Chapter 2: Ch 2

Leah wakes up in the morning to Meredith knocking at her door and telling her that she has to come down for breakfast. “Don’t expect to be served breakfast in bed; you’re not an invalid, or a Lady,” she calls through the door.

Leah dresses herself in something similar to what she wore the night before, but a different shade of brown, and slightly warmer. Meredith leads the way, and Leah tries to memorise it. The stone passages are decorated with tapestries, the doorways with carved wood lintels, and she takes note of the most distinctive ones.

The serving woman from the night before is there during the breakfast course. Leah avoids eye contact, and so does the woman. Fare is basic, but generous; porridge with dried fruits and ground almonds. Leah thinks there might be lemon zest. To her shock and delight, there is coffee – watered down a bit, but black and delicious.

For the first bit the group is quiet, talking only about the food and the weather. Finally Kain tentatively asks if Leah has remembered anything. Leah says no, and they begin to grill her on details.

“Do you remember going to Seffon’s castle?”

“Do you remember the contract to serve Valerin?”

“Do you remember the Gael’s Gree campaign?”

“Do you remember the caravan job?”

“Do you remember the cursed forests?”

“Do you remember when we first met?”

“Do you remember your homeland?”

Leah grows increasingly distressed; she had half-hoped she would wake up in her bed at home, but instead found herself still stuck in this other world. At first she had hoped that it was just the new stage of the dream, but this is getting a little too mundane to pass for a dream. Still, she doesn’t question it out loud. Best not to tell them I have memories of a different life; that would bother them too much, she thinks. Also I might get burned for being a witch.

The questioning doesn’t stop, though, so Leah finally speaks up. “Please stop asking me if I remember things. It’s stressful.” People listen and obey, though sadly. As compromise, and to help herself survive in this world, Leah adds: “How about instead, you tell me stories about my life, to see if I remember anything?”

They look between each other, and Meredith elects to go first, telling of how they met her early on in their team’s history.

“You were a jouster, a pretend-knight in a travelling group that entertained at faires,” the red-head says. “You did choreographed combat, and usually played the villain of the piece. It was a sort of combination of athletic and theatrical performance. The four of us visited the faire by coincidence, while we were trying to make a name for ourselves as a team, and we thought you fought well.”

“I thought you were a better performer than a fighter,” Iris says with a grin. “But when you’re travelling it’s good to have someone entertaining to keep your spirits up.”

“What, you don’t like my stories?” Vivitha asks, mock-hurt.

“Moving on,” Meredith says, rolling her eyes. “We decided to catch you after the show and offer you work. You didn’t seem very motivated by the idea of adventuring, and were comfortable where you were, but finally you were moved by the romanticism behind it, I think – doing good for others, exploring the nations of the Gulf, that sappy stuff. You said you were an actual fighter at times as well, not just a pretend one. So you agreed to join the team, once your contract with the travelling group had expired; but when we looked at your contract, we found that it was full of unfair clauses and secret rules, which you…” Meredith shrugs. “Well, you weren’t exactly literate, so you hadn’t noticed. You were, in essence, an indentured performer. We argued with your manager until we successfully bullied him out of abiding by the unjust contract, and you were free to travel with us. And that’s been our life for the past…three years? Just a little under.”

Leah is shocked to learn she is apparently illiterate. “I couldn’t read? At all? Is that…common?” Can I now? If I read something now will they get suspicious?

The group seems uncomfortable, and finally Iris breaks. “Gods avow, people, she was alright with us saying it before, why are we being delicate now? Leah’s never been the brightest flame.”

Leah takes note of this, and remembers some previous comments. “Oh,” she says, and immediately Vivitha and Kain gang up on Iris in telling her how rude she was. The serving woman is listening, and seems upset by this conversation. Leah notices out of the corner of her eye, and cuts in. “I’m not insulted, if that’s how I was when you met me then it’s okay for you to say it.”

“Even so,” Meredith says, with a scolding tone. “You shouldn’t be teasing her after her experience. We should be supporting her, and helping her get back to fighting-fit.”

“What experience, exactly? I was captured, right?” Leah asks. The team seems unwilling to discuss it in public, and Leah catches on quickly. “Anyway. Do we have a name? Our team?”

Meredith looks up in confusion. “No?”

“Oh.”

“Why should we?”

“I just thought maybe we – ”

“See, you’re getting better! I knew it!” Iris declares, taking her hand and squeezing it. “We were discussing, just a few days before you were taken, how we ought to have a proper title for our team, so people wouldn’t just refer to us as ‘the five.’”

Meredith mutters something about ‘the five’ being a perfectly acceptable group name, and Leah rushes to agree, that the five was exactly the sort of thing she was wondering about.

With breakfast over, Meredith takes Leah aside while the others go out into the courtyard for practice. Leah waits nervously, wondering if the grilling is going to recommence. Instead, Meredith takes the time to reassure her, talking with authority but also kindness. “I know that you need time to recover, but it’s important you do so soon. You have responsibilities that cannot be left unattended; Seffon is still in power in his region, and you technically are the reason why the five are in Valerin right now at all.”

“Why? What responsibilities?” Leah asks, quietly.

Meredith rocks her head from side to side, apparently thinking how to phrase it. “We’ve all got different skills, in the group, and you’re our defensive fighter. That’s sort of your reputation; defender, stoic, strong…”

“Dumb,” Leah puts in, and Meredith winces but does not contradict.

“You’re a classic choice for a personal guard, and often the five end up going along wherever you’re hired – you or Kain, I guess; a thief with a conscience is a rare asset. Anyway. For now, the Valerids have hired you as the guard of Lady Jeno Auzzo, for the duration of her family’s stay in Valerin. We were only supposed to attack Seffon after the Auzzos had left, but circumstances forced us to make an attack four days ago, during which you were captured. Your being held for three days has left the political situation very delicate, and the sooner you can prove you are still yourself, the sooner the tension in the city will dissipate.”

Leah drinks this in, memorising it. “Okay, how can I do that?”

Meredith gestures to the training court. “Keep up appearances. If anyone asks about your captivity, tell them you were unconscious for the whole thing.”

“Is that the truth?”

“You tell me.” Meredith gives her a piercing glance. “If you feel the need to rest people will understand, but it will also give them time to talk and come up with their own theories.”

“So we need to come up with our own theories?”

“We need to come up with answers.”

“Is that possible? I mean, without asking Seffon for an explanation of what he did to me?”

Meredith is silent. “Wellen may know something. He is certainly the only person in Valerin with knowledge of magic.”

Leah makes a mental note to see if she can find a definition of magic somewhere. Are we talking about herbs and potions, telescopes and bacteria, or dragons and witches? She agrees to at least sit in on the practice, for the first hour, then to seek Wellen.

The training ground is to the north of the main courtyard, with gardens of various sorts to the south, and an open space in the middle. Leah sits on a bench towards the northern tip, soaking in the morning sun as the spring air slowly warms, and she watches the five train.

Vivitha is on the edge of the field, firing at targets from behind cover, some being carried like tower shields by nervous stable-hands to provide a challenge. She squints as she aims, expression cold and focused, but breaking into a wide grin anytime she gets an exceptionally good shot. Kain and Iris are duelling with short-swords, wearing only minimal armour, aiming more to disarm than to wound as far as Leah can see while watching. Meredith is practicing switching from two hands to one hand with a sword, fighting primarily left-handed though occasionally trying to lead with the right, struggling through it when she does.

“I use a spear,” Leah says, when Iris comes to sit beside her and take some water.

Iris looks delighted. “That’s right. Well, short-spear technically, but close enough. Did you remember that?” She asks this hopefully.

“I remember there being one when I was riding my horse…Beeswax? When we were coming back to…Valerin,” Leah says, remembering the feeling of the shield bouncing against her hip, the spear rattling in its holder.

“Yes,” Iris says, fixing her hair tie.

“And a small knife.”

“Dagger,” Iris says, disapprovingly.

Leah nods. “A shield?”

Iris laughs. “Your personal battering ram, yes.” Leah asks for clarification, and Iris describes happily how Leah will raise the round wooden shield to her shoulder and rush their enemies, clearing a path and bowling over any who don’t duck out of the way, slashing the tendons of any who trip trying to avoid her.

Leah thinks she sounds pretty badass, but says nothing.

Iris goes back to the field. Meredith and Iris spar, and Kain switches over to some knot-work. Curious about this the markedly non-violent practice, Leah sits with her to see what she is doing. Kain shows her some knots for trapping game, and Leah takes a spare piece of line and fiddles with it, without thinking. After a minute she looks at her hands and sees a complicated knot.

I didn’t learn this in Guides. Looks tidy, though, not like a random thing. She leans over and nudges Kain’s shoulder. “It’s not as nice as some of yours,” she says, showing off the knot, and Kain’s eyes light up. “Oh? Is it something special?”

“It’s a knot I use for fishing hooks,” she says, smiling and taking the knot from Leah’s hands. “I’d been trying to teach you that one, in the days before the…well.” She thumps Leah on the head in a friendly way. “Glad to see you were actually paying attention.”

Far from being glad, Leah takes the string back and stares at it. How could I know this knot, if I’ve never lived this life before? Is it something I could have learned somewhere else? When was the last time dad took me fishing…Christ, must have been at least a decade.

Kain misinterprets Leah’s quiet distress. “Other things will come back to you eventually. For now, it’s best you rest some more,” she says reassuringly.

“Right. Meredith said someone called Wellen might be able to help?” Leah says, and Kain points the way.

After asking directions a few times, she eventually makes it to Wellen’s home on foot, about half an hour out of the estate, on the southern riverside edge of the mainland city. It stands out from the rest of the buildings by its eclectic garden, and the free-standing metal spires surrounding it on wood pillars. Lightning rods? A fence? Decoration? Leah can’t figure it out. She approaches the door, then notices a man kneeling over the garden, and walks up to him instead, clearing her throat. “Hello?”

The man stands and turns, brown eyes lighting with recognition in a round brown face. He’s an older man, tight curls gone salt-and-pepper, bookish and friendly looking. “Leah! You’re looking well, better than any of us hoped.” He reaches out a hand to shake, and Leah gives hers. “Why are you here on foot? You should have ridden in.” Leah shrugs; she isn’t sure she’d recognise Beeswax if she saw her again.

“Good to be back, Wellen,” she says it casually, but with a bit of uncertainty; the man does not correct her on the name, and she is relieved to have gotten it right. “I was hoping we could talk?”

Wellen leads her into the house, the front room of which immediately answers her magic question: there are herbs drying in the rafters, books on the shelves, a large iron cauldron on the hearth, and bits of animal bones scattered around the desks. Magic must mean botany and biology, something between a medicine-man and a dark-ages scientist. I wonder what his standing is? Is he wise man, shaman, wizard, crazy old coot, shunned genius?

Wellen clears a space at the table for them to sit, and offers her water. “I’d be interested to hear your explanation of what happened since you entered Seffon’s keep. If it’s not too difficult to talk about, of course; I understand if you need time to readjust.”

Leah hesitates. “That’s why I’m here. I seem to have…lost my memory. I can’t remember anything from before the rescue.”

He readily accepts this. “A common side-effect of compulsion magic, I’m not terribly surprised. Although, losing so much…” He rubs his chin in thought.

Leah wonders if this is like roofies, and suddenly gets worried. “Compulsion? I don’t really know…” she frowns, taking a sip of the water. “Start from the beginning. What is Seffon known for? Why is he our enemy, and what might he have wanted with me?”

“Child, I’m sure he wouldn’t have kept you alive for three days if he was eventually going to kill you.” Wellen says it reassuringly, but it just makes Leah more worried. “What is more likely is that he was trying to put a mind-influencing spell on you; one that the rescue mission interrupted before completion, hence your current disoriented state.”

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Leah looks around the workshop for familiar drugs; marijuana, perhaps, or mushrooms, or a syringe. She sees nothing familiar, though the plants look common enough, grasses and twigs and such.

Wellen is curious to see her curiosity. “What are you looking for?”

“I’m just trying to see if anything is familiar here, to get an idea for…” The level of technology I’m dealing with here, she thinks to herself, but can’t find a way to phrase it that doesn’t sound suspect or infantilising.

“Oh? You’ve always held…rather a bit of disdain for my work, in the past.”

“Did I? Why?”

Wellen evades the question, brushing it away with a hand. “I suppose you thought it was a lot of nose-in-a-book nonsense.” He veers off into discussing possible treatments for her condition, and Leah leaves at noon with a cloth bag full of herbs and powdered salamander, and instructions to brew it as a tea; Leah knows she will not, but wonders how to avoid the fate. I’ll just not tell anyone he gave it to me, and get rid of it somehow.

She walks back to the estate, and is scolded laughingly by the team for not having ridden.

“I wanted to walk,” she lies, a little defensively. “To see if I could find something familiar. Landmarks, buildings, you know.” They seem to accept this response.

At lunch the serving woman is not there, but Jeno is. Now knowing that she is supposed to be the woman’s protector, the night before makes much more sense.

“How much does Jeno know about my condition?” she asks Meredith.

“Nothing.”

“Should I say anything about it?”

“Best to merely describe yourself as ‘addled.’ That means confused,” Meredith clarifies. Leah is about to say she knows what it means, then remembers that she is supposed to be uneducated. She notes to herself that Meredith apparently is educated, and to watch for more signs of this. Who is this woman, and why is she the leader? Or is she not the leader, and I’m just misinterpreting the power dynamics here?

Leah continues to press her for advice. “Should I sit with her? Or talk to her, at least?”

 “After lunch, maybe. Offer to escort her back to her rooms.”

 “And where is that?”

Meredith sighs with a smile. “Just…follow a pace behind her, wherever she wants to go, unless it’s somewhere that looks unseemly. She’s well-behaved, from what you’ve told me, so she probably won’t want to go to any such place.”

Leah nods, and the team runs over their itinerary. They must run the horses through training exercises this afternoon, from which Leah is exempt. In the evening there will be another meeting with the Valerids, which Leah must attend lest the team’s reputation suffer and Leah be counted a lost cause.

“What sort of meeting?” Leah asks.

“Endless talk about nothing,” Iris says. “We won’t have any new information, probably, but they like to hold us back after supper some nights just to talk things over again. And again.”

Meredith glares at her, and Iris shrugs. “Debriefings,” Meredith says patiently. “They give us any new information, and we discuss potential strategies.”

Leah nods, privately thinking that despite Meredith’s confidence, she puts a little more stock in Iris’s impatience, to predict what the meeting will be like.

After she has finished eating, Leah waits for Jeno to finish. Once it looks like she has, Leah approaches and waits for Jeno to notice and react; she does, with a discreet nod and smile.

“Shall I accompany you back to your chambers, or wherever you wish to go?” Leah asks.

Jeno smiles a tiny, polite smile. “It would be wonderful to have you back by my side again.” The young woman gets up, and Leah follows her out of the hall.

The two wander the parapets, and Leah finally sees why there are no crenulations: there is no line of sight from the top of the wall to any place on the ground where attackers might approach. Instead, there are rivulets down which boiling oil may be poured, and rooms with arrow slits above each bridge, topped with turret platforms for lookouts. Leah gets the impression that defence is an afterthought to the estate’s design – or perhaps that the river is supposed to do most of the defensive work for them.

Jeno is most interested in the birds in the rookery; she holds up her deep-pink dress, embroidered heavily with gold thread, to avoid it trailing in the muck, and coos at all the falcons and crows kept in cages. One corner, better lit, has a selection of songbirds.

“They were collected from every corner of the Gulf, for use at the wedding,” Jeno explains. She seems upset when Leah doesn’t respond.

“Oh?” Leah says, at a loss.

“Usually this is where you make a joke that the birds seem too small for a wedding feast,” Jeno says.

“Oh. Do I often make that joke?”

 “We always take this walk, sometimes every day. That joke is…a part of the tradition.”

Leah apologises, and says her mind must have been elsewhere. Jeno still looks upset, and Leah tries to cover herself with another joke, about “four-and-twenty blackbirds.” She realises too late that this poem probably doesn’t exist in this world, but it is too late to take it back. Jeno asks to hear it, and Leah wracks her brain to remember every part; she ultimately can’t, but summarises it.

“I suppose it must be an Algic song, and that’s why I’m not familiar with it,” Jeno says, poking her fingers through the bars to try and pet one of the birds.

“Algic?”

“Is that not where you’re from? Ie Stasse, in Algi?”

The name sounds familiar. “I’d forgotten I’d told you that,” Leah says. “Shall we continue the walk? We can cut it short if I’m being poor company.”

“Please don’t cut it short,” Jeno insists. “I cherish my time out about the estate too dearly.”

“It will be your estate someday though, won’t it? Or will Samson go live with you in…” She draws a blank. “Your family’s duchy?”

Jeno treats this as a return of Leah’s good humour, and laughs. They resume their walk sedately, passing down the stairs, out the doors of the estate, and past the stable. A beige and white horse whickers at them eagerly and wiggles its lips as though asking for food. Jeno steps up, pulls out a half-apple from a pocket, and offers it to the horse.

“I’ve been visiting her, while you were gone,” Jeno says sadly, and Leah assumes this must be Beeswax.

“Did I ever tell you why I named her Beeswax?” Leah asks, hoping to be told the answer.

“No, why?”

Shit. “Um. I…tamed her by feeding her honey.”

Jeno laughs brightly, with sincere surprise on her face.

“I found a hive up in a tree, and got stung to bits stealing from it. On the way home I came across a lovely wild horse, thin from hunger, and I tempted her out of the woods with chunks of honeycomb. Within the hour she became so friendly she was licking my hands clean.”

Jeno seems delighted by the lie, and Leah hopes she doesn’t get caught in it eventually. If I do, I can claim it was only a story meant to entertain, and hopefully Jeno won’t mind; the girl seems nice enough, from what I’ve seen so far. Sort of naive for her age, though. Leah suddenly realises she can’t guess Jeno’s age. As this is something she is probably supposed to know, she doesn’t ask.

After the stables they go back into the estate proper, and Jeno stops outside a doorway in the living area on the same floor as Leah’s own rooms. They politely say goodbye, and Jeno once again says how nice it is to have her back.

“You have the dagger!” Jeno suddenly realises, gesturing to the small black knife strapped at Leah’s waist, worn out of a habit that Leah hadn’t even been aware of. “I thought for sure you wouldn’t have been able to take it back with you…”

“Yes, the rest of the five, they found my things. Shield, spear…everything except my change purse.”

Jeno’s smile widens a bit. “Yes, but that’s the dagger I gave to you. I’m glad it’s still with you.” Leah bluffs that she remembers being given it, and nods with a smile.

Jeno thanks her for her company, and closes the door to her rooms. Leah begins to wonder if Jeno may be unhappy about her situation, and possibly relied on Leah to relieve her sadness. Were we employer-employee, or friends? Who could I possibly ask, to find out?

Her duties towards Jeno apparently done for the day, Leah goes back to her room and changes into the softest, warmest clothing she can find. She takes the tea packet out of her pocket and sniffs it; sage, mint, and many other things. Somewhere in there, salamander. She hides it under her mattress so no-one finds it and forces her to drink it.

When Kain comes by to tell her it’s time for supper, Leah straightens her gown and finds her own way down to the dining hall; she feels a great sense of pride that she doesn’t get lost. This evening is very like the last, in terms of food and guests, only this time she must attend the debriefing afterwards.

Unsure what to expect, she lets the rest of the group set the tone. The meeting is held in Lord Valerid’s office; an impressive private study, shelves lined with books and scrolls and maps, a large desk in the centre, and a broad window in the back wall made of many little panes of glass. The room is lit by candles in little brown marble dishes, to catch the drippings. Both the Lord and Lady are there, which Leah is intrigued by, but the Lord seems to lead most of the questioning.

During the debriefing, she is grilled on what she remembers and what she learned during her time captive. The five are forced to reveal that Leah’s memory has been totally lost;()expand!()() that she remembers her name and nothing else. The Valerids are distressed, and Leah offers what she was told by Wellen as consolation; that whatever magic Seffon was attempting, the rescue mission interrupted it before completion. The amnesia is a side-effect. They all seem impressed by her use of the word amnesia, and Leah tries not to be insulted.

“Are you capable of returning to your duties?” the Lady asks, and Leah hesitates, hoping one of the others will jump to her rescue.

“I believe so,” Leah says, with what she hopes is a polite and respectful nod. “Lady Jeno is no trouble to take care of.”

The Lady seems to find this amusing. The Valerids are appeased, and the five retire to their rooms. Jeno, it turns out, has been waiting all this time to be escorted back to her rooms by Leah.

“Lady Jeno! I am so sorry – ” Leah begins, but Jeno waves this away.

“It was my choice to wait,” she assures her, tone smooth and polite.

Leah notices that the serving woman seems bothered by this, as though she had also wanted a chance to talk to Leah.

They walk up to the Auzzos’ section of the estate. A handful of guards wearing green and white enamelled armour stand watch throughout the halls; they nod politely to Jeno, and to Leah.

“Goodnight,” Leah says, once they’ve stopped at what she vaguely recalls as being Jeno’s door. Jeno smiles but does not immediately respond, seeming still a little down. “Is everything alright? Are you nervous, or afraid of something happening?”

Jeno seems more alarmed by this question than by whatever was bothering her before. “No, I was just…I was too deep in my thoughts. Goodnight, Leah,” she says, and retreats into her room.

Leah decides that arranged marriages are probably the norm in this world’s Middle Ages too, and the poor girl is a prisoner with no voice. Until Leah knows her way around this life, there is nothing she can do.

She goes to bed, finding her room only with difficulty, and once more hopes to wake up tomorrow at home.

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