.
As the early morning sun warmed the chilled air, I breathed in deeply, trying to drown my stress in oxygen. The hours since yesterday evening had been holding me back like hated chains. As the wind blew through the marshaled troops awaiting the order to move out, my guts kept urging me to bolt into the welcoming sky.
Mortal horses don’t get along well with fairies. We use magical breeds for riding. For this reason, Dilorè and I would enter the Tabad as passengers on a supply train wagon. We were seated upon a raised bench behind the driver box, where a crossbowman or magic archer would ordinarily ride. For the sake of appearance, I had the crossbow I purchased in Dausindiu, and carried a quiver full of Arken’s enchanted bolts, but if anything started, I would likely just pull out the Starfire Jade Writing Brush instead.
Dilorè, too, had a prop, a shortbow that I had only seen strapped to her traveling pack prior to this. She, too, would likely use magic instead. This show was for the Tabadan spies who were certainly sending home reports about this expedition. We needed to hide how many mages were present, since a force of this size would ordinarily have only a handful of magic archers and swordsmen, and maybe one general mage.
I took in another deep breath, and let out a private chuckle. I had been running myself ragged for several days with my habit of trying to do everything myself, and I had caught an earful from Allia about it, with supporting arguments from Ceria and Arken, last night when I returned to Lisrau. Unlike the detour I had taken in Amaga, in which only Dilorè could be of any help because of the distance, this time I needed to coordinate my actions with the team.
It didn’t change the fact that Amelia was out there somewhere, and near the traces of her aura, the Lord of Greenwater’s spirits could see “traces of demons.”
To hell with this orderly organizing and waiting for the order to move out. I wanted to go!
“The VIP is coming, My Ladies,” Allia, called up behind, where she sat on her horse, with the others behind our wagon, as she dismounted. I looked toward the front of the column where she had pointed and saw a senior officer approaching on horseback.
He had a perfectly trimmed beard that reminded me vaguely of playing card kings, but I may have made that association because of the circlet he wore. That was the only thing about him that suggested aristocratic rank. His uniform was the same as the other officers, a well-fitted brigandine over a military blouse and cavalry trousers. Basically, the high class version of what Allia and her girls wore. Still, his eyes reminded me of Uncle Owen when he is in work mode.
“This is the greetings Allia warned us about,” I told Dilorè, and set down the crossbow so I could climb down. She followed me to the ground.
“Do we truly have to do this, Your Highness?” Dilorè wondered in a stage whisper, in Dorian, a language foreign to this region. “Can’t we just dispense with all this nonsense and go looking for the princess on our own?”
Pushing back the urge to agree and do it, I turned my face toward her, away from the oncoming officer, to answer, “We don’t know what we’re facing, and we are only two pairs of hands. Don’t underestimate what help these mortals can be.”
“But we can just come back and find them if we need them.”
“Allia wants us known to the Arelians from the start, instead of having us just pop up out of nowhere after the company is already in-country. It seems like a valid concern to me.”
I could feel the man’s presence behind us, now almost in hearing range, so I quickly added, “Don’t forget, this man doesn’t know about Amelia. Allia and the rest are just an out-of-work adventuring company that Talene hired to look for the Berado mine.”
Allia had joined us at this point. She went into a curtsey as the man halted his horse, which still looked darned strange when performed by a woman wearing a jack and kilt. I was better dressed for it in a blouse and skirt as I followed. Dilorè, still hiding her armor under a ‘traveling cloak’ made from her raiment, gave a straight-backed Dorian bow from the hips.
“At ease,” the man intoned, in a manner that spoke of decades in command. We all took it as ‘raise your head’, and rose to stand normally.
“Good morning, Commander,” Allia greeted him.
“Madam,” he grunted, then looked at us. “I am Commander in the South, Rufin, Royal Prince of Arelia. I’m told the two of you are recommended by Her Wisdom.”
He was clearly too old to be the son of Uncle Owen’s sister, the King of Arelia’s wife, but ‘Royal Prince’, at least in Orestania, is a title for a prince outside the direct descendants of the king. Given his age, Prince Rufin was likely the king’s brother.
I curtseyed again. “Your Royal Highness, I am Tia Mona, a traveling adventurer. My companion is Lady Dilorè, my acquaintance’s protégé. My acquaintance has asked me to familiarize her with mortal society.”
“Ëi onar lâ, Rôn.” Dilorè declared with a bow. “Semöan Cenole Dilorè ci danmero.”
The prince smiled briefly and responded, “I only wear this damned headwear because Elder Brother insists. Everyone here calls me Commander.”
I lowered my head another time. “As you wish, Commander.”
“We have intelligence about a mysterious pair who stood off the fairy knights working for the Beradian king. Can we expect similar help if it becomes necessary?”
I smiled tightly. “Your Royal Highness is well informed. Lady Allia’s company are our friends and comrades. We shall lend our help according to her contract with you.”
He humphed with a crooked smile. “Very carefully put. Well, I am not foolish enough to demand visitors from Faerie to act like underlings, but may I trust you to have a care for the safety of my troops, should it come to a fight?”
With a nod, I assured him, “We shall take appropriate care, Commander.”
“I am told you are only traveling with Lady Allia’s company as common adventurers. You are not demanding pay as fairy knights. May I ask why?”
Naturally, we couldn’t do any such thing. The multiple crowns per day we could demand for two fairies would be more than they were paying the entire adventurers corps. But I couldn’t tell him he was getting us for free so that he wouldn’t refuse to bring us along.
“I apologize, Commander, but you seem to be misapprehending something,” I answered as smoothly as I could. “I am an ordinary adventurer, the mere daughter of a Dorian baron. My companion is merely the protégé of a knight. We could hardly demand a fairy knight’s pay.”
“Hm,” he responded, eyeing us for another few moments. Then the crooked smile returned. “Then I should have a discussion with my intelligence officer over certain exaggerations concerning the battle at Greenwater.”
“Intelligence work always has room for improvement,” I agreed with a smile.
Shaking his head, he turned his horse and rode back to the head of the column. Allia grinned at me.
“You handled that well,” she noted.
“I grew up verbally sparring with princes,” I told her. “It’s nothing new for me.”
Okay, while that was true, I had actually been demonstrating the efforts of the court ladies who drilled me in court etiquette and rhetoric for twelve years. But I like my version better.
“My Ladies, may I ask a small favor from the two of you?” she ventured. Dilorè had already turned to climb back up, but she turned to wait.
“A small favor should be no trouble,” I told Allia with a smile.
“If you can, refrain from chattering in foreign languages in front of the Arelians,” Allia requested. “I wouldn’t want them distrusting us.”
I gave a self-conscious smile and a nod. I had very specifically been hiding things from the Arelians by speaking to Dilorè in Dorian, after all.
“Certainly, My Lady,” I answered. Dilorè nodded as well, and climbed back up to our perch.
The remainder of Allia’s ad-hoc ‘company’ waited behind our wagon, near the end of the supply train, stationed together with the rearguard Arelia cavalry. Talene, who was holding the reins of her mount while chattering with mounted Brigitte, had secured horses for everyone except Dilorè and I.
The fact that we refused regular horses was equivalent to avoiding iron implements as a dead giveaway we were fairies. Hence the conversation I had just held with the prince.
Thankfully, everyone had acquired some degree of horsemanship at some point. I felt a little sorry for Graham’s mount, a beefy animal a bit like a draft horse. Possibly, Graham did too, since he was staying off the beast until he had to mount.
Ryuu was dismounted as well. He was the least familiar with riding, and not comfortable with it. But I wasn’t sure if that explained the pensive frown. He looked my way for a moment, then looked away immediately.
While waiting for Dilorè to get seated so I could climb up, I asked Allia, “What exactly did you do to Mr. Kowa, My Lady?”
“Other than training him, I haven’t done much,” she answered. “Why?”
I remembered seeing what her ‘not much’ had been like when I saw them on the training ground, but even that didn’t explain the change I was noticing.
I told her, “Two months ago, he would have made himself part of that conversation with the prince just now, whether he was invited or not.”
She thought about it, then nodded. “I think you should ask, what did your mother do to him? I hear she had words with him before she left for her territory.”
That caught me a bit off-guard, since it was the first I had heard of her even interacting with him. Obviously, if she led the summoning, she had met him before, but in the time since I had met him, I didn’t know she had met him even once.
She gave me a wave and walked back to where her horse was waiting.
The conversation with us must have been the last item on the prince’s to-do list. A distant bugle call came to us from the front, nine notes at three pitches, repeated once. In the distance, I could hear the sound of hooves and rattling gear, horsey snorts and nickers, and the rest of what one would expect from a column of cavalry moving forward. Like any start from a red light, it would take time for the motion to reach us in the supply train in the back of the traffic jam, but we were headed into the Tabad, at last.
