partitio sighed. “Same as marrying any two houses, I suppose, though putting it that way makes it sound like I’m doing something indecent. No, I mean it when I say Roque had an ugly system set up, and I’ve told him that so many times that he’s sick of hearing it. Sometimes I really have to get his old foremen in line when they slip into old habits. Believe it or not, the hardest thing is to get people to stop working! They got so used to working all day long that I’m having to go in there and drag people off the line. I’m in there hauling men out by their suspenders shouting, ‘Go home! Go home, man! Don’t you have kids?’”

“So, the cat claws are for when you need people to stop working?” Throné asked with a smile.

“I’m serious!” Partitio said, though he was laughing himself. “That sort of thing sets a bad example. I want people to feel like they can take care of things at home too. They’re not married to their station. That may be a good way to make a fortune, but it’s no way to keep a business. Believe it or not the best help I’ve had in adjusting the culture they had is Thurston. If he doesn’t have a grip on the men, no one does.”

Castti paused, and then slowly swallowed her sip of coffee. (She wasn’t a huge fan of the bitter drink, but with enough spice and sugar to flavor it, she could see the appeal.) “That would be the individual who tracked you to Wellgrove in order to attempt premeditated murder with a steam engine, correct?”

“Sure is! Shucks, he’s good at what he does.”

“Hm.”

“He is one of those that really needs good direction,” Partitio admitted.

“Hm.”

“Definitely a good middle manager. He’s a great follower, which is what he wants to be. Don’t think he’d be a great boss, but not everyone is. Listen, we’ve had a lot of good, long chats; he’s a strange guy, but a good one at heart. He has one of those regimented minds, you know? If you give him the facts, and explain why it’s better to do it this way, we’ll he’ll do it that way. So I’ve explained to him why we’re doing it my way, with good hours and good pay, a comfortable, friendly-like atmosphere, and he’s got it and he’s doing it that way now.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Y’know, Castti, everyone here knows that I have never taken a former coworker out of this life in the past, which really helps me have these conversations with them now.”

Castti’s jaw dropped. Throné bent forward in the effort to stifle her laughter. More than anything, Castti was shocked by the belated realization that out of everyone here, Partitio really was the reasonable person.

“None of your former coworkers have tried to kill everyone in town,” she said after a bit of thought.

“Mmmm-eehhh,” said Partitio, making a wavering scale with the spread fingers of one hand. “I do still respect and admire my business partner, but I recognize he would have gotten a little bloody if I hadn’t gotten in his track. Still, point taken. He was not at the time trying to kill everyone in town, unlike some other people’s associates.”

“Long day at the office today?” Castti asked pointedly.

Partitio laughed, and then stood up from behind his desk. “Day’s barely begun!” He said, despite it being past dinner. “But you’re right, making jabs at my friends is no good way to start the evening. You just leave your soft side too open, Castti.”

“That’s what I’m always telling her,” Throné said, around a bulging cheek full of candy.

“How’s about I take you two around and show you the changes we’ve made so far? There’s still work to do, but the amount we’ve brightened up this place cheers me up, at least.”

--

The brightening was literal. The cramped, thin, steam-choked tunnels Castti remembered from the last time she walked the back halls of Roque Island, under much more harrowing circumstances, had been knocked down to make wider, sparser hallways with high glass windows that let the lingering sunlight in. They were still working on finishing the new walls and floors, so there were rough patches, but even so the atmosphere was much improved. The workers did, too, appear much less… haunted. Almost everyone smiled and waved when they saw Partitio, if they didn’t outright drop what they were doing and run up to chat with him.

Two hours of what should have been a brief tour later, and once they were well on their way to sunset, Paritio finally extracted himself from his admirers and was able to bring Throné and Castti back outside to the front where they were constructing a new, greener entranceway. “We’re, uh, still in that honeymoon phase,” he admitted, straightening the collar of his coat.

“Do you require cheek-kisses from your subordinates, or do they just do that?” Throné asked slyly.

“They. Uh. Just do that,” Partitio said, slightly flustered. “Here he is! I was just talking about you.”

Thurston, who had been bustling his way from one building to the next, stopped in his tracks. He turned smartly to Partitio, and then, with a visible widening of his eyes, recognized his company. Castti saw his gaze flicker to where Throné kept her favorite knife at her left side.

Partitio walked the party over to Thurston, who approached with disguised reluctance. “Mr. Yellowil,” he greeted with a well-starched tone.

“Hey partner. You remember Castti and Throné?”

“I do,” he said, subtly holding his side.

“Ladies, Millard Thurston, one of my section managers.”

“Hello, Thurston,” said both Castti and Throné at once, and in nearly the same tone. He flinched.

Thurston had not changed much visibly. He was still thin and pale and immaculately well-dressed, with sleek silver spectacles that were surely custom-made for his face. He had a couple of stress-pimples on his face but his eyes, Throné thought, no longer had a film of madness over them. Instead, he looked tired, severe, and suspicious, none of which she could fault him for.

(Some people were squealers when you stabbed them. Some swore or sobbed. Most were just shocked, silent or nearly so. Thurston had been a ‘unhinged laughter’ stabee. Not really her favorite kind to let live.)

“Good evening, ladies,” he said through gritted teeth. “Mr. Yellowil, good evening.”

“You headed home for the night, Mills?”

Castti bit her lip. Throné snorted. ‘Mills’ replied, “As soon as I can. I’m still trying to get everyone out of the office; I’m not going to leave until all of my assistants do.”

Partitio sighed and crossed his arms. “Of course. But you don’t have to do that, Mills. If one man’s too stubborn to leave, give him the keys and tell him it’s on his head now. Long as you let me know about it I’ll back you up.”

“I understand, but I can’t do it to this assistant.”

“Oh? Which is it?”

“Floyd.”

Partitio sighed even more. “Owen Floyd. Of course. Alright, what have you tried already?”

Thurston lifted up his fingers to count off. “Simply asking him. Asking again. Reminding him of his scheduled hours tomorrow. Appealing to reason. Ordering him. Hiding his tools, but then he just uses his hands. Telling every other assistant that their last task of the day is telling Owen Floyd to go home. Everything short of getting physical.”

“Let’s keep it that way,” Partitio said quickly. “That ‘days since last accident’ sign is looking dusty, which is just how I want it.”

“I understand that I cannot physically remove my colleagues from their workstations,” Thurston stressed.

“I know. I know you do, Mills. You took the courses. You signed the form. We don’t have to take it there. Let’s just go have a little chat with our boy wonder and see what’s keeping him from getting gone.”

And so Castti and Throné followed behind Partitio and Thurston, both interested despite themselves in how the scene was playing out. As they walked Thurston talked with controlled frustration about how important it was for the workers to maintain a good work/life balance and get enough sleep so that they came to work refreshed and capable the next day, and how it bothered him that so many wouldn’t do that. Partitio ‘that’s it’ and ‘sure thing, partner’d his way through the speech, which became nearly impassioned by the end.

Castti thought it was odd, but did indeed show good progress. Throné thought it was the sweetest she had ever heard a collection of rattling pistons sound (which is what she assumed he had inside his skull).

It was dark by the time they found the boy wonder in question, enthusiastically explaining another new idea to a few dead tired associates. Castti and Throné watched both the persuasive Partitio and mildly threatening Thurston try yet again to convince him to sleep, but Floyd expressed, with shining eyes and beauteous grin, that he could not possibly think about sleeping. He had not thought about sleeping in three days.

“That is a medical problem,” Castti said.

Partitio sighed and whapped Floyd fondly on the shoulder. Then he turned around, grabbing Thurston as he went, and turned the four of them into a huddle. Behind them, Floyd continued carrying on the exact discussion that Partitio had interrupted.

“Alright,” said Partitio.

“You see? Just like that,” Thurston complained. “I have been trying to get this man to go home and sleep for days.”

“Have you slept any?” Partitio asked.

“When I can.”

“Okay,” he sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me this was going on?”

“Because I have spent three days trying to get one man to sleep.”

“Yeah,” Partitio said, “Right. Guess I could have listened the first time.”

“That is a medical problem,” Castti repeated.

“I hear you, Castti. Listen, Mills.”

“Sir.”

“Now that I’ve seen it, I wonder if the problem here is that you’re trying to do things backwards. You’ve been trying to get him home and put him to sleep, which is what usually makes sense. I’m thinking we need to start with getting him to sleep, and then we can more easily get him home.”

“Yes, sir,” said Thurston, immediately prepared.

“Got it,” said Throné, and drew a knife.

Castti, who was standing conveniently between the two of them, put one of her hands on each of theirs and firmly lowered them. “No. No to both of you. Please let me handle this instead.”

“Thank you kindly, Castti,” said Partitio, with a firm pat to her shoulder.

Castti smile, back at him, patting his hand for a second, before turning away and approaching the manic man. She stood for a few minutes just outside of the circle of his captive audience, to which he was explaining an idea he had about timetables in enthusiastic, exhausting detail.  Eventually, even through his delirious distraction Floyd was able to detect that someone was waiting on him.  He turned to Castti with a big smile and a somewhat slurred “Hello!! How can I help??”

“Hello! Are you Mr. Owen Floyd?” asked Castti, because she had somehow missed making his acquaintance earlier. She had had to duck in and out of some of her friend’s troubles when attending her own, unfortunately.

“Yes! Good to meet you!! I’m an assistant production manager at Yellowil and Roque. I make the machines!!”

“Wow! That’s great!” Castti smiled. “How long have you been unable to sleep, Mr. Floyd?”

“Oh, always! My whole life. Never got the hang of it,” he informed her enthusiastically and without even a hint of suspicion that something might be wrong here.

“My goodness! That must be exhausting,” Castti said sympathetically.

“I honestly don’t feel tired anymore,” Floyd smiled. Castti could see he was vibrating slightly.

“Do you ever feel confused or turned around when you’ve been especially long without sleep?”

Floyd thought about it. “Well, yes, but that’s normal.”

“It is normal to experience confusion when sleep-deprived. If you could sleep more regularly, though, you’d be confused less often.”

“Well, that would be nice, but I can’t sleep.”

“Mm-hm,” said Castti, and pulled her bag of medicine off her shoulder with the same determination and severity with which Hikari drew his sword. “Do you have more trouble falling asleep, or staying asleep?” she asked as she popped it open.

“Oh, falling. If I do sleep I can sleep all night. It’s getting to sleep I can’t do,” he laughed.

“Oh, I see,” Castti encouraged, rapidly pulling out jars and bags and scissors. “How many hours would you say you sleep in an average day?”

“Anywhere from zero to twenty-four.”

“Pretending it was a night where you had a normal amount of sleep before waking up for work, how many hours do you think that would be?”

“Two?”

“Alright,” said Castti, holding three jars between the fingers of one hand and pulling leaves and petals and dabs of resin out with the other. “Do you drink?”

“No, never.”

“Does alcohol disagree with you, or do you just dislike it?”

“I don’t like it.”

“Would a little bit be alright?”

“Sure, if it’s not too strong.”

“Great,” said Castti, capped a jar full of bits and pieces and about an ounce of clear liquid, and shook it rapidly until it became a uniform, viscous green substance. Floyd watched with the fascination of the exhausted as the goo changed colors. She then handed it to him and said, “drink this.”

For the first time, the glimmer of a thought that something weird might be going on here entered Floyd’s sparkling, seal-like eyes. He slowly looked to Partitio, standing ten or so feet away, who gave him a cheerful thumbs-up.

“Okay!” said Floyd, and drank it all. Castti watched with her hands primly folded and a polite smile on her face.

“Gross,” Floyd said, and then his eyes rolled into his head. He collapsed forward, and Castti caught him flawlessly in her arms.

“Goodness, he must weight barely a hundred pounds!” she said, turning to look at the group.

Partitio began to applaud Castti. Throné, standing beside him, absolutely beamed at her, like a proud mother. Thurston asked, “is he dead?”

“No, he’s asleep,” she said, “and I’ll be leaving you will a fair supply of the medicine I gave him, as well as instructions for making more. Now, on days he’s not dangerously sleep-deprived, he won’t just, ah, pass out after taking it. You’ll have to convince him to take it about an hour ahead of the time he wants to sleep. Or, well, in theory he would be doing this sort of thing by himself. How old is he?”

“Uh,” said Partitio.

“Twenty-two,” Thurston said.

“Gracious, he’ll small! Well, still, you should always use two sets of hands to carry an unconscious person, so if you’ll help me out, Partitio, we’ll get him home.”

--

Floyd settled subconsciously into his bedsheets like a sand-crab digging a hiding hole. Partitio tossed a blanket over him.

Castti went carefully over the details of the medicine Floyd would need for his chronic initial insomnia with Thurston. She asked him if he wanted anything repeated, but he said it wasn’t necessary.

She believed him. His focus on the task at hand and immediate grasp of the details were both remarkable. “You’d be a decent apothecary, Mr. Thurston.”

“I would not. I have very little natural empathy.”

“That is actually rarely necessary for an apothecary. In fact, an abundance of empathy is a difficulty that often causes fledgling apothecaries to give up the profession. If you have too much empathy, seeing the suffering of others day in and out wears on you. I’ve seen it drive people to their breaking point… and they don’t always come back. People who are more pragmatic than empathetic and more interested in the process than the people can actually make very fine caregivers. They won’t exhaust themselves of the profession as quickly as someone spending all their time over-empathizing and exhausting both themselves and their patients.”

Thurston clearly did not know how to take that compliment. “I suppose you would know.”

“I do know,” she said.

“Now then, Castti,” said Partitio, laying his hand on her shoulder. For a moment his voice was soft, as soft as he had a fallen bird in his palm, and then he picked his typical cheer back up. “It looks like you did great work! He’s sleeping like a baby and seems like to stay that way the rest of the night.”

“He should. The first dose always hits hardest. He’ll build up a slight tolerance over time, but with luck, the medicine will start regulating his internal clock. Sometimes the artificial structure gets natural processes kicked into gear,” she explained, proud of herself for using a mechanical metaphor that they’d easily understand.

“Will we need to do anything special to get him up in the morning?”

“No, by that point it’ll be essentially worked out of his system and he’ll be good to go. He might be slightly groggy or disoriented, but that will pass. Still, make sure he eats and gets his head back on straight before he gets back on the job.”

“Easier said than done,” Thurston sighed. He was looking over his shoulder at the sleeping man, and Castti did not know him well enough to read what was in his gaze. “I want to thank you for your assistance, Ms. Florenz. I was at a loss for what to do. Now I see that I wasn’t even thinking about it in terms of his health. I—I sometimes think of everything around me like it’s all parts of a machine, and if those parts are perfectly constructed and aligned, we will make something amazing. A perfect world. I struggle to think of inefficiencies in the machine as anything but flaws, but then I suddenly realize they’re people. It’s hard to explain. I see that we can make something wonderful, but people want to stall it or stop the process entirely. It’s hard to see their reasons for doing so unless I just… slow down. I didn’t even learn to do that until recently. I always thought of myself as more intelligent than others, and I honestly can’t say how embarrassing it is to realize that I was failing to properly understand everyone else this entire time.”

Castti nodded and hummed her way through his words. She saw out of the corner of her eyes that Partitio was surprised by all this, which meant it was rare and potentially sensitive. She chose to redirect. “I agree. It sounds like you’re learning a lot, which always comes with setbacks! Take the time it takes to do good work. But… I am curious about something.”

“Oh?”

“I didn’t think that I gave you my full name,” she said.

“Oh,” said Thurston, and flushed slightly.

Partitio, however, got excited enough that he practically jumped over to their side of the room to get into the conversation. “That’s it!!” he (somehow) shouted quietly. “That’s what he does!! Tell them what you do, Mills.”

“Mr. Yellowil…”

“He knows things,” Partitio enthused. “He finds things out. Did you wonder how he trailed us across a continent? This man can track down information like a hunter tracking a deer. He knows everything.”

“I don’t know everything.”

“What do you know about the people who work at the company, Mills?” Partitio asked.

Somewhat indignantly, Thurston looked up at Partitio and claimed, rapid-fire, like successive turns of a piston, “I know the names, ages, and residences of everyone who works at this company. I know their personal employment history, shift schedules, where they go to eat lunch, whether they were personally for or against the merger and why. I know their marital histories and usually broader relationship histories, including when they’ve failed in love, general preferences—”

“And where do you have all that stuff written down?” Partitio asked. Castti could hear in his voice that he was setting up a joke.

Thurston, offended, replied, “I do not have any of that written down.”

Partitio threw his head back and wheezed from trying to keep in his laughter. Castti found herself relieved that this man had not moved any higher up the ladder than he had at the time of his mental health crisis, and equally relieved that he was under Partitio’s watch now.

“You may not have a lot of empathy,” Castti noted, “but you clearly do have a lot of care. I can’t think of any other reason to memorize all of that information.”

“Well—memorizing is easy for me,” Thurston said, and he again looked at the bed and then glanced away. “To me, what’s important is this company, and the work we do. I believe in the change we can make in the world. I believe I was doing it the wrong way before, and that I can do it the right way now, if I’m just… careful enough. If I lean on men like Floyd. If I can get things right for them to be able to work unhindered, which is why I know so much about them,” he attempted to explain.

“I believe you,” Castti assured him.

“You sure you don’t. Just. Like knowing things about people?” Throné asked.

“Well, everyone likes that,” Thurston assumed. “I am using that information for a purpose.”

“Mmmhm. Are you sure that purpose isn’t getting into this guy’s bedroom? Because you’ve done an incredible job—”

“Good work, everyone,” Partitio smoothly interrupted. “But it’s the middle of the gosh-darn night! We’ve been gabbing about how we all need to get a good night’s sleep, and now we’re all losing sleep over it! Go home, y’all; Throné, Castti, I’ll be happy to put you up if you like.”

“We’d be happy to accept,” Castti replied brightly.

--

Castti had tried to gently suggest that they did not have to return to wake Floyd the next morning, all that was necessary was for her to check up on him and make sure the medicine treated him well, but that was a battle she couldn’t win. Throné and Partitio ran a campaign of nosiness and good cheer, and somehow they all ended up on their way to Floyd’s house first thing in the morning anyway.

As they approached, Castti could see through the windows that Thurston was already inside. She felt a moment of fear, because of how she had known him in the past, but she quickly realized it was unfounded. Thurston was inside, yes, but he wasn’t doing anything. He was watching and waiting.

“Parti,” Throné said through a yawn.

“Yeah?”

“Your man is in there in Floyd’s bedroom again.”

“Yup,” Partitio replied, “He sure is.”

“It’s possible he never left.”

“Yup.”

“I think he just wants to be there.”

“I reckon?” Partitio agreed, confused.

“My, do you really think so?” Castti mused.

“He’s got an obsessive personality, but this is still above and beyond.”

“I’ll make sure to tell him that ‘go home’ means ‘him too,’” Partitio sighed, and knocked on the door.

Thurston let them in, and there was really nothing to do but go in there and wake Floyd up. They weren’t exactly going to have breakfast in his house while he slept. Castti kneeled down to wake him gently and them preform a check-up, but before she could nudge him, Thurston spoke aloud.

“It’s time to wake up, Floyd.”

Floyd grumbled, stretched, and then startled. He sat up, muss-haired and wide-eyed, and took a full minute to absorb the panorama of his boss, his boss’s boss, an apothecary, and a random distant acquaintance all in his bedroom to wake him.

“Mr. Thurston?” he asked.

Thurston balked and turned away from him. He touched the rim of his glasses. “Apologies. We had to turn to drastic measures to get you your beauty sleep.”

Floyd moved to stand up, but Castti reached over to steady him. “Hold on a moment,” she said. “I want to do a quick check to make sure you’re alright.”

“Oh,” said Floyd, blinking at her. Castti observed the dilation of his pupils unhappily. It seemed that something she had given him was too strong for him. It couldn’t have been the fact that he was not used to alcohol? She had only used an ounce of spirits to dissolve and strengthen the other ingredients. “I’m sorry, I think?” he said. “But it was only—I was so excited to bring my master’s dream to fruition,” he said, his light and enthusiasm dawning out of him at once. “I couldn’t sit still!”

Castti tested the pulse in his thin wrist. Behind her, she heard Thurston clear his throat and say, “That passion of yours is wonderful, Floyd.” (Castti raised her eyebrows to herself.) “But do you remember what our president Partitio said? That people’s happiness is more important than money. Last I checked, you’re a person too. So, let me get right to the point: will you please maintain a healthy work/life balance? For your sake and the rest of ours.”

The only thing Castti was observing was Floyd’s heartrate increasing at a rapid pace. She considered whether or not she needed to ask the rest of them to vacate the room so she could actually properly examine him. She was watching Floyd’s chest rise and fall as he said, “You’ve changed.”

“What?” Thurston said.

“I assure you that he hasn’t,” said Throné with a grin in her voice from the corner she was currently haunting. “While you were asleep, he told us in detail about how he had researched your family, your past, even your love life, your habits down to where you eat lunch, and we’re only here now because he knows where you sleep at night. Oh, he told us this as we were standing over your sleeping body, which he had drugged and hauled back here.”

Castti quietly dropped her head onto the bed, making a ‘flumph’ noise and a small rain of feathers.

“Throné,” she groaned into the quilt.

She heard Partitio suck in a breath. After that there were ten agonizing seconds of pure silence.

Floyd, in a voice like a glass teetering on the edge of a table, said, “You had me drugged and carried back to the house because I wasn’t sleeping?”

“Medicine,” Castti mumbled.

“You know where I sleep? You—the only people who know about my love life are my mom and my ex. My mom wouldn’t—you asked my ex about me?”

“You have a medical condition. I made you medicine,” said Castti to no one.

“You went—you went elbows-deep into my life like you were ripping up the thermal controls of an engine and never even said anything about it to me? You never even used that information? You’ve been learning everything about me just for fun?”

Thurston failed to reply to that statement in any convincing manner. Castti heard noises, but they did not add up to anything.

Awestruck, dumbfounded, and still as doped up as high a kitten about to have its tubes cut, Floyd said, “I think that is the hottest thing I have ever heard in my life.

He did work with them all day long, but Thurston’s imitation of a steam engine after that comment was still impressive.

Castti snapped her head off of the bed and confidently declared, “You’re sensitive to slumberweed.”

--

“Well, Throné,” Partitio said, hands in his pockets, looking up at the sky with wonderment, “you really called it, huh.”

Throné smiled like a cat. “I’ve just known some guys like that, is all.”

The three of them were all walking leisurely down the piers on the south of the island, not going anywhere in particular, enjoying the gorgeous day, made temperate by the ocean wind. The ship was moored behind them, and the cacophony of the island getting to work rose and clattered. The ocean crested and crawled before them, unravelling into white loops where it met the island’s wooden posts.

“What’s that mean?” Partitio asked.

“The dogged type. I mean that if you’re contriving reasons to stay in someone’s bedroom unattended all night, it’s not usually for no reason.”

Partitio frowned. “I don’t believe he did anything untoward,” he hoped.

“I don’t either,” Throné shrugged. “A real bastard would have, but you don’t have to be a real bastard to want to do something untoward. You can have all the bastard impulses in the world, but you only become a real bastard if you act on them.”

Partitio and Castti both considered that for a moment. Eventually, Partitio said, “Well, that’s the truth.”

Castti thought a little longer yet. For Throné, that might have been a statement that cut deep. She surely believed that she had similar impulses to the men and women who raised her, all of whom she now knew she was closely related to. Castti wasn’t surprised that Throné might be struggling with the impulses they had bred into her by raising her to be a criminal and killer even from her childhood. In fact, the confidence Throné revealed that she had in herself to not act on such impulses despite everything gave Castti some comfort and a sense of pride. She had never doubted Throné had the ability to regulate herself, but the sound of self-respect in her voice was still very flattering.

I wonder what ‘impulses’ exactly, though, she thinks she’s struggling with, Castti wondered.

“I agree,” she said eventually. “Everyone has thoughts they’re not proud of sometimes. It’s how you react to them that matters. No one is going to remember you for a thought you did not voice.”

What did Castti possibly have to suppress? Throné wondered. Other than sadness, of course, a many-times distilled grief. Were Castti’s unpleasant thoughts easy to push down, or was she so skilled at it that the effort was invisible? Throné had gotten to a point when she could tell if Castti was bothered by something, but she could rarely actually pinpoint what it was that was bothering her.

“You do your best to do right by others,” Partitio agreed. “What matters is that you have a positive effect on other people by the end of the day. Course, if the things you got in your head are causing you to lash out, you’ve got some work to do there.”

“Or you can stumble ass-backwards through life until you land in the bed of a restless, experimental thrill-seeker who wants you to do all the bastard things you can think of. It seems that works for some people.”

“I really didn’t see that coming,” Partitio said solemnly.

“Do you think anything’s going to come of it?”

Partitio shrugged. “That’s up to them! You’re nuts if you think I’m getting in the middle of that.”

“Thurston is nuts is he doesn’t follow up ‘that’s the hottest thing I’ve ever heard in my life’ with anything,” said Throné.

“Perhaps it is fortuitous that I entrusted the adjusted dosage of Mr. Floyd’s medicine to him,” Castti considered, doing her best to pretend like she was only thinking aloud as usual. She could feel a grin twitching onto her face all the same. “He may be convenient to him in the future.”

“By ‘convenient’, you surely mean on hand and available?”

“Like Partitio said—he’s a great follower, which is exactly what he wants to be.”

“A heart of service!” Throné declared.

“Someone who will always come in time of need.”

“Ladies,” Partitio said, sounding woozy. “Gentlemen like me just weren’t made for such rough talk.”

They laughed, and jostled him on either side until he almost fell into the water. This proved a poor choice, because after a good few minutes of jostling and a series of elaborate betrayals, they all ended up in the ocean and soaked through.

Bobbing on the waves, Throné said, “We should go dig up Temenos. He would have thought it was funny.”

“Oh!” Castti exclaimed, pulling her now-loose hair out of her face. “We should!”

--

Original Note:

“…Few do.”

I gave into the dark urge to name this chapter after a lyric from Urinetown. Well, a spoken interjection in a particular song ('Mr. Cladwell') that is automatically so funny when placed in proximity to Roque Corp. Especially since there is a character who is basically Thurston. Urinetown is one of the most ideologically incomprehensible things I have ever seen and I’m pretty sure it’s only funny if you already have terminal Broadway disease. Uh, try some other ones first.

Anyway, afaik ‘Floyd’ and ‘Thurston’ both have one name each. Nothing implies these are surnames and they could be read as either first names or family names. I decided to make them surnames (formal, business environment) and give them first names. So, not canon, my choices. I chose them names that matched the linguistic etymology of the ones they already had and that had a meaning that worked for them (Well, okay, 'Owen' is maybe Welsh but we can't prove its origin. Millard deffo is old English, and it means ‘guardian of the mill’ or literally ‘mill-ward.’ It’s a nerdcore name but how could I resist?)

--

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Even A Poor Tailor

With a cry of delight, the King of Ku leapt off of his throne, his arms outstretched. His expertly pinned headdress remained on his head, his red robes flew out like wings behind him. He embraced Castti first, wrapping both of his arms around her. She put hers in turn behind his broad shoulders and squeezed. Then he embraced Throné, for a moment so forcefully that he lifted her off of the ground. She laughed and pushed him away. He clasped Temenos’ forearm, with just as much happiness but much more restraint, since they had been in each other’s company for a while now.

“Excellent find, inquisitor!” Hikari said, his grin dimpling his cheeks.

Temenos grandly indicated the two newcomers again, stepping back with one foot as if he were inviting someone to dance. “I always deliver! But what is up to my discretion.”

From under her hair, which she was just fixing from Hikari’s ruffling, Throné looked over at Temenos with undisguised affection. Castti smiled to see them together again.

“Are you the Emperor’s bloodhound now, inquisitor?” Throné teased.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderfully convenient if I were? A brand-new government, freshly smote, shriven, and still stinging from knowing the fear of God! I had to do that to my last governing system myself, and it’s just awful work,” he grinned. That grin, though, was sharp-edged in a way the rest of the travelers could see, with a bit of white under it like a fresh scar.

Throné and Castti both looked at Hikari, but he was undeterred. He clasped him firmly once more before drawing away. “We must celebrate tonight! A subdued celebration, I’m afraid. It’s been decided that it is simply not appropriate yet to feast and make merry in Ku.”

Throné understood in a moment why restless Temenos had lingered so long in Hikaru’s country, and resolved to get him out of it for a while. “After enough time on Partitio’s non-private island, I’m okay with a more subdued evening.”

“I assure you that we can’t wait to tell you all about it,” Castti promised when Temenos opened his mouth, “but I’m not sure all of Hikari’s government officials want to hear what amounts to a laundry load of gossip.”

“Oh, lovely,” Temenos smiled.

“I’ll be glad to hear all about your tales of the road,” Hikari continued smoothly. “I am beginning to miss it. You will come get me, when we?...”

They had never spoken about it out loud. Perhaps Temenos had suggested it, and Osvald as well. When they… When they went to find it. It. ‘The Shadow.’ Whatever it was. The thing that Temenos’ cultists wanted. The thing Osvald’s despicable teacher had nearly found. The thing which had dug claw-rifts into Ochette’s island. The thing that may have touched Hikari as well, and grasped Mugen and squeezed him until he popped. The thing that had turned Trousseau inside out.

It did feel insane that it could have been all one thing. And yet.

And yet.

(Castti had seen most of them, and had the rest described to her. They all looked the same.)

“Of course we will, Hikari,” Castti promised him. “We’ll need you.”

“Once we figure out where we left Ochette,” said Throné.

“I swear we just had her,” Castti sighed.

“I’ll find her if it comes to it,” Temenos promised cheerfully. “Now, ducklings, we have a private engagement to plan, and I have found the cooks of Ku’s imperial kitchens to be enormously accommodating and charming company besides. What say we go wheedle increasingly decadent sweets out of them as we consider the dinner menu proper?”

--

Over the course of the ostensibly solemn celebratory dinner, Hikari became what Throné would call ‘lightly drunk.’ He was swimming, but his head was above water. His speech did not slur, but he did have to pause to search for his next word from time to time. He kept effusively complimenting his companions and his only topic of conversation was his subjects in Ku and how much he loved each of them.

For example, “Mikka is like a sister to me,” he enthused, a bowl of plum wine in one hand and a knife he had stopped using for eating several minutes ago in the other. He had already said that Mikka was like a sister to him twice. “She’s patient, and kind, and so generous. Too generous. Now that Ritsu is gone, I just…”

He trailed off, lacking sufficient words to express how much he wanted to just keep her in a safe box of silk cushions and pearls and delicious treats forever. 

For her part, Throné was what she would describe as ‘solidly drunk’. Hikari has access to potentially the finest wine cellar in the continent and he was a generous man. She was using one side of Temenos to keep herself upright instead of just flopping over onto the soft, subtly heated cushions beneath the low table. Incidentally, Hikari was using Temenos’s other side for the same purpose. The two of them repeatedly leaned over his front to talk to each other, arms braced on his shoulders or behind his back, creating a picture that could probably get the Inquisitor excommunicated if the wrong person saw it. Of course, Temenos was straight-backed and composed, still wearing fastened buttons up to his neck and his singular enigmatic smile.

Castti was happily sipping and nibbling across from them. The whole thing had started with them equidistant around a four-person table, but it now looked a little like Temenos had a pair of drunken hangers-on and Castti was politely chaperoning.

“She sounds like a lovely young lady,” said Castti. “I don’t believe I ever got the chance to meet her.”

“You must!” Hikari said brightly. “You’ll love her. She’s a little like you. She works hard and doesn’t complain. All she wants is to make things better for everyone else.”

Castti briefly squeezed both hands around her bowl, and then relaxed them. “You are fortunate to have her, then. We’re all fortunate to be left with so many kind, hard-working people despite having lost so many.”

Monsters, disasters, war. It was not only Ku that had found herself a little less population than she was a generation ago, even mere years ago. Perhaps it was that tenacious people had a better chance of survival, but Castti still felt a sense of awe when she thought about all the kind-hearted, considerate people who had so far survived wolfish times.

“Castti’s talking about—we just spent a week with Partitio,” Throné said, leaning over Temenos so she could talk more directly to Hikari. Her arm wound around Temenos’ neck, and he reacted to the extra weight and warmth exactly like a tree would, with the barest, impersonal bend. “On his little island.”

“The island he has now,” Temenos agreed. He had to hold his own drink above Throné’s head. Hikari listened, intent and bright-eyed. (His eyes always glowed slightly now. No one had brought it up.)

“Right. The island he has now. We spent a week with all his little assistants, and he has about a hundred of them, and they all just adore him.”

“I think there are a few that like him just fine,” Castti countered.

“Ha ha. Well, we were there for barely a day or before, with our combined efforts and mere proximity, we managed to convince two of his little men to hook up.”

Castti saw Temenos’s eyelids tense and his fingers briefly curl tighter on his bowl.

“You what?” Hikari asked.

“He had—that little blond angel who makes the steam engines.”

“Owen Floyd.”

“Parti keeps him as a personal assistant now, as well as the maniac who tried to kill him with a wrench. They had been trying to figure out how to get him to sleep for days, and it turned out putting them both in bed at once was the best way forward.”

“Throné, that is a terrible summary of what occurred,” noted Castti. “That was a bad enough summary that it was pretty much a lie.”

“Okay, you tell it, Dr. Mom,” Throné said with a drunken smile.

“That’s–” Castti looked at Temenos, and he looked fine, yet paradoxically he didn’t. “It seems like the gentlemen in question had been considering exploring the possibility of a relationship independently, but hadn’t discussed it with each other yet. Then I drugged Mr. Floyd so that he would sleep, misjudged the dosage because I was unaware of a preexisting intolerance he had to certain substances, and engendered in him a state in which he was willing to say things he otherwise wouldn’t. And then, yes, it appears they may have ‘hooked up.’”

“But what does that mean,” Hikari asked.

“It–” Castti began immediately, hoping to talk over Throné, but it was too late. Throné told him exactly what that meant while Castti delicately covered half her face with a hand.

“Oh,” Hikari responded.

“What, do people not hook up in Ku, your eminence?”

“Well, I’m–”

“‘Your Eminence’ is a religious title, you whore,” Temenos informed Throné with a suffering sigh.

“Oh. Oh–”

“He’s ‘Your Imperial Majesty.’ Just ‘Your Majesty’ if you want to emphasize him being King of Ku, not Emperor of her outlying territories.”

“My most sincere apologies, your holiness. And by the way, it’s Your Slatternliness for me, since we’re being proper.”

“There’s no way you’re a High Slattern. You’re a harlot at best.”

Throné moved as if she intended to throw her drink in Temenos’ face. She missed and smashed the whole bowl into it instead. 

Temenos shrieked, and the two of them engaged in a play-battle that, since Throné was so drunk and Temenos wasn’t any good at playing, better resembled kittens doing their best to imitate grown cats. Hikari gently dislodged himself, and, looking at Castti, set his bowl down.

“I believe we’ve all had enough,” he said.

Castti said, “Oh, I’m feeling fine myself.” She took another drink.

Hikari nodded, and then carefully stood to his feet. He could not quite hide how he was standing crookedly to accommodate for all his ostensibly healed wounds. “Let’s get some night air,” he decided. “It will do us well, and I can actually introduce you all to some of these people I have recommended so highly.”

--

Castle Ku at night felt to Throné like a thief’s wonderland, a forest of high pillars and sloped ceilings that cast slanted, striped shadows that confused the eye and brought tigers to the mind. Hikari’s various night-wandering counselors and attendants couldn’t be seen until they were close, or a shifting bank of moonlight revealed the curve of a cheek or a resting hand. The treasures of the Kingdom were uncaged, sitting on open-air perches, presumed completely safe.

The only reason she controlled herself was because she was so drunk, and while she felt sharp, experience had taught her she might do something stupid in full confidence. She reluctantly kept her hands to herself instead and, when she felt tempted, looked upon Castti. Every time Castti caught her eye—and it was many times—she smiled at her. The smile did not wear out, like the slowly shifting moon, or an excited drunkenness that eroded and let hollow pangs. It remained perennial, inexhaustible, a curved sword many times tested and capable of saving your life again and again.

That Castti found Throné a source of strength, even comfort, was undeniable, as much as it felt unreal. Like encountering a fairy godmother or an angel in the magical night, like being told you were a lost princess all along. Throné already knew that she would not be able to handle the thought of Castti’s affection again once she was sober, that it would go back to being a thing of storybooks. The permeability of the boundaries between fairy-tale and reality were thin only for a night, in the vast castle that rose out of the waste of the desert, when Castti appeared from the other side of every pillar that they walked on either side of, her hair down, her cheeks flushed, smiling at her.

Outside the castle, where the moonlight was powerful and the desert sands more real, they encountered Hikari’s mentor Benkei. When Hikari saw him he rushed right to him, and then stood in front of him with an embrace echoing in his posture, unrealized. Throné had noticed that she did not see many embraces at all in Ku, though Hikari often held her and their fellow travelers, and tightly.

 She was not unfamiliar with that. Blacksnakes rarely touched each other affectionately. She wondered how much of the tension she had felt around affection, touch, and sexuality had to do with the fact that they were all about to kill each other even when being affectionate, and how much of it was her bones screaming that they were all her siblings.

She found these really aggravating questions to live with.

She missed half of the conversation Hikari had with Benkei and only properly paid attention again when she heard Castti being concerned. Throné quietly put the pieces together: they were worried about Mikka, Hikari’s beloved sister. It was a delicate situation, because she always refused help. They were debating the possibility of practical gifts instead, to aid her work without risking insulting her. Throné was leaning against someone warm and solid, and so comfortable she had not noticed she had started leaning against them. But once she noticed, she knew it was Temenos, her best friend. She could feel his steady breath in her hair.

“Why do you get to be so tall?” she asked under her breath.

Temenos evenly replied, “For further sight.”

“What the fuck,” Throné sighed. She heard and felt Temenos chuckle.

The people having a normal, adult conversation settled on the idea of getting Mikka a good new kimono to wear. Throné wondered if that was Castti’s idea, kicking the toe of her lovely new boots on the sandy ground, feeling the glassy crunch. Hikari excitedly suggested hiring Agnea’s father for the job, and Castti volunteered to go get him.

“And we’ll bring Temenos,” Throné interrupted, at the same moment pinching Temenos’ sleeve in her fingers so he couldn’t slip away.

“We will?” Temenos asked.

“We need your powers of persuasion,” Throné assured him.

“I am certain Mr. Bristarni will be happy to help without additional persuading.”

“I think Throné is right,” Castti smoothly intercepted. “While I’m sure Agnea’s father will be happy to help, what I understand of tailoring is what we really would be best off bringing him here so he can see and measure her. Agnea made it clear that her father was very hesitant and worried about her leaving Cropdale and seemed to think it was unsafe. We might end up having need of your title and… well, gender.”

“Gender.”

“Mr. Bristarni is an old-fashioned man,” Hikari considered. “Castti’s right. I hadn’t considered that. He might refuse to travel with unattended women.”

Throné, gleefully recognizing the opportunity to make this awkward, clung to Temenos’ arm. “We need you. We delicate girls have been alone for ages. How we’ve made it so far on our own feeble powers is a mystery.”

She heard Castti laughing and felt Temenos sigh. “A mystery. Well, in that case.”

“How have we got on without you?”

“Dear Throné. I believe that the two of you have got on just fine,” said Temenos in a tone she wasn’t sure she liked.

--

The journey from Ku to Cropdale was shorter than it had any right to be. Monsters and roadblocks and marauding armies were all fewer than they had been a year ago, and the group was familiar enough with the way to make somewhat daring shortcuts. What by all rights should have been long and winding went astonishingly smoothly, and much more with Temenos there. He was so skilled at cutting out the extraneous and finding the most direct way that Castti became, as she often did with Temenos, slightly concerned.

If I lived always like this, she thought, clambering through a dark ravine after Temenos that would cut practically a day off of their walking time, walking dark and damp ravines so I didn’t have to endure a day of bright sunshine and fresh berries, never taking time for birdsong or banks of light, I would eventually develop a quite dim picture of life indeed.

A situation so delicate it might have shattered if discussed persisted on the road, a closeness that permitted them all to spend the chilly nights each curled up with each other. Temenos was such a bitter defender of the painful truths of his life that they wouldn’t interrupt their camaraderie if no one brought them up, and Throné, who would flinch away from affection if it was pointed out, could enjoy proximity with two of her most cherished friends as long as they didn’t thrust it back into her face. Castti often found herself suddenly wound up when she realized she was on the road again and lying with dear companions that she trusted with her life and her heart; she imagined their blackened, wet, and swollen corpses, all taken from her on one single, dreadful day.

Morning chill would come, and whoever woke up first would still find the other two right beside them and get to enjoy that for a while.

--

All of that proved pointless, because Pala enthusiastically volunteered to go with them and fit out Mikka before anyone even asked. Like her sister, Pala barely knew what a gender was and wouldn’t have been fussed if it were just Hikari and Temenos asking. Despite concerns, Garud seemed to have learn that his daughters were made of strong stuff, and let Pala head out on her way with minimal brooding.

If Pala was worried about travelling with any of them, it didn’t show. Agnea’s endless letters had given Pala a truly starling amount of information about all of them, and Pala was willing to tell them just as much about herself in a nigh-continuous stream of chatter. She was also willing to recite every embarrassing or strange story about Agnea she could recall on command, much to everyone’s delight. She sewed as quickly as she spoke, meaning that she had a nearly-finished kimono by the time they were passing through the walls of Ku, ready to be adjusted to the recipient as soon as she saw her.

That potentially awkward fitting was smoothed over by Hikari’s enthusiasm and Pala’s general good graces; Mikka was, once she was convinced to accept the gift, so full of gratitude that she insisted on serving dinner for everyone.

That started very well, and then Pala suggested marriage within two minutes of dinner starting.

Mikka paused, her hands folded in her lap. “…A wife?” she asked innocently.

Hikari, who was sitting next to Mikka and not quite in her sight, not now that she was staring at Pala, was for a second shocked. Then he began to light up like a lantern. Pala began to laugh, and Mikka laughed in response, flushed and nearly carefree. Hikari watched intently.

“My,” Mikka said, covering her mouth. “It’s been a while since I had such a lively meal! I should like to have more…”

“Oh?” Pala asked. Her hair, which she had just lowered from a tight, work-ready updo to a braid, fell over her shoulder.

“Ah… I was used to larger family meals. I miss it…”

Throné watched Hikari nearly drop his cup. Whatever Mikka was doing, which looked like delicately eating and lightly chatting, was actually quite bold.

“Me too! It’s been dull as paint drying since my sister left home. Of course, I have my daddy, and he’s many things, but none of those things is a talker. It’s quiet ‘round home now,” admitted Pala.

“I used to live with my brother once everyone else was gone,” said Mikka, “Just him and me. Now he is gone as well… taken by war, like the rest of them. It’s due to him that I still have my home and a comfortable life at all, set above those who are struggling harder than I am. I was never able to repay him for what he did to me, but, I thought, I could still repay the people of Ku for accepting me after everything, if I worked hard to help them rebuild, tried to give them what they have generously let me keep. But it seems all I have done is make people worry about me…”

“Mikka,” Pala said, surprised. To Castti’s eyes, it looked like her own were shining a little. “That’s…”

“I’m sorry,” Mikka replied. “I’ve kept this bottled up inside, I…”

“But that means this is great!” enthused Pala, sounding so much like her sister that several of the travelers had to stifle an inappropriate giggle. “You’re willing to talk about your troubles now, which is good. When you just talk about what’s going wrong half the time someone has an idea to help you out, and even if they don’t, they’re happy to share your troubles.”

“To share them,” Mikka repeated, wonderingly. “Do you have troubles too, Pala?”

Pala made a noise that seemed inspired by a canning-crack giving into the pressure of the steam and bursting a few cans. “Do I have troubles! God in heaven help me. I’m only running a whole house by myself and half the business on top of it while I try to juggle every plate my sister left in the air before she left, and none of that is nothing. Did you know she was doing the grooming for nigh-on everyone’s livestock and animals in town before she left and just never thought to mention it? What do I do about that?? A whole business for the whole town, and she just thought it was a little hobby of hers. Her sensitive ear was holding together half the relationships in town too and they expect me to do the same thing. Do you know what I keep saying? ‘You’re crazy! Break up!’”

“Oh, no,” Mikka laughed.

“I guess the rest of us were unaware that Cropdale was made up completely of dysfunctional couples because Agnie was handling it. God help me. I may have never been married before, but I now know so much about how it don’t work that I’m confident I could do it better than the rest of them combined.”

Mikka covered her mouth again. Hikari nodded intently.

“Besides that she did all the cooking at home too, and the second she left, nearly as soon as the door shut behind her twinkling toes, the question was ‘what’s for dinner?’ What’s for—I’ll tell you what’s for dinner, because I only know how to cook one thing! Raspberry pie. We ate raspberry pie for weeks, Mikka,” Pala said, nearly slumping onto the table.

Mikka was also nearly bent over in giggles. Hikari was looking down at her like she had the moon in her primly-clutched hands. “That’s—that’s awful!” She finally said between giggles. “I see why you need a wife now. You need a better homemaker!”

“I do!!” agreed Pala vehemently. “I know I can handle every business and side-hustle we got running, but then I come back home after a long day and just want to throw the whole damn stove out the window. More work to do?? You’re kidding me!! Ah, but that’s—” Pala said, suddenly stopping herself short. “Well, I’m not—don’t think I’m that kind, that’s not the only reason I’m looking, I mean, that I would be looking to… I don’t just want someone to do chores and… Well, never mind. Hell’s bells,” she grumbled, flushed.

“It seems you need someone to listen to you, too,” Mikka said, somewhat consolingly, somewhat coyly. “I’d be happy to do that service, I think, at least for tonight…”

That did not only make Hikari’s eyebrows rise. Pala lit up. “Well, then, you asked for it!” She said. “I have enough stories to fill a book. You’ll be able to fill out a labelled map of every home in Cropdale by the time I’m done, I’m going to be serving so many dishes.”

“You’re what?” Mikka asked, and the conversation went a little off the rails for a while.

--

As soon as dinner was finished up, Hikari hurried them to wash the dishes and leave the girls alone; Mikka had said something oblique about wanting to share her troubles with ‘someone special’, and nothing could have kept the King of Ku from leaving Mikka and Pala a private and atmospheric place to converse. He was practically lighting candles for them on his way out the door, finally pulling a very intrigued Throné out with him.

The door shut behind him, and everyone that he had shoved out of Mikka’s little family home watched as he clapped his hands together and said, “Well! Wonderful. I will have to write to Agnea right away! She’ll want to be here.”

“…For what, Hikari?” Castti finally asked, even though she knew she was biting bait.

“Oh! Well, who can say? But Agnea will surely want to be here for it,” he cheerfully continued, beginning to walk back down the road to the castle.

“I don’t want to dampen your spirits, but you may be taking a few little jokes too far,” Castti said cautiously.

“No, no; perhaps young Ms. Bristarni was joking, but Mikka wasn’t,” Hikari dismissed her concerns confidently. “It is a different cultural context. It’s hard to explain. While it may have seemed subtle or even like nothing at all to you, she was doing and saying things to make it clear she was interested. If she wasn’t, she would have told Ms. Bristarni that ‘that was a very strange joke’ and wrapped up dinner quickly. Instead, she’s trying to keep her over tonight. She would have said something to me if she wanted things to end differently. Trust me, this is very good.”

“My, if just not telling someone to fuck off and go back home is a come-on, you and the Inquisitor should have invited us to the wedding,” Throné teased.

Simultaneously, Hikari laughed the comment off with a gentle “No, no,” and Temenos, who had been in good spirits just a moment before, tightly said “Throné.”

That was clearly a warning, and the force of it took everyone by surprise. Of course, the one who recovered the best and the fastest was Castti, who said “I think it would be very sweet, but I agree that one night of knowing each other is pretty fast! You might have to give them some time before you engage them, Hikari.”

“Of course, I’ll give them time, of course,” he waved her off. “Nothing is more foolish than trying to put pressure on a match that’s going to happen anyway.”

“So confident!” Castti laughed.

“So determined!” Throné countered, having (temporarily) shaken off Temenos reprimanding her. “They might make a cute couple, but why are you so excited about it?”

Hikari sighed, putting a hand on his forehead for a second as he walked. “I think kingship is getting to me,” he admitted. “So many problems to solve, and ‘take off his head’ or ‘burn down their village’ are easy solutions that I have completely taken off the table. ‘Let’s arrange a marriage’ is the next easiest thing, and, well, everyone likes weddings. Everyone likes it when you throw weddings instead of executions. And it keeps working,” he defended himself.

“I thought you were just trying to solve the post-war population crisis by yourself,” Temenos stated with nearly believable calm.

“Everyone likes births and baby showers too,” Hikari continued.

“How many marriages have you… decided since taking over?” Throné asked.

“I have been suggesting many marriages,” Hikari said with utmost regal poise. “And a good match for my precious Mikka will be one that I will be very happy to suggest.”

“With a poor tailor?” Throné asked with a smile.

Hikari replied with a firm, “With Agnea’s sister,” and on his face was a softly radiant smile like dawn light.

--

Unlike Pala, the Kingdom of Ku tended to separate genders for practical purposes, so within the Palace Castti and Throné went to sleep in a woman’s wing. The second the door closed behind them, they both immediately began to do two things: strip off their sweaty travel-clothes and debate what Temenos’ fucking problem was.

“We need to take Temenos with us when we leave,” Castti said.

“Yes,” Throné agreed, pulling her shirt over her head and shaking out her hair. “He wouldn’t admit it, but he’s growing mold sitting here. In his brain, I think.”

“I can hardly recall him ever being so temperamental. Except among his own, I suppose,” Castti considered, stripping off her shoes and socks. “I was always unsettled what he became a harsher person in the churches of his own God, but I suppose that is his job.”

“That’s the Inquisitor,” Throné agreed, unhooking her belt. “I don’t actually think of them as separate people, exactly. Temenos on the job and Temenos off the job are the same person. Still…”

“I have been both a person and an apothecary for much of my life, and you can have the healthiest separation between your job and your life possible, and it still bleeds over. You get used to dropping everything for any request. Turning your nerves into an alarm clock will eventually affect your everyday life.”

“So does turning your flaws into sins, I think,” Throné said darkly.

Castti hummed, considering things more deeply as she undid her hair. Was this making too much of one stressed reaction to a sensitive subject? “Do you think he was so offended by your joke because he’s sweet on Hikari?”

“I hope not,” Throné said sincerely, her eyes widening under her tossed hair. “That would sink like a stone.”

Castti didn’t know if she was referring to an assumption that Hikari wouldn’t return his feelings, or the fact that the King of Ku could not possibly spend his time consorting with a foreign cleric forever, or to the fact that it seemed slightly cruel to unleash sharp Temenos on heartfelt Hikari like that. Perhaps to everything. “I don’t think that is the case anyway.”

“I don’t think so either. I would have noticed by now. I was pretty aware he was into the little redhead a long time before he admitted anything out loud,” Throné continued, slipping her stockings down.

Therein was the heart of the issue, wasn’t it? The very dead ‘little redhead.’ The redhead who had not, in the grand scheme of things, been dead very long, and who represented another layer of complication over the ‘problem’ within Temenos that he so loathed. “It’s so hard to talk to him it,” Castti continued. “The only time I ever heard him talk about his sexuality at all was in regard to Sir Wellsley, and that was only once. He doesn’t talk about it otherwise. Unless, with you?...”

“One or two more times than that,” Throné grumbled. “Oh, good, towels. There’s sure to be a bathing room, then.”

Castti’s eyes lit up at the thought of Ku’s warm-water baths. “Good! Let’s find it.”

Once they did, after a scamper down the cold halls, clad in towels, seeking the heat, they were still alone in the wide, misty room because it was so late at night. They enthusiastically grabbed up baskets of scented soaps and lotions and hair oil and slipped into the warm water together.

The water of the bath was so incredibly pleasant that Castti lost her thoughts for a while, head tilted back into the gently swishing white water. But after a minute, Throné began to speak again, in a quiet voice.

“Thinking back to my own life, I can’t remember there being any rules about having sex. Other than that trying to grab someone else’s partner was a good way to get stabbed. That wasn’t what our life was like. You took what you wanted. Obviously, anything that happened as a result could only benefit him in the end, so why make up any extra rules?

“Temenos has completely different ideas. And for as long as he could remember, he told me. The church was always a part of his life. In fact, part of the reason he felt so called to it was the promise of purity and chastity. He told me it appealed to him in comparison to the situation he was raised in, but he didn’t tell me any more than that. He was then very offended that the majority of people even in the clergy still didn’t keep to the rules of chivalry and chastity that had drawn him in. To him it was a shield, a way to hide what he didn’t like about himself. But it would only protect him if he buried himself under it. He could avoid the fact that he doesn’t like women if he obediently covered up the fact that he does like men.

“I’m not reading into his words. That is almost exactly what he told me himself. He knows he’s got a double-edged sword. He’s aware it hurts him. It has an iron grip on him anyway. Even seeing how terribly corrupt the church is, even being the person who was in the center, the person ripping up he weeds…”

“…When you’re the last man standing,” Castti replied eventually, “you do what you have to do to stay standing. Once you’re the only one left, you know that if you give up the cause, there isn’t a cause anymore. What they fought for and died for would disappear.”

There was silence for a while. The mist above the water drifted. Though normally such a grim topic would keep her awake, still Castti felt half-asleep.

“Castti,” Throné whispered, “you don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, do you?”

“No,” said Castti, straightening up so she could look at Throné. Throné was curled up on an underwater ledge, her head just above water, looking down, as though she were in bed. Castti couldn’t think of what she had done to make Throné think she would disapprove of such a thing. “No, not at all. Same-gender sexuality is a normal biological behavior. It’s observed in every human-like species and in many animal and plant species as well. It has no health benefits or determents different from any other kind of sexuality, unless you count the reduced chance of dying in childbirth, which is… actually a very significant benefit.

“The issues that Temenos has with his own biological reality are cultural. I suppose he would say ‘ethical,’ but ethics are more often a result of cultural norms than most people like to admit. I would observe completely variant opinions on what proper relationships and family structures looked like everywhere I traveled, and the only thing that was identical across borders was the unshakable belief that everyone thought the way they did.

“I mean, heavens. Hikari is the King of Ku and he’s trying to marry his sister to a woman. He would not even be talking about that if that wasn’t something that happens around here.”

“He’s very excited about the prospect!” Throné agreed, her voice slightly shaky.

“Incredibly! And his excuse that he has so few methods for managing political problems now is somewhat thin. Then again, I’m sure what he wants is safety and security and a happy home for his sister, and he’s decided that the Bristarnis will provide that.”

“For good reason! Get Agnea involved and she’ll never have a down day again. She can’t fail to cheer people up. In fact, I suspect that’s his real motivation.”

“What is?”

“Agnea,” Throné said sneakily, uncurling from her closed-in posture. “I always thought Hikari was hiding a little additional interest in her. He’s such a gentleman, he would never do something to make her uncomfortable while we were all on the road together. But now…”

“But!” Castti exclaimed, siting up herself. “But! But I always thought so too!!”

Throné laughed.

“Agnea would always say he was so handsome—”

“He is!”

“And I really wondered if there was some mutual feeling, but I wasn’t sure. He can be so hard to read!”

“He’s that, too, but no man is impossible to read,” Throné said, a smug smile overtaking her face. It was very natural on her, it made the creases and worry-lines that a frown brought out disappear. “He has tells the same as the rest of us. I thought he had his eyes on Agnea, and now I’m half-sure of it. It’s a bit bold, but he’ll certainly have more time with her in the future if they’re planning a wedding. What a romantic situation, too!”

“Now I know he has truly become King Hikari!” Castti laughed. “He’s trying to start a dynasty!”

Throné snicked, and Castti slowly soothed her spasms of laughter. When she was close to regaining equilibrium, but before the smile had faded from her face, Castti opened her eyes to look at Throné again, who was now leaning toward her, and felt her stomach flip.

It turned with a much cruder, bloodier twist than the anxieties she had lately become familiar with. When she looked at Throné, wreathed in misty heat, her body recalled nights under heavy quilts together, long embraces, the sparks of both heat and delight that Throné lit in her when they cuddled close. She loved to see Throné smile, to see her affectionate, to know that she was feeling okay—and simultaneously she savored the way her heart picked up and her skin tingled when Throné clung especially close to her. Her hands on Castti’s bare skin would make her twitch.

With a smile on her face, with her open posture, with every sign of happiness evident on her bare skin, Throné was hard to look away from. Castti’s gaze dropped rapidly from the bow-tight curve of her cheek to her strong, sleekly muscled shoulders, lightly spotted with freckles, to her pale collarbone and her soft, round breasts that were halfway in the water, the pink bumps of her nipples just above the waterline.

The figurative steaminess of the conversation and the literal steaminess of the situation had Castti feeling too hot. She had been pragmatically putting away the pangs that Throné occasionally made her feel, simply because they had always been in such tense situations. Advances would have been… if not wrong, then at least fraught.

But was it ‘simply?’ Between one moment and the next, Castti suddenly found herself wondering if she had been purely pragmatic about snipping away nascent feelings for Throné down as soon as they began to bud, or if she was trying to avoid facing a deeper fear in herself.

Temenos hates that he loves men, Castti thought frankly. I don’t think I have the same hatred for myself. But when I think about taking the next step, I feel fear anyway. Why? Am I simply afraid of mishandling Throné, or is there something I fear in myself as well? A fear of further loss, or that I might be pursing someone I shouldn’t, or a yet deeper, instinctual flinch away from wanting and needing?

“It is strange this keeps happening,” Throné said. “Do you think we’re doing something?”

Castti could feel herself flushing. Despite her thoughts, the urge to gently guide the conversation away from sensitive topics was too strong… even though she was the one feeling ‘sensitive’, if that was what she wanted to call it. “I think it’s the case of simply showing acceptance instead of judgement. Since we always decline to judge people’s preferences, and have companions who do the same, we’re more likely to be trusted with these things instead of obligating people to hide them in front of us.”

“If you just don’t smother flowers, they’ll grow,” said Throné, and Castti could feel Throné quoting someone, though she wasn’t sure who.

A sister or brother, surely.

--

Pala stayed all night long. When they met Hikari outside of Mikka’s house, late in the morning but with lights still shut out, he could not have looked more smug.

“You know, they’re both awfully young,” Castti reminded him.

“Engagements can last a long time,” he serenely responded.

They waited with him outside. Temenos wasn’t there; Castti resolved to grab him by the end of the day. Hikari told them rain was coming. Though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, minor signs in the scent of the air and the behaviors of animals told him it was coming, and he taught them how to tell as they waited.

“You must stay for the rain,” he said, “A real rainstorm in Ku is rare, and you’ll want to see it.”

“When is it coming?”

“Tonight.”

“Then we’ll stay tonight and get Temenos out of your hair in the morning.”

Hikari half-smiled. “Would that he were! You have to get him to talk to you. If the two of you can’t do it, no one can. He won’t talk to me honestly about anything he’s doing, but I know he’s stuck and needs help.”

“I’ll do what I can,” promised Castti.

“I’ll make him talk,” Throné threatened.

“I leave it up to you, Throné,” decided Hikari. Apparently, in his mind, she had made the better offer.

The door opened, and Mikka tried to slip out alone, quickly shutting the door behind her. Of course, she ran directly into her beaming older ‘brother’, who greeted her with a happy “Good morning, Mikka!”

“Ah! Good—morning, older brother Hikari,” she said nervously. “I didn’t realize you were waiting for me! I would have woken up earlier.”

“No, don’t worry about it! I didn’t want to interrupt your sleep.”

“I slept late…” she noted. “Well, Pala and I stayed up all night talking…”

“Yes. Good,” Hikari said.

“Well, and that is…” Pala said, one hand drifting nervously up to her ear.

“Yes?”

“Well…” And like a dam breaking, she surged forward, hands clasped together, and pleaded, “I need your help, big brother!”

He grasped her searching hands. “Anything,” he replied immediately.

Mikka nervously explained that she had lost a set of wooden earrings. This seemed to have significance, because Hikari understood immediately. He questioned her about what had happened, and Mikka, looking like she was on the verge of tears, explained that she had taken them out the night before and put them on an endtable, but in the morning, they were gone. She had searched the house already and found nothing.

“Oh,” said Throné, “then it was that guy,” and ran off into an alleyway.

“Uh,” said Castti, glancing back and forth. “I’d better follow her, then,” she said apologetically.

She took off after Throné at a respectable jog, and still by the time she got to her Throné was already pulling things out of the pockets of a man she had thrown over her shoulder.

“Throné!” Castti gasped.

“Petty thief,” she grunted, only barely winded, “and not a good one. I saw him coming out of the window clear as coins but didn’t think much of it. This is what you get for being a shit thief, by the way,” she said over her shoulder. The man, dangling and dazed, might have heard her or might have not.

“Well,” Castti said, and left it at that. Really, this was no different from her having to be stern with a young apothecary who had made a mistake that could have had serious health complications for a patient.

Throné dropped him down once she was done clearing him out, and Castti checked him over. Throné hadn’t properly knocked him out, he was just stunned and winded. She left him with some honey-sweetened tea and told him to take better care of himself. They returned with Mikka’s wooden earrings and all of her spare coin victoriously in tow, as well as a few knick-knacks that now belongs to Throné, since no one else claimed them.

Mikka was overjoyed to receive her earrings back, and Hikari was overjoyed to watch one be gifted to Pala. The explanation of the cultural significance of the earrings made it all make sense to the on-lookers; in fact, Pala seemed to understand it correctly as a proposal.

Hikari managed to convince her to stay one more night, again insisting that a storm was coming in and it would be best if they all left in the morning. (That gave them time to round up Temenos, anyway.) So everyone gathered for dinner in the palace again that evening; Pala and Mikka confirmed several times the need to stay in contact and to visit soon. Throné extracted a promise from Temenos to leave with them in the morning, and very late, just as they were putting away dinner, a cold breeze ushered in a sudden, freezing rain that made the desert feel like winter in the far north, with crystalline droplets that settled the dust and made all of Ku feel like a cold spring morning.

--

Original Note:

Of course named after one of five potentially heart-rending lines from the monumental Fiddler on the Roof. “Even a poor tailor is entitled to some happiness!” I couldn’t resist that particular line, though a lyric from “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” would have been more appropriate for the actual storyline, I suppose. When people who don’t ‘get’ musicals ask me for something to make them appreciate musicals, I usually say Fiddler, unless I sense that they’re fun enough to be able to cold open with Chicago. Both of those choices make me Old, though, ha ha.

Y'all should have seen me squeal at these baby lesbians when I played this epilogue ;u; so cuuuuuute. Still, I can't say this is my favorite chapter of this fic.... prrrrobably because the next one is. See you then >u<

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People say that modesty's a virtue...

They were only in Temenos’ hometown by coincidence, and Throné regretted that coincidence.

They were on their way to Montwise, which was not an easy journey. The slopes could be harsh and so could the weather, and the ne’er-do-wells in the reason seemed to have not been given the message that everyone’s problems had been fixed now. A few scrapes on the way necessitated a stop for Castti to restock. Even so they had tried to convince Temenos it wasn’t necessary to stop in Flamechurch, but he had insisted they restock there anyway. And so they did, and so they learned that the typical shop-keeper was away visiting family but a travelling medicine-seller was visiting the cathedral today, and so they walked up the path to the cathedral, and so now Temenos was standing dead-still in front of Sir Ort Edgeworth and they were both looking at each other like they had individually seen a ghost.

Sir Ort Edgeworth was in half-armor, which, compared to how Throné had seen him and his fellow Sanctum Knights before, made him seem pared-down and underdressed. Beneath the half-armor he wore mourning black, and he had his thick black hair, which had previously been tightly tied, in a rough working tail. Throné could see the sleeplessness on him, as well as the tight, unnecessary grip on the hilt of his sword.

“Inquisitor. This is a fortunate meeting,” he said, sounding like he rather felt it wasn’t.

“Certainly an unlikely one,” Temenos responded. “We seem to keep meeting.”

The last time the two had seen each other was in the aftermath of Kaldena’s death. The time before that was the occasion of Kaldena’s death. The time before that was Crick Wellsley’s funeral.

Throné felt the urge to leave, but was reasonably concerned that if she left the two to their own devices, she’d be attending one of their funerals next. She grit her teeth and stuck the conversation out.

“Not so unlikely, I think,” Ort replied. “I am here to visit Flamechurch’s venerable cathedral. I understand it is your home.”

“As much as it is for the mice in the walls and the bats in the rafters,” Temenos ‘agreed.’ “It is not yours, though; that would be the equally venerable church of Stormhail.”

“It is.”

“What brings you from that grand citadel to our country church?”

“Well—the truth is that I have begun investigating on my own,” Ort said, looking dead into Temenos’ eyes now that he had gathered himself.

“Investigating?” Temenos prompted.

“Kaldena’s death. Her crimes. The circumstances surrounding them. Everything after the pontiff’s death, really.”

“That is a broad subject,” Temenos said, his voice slightly tight.

As stated, Temenos was sterner with his own. The closer he was to something, the more suspicious he was of it, and no one made him suspicious now like his brethren in the church. Throné didn’t know Ort well enough to see through the blank face with which he was accepting Temenos’ unstated judgement. “It is. And not being typically an inquisitive person myself, I’ve had my work cut out for me. But even after we had the story set straight about Vados, I couldn’t help but feeling there were more forces at play.”

“I see.”

“I—” said Ort, and cut himself off. Temenos stood unchanging, like a cliff wall. Ort persevered. “I am ashamed, Inquisitor,” he said, a pink flush blooming on his cheeks. “I have been absolved of any guilt officially, but I am not absolved of guilt in myself. Perhaps I did not wield the bloody blade, but I did not have to. Kaldena would not have accomplished the half of what she did without loyal dogs at heel for her every step.”

Temenos was wearing fur gloves, and Throné could still see how his knuckles gripped his staff through them.

“I have sworn to never misplace my faith again,” Ort continued, “but that necessitates… understanding. Understanding the system to which I once swore a lifetime of service with a boy’s motivations and comprehension. I need to know I can trust my superiors, now. I need to know that I’m actually fighting for something I would be willing to fight for. I killed for Kaldena.”

Throné saw Temenos swallow. He said, “The highest authority knows what you intended.”

“And He knows what I did as well,” Ort continued darkly. “I’m not concerned about the state of my soul, Inquisitor, but thank you. But for the sake of my heart, I need to know what happened and to know it won’t happen again.”

“I understand.”

“To that effect, I took it on myself to pull on some loose threads,” Ort said, a heavy flush on his cheeks belying the apparent composure of his poise and expression.

“And what have you found?” Temenos asked.

“Vados had accomplices,” Ort continued, crossing one chainmail-clad arm behind his back. “At the time, I didn’t think about that. I just assumed someone else would take care of them. Now it feels like an odd thing to overlook.”

“It is,” Temenos agreed. “I thought about that myself, but by the point that I had time to pursue them, the trail was cold.”

“No doubt. I went digging, though, and found that Vados had kept very detailed records and, to my shock, included names. Those records were in the custody of the Sacred Guard immediately upon his arrest, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you never heard of them.”

“I hadn’t,” Temenos confirmed sourly.

“Yes. I was able to track down a few of his named accomplices, and in fact to track them here, and—well, I should be set up to confront them tonight. Which is why it is such an odd coincidence that you are here today.”

“I believe this is one of Aelfric’s coincidences,” Temenos replied, which Throné interpreted as ‘Indeed, God is fucking with me, because I am the Lord’s favorite stress ball and He never tires of throwing me at the wall to watch me go squish.’

“I take it as a sign that He’s on our side in this endeavor,” Ort responded. “Would you come with me to find them, Inquisitor?”

“Gladly,” said Temenos, grimly, but he meant it.

--

Throné disposed of their door guard with the grace and respect that he deserved: none. He went over the side and into the bushes, and then she indicated the door to the rest of them.

“Well done, Throné!” Temenos quietly applauded, fingertips tapping in his palm.

“…Yes,” said Ort, clearly discomforted. “You’re quite skilled. I find myself depending on the abilities of others again.”

“That’s normal,” Castti assured him, coming up from the back. “No one can have every skill in abundance. We band together in communities for a reason.”

“I suppose that is so,” Ort said reticently. “Though, I—” he sighed unhappily. “Despite having gained the position I always wanted, now that I have it, I find it just a position, and a man who is just myself inhabiting it. Armor did not make me the man I hoped I would be; I don’t know what will. I was always behind Crick, and looking to his example of what to do next. He walked the righteous path, even to his own doom. Without him, I chase after the same conviction, not finding it in myself.”

Temenos paused just before the door. He commented, “He informed me you trained to be Knights together, and in fact were knighted at the same time.”

“He told you that,” Ort repeated, sounding unsteady. “That is true, we were. And in fact we were ever by each other’s side until the day came that Kaldena’s treachery parted us. Me she promoted to be her guard, and Crick…”

As Temenos opened the door, Ort stared into the deeper darkness inside, even more shrouded than the night. He continued, “I believe she knew from his swordplay alone that he was too honest to follow her unto the last… and that I was not. However she judged us, she did it right. Once she started showing her true colors, Crick saw them and I did not. Not until the very last moment. Certainly not soon enough to count for anything.”

“Once thing I have learned in my time as inquisitor, Sir Edgeworth,” Temenos said, his voice light as a snowflake, “is that the very last moment comes once for everyone, and true regret does not come until that moment. You have time yet. Shall we?”

--

The Inquisitor and the Godsblade fell into a rhythm that even Throné found eerie. One or both of them was standing in the shoes of a ghost, treated with the familiarity that the dead had earned. Temenos grabbed Ort’s sleeve to hold him back from blundering around a corner too quickly and too automatically; Ort deferred to Temenos with an obedience that seemed instinctual. Despite the discomfort of their meeting, the moment they were underground, they spoke in hushed, close whispers like they had forgotten Castti and Throné were behind them, making their plan of approach between each other.

Castti looked at Throné and tilted her head forward. Throné nodded and moved up so that she was just behind the clergymen.

“Fill me in, professor, I’ve lost the thread,” she said, just loud enough to be heard. (Really, she was 99% sure she knew exactly what was going on.) “This is whose accomplices up to what?”

“Vados’.”

“The serial killer your ex-boss babe was using as a hench.”

“Precisely.”

“And his guys are doing what?”

“Still killing, I presume,” Temenos sighed.

“I’m not certain yet, but I believe so,” Ort agreed. “They seem to have their own agenda but to have been useful to Kaldena.”

“As the sword is of use to the executioner,” Temenos continued grimly.

“I didn’t come here for the sermon, boys,” Throné countered. “I came here for the dish.”

Temenos couldn’t help a quick laugh. “Throné really is a ‘comes late to the potluck after the service’ sort of church-goer, pretending she is one at all. Hst,” he cut off suddenly, and everyone caught the cue to stand still and silent.

Temenos walked forward, past a corner and into a hall on his own. Ort lurched forward, but Throné grabbed his chainmail in one rough fist to keep him back.

“Let him work, Sir Serious,” Throné grumbled at him.

Ort looked down at her with a look of apprehension. “Who are you, again?”

“No different than you were to your boss, really,” she responded, “except that I don’t hide it behind a nice title.”

He shuddered in his shoulders. “What business have you skulking around the Inquisitor?”

Throné couldn’t help but smile. “I just answered that question.”

“What deeds does he ask of you, then, street-crow? What purpose would any man of the church have for such questionable company, I wonder?”

“He doesn’t ask me to do anything, you vulture. I’m dependable like that.”

She could see him trying to untangle her responses in his dark eyes. Before he came to any solid conclusions, Temenos walked back around the corner, annoyed.

“I heard my own thoughts, it seems,” he sighed. “Onward.”

Onward they went. Throné could feel Ort’s suspicion of her. Temenos had his gaze forward, sharpened like a dagger. Castti brought up the rear, clutching a tight hand on her medicine bag. Throné looked back to her from time to time, but there was nothing to say. Castti would nod, and they would keep walking.

They went down and down again into the darkness, and around winding corners. Throné realized quickly that Temenos knew the way; unsurprisingly, even the dark, hidden bowels of his cathedral were known to him. The minutes stretched as they went, as she became more alert to tiny sounds, more and more anxious to find their quarry and be gone.

Then Ort, his voice full of regret even as he spoke, said “Inquisitor… I have a question.”

“Ask,” Temenos said.

“Did you instruct Crick to look for the secret chamber in Stormhail?”

Throné sucked in a breath.

After an icy moment, Temenos replied, “I see.”

“Did you?”

“I could answer your question, Sir Edgeworth, but how could I prove the answer to you?” Temenos asked. “You have clearly thought about the matter at such length that you have arrived at a very precise question. And it seems you doubt me. Will you even trust my answer?”

“I would trust you as the Inquisitor.”

“Would you?” Temenos asked. Both men walked abreast, not looking at each other. “Am I not part of that church you have learned to distrust? A superior, in fact, once favored by the deceased pontiff. I know that my closeness to him has caused others to suspect favoritism or even some form of cabal in Flamechurch before. You would like to trust me as the Inquisitor, but do you?”

“I will know based on how you answer that question. Did you tell him to find the hidden archives?”

“Then you must already know the answer. Do you just want to see if I’ll lie to your face?”

“I become more suspicious you might as you dodge the question.”

“You do not appear to understand who you’re talking to,” said Temenos, and stopped walking. Ort kept walking for a step and a half, froze, and cheated to face Temenos.

“Just as the organs of the body do different services to upkeep the whole, the servants of the Church preform different favors for her. I am not like a Sanctum Knight; I did not take an oath to be honest and true. In fact, you do not know what oath I swore to the Church or what it demanded of me. I am not a hand that gives or a heart that pumps warmth. I am more like a tooth, I think, or some unlit intestine that pulls things in and spits out the refuse. We men of the cloth are not all good, Ort, which is exactly as you suspected. Though I can at least say that I never said I was. But am I approved of? Am I an official of the Church, trained, ordained, and given her orders? Oh, absolutely.”

“You…” Ort could not form his mouth around what he wanted to say next.

“I told him to wait,” Temenos said. “I specifically told him to go back home and think it over. I told him I’d see him in the morning. I told him to wait. Then I took my leave, instead of keeping him at my side like I was tempted to do, because I wanted him to make the decision of whether he was going back to Kaldena or taking another path on his own. But how on earth can you trust what I say? That’s exactly what I would say if I wanted to make myself sound good.”

Ort’s face, which had grown pale, began to grow tense with anger, or panic, or both. Throné stood a few steps behind Temenos, waiting.

“I thought you seemed quite grim when you invited me to come down here with you!” Temenos noted, a note of cheer entering his airy voice. “You had resolved to question me about my involvement in Crick’s death, but hadn’t been prepared to do it today. Still, you couldn’t waste such an opportunity, considering I’ve been impossible to pin down for months. You walked in here with the possibility on your mind of taking care of two birds with one stone… just in case it really was my fault that he died. Well, here’s another question you can ask me: do I think that it’s my fault that Crick died? I was there, I would surely know better than anyone else.”

Ort’s mouth started to close around a syllable, but before he could speak, Castti began to walk forward from the back. “No. Temenos, that’s too far. You can’t do this.”

“Let me work, Castti,” Temenos said, his eyes stuck to Ort.

“No, and don’t speak to me that way,” Castti said firmly, striding forth until she stood between them, so Temenos had no choice but to look at her. “I know what you’re doing, and I won’t stand for it any longer. Sir Edgeworth,” she said, turning to Ort and cutting Temenos off cold, “I was there as well, though I don’t know if you recall.

“I do recall, Miss,” he responded. “You’re the apothecary.”

“There. Then perhaps you can trust me: Temenos never intended for Crick to die, or even to put him in harm’s way. I heard him warn Crick to be cautious of the matter more than once and I know he was taking measures to keep Crick in the dark about the struggle that was beginning to form between him and the Sanctum Knights. I was not privy to the conversation that took place between him and Crick before the end, because I had left to allow them to talk privately. But I was there for everything that happened afterwards, even immediately after his death and through the funeral and after that. Temenos did not intend to bring Crick to harm. He may have been able to fake sadness through a funeral, but he has not faked a year of grief.”

“Castti,” Temenos said, and it was not a warning or a reprimand.

Castti did not move. She waited with her arms crossed. Slowly, Ort leaned forward and touched her cheek. “Thank you, dear lady,” he said.

“I’m only a common woman,” she replied.

“I doubt that,” Ort replied. “Now I do know the truth, though to tell you why would be to betray the confidence of one who is now dead. Perhaps someone could split hairs and say that the Inquisitor carries blame because he is not blameless, but I will not. Kaldena was the killer, which I knew. But it was Crick who made the choice to walk into her trap on his own. I am sure now.”

“…What do you mean by that?” Temenos asked, his voice strained.

“Like I said, Crick entrusted some things to me before he died. We were friends from our childhood. He confided in me. I won’t break his confidence now.”

“What do you mean he made the choice?” Temenos asked again, his voice growing dark. Castti turned to glare at him, but he didn’t flinch.

“Crick had many things on his mind on his final day,” Ort answered, his face set. “His faith in Aelfric. His dream to be a Sanctum Knight and the very little time he had lived that dream so far. His desire to prove himself to the Captain who seemed to doubt him. His growing doubts, which you did place in him, but which grew through observing the facts of the situation around him. His desire to know the truth, and above all his resolve to do the right thing. But there was another thing too, and this was a thing I believe he told none but me. I would keep it that way.”

“If this is related to the truth of what is happening in the church,” Temenos said, stepping forward just far enough to put one hand on Castti’s shoulder, “You cannot keep it from me.”

“It isn’t,” Ort said firmly.

“No?”

“No. It was Crick’s secret.”

“Yet it was a factor in why he made the choice—his choice, like you said—to further investigate the Sanctum Knights even when he had been warned away.”

“I believe so.”

“A truth only you know, now; one that would shed light on the circumstances of his demise.”

“Yes.”

Castti grabbed on to Temenos’ arm, but that did not stop him. He walked forward once again, and, in a fluid motion, lifted his staff before him. The tip swung up from below and, with a gentle tap, rose up to rest under Ort’s chin.

“You will answer me,” Temenos whispered.

Ort looked down, and his eyes widened. The weapon held at the skin of his throat was a threat, but not of violence. In the dim light of the cavern still the barest hint of light found the edge of the emblem on the end of the staff, Aelfric’s golden flame. The sight of it, how a gentle turn made it flash like the gleam of God’s eyes, broke Ort immediately.

“He felt seduced by you,” he whispered.

“What?” Temenos said. He pushed the emblem of Aelfric just a hair further, so that its curved edge pressed on Ort’s throat.

“I swore I would never tell,” Ort said, his voice breaking, his eyes stuck to Aelfric’s flame. “He told no one but me and God. When we were young men he admitted to me that he felt sometimes… compelled… by men, just like he would by women. It was of course easy to remain chaste, since there wasn’t a man in the church who would commit such an act with him, but the impulse troubled him all the same. He felt that Aelfric would judge such a thing. Our teachers, if they would mention it at all, agreed; it was a crime listed among bigamy and the abuse of animals. He never committed such an act. But he would… he would be attracted to men from time to time, and act foolishly to please them, and he knew he did. Such as he did for you.”

Temenos held statue-still, holding up Ort’s head with the edge of his staff.

“He admitted to me after he was reassigned in Canalbrine that he was being foolish,” Ort continued mournfully. “He took account of his actions and decided he had always done the right thing, in accordance with his principles, and yet, it was a pull to you that provided the impetus for some of them, not initially his moral sense.

“I warned him against you, and he said—that he knew you a good man, even accounting for his growing admiration of you. He felt—he said that he felt that, against all likelihood, his moral compass had led him aright. It was correct moral action that had led him to you and all remained correct. That you were guiding him in the right direction, even though he had to push aside the way you distracted him. I—I tried to tell him that wasn’t what had me worried. I tried to tell him I was worried about what could happen to him if he crossed the Knights. But I really only thought he might lose his position, which would have been awful enough. It would have shattered him.

“I didn’t say what I should have. I never told him that I didn’t think it was sinful or corrupting, and I didn’t think that Aelfric would judge him. I knew the church would, and that had to be taken seriously, so I never spoke up. He died thinking I found him disgusting and that he had betrayed the order because of his sinful distractions,” he said, and closed his eyes. “But he was always right, every step of the way, and I was blinded by my desire to rise to the top. For power. For position and prestige. I would never have been willing to take proper account of my own actions if I hadn’t been shoved into it like this. It was none of it worth it.”

Temenos took his staff away from Ort’s throat, and back to his side. He leaned on it. “You think that God would not judge him,” he repeated.

“Crick?” asked Ort. “How could He? If He knows all our hearts, how could He judge Crick for anything?”

An awful expression came over Temenos’ face. It was not that the was about to cry, it was that he was putting every ounce of strength he had into suppressing it. “I see,” he said, and turned away. “I—”

Ort watched, beginning to shake now that his heart had caught up with his nerves.

“That is unfortunate,” Temenos said. “I see I needn’t have pressed you.”

“Inquisitor…” Ort began.

“Rest assured that his secret is safe,” Temenos continued. He turned away, so that none could see his face. “I apologize for making you confess. And I assure you that if Crick Wellsley faces judgement, so will whomever thinks they have the right to judge him.”

“Except Aelfric Himself,” Ort whispered.

“I might still ask Him a few questions,” Temenos whispered.

“…Special position or not, there’s no way you can do that.”

Temenos turned back around, as calm and collected as if he were simply chatting over tea. “I’m sure He’ll be up for conversation! But that day has, unbelievably, not come for me yet. How about we tempt fate again?”

--

The robed men were no match for the combined efforts of the clergymen, the apothecary, and the thief. Temenos and Ort divined something from their words and the symbols they had on them, but mysteries yet abounded. Finally, the whole party emerged from the other side of the cathedral’s intestines and into its stony, public chambers.

Temenos made his exit, saying he needed a word with the acting priestess there. Ort watched him go, looking clearly unsettled and dejected. Throné could imagine why; while he had gotten the information he had been looking for, what had been taken from him was quite the cut.

She also saw that Castti looked like a wet cat about it all, even more apparent in the heavenly light of the cathedral. The second Temenos was out of ear-shot, she turned around to both of them and stubbornly snapped, “That was not the whole truth.”

“…No?” Ort asked, blinking.

“It wasn’t,” Throné agreed, curling a hand under her chin.

“I am very displeased with Temenos,” Castti said.

“Oh,” said Ort, visibly relieved that she hadn’t been accusing him of lying. Then, a look of realization crossed his face. “But that means…”

“Sir Edgeworth,” Castti continued, crossing her arms and looking up at him with pinch-browed unhappiness, “Temenos was not fully honest with you. He was honest, he told the truth. But he did not tell the whole truth.”

“…Would it change the overall picture to know this truth he kept?” Ort asked.

“I would say it does.”

“It is about Crick?”

“I would say it is!” Castti continued, quite offended. “I am honestly shocked that he ran off without returning your candor with his own, and consider it uncharacteristically cowardly of him.”

“I don’t know,” Throné shrugged. “I think it’s not that uncommon for him. We’re not taking about Hikari, here. Temenos would fight the Night itself, but his own inner darkness will make him shake.”

“His inner darkness?” Ort asked, alarmed. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, damn it,” Castti said, with one adorably petulant stomp of her heel. She turned her head to Throné and said, “Throné, don’t stop me.”

“I don’t intend to,” Throné promised.

Throné had been perfectly content, actually, to just let Temenos work, as he had requested of Castti. She had had no plans to stop him, or Ort, thought she had sensed predatory intent on him from the beginning. She had not moved to stop any of them during the entire confrontation, after all. Her only plan had been to make sure that, if the situation got violent, neither of her friends was dying tonight. She would have been perfectly content leaving Ort lifeless in the tunnels. If it had just been her and Temenos, surely it would have come to that, and they would have killed for each other and come out together—but Castti had been there.

That was why letting Castti work was almost always the best option. Temenos might be her best friend, but he could and would agree that Castti was smarter than both of them when it came down to it. She would make him agree, if necessary.

“Sir Edgeworth,” Castti said, and held out her hands.

“Ort,” he replied, and took them in his own.

“Ort,” Castti smiled. “First off, your skin is very dry. You should be using a moisturizing lotion regularly, or you will see undesirable results in the health of your skin as you age.”

“Oh,” Ort said.

“Second, though Temenos didn’t lie to you, he was still remarkably dishonest in the matter of Crick in a way I find unfair, because you were fully honest, even telling a truth that you swore not to tell. Temenos should have responded alike, but he didn’t, and to keep him to task I will do it for him. He is a dear friend to me, and has confided in me. Temenos feels so spectacularly guilty about what happened to Crick because he was falling in love with him. Yes, so he told me himself. Temenos has always loved men and, unfortunately, he has always been completely convinced he will be judged for it. Learning that Crick might have—gracious, that he might have felt the same has only served to convince him that this was his fault, and that he did bring Crick to his doom somehow, even though he cared so much about him, or else I don’t even know him. And I do,” she said, glaring in Temenos’ direction.

Ort stared at Castti in utter shock. Then he looked also down the corridor to which Temenos had disappeared, and whispered, “No.”

“Ort,” Castti said, getting his attention. He looked down at her, and his expression now was like he was looking at a wise old grandmother, rich in experience and knowledge. “I know he can be intimidating, from a distance. I know that in your own culture it’s… odd to approach a superior like this. But I urge you to have another conversation with Temenos. A healing conversation. Blame me if you want, but talk to him. Really. You have been two halves of something broken all this time. Fix it.”

“Okay,” Ort said, and looked down the hallways with blatant fear, followed by determination. “Okay.”

--

After Ort left, and the sacred silence of the sepulchral cathedral had settled down on Castti and Throné again, the two of them alone between candelabra and censor.

“Temenos will be unhappy with you,” Throné noted.

“He can be unhappy with me,” Castti said. “I’m unhappy with him.”

Throné raised her eyebrows. “Really.”

“His hatred of his own nature has caused problems for both him and everyone around him,” she said. “You and I have both seen the good things that can grow if we let them. Even if all we do is refuse to show judgement. When Temenos projects his own anxieties about himself, it causes other people to question themselves, and stifles those good things. I won’t stand for it.”

With a turn of her head, both away from the dark hallways and away from her anger, Castti whispered, “I believe that you didn’t see anything wrong with him and Crick, or with Mikka and Pala, or with Alrond and Misha.”

“Not at all,” Throné responded, through a nervous flutter in her throat.

“No,” Castti agreed, “I knew you didn’t. You teased, but with affection.”

“You didn’t mention Thurston and Floyd.”

“Hm. Well. That did worry me somewhat.”

Throné laughed, but then shook her head. “Of course I never thought any of that was wrong. I’ve seen wrong.”

Castti hummed. Her head bobbed in a subtle nod. Throné could tell she was lost in thought.

“Do you think I was too harsh?” she finally asked.

“No,” responded Throné. “You’re right. The thought of Temenos and Ort never having the chance to really talk to each other, never fully know the truth, is… sad. And you’re right that Temenos was the one stopping it from happening.”

Castti hummed again. She pulled in a breath, and let it out slowly. She curled a hand for a moment over hear heart, and then looked up to the ceiling. “Throné,” she said, “I’d like to have a conversation with you, too.”

Throné felt a coil of shock wind through her body. In its wake her skin was raw and her heart was beating hard. She responded, “Any time.”

Castti turned to look out one of the high, peaked windows, framed with coiling stone, to look at the dark night outside. “It’s not too cold,” she said. “Perhaps we can step outside. There are gardens.”

“There are,” said Throné, who had been here before with Temenos, before either of them had even met Castti. “They’re lovely.”

“Let’s.”

--

Though it was late in the year, purple and emerald leaves bunched thick in the winding patches of the cathedral gardens. Berry-bushes and fruit trees crowded together, blocking the wind and warming each other. Everything was meticulously trimmed by the sisters who tended them for food and medicine, and simple stone statues of deities and intercessors stood wrapped by tenacious ivy between them, their hands eternally clutched together.

Since the Cathedral stood over a steep hillside, the garden wound down the slope in terraces, half-moon steps one above the other, with stone railings to keep even a wayward wanderer from falling down. After walking quietly side by side, Throné and Castti stopped at once of those railings, one twined with a still-blossoming wisteria, and watched the stars and the dim, flickering lights of Flamechurch below for a while.

“Throné,” Castti said, “I have been afraid I was about to die many times in the past few years.”

Throné laughed like sharpening a knife in response, a few quick slashes. “It’s a feeling you don’t really get used to,” she admitted.

“I’ve noticed,” Castti continued. “I’m no longer afraid of some things that might be able to kill me, but anything that gets close enough, whatever it is, will make me afraid all over again. I think it’s natural to wonder about regrets, if there’s anything I have left to do that I should do before I die.”

“Sure,” Throné said. For her, life was a yawning gulf before her, an ocean she had thought she would never reach, sometimes paralyzing in its vastness and changeability. Yet sudden death retained its ability to terrify. “There are times I thought that I would be so mad if I died in this moment, because there was something I hadn’t finished yet.”

“Yes, exactly. For a while, I was determined, no matter what, to not die until I recovered my memories again, and then to not die before I found Trousseau again and… resolved him,” she sighed. “And even now imagining that I had died of some other threat before I found him makes me feel cold. What if I hadn’t managed to get to him, if he had simply gone on?... But that, and seeing Temenos today, convinced me of another thing. Dying without finishing something I must do is not the only sad fate. Living on while it dies inside of me is as well.  Refusing to do what I could have done, not because death stopped me, but because I did. In a way it seems worse. It may seem like a choice at first, like I’m putting it off for a better time. But then it stops becoming a choice, and becomes just what I always do.”

“That was how my father lived, I believe,” Throné said, leaning forward onto her hands on the railing. “I think not escaping was a choice he made… until it wasn’t. And then it was his whole life.”

“Precisely. Oh, but this isn’t just about not living with regrets. Far from it,” Castti sighed. “This is about choosing to live with joy, to reject the guilt and shame that insist that I do not deserve better. This is about being a person who demonstrates love, who loves visibly, so that it spreads, just like I have seen it spreading once given a chance. Love begets love, I believe.”

Throné’s hands tightened on the railing. Castti was radiantly beautiful in the faint, distant, golden lights, reaching from miles away to dust the curve of her cheekbones. In the rapture of her speech she looked up at the sky, and it looked back down on her in light.

“I have also been stifling something unfairly, even though I have been sure of it for some time now,” Castti continued, her gaze lowering to Flamechurch below, “and I am also looking forward to a future where I didn’t let it flourish with regret. Throné, what I feel… What I would like is for you and I to become something more.”

Throné felt shocked through, cut open with light. She felt like she was glowing. She felt dizzy, and she had to lean forward onto the railing. “You mean…”

“Yes, and I’ll be completely clear about it,” Castti said, her voice both strong and wavering. “I’m falling in love with you. I love being with you, and I dread the thought of splitting up. I want to get to know you better, as much as I can. I want the permission to love you as much as I can, to always be the one at your side when you need someone. I want to be the one in bed beside you every night, so much that I get aggravated if I can’t. It’s very childish. I fear I’m rambling,” she trailed off anxiously.

Throné leaned over her own hands, halfway over the railing. She felt like she was falling upwards, unmoored, an endless field of star-filled blackness all around her, whirring and wheeling, an unending, golden, cosmic dance. “You can’t mean it,” she said breathlessly.

“Why can’t I?” Castti asked. “If it bothers you, I understand. There’s nothing to be done if you just don’t feel that way.”

“Oh,” said Throné, and straightened up through the shivering in her arms, holding onto that railing on the mountainside for her life. The earth slid underneath her; her head rang like a bell. “Castti, I’m afraid.”

“Why?” Castti asked softly. She placed one hand on Throné’s arm; she stood solidly on the ground, moored through the touch of her fingers.

“I have never done this before,” said Throné, immediately, honestly, mortified. “I am not a maiden, but I’ve never been in love. I am so practiced at hurting people and so inexperienced in making people happy. You are such a precious person, and I don’t know how to treat you well. I didn’t know how it was done until I left the Snakes and met you and the others. I think you deserve better and I am afraid to take you. I don’t know what I am; I don’t know what Claude was and what that makes me. Could he have been some creature from hell, and could there be some awful true nature still waiting for me? What if terrible things happened, and you were there for my sake?”

“Oh,” said Castti, and around Throné’s back her other hand slipped onto her far arm, so that Castti was holding her from the side. Despite her fears, Throné was powerless to do anything but lean into her, melting into her warmth and softness. “Throné; everything you have said is something I have loved about you, or found it precious even if I could not love it for what it was. Except your sire; I do not know what he is, and I’m afraid of him too, but I argue he is in no real way part of you. Flesh and blood, perhaps; blood is not the reason I am falling for you.”

“What is?” Throné quietly asked.

“Consideration,” Castti said quietly. “Kind consideration, which blossoms whenever you have enough space to let it. Laughter. Daring and bravery. Never feeling hopeless or powerless when I have you. Stunning, sometimes astonishing strength. How you accept everyone around you, how you see the good in everything after knowing so much darkness and pain. Your love for your friends. Your tenacity and willingness to fight, both to defend others and for yourself. The fact that you have never once been shaken by anything I have done or said. Let’s be fair, Throné,” she said, and turned, but kept her grip on Throné’s arms, so that they were facing each other but Throné was still held fast. She felt dizzy even looking into Castti’s eyes.

“I have killed people,” Castti continued. “In self-defense, or from failing to save someone. I took a life after deciding it wasn’t worth as much as the lives he threatened. I am still… not quite whole from the effects of losing my memory. I need extra help sometimes, and reassurance. I’m no maiden either, or young anymore. And I am determined to chase that unholy Shadow to whatever horrible end it takes me to, even if that costs my life. You may consider some of those things nothing compared to what you have done, but they’re not nothing.”

Throné’s heart was pounding so hard it was hard to think. Castti’s strength was evident in her grip. “How can you—how—” Castti let her arms go, and Throné shivered. “How can you be so sure about this? About me?”

“Throné; do you think I don’t know you after the time we’ve spent together? I know you have darkness inside you, I’ve seen it manifest. I’ve had plenty of time to…” Castti paused to consider something. Her eyes traced Throné’s face, and Throné thought about the feeling of pressing their lips together, if she would be able to feel the little cut that Castti had worried into her bottom lip.

“…But you haven’t,” Castti said consideringly. “I’ve just sprung this on you now, you didn’t spend the whole walk from Ku thinking about it like I did. And none of this is nothing; we do both have things we are struggling with, and there are reasons to be hesitant to take me as a partner. You need time.”

“I… that’s…”

“No,” Castti decided. “Take your time to think about it. Take all the time you want. You shouldn’t have to answer such a proposition right away. I want to give you the time to be sure.”

Now that Castti said it, Throné felt incredible relief. She was anxious to be near her, to close the slight distance between them, but also afraid, with a fear that made her hands shake. What then, she thought. What then, once you have it? Will it just taste of blood too? Will you make Castti taste only of flesh and blood?

“I mean it,” whispered Castti. “All the time you want. All the time you need to give me an honest answer.”

“Okay,” said Throné, but then Castti backed away a step, and moved to turn.

Throné reached forward to grasp at her arm, to hold Castti in place. “But don’t leave me,” she said, words that tumbled out of her mouth and onto the mossy stone beneath her, raw and afraid.

Castti slipped her hand into Throné’s and gripped it. “I won’t,” she said, startled, but her eyes were crinkling. The dammed tears gathered in them made it look like liquid starlight was swimming in her pupils. “I won’t go anywhere. I’ll be right here.”

“Okay,” said Throné, feeling her legs shaking. “Okay. I need to sit down.”

“Let’s go inside,” Castti said, and turned so Throné could not see her face, but she held her hand and led her inside. Throné did not think she had clung so anxiously to someone since she was a child, but the second their steps lined up and they walked in the same rhythm, it was like her heart settled into rhythm as well. Her thoughts were not connected, they crashed, tearing through each other, galaxy arms turning faster than thunder. She had seen a star fall to earth; she had seen something incredible, once-in-a-lifetime, a dim childhood memory that everyone would later insist to her wasn’t real. It was still too hot to touch, smoldering, glowing, emitting enough heat to burn her fragile body into ashes. She watched the radiant glow and imagined burrowing into the hole, imagined being someone that wasn’t burn by its heavenly fire.

‘Time to think.’ She knew and had known that she would smash a window and snatch Castti off of a shelf if she could. She had to think if she had the strength and the courage to keep her; if she didn’t, then starting this would be worse than a sin. But here she was, blessed anyway, allowed to wait, time in stasis, the stars not spinning and the sword not falling on her head, allowed to have and to hold anyway, to not be punished.

--

They slept together in a tiny wooden bed, meant for an apprentice nun, in the room where all the nuns rested together. Castti and Throné held each other under the sheets. Castti pet Throné’s hair until she felt asleep, her fingers still tangled in the strands. Throné stayed awake like that, with her hands around Castti’s waist, wondering. Holding. Having. Keeping.

--

Castti tripped up the stairs to where she had been told Temenos was sleeping, feeling unreasonably light. The old pontiff’s room, they told her. Even that could not bring her down. She was in gentle stasis, floating between the question and the answer. It did not feel like suspension. It felt like flying.

She threw open his door without a knock. “Good morning Temenos!” she sang. “I hope you’re feeling properly chagrined, as well as full of peace and love for yourself.”

“Whh. Ff. Fuck,” said Temenos, buried in the cocooned sheets of a similar wooden bed, in which he was curled like pillbug.

“None of that. Get up,” said Castti, walking over to a shaded window and throwing the blinds open. “I don’t care if you cried yourself to sleep, it’s a beautiful day and you’re facing it bravely and with joy in your heart.”

“Why,” Temenos said, sounding less like a specific query and more like a general plea. Castti approached him and lovingly started stripping layers of bedsheets off of him.

“Up, up!” she said. “I’ve met every nun in the building this morning and they’ve communally volunteered you to do a sermon today. They love you, you know; they all tell me how much they missed you, and they seem quite aware of your flaws as they do so, so I doubt you’re really the scum of the earth as you claim.”

“Leave me alone,” Temenos whined petulantly as Castti tore his many comfort blankets away. “I’m not decent!”

“Oh, no, how will I endure after my maiden eyes have seen a man undressed?” Castti gasped, pausing for a moment. “Just kidding, I’m no kind of maiden and I’ve seen a man’s snapped femur pushing out of his thigh and into his stomach before. Up!” she said, and wrenched the last sheet away.

Indeed, Temenos wasn’t decent. He threw a pillow at her, and then scrambled to at least get into underwear. She laughed at him and began to gather up all of the linens to be washed. “Ort is still downstairs as well! Whatever you’ve convinced yourself after your conversation last night, he doesn’t hate you. And you had better have had a conversation.”

“Oh, we had a conversation, all right,” Temenos grumbled sourly, while he threw clothes on himself. Castti was concerned that they were the deceased pontiff’s clothes, and… they might have been. Temenos would look absolutely no different if dressed in the wardrobe of a man his grandfather’s age. “And I will tell you that I was briefly debating make Castti stew out of you, but in the course of deliberation I concluded that you must have meant well, and as such have decided to not deprive Throné of you.”

Castti’s heart briefly fluttered, and she smiled into Temenos’ sheets. Then she smelled them, and winced. That was the smell of something that hadn’t been cleaned since its last owner died. “I’m glad you have chosen to spare me,” she said, “and now I’m going to ask one honest answer from you—provided you learned how to give them after your shoddy show last night.”

“You wound me,” Temenos said, “but that’s fair.”

“Do you feel better now that you’ve talked to him?” Castti asked firmly.

Temenos sighed. “Yes.”

“See.”

“Much.”

“So there.”

“It was… good to talk to someone who really knew him,” Temenos continued, fixing a dusty coat onto his shoulders, “And in fact it brought me to the strange peace of the knowledge that I did not know Crick very well, yet. Unsurprising, considering how little time we had together. But the wake-up call of the differences between the things I had come up with in my head and the truth of the things Ort knows was refreshing.”

“Such as?”

“Well,” Temenos said, “Such as his utter conviction, backed with examples, that Crick was made of very strong stuff indeed, and would never have put a pretty face above his ideals. He was always trying to do the right thing first, and chasing around an ill-starred man second. I remember knowing that. I forgot it, in my grief. Now I am sure again.”

Castti smiled. She dropped the sheets into a wicker basket, and then walked purposefully over to Temenos. She grabbed both of his arms. He stood there like a startled deer.

“Temenos Mistral,” Castti said firmly.

“Yes,” he said, sounding a bit embarrassed of the fact.

“I love you,” Castti said.

Temenos flushed, and then ducked his head away, and then smiled. “Castti,” he complained.

“You’re a dear friend, and I wouldn’t be so fond of you if I thought you were a bad person.”

Temenos blinked quickly a few times, and then smiled again. “I love you too,” he whispered.

“And I promise that Throné, who wants to turn you into Temenos Stew every single day, also loves you. In fact, she complains often about missing you when you’re gone.”

“Stop that,” Temenos said, turning red.

“And all those nuns downstairs love you, though I think some of them think of you like a convent pet,” Castti continued.

“When you’re a respected mother superior with no secrets at all, having a local inquisitor is honestly indistinguishable from having an adopted stray.”

“And I think you have a new friend in Ort, too, even though you tried as hard as you could to muck that up,” she pressed on.

“Oh, I know I do. After we finished talking, and crying, and talking some more, and emptying a bottle of wine between us, I had ungodly rebound sex with him,” Temenos said.

Castti felt the world halt under her feet.

Temenos smiled serenely.

“No you didn’t,” she said.

His smile broke open like shattering glass. “Just kidding,” he sang.

“You didn’t, right?” Castti asked. “Wait, did you??”

“Heavens, I should think not!” Temenos’ eyes crinkled. “Is that something you think I would do?”

Castti searched his face for the answer and saw only fey delight. “N—well—how well did that conversation go??” He had been naked in that bed, and he did look rather sleepless and hungover. (And those sheets had smelled vile.) But surely, after only one night of working on his life-long, deep-seated issues, he couldn’t have?...

“Castti,” Temenos said, feigning shock. “Is that what you think of me? Or of the noble Sir Edgeworth? Do you feel like he would do such a thing? How confident are you?”

Castti held up a finger and made a noise of vexation at him. She then stalked over to the door, threw it open, and bellowed down the stairs for Throné. Behind her, Temenos laughed at her until he had to collapse back onto the bed, him in his stupid old man clothes, in his stupid cathedral of endless mourning, with his stupid jokes and absolutely, completely unfixable, unsinkable, irrepressible bad attitude.

--

Original Note:

A ha ha ha >u< I didn’t tag Temenos/Ort on purpose, because I want it to be genuinely up to the reader (you) if you think Tem is joking or not. It’s your brain. Use it however you want.

Anyway. In my dreams, I wish Ort had had more of a personal villain or antihero arc, instead of just being a scarecrow-like party to Kaldena’s. This could have been a much spicier character. I mean, he’s one of Kaldena’s men for most of the game, his character arc insomuch as he had one is about realizing he was always a willing crony, ready to put aside his morals for his position (a position he still keeps after the institution as a whole is discredited), and when we finally catch him alone it’s in this weird additional dungeon crawl… in the dark tunnels under a holy place of his religion. (Of course, I find it poignant that Temenos’ story starts in those same dark tunnels.) I just wanted to darken that armor a bit ;)

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...But in the theatre, modesty can hurt you!

Agnea screamed like a seagull and leapt off of a second-story balcony.

Castti and Throné both froze, but only for a second. Throné jumped back, Castti leapt forward. They were both nearly correct about Agnea’s trajectory; Throné caught her shoulders and cradled her head in one arm, and Castti snatched her legs out of the air. Agnea laughed and wiggled so hard that, after a few seconds, they still dropped her, and would up in a pile on the street.

Agnea screamed again and hugged Throné around the neck. She reached and pulled until she could hug them both at once. “It’s been so long!!” she cried. “I missed you both so much!!”

“We missed you too, Agnea,” Castti wheezed.

No one on the busy streets of New Deltsa seemed particularly bothered by the exuberant and hazardous reunion, but they wouldn’t be. In New Deltsa, it was best to pretend you didn’t notice anything and keep walking. Throné knew that just as well as any of the high-heeled or tight-trousered dames and dandies that hustled by them. Anyone who paused at all was asking themselves if that was really Agnea Bristarni that just jumped off of a balcony, but still they rushed on.

“We’re getting brunch!!” Agnea declared. “I’m meeting Veronica for coffee in a few hours, but we have plenty of time to catch up before! And you can come with me too, she’d be delighted to see you!”

“Dolcinaea’s bodyguard?” Castti asked.

“Biceps woman?” Throné added.

“That Veronica?”

“Yup!”

Castti and Throné looked at each other. Castti recalled Thurston, reformed under Partitio’s determined guidance, and Throné recalled Pala, who seemed to not have a bone of ill will in her body, despite her brother having died a belligerent in the war his opponents had won.

“Sure,” Throné said.

“Sounds lovely,” Castti agreed.

--

“Hhhhhhoohhhh,” Agena gasped, hiding a mouthful of eggs and bacon behind one peach-tipped hand, “No he didn’t!!”

Castti turned her head to glare at Throné, who merely smiled. “Temenos is capable of many things, if you push him far enough.”

“She knows,” Castti said petulantly. “I know Temenos told her the truth.”

“I swore to keep his secret,” Throné said, putting a hand on her heart. “He trusts me, unlike some loose-lipped people I could mention.”

“Even he thanked me for doing that!” Castti defended herself.

“It did sound like something he really needed to do,” Agnea said, “Whether he did that… last part or not. And it’s a good thing that he and Ort are friends now! …Whatever kind of friends they are.”

Throné laughed, of course. Castti sighed and looked up at the ceiling. The very high-vaulted ceiling, painted sky-blue and spangled with doves and cherubim, dripping crystalline chandeliers over the heads of the uniformly wealthy and hungover brunch-goers at possibly the strangest restaurant she had ever seen. The guests were either wearing pajamas or ballgowns, heavy velvet theater curtains hung between the rooms, the breakfast came with champagne, and the only staff she had seen in the half-hour she had been here were each unrealistically beautiful young men. There were three or four record-players in the building and she could hear two from where they were sitting, and every once in a while, a bright red bird flew through the room and out again.

Agnea had clearly been here before and seemed perfectly at home. Throné had clearly also been here before, though Castti highly doubted she had been paying for a meal at the time, considering the prices. It was a bit chaotic for her tastes, but she was not going to argue with cup after cup of hot melted chocolate served with whole cinnamon sticks to stir.

“But that’s not even the most exciting news,” Throné said, leaning over a plate of sugar-dusted fried confections and toward Agnea. “I told you we were saving the best for last.”

“Ohhh?” Agnea asked, eyes shining, fingers pinched around a fork on which she had stabbed three strawberries.

“Before we drug Temenos out for some sunshine, we spent a little while with him and Hikari in Ku, and while we were there, we met his adopted sister Mi—”

“ENGAGED!!!” Agnea screamed, flinging her arms into the air with such force that she lost one of the strawberries. (Two tables away, it landed deftly into someone’s champagne glass. Truly, a dancer’s grace.) “I KNOW!! I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW!! I’m so HAPPY for her!!” she gushed. “I’ve been writing to Hikari every day. Twice a day! I’m so happy for Pala I could burst into streamers!!”

Castti couldn’t stop grinning. “You know, I think Hikari would be very happy to see you instead of just writing you. He’s nearly as excited about it as you are, though a little less loud.”

“Ugh, I’ve been trying!” Agnea complained, slumping forward with a huff. “I’ve been trying to get my butt over to see him since I was in Merry Hills! It’s just really, really far away. And I keep needing to stop and say hi to folks everywhere I go!”

“Why were you in Merry Hills again?” Castti asked.

“For this year’s Grand Gala, of course!”  Agnea said, twirling one hand over her head.

Castti and Throné both stopped eating. They looked at each other.

“It’s been a year?” Castti asked, shaken. Good Gods, she had been at the Gala cheering Agnea through her victory after she had left Timberain and Trousseau behind.

Throné, who had stumbled bloodloss-edly out of Lostseed even before that, looked equally shaken. “There’s no way.”

Agnea blew some air up into her face. “You two can really just get into your own little world, you know that? Osvald has spent a year tracking the connections of, y’know, everything, and has nearly written a whole thesis on a theoretical ultimate puppet master none of us have even met. Parti and Tem have both been getting information for him nonstop, from, like, talking to travelers and finding dusty old archives in ruins and stuff. Ochette has probably visited every ruin or crypt in the entire dang world! I mean, I’ve mostly been, you know,” she said, lifting a champagne glass and looking into it, appearing to get lost in their swarming dance for a moment.

“I did know all that was happening, I just… didn’t think it had been a year,” Castti reflected.

“Well, it sounds like what you two have been doing is fixing people’s lives,” Agnea said, tearing herself away from the champagne’s hypnotic turns, “Which is just as good! That’s the whole point, or at least I think so. I’ve been making people smile!”

Just as bidden, both Castti and Throné smiled. “You sure have been,” Throné said, watching the little dancer with undisguised affection.

“I think ‘fixing people’s lives’ is an exaggeration,” Castti pondered.

Throné’s eyes shifted over to her. “I remember you saying yourself that ‘mere acceptance’ can allow people to blossom.”

Castti felt herself flushing. “It’s the least I can do. Especially when everyone’s doing such hard work to turn their lives around. Even people we once considered enemies. It makes you wonder… who else we could have helped if we had only had the chance.”

“Steady now,” Agnea said gently, probably not realizing she had picked up both the phrase and tone from Partitio. “Sometimes, you stumble. It doesn’t always mean you made a mistake. Things happen, even really bad things. All you can do is get back up and try again.”

Very rarely, Castti was ungracious enough to think, you didn’t lose everyone. But that was another reason, grim as it was, why she was so fond of Throné, and why her company was so comfortable to her. Unbelievably, they were two people who had lost everyone, but still had each other. She swallowed the bitterness and said, “You’re right. It’s all we can do.”

“We have our work cut out for us just doing upkeep on Temenos,” Throné sighed.

“It sounds like! Jeeze louise, I’ve never known anyone who gives you such a run around when you’re just trying to help him. That’s what’s fun about him, though. But…” Agnea did a little wiggle with her shoulders, projecting the turning thoughts in her head. “I don’t know if I should say it, but… when you talk about not being able to help people, or wishing you could help more… Well, right now, I think both of you look the best I’ve ever seen you. I’ve never seen either of you smile so much. You’re clearly helping yourselves, and each other! That’s not nothing. You’re important people too.”

Castti flushed to her ears. She and Throné tried not to glance at each other and failed. They both looked away, Throné out the window and Castti at the table.

“Aw, I didn’t mean to embarrass you!” Agnea apologized, holding her own cheek. “I knew I shouldn’t have said that! Listen; let me get you up to spend on what’s going on with Ronnie and Dolcie; Ronnie told me she was needing some advice, and it’s been like sitting on an anthill waiting to hear what she thinks I can help her with that she can’t do herself, but I have some theories.”

--

Veronica was taking up about a third of a table by herself. The open-air coffeeshop had small, cute tables and smaller, cuter chairs, so the leather-strapped bodyguard had her ass in one and one of her thick thighs propped on another. By her elbow on the table, clad in a patch-rich battle jacket, was a largely untouched cup of what Castti spotted was actually black tea and cream. A cup of artfully decorated café latte sat across the table for Agnea.

Veronica was unfazed by Agnea bringing uninvited guests. Before even saying hello, she snapped to call over a worker (who dropped what they were doing and hustled) so that Castti and Throné could order drinks.

Throné had grown up in the city. She said ‘café con miel’ and sat down. The worker looked at Castti next, who fretted.

“Just—a—well, what do you—”

“One for her, too,” Throné said.

“Yes,” Castti agreed gratefully.

Veronica invited them all to sit down with a flick of an open palm, and they did. Agnea slid her latte over so she could sit right by Veronica, and the other two sat across. Agnea picked up her coffee, cheered about the design on its frothy surface, and drank half of it in one gulp.

While she was occupied, Veronica did a slightly odd thing. She looked, very briefly, from Castti’s face to Throné’s, and then somewhere between them for a second. Having visibly decided something, she gave them both a tight, quick nod. Her tailed hair slid from her shoulder to her back.

Throné gave her a slower but similar one in return. Castti, who had no idea what easterner social cue she had just missed, smiled and tried to look polite.

“Delicious!!” Agnea squealed. “I didn’t really like coffee until Dolcie brought me to have the good stuff. Now I like it. Ronnie, this is Throné and Castti! I don’t know if you remember them or not.”

“I remember them,” Veronica rumbled.

“Great! Throné’s actually from here, like you! I know that you moved around a lot—”

“I know who she is.”

“Oh!” Agnea said, pleased and surprised. “Did you already know each other? Neither of you ever said anything!”

Throné and Veronica glanced at each other, considering but not uncomfortable. Throné’s summation was, “I don’t think we ever ran into each other except in passing. It’s a big city.”

Veronica added, “I haven’t had a permanent New Deltsa address since I was eight. This is bringing up the past, but anyone who does any kind of bodyguarding here has to have a good idea of who the active Blacksnakes are and what they’re up to. What’s up with that these days, by the way?” she asked Throné, her voice conveying that she noticed something was up.

“There just aren’t any many of them these days,” Throné said smoothly. “You may have noticed I’m out.”

“Yeah,” said Veronica, and after a glance down at the table and gathering her iron-tipped knuckles under her chin, she changed the subject. “Agnea, I heard you’re heading out of town soon?”

“Oof! As soon as they let me go,” she laughed. “My sister got engaged, so I’m trying to get home to see her.”

“Congratulations,” said Veronica. “Who’s the lucky man?”

“Lady! A relative of our friend in Ku. She’s an angel, I couldn’t be happier.”

“Oh,” said Veronica, her eyes opening wide for a second, her chin lifting off of her knuckles. The worker hurried back to their table with two small, black cups of bark-colored coffee that smelled of honey and cinnamon. Castti tried to gratefully accept a cup, but instead they set it down in front of her. Throné, seeming to expect this, did not even look at him. Having traveled a lot, Castti knew that city politeness usually stressed privacy and efficiency, and it seemed like that was taken to spartan heights in New Deltsa.

“Well, congratulations again,” Veronica said, somehow both gladder and more firm in her statement.

“Right? My sister is such a hick, honestly, I have no idea how she did it,” Agnea laughed.

“Agnea’s rather underselling it,” Castti said, carefully picking up the tiny cup, filled to the brim. “Our friend from Ku is their King.”

“Oh, shit,” Veronica said. “Is that who the little freak with the sword was?”

Throné snorted. Castti closed her eyes and sighed, but she couldn’t debate that. She did recall that Hikari had gotten a little… touchy in Sai, being so close to his troubled home country and his memories therein. Veronica had witnessed a particularly alarming instance of his shadow in action. “He’s doing much better these days,” he said eventually.

“I’m just saying that he brought a sword to a fistfight,” Veronica defended herself. “I wasn’t going to take it there. But the only reason I brought it up was to say that you have to say good-bye to Dolcie before you leave. She’ll be offended if you don’t.”

“Of course I’ll say bye to her!” Agnea said, shocked. “I wouldn’t skip town without stopping by! I mean, I’m nowhere near ready. I haven’t even packed!”

Castti wondered how long Agnea had been trying to leave town for. “We’ll help you,” she said.

“Oh, geeze! If you two are both helping me, I’d better get those good-byes in. I’ve never seen Castti do anything but she does it in cut time,” Agnea told Veronica. “And Throné—"

“Then I need to ask you what I came here to ask you,” Veronica interrupted evenly, “before you scuttle off.”

“Oh, of course!” Agnea sat, and sat down firmly, folding her hands in front of her. “What is it? You can ask me anything!”

Veronica looked incredulously at the sheer cheer emanating from Agnea, and responded it with a tiny huff and a shake of her head. “Okay, I’ll be totally—” she started, but then her eyes flickered to the corner and she suddenly sat up straight. A small group of people were approaching the table, getting nervously closer. Once everyone turned to look at them, their leader startled, and then visibly swallowed.

“H—Hey,” she said, “Are you—are you Agnea Bristarni?”

Agnea gleaned and jumped up to her feet. “That’s me!! Are you fans?”

And Agnea was gone. Veronica slumped into her seats and watched as Agnea tripped over to be absorbed into the circle of adoring fans. Castti waited a minute, but then, as Agnea picked up her feet and did a little twirl, to cheers and gasps, she realized it was going to be a lot longer than a minute.

“I see,” Castti sighed.

Veronica shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. You two will probably be of more help anyway.”

Castti and Throné shared, as they so often did, a quick assessing glance. Neither of them were sure what she meant by that yet. “I’ll certainly do my best,” said Castti.

Veronica sighed, visibly embarrassed by the question she was about to ask. “I’m trying to think of what to get Dolcie for a gift. I never used to get her gifts, but it feels like I really should now. Thing have… changed. But there’s nothing she can’t buy if she wants to, you know? So what should I get her?”

Castti and Throné shared a slightly longer look. “Something she likes,” Throné said.

“She can get anything she likes. And she does. The second she wants it. What do you two get for each other?”

Castti felt a little sparkle of magical lightning that arced from her head and down across her arms to her fingertips when she realized what Veronica meant. Several things about how the conversation had been going fell into place at once. “Oh!” She said. “Well. We don’t do a lot of big gift-giving things, I don’t think.”

“She’s practical,” Throné shrugged. “She always gets me things that will be useful. Knives. Your girl isn’t really a knife girl.”

“Not really,” Veronica said flatly.

“Throné gets me things with interesting stories,” Castti said after consideration. “things she found in an interesting place, or went through a lot of trouble to get.”

“You can say that I stole them for you.”

“Throné… It seems, as if, perhaps, Miss Veronica doesn’t want to hear that—”

“I know who she is,” Veronica sighed. “I see what you mean, though. Stuff that money can’t buy because it’s rare, or unique. Gifts with a special history.”

“Exactly!” Castti beamed.

“But the question isn’t really ‘what do you like’, it’s ‘what does Dolcinaea like,’” Throné said. “Which, actually, I may be able to help you with.”

Veronica raised an eyebrow. “Can’t wait to hear why.”

“As you recall, she comes from the city of Sai, where you had the pleasure of meeting Castti and several of my other friends.”

“Pleasure was definitely yours,” Veronica replied.

Throné smiled. “When I learned that the great Dolcinaea came from that tumbledown slum, I became curious and went poking into it. Just nosiness, nothing to worry yourself about. I remembered her being the talk of the town at a time when I was eating moldy half-sandwiches, you know how it is. We met the folks who raised her, and got to talking to them. They’re sweet folks. They really are. And they told me that they gave each other gifts from the heart. You know, thought for weeks and weeks what to give each other. And these are people with absolutely nothing, so, they know how to give a gift.”

Veronica leaned back in her chair. “From the heart,” she groaned. “Ah, fuck it. I know what I’ll do. If she doesn’t like it, I did my best.”

“That’s the spirit!” Castti smiled.

“She didn’t hire me for brains, and she’s better not expect them,” Veronica grumbled, clomping the thick heels of her boots onto the ground and standing up after them. “Make sure Bristarni stops by before she leaves. Docie will cry if she doesn’t get a proper farewell. See you.”

Throné waved her hand. Castti shouted, “Oh, goodbye! Good luck!” at Veronica’s retreating figure.

Throné made a clicking sound with her tongue. Castti hummed. “They’re—”

“Yeah. They’re—”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Thought so.”

“Should’ve known,” Castti said, and, feeling that it was finally cooled off enough, took a drink of the café con miel. 

She had never been too partial to coffee, but this was the best kind of coffee. Sweet but not very sweet, crackling with cinnamon and clove and orange peel, mellow and slightly milky. Like a stew, the many flavors blended into something savory and mellow. “Oh, this is delicious! I like it.”

“I hope so,” Throné said. “That’s what I make for you.”

Castti looked into the cup, shocked. “Oh my goodness, it is!” She took a drink again, and liked it even better. “You never mentioned what it was called.”

“No? I guess it’s not common. You have to have a lot of stuff on hand to make it, so.”

She hadn’t realized Throné put so much effort into it, either. “I think yours is better.”

“Then you’re crazy. This is the good stuff.”

“Then I’m crazy,” said Castti. “I like yours.”

Throné flushed and tried to hide her face in her cup.

Agnea, who had just turned around and saw that Veronica had left without her, put both hands on her cheeks and shrieked.

--

Agnea insisted on chasing after Veronica, and Castti and Throné (and also a glob of what was now more like six or eight fans) complied. Though, at first, they were confused about how Agnea knew where Veronica and Dolcinaea would be without asking, all was made plain when it became apparent that she was running uphill to the theater, where it was simply most likely that the two of them would be.

She was right, and the whole party skidded into the back of the theater just in time to see what should have been an unmitigated disaster. Throné watched Veronica hand Dolcinaea a dumbbell as if the exchange were happening in slow motion, like she was watching the surreally graceful descent of a knife into a back. But fortunately, and incredibly, Dolcinaea had no idea what the thing was and assumed the best. She watched Castti clutch her heart and form an expression halfway between sentimentality and pity as Veronica fumblingly expressed affection for Dolcinaea, and as Dolcinaea magnified it in return.

Throné grabbed Agnea’s arm as the two ran off to prevent her from following them. “Let’s… let’s give Ronnie a minute to explain.”

“Yeah,” Agnea reluctantly agreed. “Yeah, I’m sure they need some time to themselves. We’ll just have to catch up with them later today! I’ll give them an hour or two. Just want to make sure to pop in before I leave!”

“…How are you going to find them?” Throné asked sincerely. Agnea could be sharp when she focused, but focus was a rare occasion.

“Oh, I know where they live,” said Agnea.

“Of course.”

--

And so they headed right to Dolcinaea and Veronica’s apartment, which was to say that they wove through the criss-crossing streets of New Deltsa for two hours, stopped every few feet by something Agnea wanted to do or someone who recognized Agnea. In the course of those two hours they were given so many strawberries, iced teas, cakes, apples, grapes, coffees, cups of water, and cinnamon candies that they essentially ate a full meal. Agnea technically bought a hat for herself, a set of earrings for Throné, and a new bag for Castti, but the money flowed so liquidly from hand to hand that it was hard to tell where it came from, whether it was Agnea’s to begin with, whether Throné had grabbed it, or a fan had simply put it in her hand, or if a shopkeeper was tipped without them seeing.

In any case, they were fed, re-dressed, somewhat sticky, and exhausted a mere ten city blocks later, but Agnea was still vibrating with energy as she looked up into the balconies and terraces of a hotel that may as well have just been made entirely out of gold. Marble and plaster detailings were preferred instead, but the price of building must have been comparable.

“This is a hotel?” asked Castti.

“Yeah, they’ve been living on the top floor for a while now,” Agnea confirmed.

“The whole top floor?”

“Yeah. They just rent every room every night.”

Castti gazed up at the railings woven with gilded garlands that teemed with garnet pomegranates and the frosted glass doors that carelessly stood open to reveal glittering rooms inside, like caves crowded with shining gems.

“I think. Hm. As someone who has seen a lot of slums in my life, I think that’s not right,” she judged apologetically.

“Well,” Agnea continued, undeterred, “well, they’re not, like, good people. They’re better, I think, but.”

“Hm.”

“Anyway!” Agnea sang, and grabbed both Throné and Castti’s hands to lead them inside.

The reception hall was cavernously large, paneled in vibrantly burgundy, white, and emerald marble, featured both statuary and absurdly large vases, and was thronged with no less than a dozen uniformed attendants. Naturally, none of them even tried to stop Agnea from just heading up; she knew most of them by name and they happily let her and her guests into an electric lift to go upstairs.

“Okay. So, it’s not really them,” Castti decided, as the glass-paneled lift took them slowly past four nearly identical floors of dazzling opulence. “I think by all rights this whole building should be taken apart and redistributed to anyone who lives in the west side of the city. Maybe this whole block should be demolished?”

“Now you sound like Parti!” Agnea laughed.

“I’ve never stolen a building,” Throné said thoughtfully. “But I always thought if you had enough time and were very determined… Well, buildings are made of small pieces too.”

“You wouldn’t have to take the parts very far,” pushed Castti.

“I’d need help with the statuary.”

Castti slightly gripped the strap of the bag which, perhaps incidentally, showed off the toned strength of her arm. “No problem.”

“We’re here!!” Agnea called, which saved Throné from having to respond to Castti’s words while she could see the subtle curve of her tricep, toned from occasionally deadly axe-wielding. All three walked off of the lift and into another marble-paneled hall, which was lined with gorgeous, artistically stunning portraits of… Dolcinaea. Unsure how to react, they simply didn’t.

Agnea skipped down the hall, her dancing shoes making little clacks as she went. She seemed to know where she was going, so Castti and Throné simply followed behind, occasionally pointing at objects that looked reasonably movable, looking at each other, and then either nodding or shaking their heads. Because the inhabitants had the doors, both inside and outside, heedlessly thrown open, there was quite a lot to see and appraise.

After five nearly identical suites had been passed by, they heard something: a sharp, low laugh, sudden and harsh. Agnea brightened, because the laugh came from just around the corner, and clearly belonged to Veronica. Pulling her arms over her head, ready to make an incredible entrance, she turned into the next open doorway, Castti and Throné right behind her.

Whatever she had meant to say to introduce herself died on her lips. Through three sets of open doorways, straight through the room and onto the open-air balcony, they could all clearly see Dolcinaea and Veronica, standing at the very edge of the balcony, leaning on the gilded railing. Dolcinaea was completely naked and clinging to Veronia, who herself was only wearing trousers, boots, and a belt hanging open. Dolcinaea’s bare legs were wrapped around Veronica’s waist, and that and Veronica’s strong arms had her lifted off the ground. In the split-second after the three of them had stumbled into the doorway, Dolcinaea’s hand wound into Veronica’s loosened hair, and she laughed a lilting, lust-laden chuckle as she pulled sharply down.

Veronica’s head turned. Dolcinaea bit down on her neck.

Agnea was completely frozen in place, but neither of them had seen her yet. Castti, who had good reflexes, had already started retreating the way they had come. Throné grabbed the back of Agnea’s dress and yanked her backwards. 

They heard Veronia gasp roughly, and then moan, “I love you.” She must have done something as she said it, because Dolcinaea screamed in response, a cry that echoed down the hallway, seeming to rub on every plaster curve as it went.

Veronica chuckled at her, and then asked, “Like that?” Agnea’s whole face turned red, and Throné started just shoving her down the hall. She went limply, like a cotton doll.

They hustled, but did not escape the sound of Dolcinaea starting to gasp, “Oh, darling, I love you, I love you,” which to Castti sounded distressingly like she was close. She grabbed both her companions, yanked them back into the lift, and then pulled the level that would lower it back down.

The gates clattered closed and then happily beeped. Slowly, after a little jolt, the floor started lowering under them.

Even that tiny jolt made Agnea drop down onto her knees. On the ground, befuddled, red as a strawberry, she blinked, and then turned her face up to look at Castti.

Castti looked down at her wide eyes and innocently stunned expression and burst out laughing. She tried to stifle it with a hand over her mouth, but it did nothing.

“Castti,” Throné reprimanded, but the infectious laughter caught her. Soon, they were on either side of Agnea, clutching their stomachs and doing everything they could to not be heard through the entire, obscenely open building.

Blinking, Agnea finally said, “…I wasn’t expecting that!”

Throné nearly bent double. Castti sank down to the floor.  After a lot of effort, Throné asked her, “Did you seriously not realize—” but that was as far as she got before another fit of laughter overtook her.

“No!” Agnea cried. “No one told me!!”

Castti put both hands on her face and completely lost it. Throné remained upright, but almost barely. Agnea protested that there was no way she could have known about Veronica and Dolcinaea being a couple all the way to the very bottom of the elevator, where it opened to a couple of waiting staff, who looked at the absolutely hysterical party with general bafflement.

It was a particularly young man in a well-pressed suit who calmly asked, “Are they occupied again?”

Castti, who had been trying to get up, slumped back down to the ground. Agnea, looking up at the man, used every ounce of her strong dancer’s lungs to cry out, “Why don’t they shut the doors??”

--

Agnea got over it. Five minutes later, she was laughing about it too. Completely unimpressed staff regaled them with shocking tales of a crowd of admirers who haunted around the edges of the hotel at certain times of day hoping to ‘watch the show’ and the tactics the staff had developed to chase them off without cuing Ronnie and Dolcie into the situation. It was completely opaque to everyone involved whether the exhibitive couple in question were unaware or just didn’t care.

Castti and Throné tried to convince Agnea to just try again in the morning, but had no such luck. The rest of the day went by in an incredible blur as they got her to go to her own apartment (which someone had apparently gifted to her), made her pack the things she was going to take with her and pile up the things she was leaving behind, and they still completely lost her at the end of the night as she slipped free to wander the town again, leaving them alone in her overdone apartment stocked with everything a person could want and then some.

Castti looked at the piles of cut glass and tulle, looked at Throné, and said, “We cannot stay here.”

Throné said, “Agreed,” and they took their own bags and Agnea’s, went to the regular, completely normal inn, booked a room, and nearly fell into bed.

“If I had to be Agnea every day,” Castti said, eyes shut and arms splayed out behind her head, “I’d quit.”

“She’s young and energetic,” Throné mumbled.

“When I was her age, I thought women in their thirties were old and wise. But now that I am, I admit I still feel like I was her age just yesterday, barely set out on the road, with what I thought were boon companions who would then be replaced thrice over.”

Throné shuffled onto her side so she could look at Castti. Her eyes were shut, but an expression of serenity laid softly on her face. “You lost everyone three times?”

“Oh. No. I had so many failed starts when I was trying to build an apothecary guild that I remember being left with no one and starting again at least twice. Then, yes, I did lose everyone. That is the way in which I do feel old, I’ve had a reasonable number of years to pack all of that loss into.”

“There are some that have that much in ten years or less,” Throné agreed softly.

“Precisely. I had the time to love and to lose, which does make it better at the end of the day. I know now that I was something like in love with Malaya. Or, I was in love, but it was very practical. We were going to stick together no matter what, and having a casual relationship worked for us, or else we wouldn’t have bothered. I wouldn’t have done anything to get in the way of work, and neither would have she. Still, practicality didn’t mean it wasn’t love. A placebo is a medicine if it works.”

Throné digested that. The lack of pain on Castti’s face gave her time. She did not think she could yet talk about what she had lost herself with such peace. She was tempted to think that Castti was just strong, but she had seen strength crumble before. Castti was persistent, which did not.

Weeds grew where steel rusted. Throné had depended, once, on the strong to defend her, and found that strength was inherently always waited to be dominated by superior strength. There was nothing that dominated persistence; it was inherently the act of not being overtaken.

“Would you rather her back,” Throné asked, “or to be with me?”

Castti opened her eyes, with heavy, tired blinks. No offense or fear clouded their clear blue. “I would rather you were both alive or well, pretending I could have anything I wanted,” she responded. “But I would have to be making her some unavoidably awkward apologies about still valuing her and wanting to just be friends from now on.”

For a moment, all Throné could do was hold her eyes, feeling, in the grip of the most romantic thing she had ever heard, like she had fallen asleep without noticing. Was she actually burrowed into the blankets, imagining Castti’s affectionate words, her soft eyes?

But did it matter? If she were dreaming this, that meant she had fallen quite far enough in love and may as well admit it now. If she were still awake, that was excellent, because that meant this wasn’t a lie. Castti still remembered what she said earlier and still meant it. It wasn’t a five-minute trick to get her to act favorably, or a whim she felt for a moment and would forget later.

But Castti wouldn’t do that. She knew she wouldn’t. It was her family who did things like that, and their cursed blood, flowing freely from the most selfish man (if that’s what he was) who had ever lived. Throné had never doubted Castti’s constancy. There had never been any reason to. She had doubted her own. She had believed in her heart that she was fickle enough to love Castti for a moment, and then not care about her the next. But she felt now the same way she had felt in Flamechurch, and in Ku, and on Partitio’s island, and in Wellgrove, and for a year before that. It was consistent, and had been; never a moment of passion, a stab wound, but a slow, ongoing process, always evolving, never completing. A healing. 

Throné shifted onto her stomach, which brought her right beside Castti and nearly upon her. Castti’s eyes opened wide for just a second, and then they closed shut. Throné watched her tilt her face, and the corn-husk strands of her hair trickle out onto the white linens beneath her.

Throné kissed her, pressing together their lips, being stunned immediately by the softness of her skin and the tremors that she felt inside the moment they touched. Her face tingled, a wash of light spreading out from the contact; her hand, which she had to brace beside Castti’s face, shook on the sheets. Castti sighed, a breath so soft that Throné would not have heard it if she hadn’t been perched on her, and pressed up into Throné to deepen their kiss.

Throné’s fingers twitched on the sheets. She felt dizzy, like she was about to collapse, but the point into which she was falling was the connection of their lips together. Castti slightly opened her mouth and pressed, and Throné could feel the heat of her breath.

Throné curled into her, and Castti gasped. Her fingers wound gently into Throné’s hair. Their chests pressed together, and more firmly after Throné went slightly limp because Castti ran Throné’s bottom lip between her teeth and then released it. She melted almost off of Castti’s other side, clinging with one hand to her face, legs intertwining and one arm crushed beneath her.

“Oh,” Throné panted, a mere inch from Castti’s face. “I promise I’ve done this before and I know what I’m doing. I seem to have just forgotten everything temporarily.”

Castti chuckled. Throné had thought she was completely familiar with every way in which Castti laughed, but this example, breathy and confident, was new. Castti leaned into her and kissed her again, slowly, resting her mouth on hers, applying more pressure, and then less, running cold, skillful fingers through Throné’s hair, caressing the curve of her ear. Throné clung to her back, or rubbed and clutched at her shoulder, or pulled an experimental arm down her side and around the small of her back. Lying on her side she could sink into the bed instead of being afraid of falling, and as Castti’s fingers dug into her arm, her back, she felt grounded to her, nearly sinking in. Warmth spread in her chest and her stomach, and especially where their thighs brushed and rubbed together, or where Castti’s calf briefly hooked over hers before retreating back.

“You seem to have remembered what you’re doing,” Castti murmured, breathlessly pulling away. Throné saw how her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were soft and misty, and her stomach pulsed.

“You certainly have a few ideas yourself,” Throné responded. She held Castti by the small of her waist, pushing the palm of her hand into the lowest dip.

Castti looked down, and then back up at her. She lifted one hand to push the fringe of hair away from Throné’s face. “Are you sure about this?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t,” Throné whispered in return. “I thought that would be clear.”

Castti both shuddered and smiled, a look of pure pleasure on her face, like she had just dipped into warm, steaming water. “You take what you want,” she murmured, and leaned into her again. She kissed her firmly, pulling her in, opening her mouth; with her subtly strong arms she pulled Throné back onto her body. Throné found herself with her thigh between Castti’s legs, with her hands on her waist, which she pushed down into her soft skin with greedy instinct. Castti half-gasped, half-chucked in response, threading a hand through Throné’s hair again, which was just tangled enough to send little sparks of pain trickling down her neck.

Throné kissed Castti’s lips until she turned her head, and then she was kissing her cheek, then her cheekbone, and then the soft skin under her ear. Castti groaned nearly soundlessly, pressing into Throné’s lips and the gentle push of the tips of her teeth. The hand on Throné’s back moved down, and then just under the hem of her shirt.

She felt the tips of Castti’s fingers begin to creep up her back. Without waiting, she sat up on Castti’s lap and pulled it over her head, ripping away her undergarments in the same motion. She got to watch dreamily and smugly as Castti took her in, the gentle curves of her breasts and the strong, muscled swells of her stomach, the dip of her waist and white slashes of scars.

“You’ve seen me before,” teased Throné.

Castti rolled her eyes at her, which did not have nearly the same effect when she was flushed pink and her chest was visibly heaving. Instead of responding verbally, she reached down to pull her own shirt up, over her breasts, which squished together when she pressed them with her arms.

“And you’ve seen me, but look at you now,” she said smugly.

Throné did not dignify that with a comeback. Instead, she reached down to grab the hem of Castti’s shirt and began pulling it the rest of the way off herself. Castti yelped and giggled, putting up a very pathetic ‘fight’ against the manhandling. Throné had to pull her half off of the bed to get it over her head, so that by the time they were done their bare chess were pressed close and both of them had their hair all over the place. Throné struggled to pull Castti’s hair ou. of her face so she could kiss her, but Castti wasted no time pressing one palm onto Throné’s back and sliding one between their chests.

Throné jolted the second Castti rubbed a hand up the side of her breast. They had always been sensitive, but lack of use and genuine affection for her partner seemed to have suddenly made them very sensitive. She lost the battle to not make little gasps in her throat as Castti grabbed and pet what she could through the gaps in the closeness between their bodies. 

The hair in her mouth finally got to be too much for Throné. She leaned back, spat some out, and lifted both hands to pull her own back. How she didn’t see that this would lead to Catti fully grabbing both her tits was beyond her. Sheer distraction was her only excuse. 

She heard herself squeak, an embarrassing, kittenish squeak. Castti laughed a shockingly low and sultry laugh. Throné, still determined to tie up her hair, squirmed as Castti first gently squeezed and then palmed her breasts.

“A little—” Throné tried to say.

“Softer?”

“Yes,” Throné said, and then “yes” as Castti softly, teasingly rubbed her palms over both of them, sending tingles down her sides.

Castti laughed and Throné gasped. Everything reinforced the rest, Castti’s exploratory caresses and rubs over her chest and down her sides making Throné wriggle and gasp louder, and her noises only encouraged Castti to try harder. Once Throné finally had her hair in place, she reached down and somewhat aggressively smoothed down Castti’s, making her laugh. She leaned in and kissed her heavily, pushing her lips open and coming inside.

Castti sighed and gripped Throné’s sides. Throné became lost in the wet heat of her mouth, the gentle ridges of her teeth, the feeling of sinking into her. The feeling of Castti touching her sides and chest again at first registered only as little sparks, tiny pinpricks of stimulation. Then it seemed that between one heartbeat and the next she was flooded with heat, itching all over, shuddering under Castti’s hands on her breasts and squirming in her lap. She arched her back and pushed herself down; Castti gasped into her mouth.

Throné’s mouth slid away from hers and onto her neck, which she kissed desperately. Castti’s hands grabbed and pinched at her and she gasped and arched again. She became suddenly aware she was too close to a precipice, and then, she was off of it.

She had one hand clenched into Castti’s hair, and the other gripped at her arm. A pounding tide of blood washed over her lower half and away, and back again, lapping at her with heat and satisfaction. She pressed ardently to Castti, shuddered, and pressed again. She heard herself whine, and felt her own heat and damp on Castti’s neck. Her arms went weak and her body all but limp as aftershocks crested and faded in smaller, softer circles for a handful of heartbeats, slowly fading away.

She was still breathing into Castti’s neck, and still gripping her hair. She made herself relax her fist, and feel the strands of cornsilk slip through her fingers. She cleared her throat and then gasped. Shakily, she propped herself mostly onto her elbows again, though her arms shook so much that it shocked her. She swallowed, blinked, and looked down at Castti.

Castti looked so smug, and so charmed, and so lovely that Throné could have smacked her if she had the strength. Her face must have said so, because Castti laughed at her again, a laugh so purely delighted that Throné could take no real offense at it.

“Take it as complimentary!” Throné said haughtily.

Castti snickered and grabbed both of Throné’s weak arms, gripping them more gently. “I think I have taken it exactly as it is!—Dear Throné, you’d tell me if I pushed you too far?”

“You’d know,” Throné promised. “Oh, look at you, so proud of yourself.”

“Should I not be?”

“You should be more often,” Throné said, lowering a little closer to her again. “It’s a good look on you. You are a fantastic woman, Castti, and you’re too humble.”

Castti replied, “Humility turns away extra attention. I don’t need a crowd around me. It would keep me from getting things done.”

“And get things done you do,” Throné complimented, and kissed her again. “Oh, I am so happy we’ve done this,” she admitted. She felt enormously relived, and at the moment like their bodies had melded into each other, stuck by sweat and fizzling affection. When she shifted her hips and her thigh, phantom tingles ghosted under her skin.

“And we will again; more than anything I’m happy I know that I’ll be keeping you,” Castti confessed, a single hand sliding onto Throné’s face. “I was always worried you’d be taking your leave of me next.”

“Not a chance,” Throné promised, motivated by somewhat selfish desires at the moment but incapable of imagining she’d willingly part from Castti now all the same. The power of what had just happened, she realized, and the reason it had completely taken it over was in her being very fond of the person she had done it with, which she had not had before. There was no replacing that. She premeditated murdering anyone who tried to separate them. “Even without this. I think I would have just followed you from chapter to chapter without any incentives, just to not wander back into the blankness between the pages.”

Castti smiled, a smile both honestly happy and forlorn, and traced Throné’s cheek. “Nothing to worry about now,” she whispered. “Not as long as I can help it.”

Throné held her gaze for as long as she could bear it; the full power of Castti’s affection was difficult to bear, because it was so vast and so unyielding. “I’m being selfish,” she noted, pressing down with her thigh. “You…”

Castti hummed and then shook her head. “No, not now; I’m halfway asleep from just settling down for a minute,” she confessed apologetically. “Just from the amount of running around we did with Agnea today. I’m old, remember?”

Throné might have feared it was an excuse from another partner, but she knew Castti. They knew each other with simple glances and twitches of their mouths, and she could read polite dishonesty on Castti as if she had written it on her skin. Castti really was just exhausted. “Then get to bed, old woman,” Throné teased. “I’m going to clean up. Try to stay awake at least until I get back.”

“A challenge,” sighed Castti, and her steel shone through her fatigue.

Throné extracted herself at great length from Castti and stumbled into the washroom. She looked at herself in the black-spotted mirrors and saw forming bruises, swollen red skin on her lips and her breasts, and the whites of her teeth as she smiled. She stripped naked and washed herself, lingering at points where bruises were forming or small spikes of pleasure still shot through her when her fingers brushed them. She felt so heavy and pleased and stuffed full that she could have fallen asleep in the bath, but she pulled herself out and toweled her hair and opened the door to the room again, which was now dark as night from Castti putting out the lanterns.

She walked to the bed slowly, feeling ahead of her. She found its soft edge and climbed on top. Then she found Castti’s ankle, her leg. She cleaved fearlessly onto her, and felt that Castti had undressed herself as well.

“There you are,” she mumbled, sleep heavy in her voice. Her arm wound around Throné, and a warm, comforting quilt came with it, like a dove’s wing.

“Here I am,” Throné said, pleased and humbled, feeling like she had stolen the finest treasure of her life, and it loved her, and she didn’t have to give it away to anyone. She curled into Castti, who curled around her, and sleep came for her despite the tingles of happiness that were still winding through her like a hand smoothing back her hair and lulling her to peace.

--

“TIME TO RISE AND SHINE!!” sang Agnea, one arm thrown artfully over her head and the other extended, throwing the door open with such force that it smacked into the opposite wall and stayed there, letting the light of the outside world flood into the tiny inn room.

Throné vaulted half-way up, scrabbling for her nearest knife and not finding anything. Castti gasped and startled, staying prone in bed but clutching her hands into the sheets like a cat. She lifted up her head just enough to blink at Agnea, stupefied and disoriented.

Agnea visibly took in the fact that her companions were very undressed and very in bed with each other, as Throné’s panic had largely divested them of covering. Her arms lowered halfway, so that they were held in the air on both sides of her head, frozen.

Then, she clenched her little fists in front of her, and shouted, “Not again!! Why wouldn’t you just lock the door??”

Throné looked at Agnea with nearly audible confusion. Her hair was absolutely everywhere and her knives were nowhere to be found. Castti cleared her throat, grabbed the nearest blanket, and covered Throné up. “How did—we didn’t tell you where we were going,” she remembered, scatter-brained and rough-voiced. “How did you even find us?”

“Like I wouldn’t know where my friends are!” Agnea replied indignantly, planting her fists on both of her hips. “Come on!! Get up and get decent!! Dolcie wants to thank you personally for helping her out, and then we’ve got continents to cross, and we won’t get it done in a day!”

“Oh, hell,” said Throné, finally falling back into the sheets with a soft puff. “Do we have to? I am very comfortable.”

Castti, clutching a sheet to her chest, tugged on a lock of Throné’s hair and chuckled. “We’d better. I am beginning to suspect that absolutely none of these people can do it without us.”

“That’s right!” Agnea responded, maintaining an incredible stage presence despite her bleary and disoriented audience. “The world is waiting for you! It’ll keep turning on its own, but it’s just not the same without you.”

“That could be said of anyone,” Throné argued.

Castti smiled. “How fortunate,” she said, and leaned down to kiss Throné’s forehead. “There’s no one we’re willing to spare.”

“I guess I’d better leave you two to it!” Agnea sighed. “They have coffee and pastries downstairs, so they’re about to have me downstairs too. Meet you there!”

The door shut behind her, and Castti stood up from bed with a quiet groan and many popping joints. She walked over to Throné’s side of the bed and tugged on her arm. “Come on,” she said fondly. “We’ve got lives to fix.”

“They can’t handle their own lives for one day?” Throné asked one last time.

“They could, but why make them?” smiled Castti.

Throné barely hung on to her bad attitude as she slowly sat up in bed. She turned into Castti’s warmth and embraced her around the middle. Castti’s hand curled onto the back of her head. “Better spread the love,” she grumbled.

--

Original Note:

I would have named her after Carlotta instead of Dulcinea, but then again I named both this and the last chapter after a Producers lyric, so that is what it is, I guess. Which is why I went with the ‘musicals lines’ naming scheme at all; I thought of splitting that quote to name these chapters and despite a great struggle of willpower I could not resist. It’s just one of those weird things now, I suppose.

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Oh the fallen and the burdened / And the wreaths upon their graves

Throné’s mirror showed the truth.

Every mirror, of course, shows the truth. Despite their unflinching outward gaze being unnerving to some, made uncanny in reflecting the seeming of perception, slabs of polished metal or glass have no power to show anything but what is directly and materially in front of them.

Throné’s mirror, however, could do what other mirrors merely felt like they could do. It could reflect not just the visible truth but the invisible, with a light that illuminated every corner of the mind and shrove the things hiding within. Throné did not understand how, or why, but somehow she knew that it had to, that the illumination of truth was essential to the rekindling of the holy flame. It was, for reasons she could not verbalize, essential that it reenacted the death which had snuffed it out, illuminated what had been done in shadow and secret, before the light of its inert glass could burst forth flame.

She watched it reflect upon the curve of Arcanette’s false smile as she said “I love you, Tanzy.” It shook while it did it, furious. The strength of the lie made the glass ripple and distort. But it was still and placid when it showed how Tanzy’s face lit up in response to those words.

Just like it had every other time, its reflection was at its darkest when it showed the sacrifice which had snuffed out the flame, fading almost into gloaming for a moment before it blazed with glory. A glow like both the sun and the moon shining leapt out of it, and Aelfric’s flame roared.

Throné’s eyes stung, but she did not flinch. She watched it crest almost into the sky and then settle itself back into its bed. She kept her eyes fixed upon it like her fingers clenched the corners of her mirror, the mirror that Alpates entrusted to her. Surely a vessel of darkness could not gaze upon this flame unflinching, or bear the truth of the mirror. It reflected her face, and nothing else. Just Throné.

As the heat fell from the air and into her skin, she felt that Castti was still right behind her. Everyone was still there, unchanged. She clenched Castti’s hand at her side, but turned to her other side to look at Temenos.

Temenos was crying. This seemed natural, but by appearing on Temenos it felt unnatural. She had seen him grieving, but not crying. The trails of his tears were glimmering in the light. His face seemed to not know they were there.

Shakily, she reached out to him. “Professor,” she croaked.

Temenos looked at the flame, not her. Still, he sensed her hand, and slowly extended his own to it until their fingers touched at their tips. “Entrapment,” he whispered. He kept his voice steady as stone through his tears. “Using a forbidden desire she could not otherwise express to pull her in. Depending on how stigmatized it is and how hated we are to keep her victim quiet. Enforcing the rules that keep it quiet to cover up her own crimes, depending on her victim to be terrified to confess to what she insisted was a sin, which wasn’t a sin until we decided it was one.”

Throné wobbled forward to lean her forehead on his shoulder. Without even thinking about it, he bent to brace her.

“Brilliant,” Temenos admitted. “Absolutely genius. I would never have thought about it. I’m not like that.” A sense of awe had crept into his tone, the rapture of revelation. “Doing that would never occur to me. I’m not anything like that. I know exactly what I wanted, and it wasn’t anything like that. It never was.”

Castti let go of Throné’s hand so she could fully collapse into Temenos’ side. The cleric, who regularly claimed to be weak, was able to hold her up with no difficulty. 

“There was never anything wrong with it,” he continued, peace and anger wrapped into a coil in his voice. “I always knew that. The difference between that and this are so obvious that a child would know. Did once know, I believe.”

“You’re…” Throné coughed into his shoulder, out of the phlegm and emotion gathered in her throat. “You’re just so dumb, Professor. You’re just so incredibly stupid.”

Temenos held the back of her skull. Throné had felt that Temenos was her best friend before, even her brother. She had seen him be a guiding light to others, but this was the first moment that she fully felt like he was a cleric, a holy man. “The flesh knows little,” he agreed, his voice thin with revelation. “But the light knows all, and it can shine through. Truth, when it comes, is a scythe; lies are cut down, revealed to be husks.”

She looked at him, and startled for a moment.

His eyes were glowing.

But when he looked down at her, in the next second, the light was gone. She couldn’t even tell herself it was a trick of her eyes, because it had looked exactly like her mirror.

Temenos squeezed her for a second, and then slowly extracted himself. He waited until he was sure Throné was standing fine on her own before walking forward, three, four, five steps until he stood before the pillar that held up the light of Aelfric’s frame. He reached out and put a hand on it, staring up into the fire.

He stepped back after a few moments, his face lit like a match. Then he turned back around to the party, smiled, and said, with stunning confidence, “Lovely. Let’s go kill a God.”

--

It took time to track down Giselle and her troop. The last time Agnea had seen them was in Merry Hills, and it had been a few long months and one very long night since then. They were fast travelers, so there was no assurance that they were even on the same continent. When they did find them they were in the grape-vined hills around Clockbank, their wagon hitched between cliff and ravine.

Temenos approached first, his hands clenched around a bundle of black silk, fastened shut with a silver pin. Thus he had shrouded Tanzy’s journal after reading it, and thus it had remained in his possession since. Agnea hurried up to keep pace with him, coming from behind and then over taking to rush into Giselle’s immediately-opened arms. Castti and Throné came more slowly behind them, waiting silently through the emotional reunion.

After it all ended, the travelers had taken stock of the loose ends more important to tie up and the condolences most crucial to send. The others were taking care of other sensitive matters, but it had been agreed that informing Giselle and the others of what had happened to Tanzy, since they might otherwise have no idea, was of high importance.

It seemed, however, that they already knew. In broad strokes, if not in the finer details. What hadn’t come across to Agnea as an outsider had been becoming slowly evident to Tanzy’s companions, the fact that something wasn’t right. They didn’t know that she had died in the long night, but when they were told they weren’t surprised.

Still, the details were harrowing. Temenos handed over Giselle’s journal with the solemnity of interning a casket, and Castti and Throné split away to sit down by the riverside and give them some space as they read and digested what they had read. Castti could hear Agnea’s sniffles and consolations, and Temenos’ even, professional, compassionate reassurances as he assured Giselle, Coda, and Rico that Tanzy had not been forgotten nor her death unavenged.

Throné watched Castti draw circles in the dirt with a single finger, hum to herself, close her eyes. It was hard for her to listen to something like this and not help, but it wasn’t really necessary right now, and she was getting better at recognizing that. They held hands and shared a mug of mint tea. They talked quietly about their slowly-growing plans to find a place for those who still lived in Lostseed, which were all still theoretical but coming together.

Then everyone sat together to eat a midday meal, a spread of bread and cheese and fruits and roasted nuts on a quilt placed on the ground with everyone gathered around. What began with solemnity slowly, naturally morphed into smiles, and then laughter, as Tanzy was remembered for the person she was, unburied from under her tragic ending.

“She would cry and flop around about how she’d never write again twice a week!” Giselle laughed. “We didn’t get the wagon for the birds, we got it for dragging her around when she was too sad to walk. She started sharing it with the birds eventually. But no matter how much she whined, I would see her writing furiously within a day, or two at most.”

“I assumed that ‘drama’ came with the territory,” said Throné.

Giselle flipped her hair, pulled a rose out of thin air, flourished it with a burst of pink glitter, and said “Yes.”

Agnea squealed and clapped, like she did every time Giselle did that. The joy, however, was completely sincere, and Giselle handed her the rose with a smile.

It was a joke, of course, but Castii thought it seemed like Tanzy had been less ‘dramatic’ and more ‘incredibly unwell.’ Still, they had largely covered that topic and Castti didn’t want to drag the mood back down again. “Her writing must have been good if she practiced so often,” she said instead. “As fraught as the experience could be.”

“Yes! She was a phenomenal writer, despite her claims to the contrary. She always insisted that I just performed her work because I had to, but I would have done it even if I didn’t know her. She wrote me a thousand funny little skits and she was better than it. I regret that we got to perform her long plays so rarely; some were incredible, but we just never had the right audience. Though…”

Agnea tilted her head. Giselle opened her mouth, and then closed it again. She looked at the crowd around her with a sharp, considering eye, each to each; she judged them quick as a palette knife and then repeated, “Though!”

Temenos, who had been doing his damnedest to be a normal, comforting cleric up until that point, could not resist biting. “Though!” he repeated, matching Giselle tone for tone.

“Though,” she continued, “There was one drama in particular, which I regret never having been able to put on. It was a personal favorite of hers, and I really wanted to produce it. We could have, it only had four roles. But she stopped me herself. It was too close to her heart, and she was too anxious to see it on stage. So…”

“So,” Temenos repeated.

Giselle clasped her hands together; a rain of silver sparkles puffed from between her fingers. Throné couldn’t tell if it was purposeful or if Giselle had forgotten she had them tucked away for a bit of sleight of hand. “So I beg you to help me perform it! There are only four roles, and you are perfect for them! Two common women in love, a priest, and a strange, magical woman who may be a goddess or may be a devil! I will respect her wishes that no audience ever sees it, but I want to see it done, very badly. I want to be the audience this time.”

Castti and Throné looked at each other, shocked and a little concerned. “Two women...” mumbled Castti.

“A priest,” Temenos sighed.

“A strange and magical woman!” Agnea delighted. 

“I know she was anxious about it and I never pushed her about it,” Giselle continued. “I believe I was the only one who ever read it. I just want to see it, just once. I think it was her best work, and… She said she was uncertain how the focus on the female couple would be received. I don’t think that makes sense, because we both did trouser roles all the time. We were always performing female couples. I think her real source of hesitation was the play being so close to her heart, so I understand why. I just want to see it once.”

The party glanced around to gauge each other’s reactions. Everyone was hesitant except Agnea, who was luminously excited, so, obviously, it was happening. Castti reflected that they had all done much less pleasant things for the grieving and afflicted to give them some relief. “I have never tried to act,” she said hesitantly, “but I can’t imagine I’m much of an actress.”

“That won’t be a problem,” promised Giselle. “One of the roles is a very serious one. She has just lost someone dear to her and is hesitant to reach out. You would be fine even to perform her in monotone. Besides, I’m not worried about the quality of the performances. I just want to be able to stop saying ‘it was her best work, and it was never performed.’”

They all knew they were going to do it. It was so little to ask after so much grief. “Do you have a few copies of the script?” Temenos sighed.

“No. She only ever made one copy, though it saw many revisions. You’ll have to share.”

--

It was not a script, it was an agony. Words overlapped each other like they were shouting over each other; straight lines and bars silenced them. Slips of cut-out paper were pasted over old lines, covering a thought under a thought permanently. The few untouched pages, loved from the first, stood out like a shining patch of fresh-fallen snow above grimy roads.

It was one copy, but it had not been written once. It had been written five times over itself.

It was, however, not a long work. Giselle estimated it would take less than an hour to perform. None of them afraid of doing the work, so they took to the task of writing individual scripts for their characters, which they all promised to return to Giselle’s possession once the singular event was done.

The process required translation. It wasn’t always clear which of Tanzy’s lines was the correction and which was the rejected original. Sometimes a later choice would make the matter clear, and sometimes Giselle or Coda knew the truth from remembering a comment Tanzy made about it. Sometimes they could only guess, pretending they could understand the intentions of a woman who had hoarded secrets in her heart like jewels.

Oddly, Castti thought she had the easiest time of any of them. The character of Annabel, straight-laced, precise, and self-effacing, was direct and unassuming. It was almost always the best choice to cut out words, to respect the bars that cut them out and depict them as silences instead. The conceit of Annabel’s character was that she was so ignorant to her own feelings that she assumed she was being honest in denying them, including her complex feelings for Faye—who was, of course, being played by Throné.

Faye was a nightmare to coalesce into one idea out of three. It seemed that even Tanzy was still unsure in the end if she was still the brashly confident character she seemed to have initially written her as, or as a bitterly brittle one instead, sharp and firm not because of internal serenity but instead because she had been disappointed so often that she was boxed into her unhappy convictions. Annabel leaned on Faye’s grim certainty about the world, but whether or not that certainty was a façade about to dissolve was left unsettlingly up to interpretation. What was certain was what she had been betrayed and wounded many times, what was not certain was how many of those repetitive betrayals Tanzy had meant to keep, or if they were supposed to be eventually coalesced into one massive, ultimate betrayal.

Faye and Annabel had a happy ending no matter what, but Throné felt like she would like to know who Faye was before she attempted to bring her to the point. It seemed that she did not have that luxury, however. She would have to wear her face with a frustratingly fitting false confidence.

Temenos acted as though his role as Byron, the priest, was just completely rote. He sighed ‘of course’ and ‘a sectarian like him would’ as he scribbled down notes in awful short-hand (he had picked up the habit of writing in code years ago and had been unable to put it down). That didn’t change the fact that Byron was a completely ruptured character, cut down the middle by a choice not made about whether he was accepting of the climactic twist of the play or horribly unsettled by it. Temenos just wasn’t bothered by that.

It was Agnea’s character, Fretha, upon which the climax of the play rested; she was incomprehensible. Fortunately, she was intended to be incomprehensible. Agnea wrote down her favorite lines out of the options and the end result was very good.

The travelers took to the task of unwinding Tanzy’s tangled thoughts with the same determinations they applied to saving a lost soul or taking them down. There was someone in the text, in at least four parts. She could not be questioned any more after being dug up but she could at least be seen and given a final goodbye.

A few pleasant weeks were spent on the task as Giselle’s troop wove through the crestlands, performing short plays and shows for small towns. Castti and Throné watched puppet shows and feats of magic performed for little crowds of children and laughed and clapped; Giselle’s smile did not falter on stage, representing honest cheer.

--

“Yet I am not content in my allotted moments of quiet contemplation…” Castti said, and then stared, blankly, at the stunning, sloped vista of the sunset-stained Crestlands. She said it again, and left off again.

Then she plopped down on the gentle cliff’s edge and quietly, petulantly said, “No. No, I can’t do it.”

Throné sat down next to her, as if they were only watching the sunset. “Yes you can.”

“Memorization,” Castti grumbled. “Recitation. No different from taking a test. Memorizing lists of herbs and correspondences, diseases and their cures. But that’s not the problem. It’s feeling. Being asked to feel on command. I can’t do it.”

“I could make you feel on command,” Throné teased, leaning into her shoulder.

Castti fought it, but she smiled. “I will have to depend on your invigorating presence, or else I’m going to be a cold fish on stage.”

“You’re never a cold fish.”

“Generous.”

“You’re not,” Throné insisted.

Castti smiled a little, tilting her head this way and that. She didn’t really have to say anything. She had a subtle and intimate language of tiny reactions, small acknowledgements of the world around her she could not fully suppress. In study Throné had learned to recognize the subtlest indications of insecurity, interest, and desire for affection, as subtle as whatever the flower says to the bee.

“You always feel for people, even when they don’t deserve it,” she told her frankly. “You’re telling yourself you can’t do this because you can’t make up imaginary feelings for an imaginary character, but you already have plenty of real feelings about it. You know you’re doing it for Gisella and Rico and Coda, and because they feel genuine grief, and when the time comes you will find yourself suddenly able to do it and will claim acting is simple for the rest of your life.”

“I see,” Castti responded plainly. “Good to know you’ve got the matter sorted.”

“I have.”

“And you haven’t found anything to give you pause about the task before you yourself, of course.”

But Throné did pause, and Castti put teasing aside to examine her. Something was troubling her, an invisible thing in the distance. Castti fell silent, and gave Throné time to speak.

She said, “Getting the official announcement of Pala and Mikka’s engagement makes me think about how Tanzy lived and died thinking she was wrong and fucked up. Living with you makes me think about how she lived and died thinking she couldn’t be loved and no one told her otherwise, even her friends who watch her and knew she was struggling but didn’t even ask. Thinking about how Veronica and Dolcinaea live lavishly and carefree while Tanzy snatched a clearly selfish, one-sided love because she thought she couldn’t ever have anything else… I didn’t know her honestly at all, but reading her play over and over every day just makes me think…”

Throné grumbled and tugged at her own hair, unable to quite phrase her thought. Castti waited, and eventually, she started again. “Basically, we have to be being more blatantly in a relationship at all times. Tanzy lived and died thinking there weren’t other women like her. Are you kidding me? We can do better than that. I don’t want us to go through a single town again without it being very clear that we are in love with each other.”

“Oh, good idea!” Castti said. “Should we hold hands?”

“Should we hold—yes, I suppose that might do it. We just have to do our part to ensure for future generations that they aren’t dealing with whiners like Temenos. They just have to get used to the subject, immediately.”

“I agree. It’s clearly incredibly unhealthy to stifle this sort of thing. I have only ever seen evidence that being straightforward about it leads to a better adult life.”

“That’s exactly how you would say it, but yes?”

“Am I wrong?” Castti asked challengingly.

Throné observed the lively flush on her cheeks, the sparkle of good humor that she could not even take for granted now that it was so abundant. Laughter, good cheer. Friendliness and comfort. Warmth and companionship. Simple things that she would have once thought of as creature comforts, shameful, as merely showing weakness. Instead she now firmly believed they were all medicine, good for you but, even more importantly, good for everyone around you, because they spread like petals, exponentially unfolding. Seeing happiness on others made people determined to grasp at it, and it spread again.

“No,” she clarified, “you’re just a geek,” which Castti simply had to accept as true.

“But sweet,” Throné complimented, and received a gentle, warm kiss to the side of her face, which the night wind had just started to chill.

--

The wagons were hitched at the foothills of the mountains, where the elevation was just beginning to turn the trees red and the grasses gold. A cliff towered over the place where they chose to set their natural stage, a slightly-barren patch of grasses and wildflowers where the shade of the cliff disallowed rich growth. Giselle and Agnea lined it with candles, which Temenos lit all at once with a rush of magician’s fire. He missed just one, and pretended to light it surreptitiously behind his cloak as Castti hid her smile.

As far as they could tell, there was no one for miles. The last farm they had passed, early in the day, had told them that no one really lived in the area. The soil was too rocky for use and there were better opportunities not far beyond. The first and final production of Tanzy’s unnamed play wouldn’t be interrupted by anything but the calls of birds and perhaps the wandering of a confused but unbothered doe.

There was no backstage and no waiting audience except Tanzy’s friends, so the work of putting up a meager set of boxes and lanterns and dressing the four rookie actors in their costumes was done without secrecy. Temenos helped Agnea tie a corset and Giselle arranged the mourning cowl Castti would wear for the first few scenes. They had considered not changing Temenos at all, but for the sake of everyone else remembering to call him by another name they made him put on empty silver glasses frames (which did suit him well) and carry a false staff instead of his real one… just in case. Redone as Faye, Throné had the greatest transformation; she wore an old traditional dress and had a wig of auburn hair on her head, taken, it turned out, from when Rico cut off and dyed all her hair. No one cared that her knife was still on her thigh under the dress as it could not be seen. Giselle clasped their hands warmly, individually, and then she, Rico, and Coda left the stage, leaving the rest to them and the setting sun.

The play began with Faye and Annabel, in a room, pulling invisible objects out of a trunk and valuing them; keep, donate, throw away. They spoke without cues or extra explanation, so familiar with each other that the sentences were half-sentences, brief and comfortable.

Castti couldn’t help but feel nervous about being watched, but then she noticed that her mourning veil blurred the sight of the miniscule audience to her side, and if she looked in front of her, all she could see was Throné, still Throné under the wig and the dress. And Throné was taking to the stage very well, totally unconcerned with her audience.

She did, however, treat her lines almost too casually. She would add or take away Faye’s words, only one or two at a time, so naturally that Castti kept forgetting it was ‘Faye’ she was looking at, ‘Faye’ who decided if the unknown, invisible object from the trunk in the deceased mother’s attic was worth keeping or completely broken now. It was ‘Faye’ guiding ‘Annabel’ through grief with calm and unflinching understanding, ‘Faye’ whose quick judgements of the wreckage led ‘Annabel’ through it.

Castti just felt too aware that it was really her and Throné talking, and that they quite sounded like themselves, until Agnea burst into the circle of candles with a vocal “knock knock!” and a huge smile. She was her character, the odd, fast-talking stranger who claimed to be a friend of the deceased, though neither woman had ever met her. When Fretha jumped in Castti suddenly became Annabel, though she didn’t even realize it for a minute.

Annabel and Faye both uneasily took Fretha for her word. When Fretha suddenly pulled something invisible out of the trunk, gasping, exclaiming at how wonderful it was, Annabel insisted she take it. “It’s nothing to me,” she said, a thin smile on her face. “Yet another piece of mom’s collection.”

“Nothing? So it is,” Fretha said, examining her empty hands. “Useless for any practical purpose, unwanted by anyone. Yet it is wonderful. I’ll take good care of it; I’ll see you both soon!”

The play went on, scene by scene. With each one it felt more natural, less like she was speaking someone else’s lines and more like she was doing her best to let Annabel say her piece. The two women, both previously married to men and individually unsteady with having developed feelings with another woman, wrestled with the ramifications of a marriage proposal that had happened right before Annabel’s mother’s death. She wouldn’t have approved; did marrying now dishonor her memory? Worse, they lived in a pastoral village and the only priest available to wed them is Byron, who had just officiated the funeral, and who personally disapproved of the match for reasons he never directly stated (but clearly implied). Byron’s first scene found him at his desk alone, monologuing as he worked through a completely unrelated, thorny legal case involving a dead woman who may have also been violated before her death. The priest thought he knew the truth; the truth was inconvenient.

If Tany ever meant to resolve that plotline, she didn’t; the only mention of it was this monologue and it remained unresolved. Byron was interrupted when Faye showed up to discuss the potential wedding in a rapid-fire scene in which both characters rarely finished a full sentence (and Castti was quite amused by watching Throné and Temenos play off each other so), but then were interrupted, again, by Fretha, whose appearance clearly discomforted the priest.

Castti had to watch that scene in the ‘wings’, of course. She stood right outside the circle of light candles, whose glow was becoming more prohibitive to sight as the sun settled low. She watched Byron tersely remind Faye, “I married you to your late husband; that was a proper—” and Faye cut him off with “—and counseled him through the disease which killed him,” Castti thought she saw only hints of Temenos and Throné inside them. Somewhere in the note of Byron’s voice was the strain of Temenos the Inquisitor, enduring daily conflict on a divine scale, but the character might have been how Temenos would appear in a sinner’s nightmare, nothing more. So too did Throné’s cleverness and hunting patience put some steel into Faye’s voice, but bled dry of Throné’s humor, Castti felt a little like she was looking at a beautiful stranger again, with depths she had not plundered and could not guess at, fresh and strange.

It was not an unpleasant feeling.

So, too, was Agnea swiftly becoming something else in Fretha. Agnea’s body lent the spring to her step, but the confidence and talent which Agnea had fostered allowed her to transform completely on that rough stage, as if a mask had melted onto her face. It was fortunate that everyone was supposed to stammer and stumble while talking to her, that the uncomfortable priest was supposed to say, “I wouldn’t call that heretical, per se—”

But not be able to finish his line when Fretha turned her face to him. “What would you call it?” she asked.

Byron stammered, “Perhaps—it is inventive—”

“Creative,” Faye decided, “A very creative interpretation of religious text.”

“Like a rose window, stained violet and red,” Fretha beamed, her eyes crinkling; “Like a pillar of holy flame, carved all around with ecstatic saints.”

“And that is an interpretation I would call favorable,” the priest replied.

So it went on. The scene wrapped up and Castti had to take the stage alone next. Before she did, she remembered to look at another face. Giselle, who was seated outside the ring, watching on. Castti saw her wipe a tear from her cheek, even though nothing too moving was happening on stage.

When she was doing it for someone, Castti was capable of many things. Despite her nerves she took a deep breath and put Annabel on like a cloak even as she followed the next stage direction, which was to take off her mourning veil. “Beloved,” she said, searching through the empty air, “Are you at home?”

She waited ten seconds for silence, looking hopefully up, and nervously around. “Often unfound when sought,” she said, projecting her voice even though she could hear it was flat. “Yet arriving always at the right time. I seek out of turn, when I should wait and be content. I know it. Yet I am not content in my allotted moments of quiet contemplation, my time in the darkness unspeaking; I would rather not do it alone. I did for many years, I grew familiar with the meager blessings of solitude and austerity, and became an admirable widow. All praised me for my virtues and admired me as a stone statue, well-carved. I am toppled in my hunt for Faye, and all shudder to see me so fallen. Are they all inhuman themselves, frozen and unfeeling? Have they not felt love and lost it? Can they truly not understand why I tired of my starving virtue and asked to eat again? Let them affix themselves if they need a statue to stare at; if I had been intended to serve such, I would not have been made a feeling thing. But I think I hear her come; speak not of it for now, Annabel, and recall what you came here for.”

Castti was merely relieved she hadn’t botched it. When Throné walked back inside the circle the task was easy again; she came in with a little smile, and Castti knew she had been watching her, and listening.

Because the show was so short the plot twisted and turned quickly in the second half; Castti was rarely off-stage to catch her breath. Scenes shortened and lines came so fast that there was no way to think too hard about it, no way to interrupt herself with hesitance and anxiety. Byron confronted Fretha about how she always knew more than she should, and she evaded answering the question. Annabel discovered something among the priests’ possessions that clearly shocked her, but she never revealed to the audience what it was. The women conspired with everything they had to bring the wedding to fruition, including Fretha, who continued to aid them at every step despite neither ever knowing (or really getting to discuss) why the strange, canny woman was so invested in them.

All came to a head at the wedding, which saw Byron standing behind Annabel and Faye to officiate. Before then was the emptiness of the stage; Annabel and Faye both saw it and remarked upon it. Though no one had properly risen up to protest their wedding, there were none that would celebrate it either.

“No surprise,” Faye said, reaching up to affix a wedding-veil on Annabel’s head, with real metal hair pins that bit just gently into Castti’s skin. “I find myself, in fact, pleased that they chose to keep their disapproval in their own homes, where it belongs. It can stay out of mine.”

“In the end it is best,” Annabel agreed, doing the same for Faye, except that Castti could not be ‘Annabel’ while she was fixing a veil on Throné’s head, pushing black strands out of her forehead and pinning the white lace high. It fell on both sides of her face, and framed her black eyes, which sparkled with the candlelight of the stage. Castti’s heart beat in her chest. “In the end it is best,” she said again, and had to depend on rote memorization for the rest of her line. “This day is mine, and does not belong to anyone who would not honor it. If they cannot see the joy I see, then…”

She forgot again. After a moment, Throné, who had been doing so well being grim, smiled sneakily at her. “Then let them suffer,” Throné finished for her. Which was not the line.

“Oh, God,” Castti begged, covering her face. Everyone laughed, some louder than others. She could hear the smile in her voice as Throné said, “It’s a wedding. Lighten up a little.”

“It’s more than a wedding!” Castti argued. Meaning, of course, that this was Tanzy’s last play, put on for her dear friend. “It’s—it’s your wedding. Dear. I’d like to do it right.”

“It’s your wedding too!” Throné said. They were on some secret page of the script, it seemed, which Throné had found and not informed anyone of. Stolen directly from the playwright’s mind, perhaps. “Stop worrying about doing it right. We’ll never do it right. Just do what you want to do.”

Castti considered. She held out her hands, and Throné wrapped her own around them. “That will absolutely send us far off track.”

“We were never on the track.”

“We were doing fine for a while there.”

“We followed the script; it took us this far,” Throné said. “But it is about to end. We’ll tumble off the last page together. Then there won’t be a right way to do it at all, and I’d like to see you stop agonizing about it.”

“Oh,” Castti sighed, and hung her head. She was flushed red and Temenos was giggling at her. “If there’s no right way about it, I suppose we’ll just have to do it the way it works for us,” she admitted.

“I want to know who will stop us,” said Throné.

Castti thought of something she shouldn’t say, and bit her lip against the laughter. Then she said it. “We have to get through a snobbish and sexually repressed priest first.”

Temenos whispered, “What the hell, Castti,” and both women nearly bent forward stifling their laughter.

“WHAT DID HE SAY?” screamed Coda from the audience.

Castti couldn’t help it. She pealed with laughter, holding her veil in front of her face. Throné yelled out to the audience that Temenos had said that it took one to know one, which was obviously not what he had said, and the two of them nearly got into a fight on the stage. It took Agnea physically walking in, taking each person individually, and putting them back into place for the scene with a stern reprimand that they were all messing it up. They apologized to her and got over the giggles enough to carry on eventually.

Castti put her hands in Throné’s again, they stood in front of Temenos, and he began the wedding. As he recited verses about love and partnership, as he said the millennia-old words that bound man to wife, Throné held Castti’s gaze, and Castti did the same in return.

She did not think she was ready to do something like this, and yet acting through it made her body feel light and warm, like she had shed off an awful weight. There was no joke, there was no cruel, hidden punchline about Annabel and Faye and their love. It was given in the sanctity of the text, the unaltered and unchanged marriage liturgy, the two or three pages of the scrip absolutely bereft of corrections, clean, left the way they were written in the first place, an unflinching claim that this was as real and as sacred as it had ever been.

The marriage, like almost every other scene, was interrupted by Fretha. But that was where the travelers had had to make a choice in interpretation, and the most important choice.

Tanzy herself had changed her mind over time on what Fretha really was, a malevolent figure in disguise or a beneficent one. Giselle herself admitted that she wasn’t sure which one Tanzy had really wanted to be the final, canon ending. It was up to them to pick the ending which was best, to untangle their own opinions about the play, their assumptions about Tanzy, their regrets about what had happened, and the paths that led them here to pick which was the show deserved to end.

In one of the potential endings, Fretha was Aelfric, and revealed her divine glory as wires took her up from the ground, radiant and beneficent. The priest cowered in shock, asking how it could be.

“There is no difference from the height of the Divine between man and woman,” Fretha said, “For behold how I shine in each.”

“But why would you come, for such a little thing?” Byron asked.

Fretha held something in her hands, the invisible thing she had carried for the entire performance. “Such a little thing!” she said. “Do you not see what you have?”

Agnea was not floating above the stage on wires; instead of descending from on high, she had to walk over to stand on a box to take the priest’ place and officiate the wedding herself. In their favorite ending of the play, God herself bound the two women together in marriage, blessing them and gently admonishing her priest. They could not tell if it was truly Tanzy’s favorite ending, or if, in the end, she still preferred the bleaker one; but it could have been.

The sparse audience—of the wedding—Fretha also remarked upon. “What a shame!” she said. “I would have blessed them too if they had come!”

--

The boundary of the play was broken after the final line was said. Instead of sitting and applauding, Tanzy’s friends rushed the travelers. They cheered and embraced them; Giselle kissed everyone on the cheek and thanked them individually. Her eyes were brimming with tears. 

“No wonder you wanted to see it performed,” Agnea gushed. “That was beautiful!”

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” Giselle enthused, kissing her again. “Thank you.”

“Miss Tanzy had a beautiful mind,” Temenos said, taking the fake glasses off of his face and surreptitiously clearing his eyes. “And a sharp one, I think. I did not enjoy being chastised by Aelfric, and especially not when Agnea got into it.”

“I got carried away!” she laughed.

“You were brilliant,” promised Giselle. “Just perfect. If Aelfric gives you trouble for the portrayal, I will tell him he doesn’t understand art.”

“I promise he does, and it will be fine,” smiled Temenos. “Though, when it comes to my meager portrayal—” he began.

“Temenos,” Throné interrupted him, “You were yourself up there, and it was fantastic.”

“Oh, you awful creatures,” Temenos said of all of them, with obvious affection in his voice. “With my apologies to Agnea, none of us were quite like the two of you.”

“Oh, no,” Castti said, preemptively mortified.

“Oh, yes; I’ll say it,” Temenos said smugly. “The rest of us were acting, but how can any portrayal compete with real love?”

“Thank heavens we’re here to be convenient to you! Where would you be otherwise?” Throné told him.

“Well, I’ll thank you both sincerely!” Giselle laughed. She embraced them both, again. “Thank you so much. I know it took a lot of bravery to put yourselves out like that. It means so much to me. She would have loved it. She would have just loved it.”

“Oh,” said Castti, tearing up. “Oh dear. You’re welcome. You’re welcome,” she said, hugging Giselle back.

Into her ear, Giselle whispered, “Go and love her. For as long as you can.”

Castti promised, “I will.”

--

Original Note:

…Transformative work, am I right?

We are off the beaten path with that chapter title. It comes from an opera score called The Dolls of New Albion that mostly exists as a recorded album. I believe it was performed live just a handful of times. I found it the old-school way; an internet stranger recommended it in a forum thread. It’s fast-paced and sometimes hard to follow but wonderfully imaginative and strange and unique. The quote itself is from a ballad in the final act called ‘Priscilla Contemplates’ which I think is worth a listen even outside of the broader context of the opera. The full lyrics of the chorus are

And some sacrifice anyway / And some sacrifice it all away
Oh, the fallen and the burdened and the wreaths upon their graves
When you’re broken there’s no assurance you made a better place

Some of you who were reading from the start might remember that this fic was originally five chapters, not six. In fact I had the whole thing written and halfway edited before the fact of the sixth chapter struck me like a train. I wasn’t going to bring Tanzy into this, and then I absolutely had to, and here we are. That’s a wrap!

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