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“Big Sis fast fast!”
I received this faint praise from my little sister as she flew upside-down with her arms crossed behind her head while looking up at me. It made it difficult not to believe she was making fun of me.
“You could at least pretend that you have to make an effort at this speed!” I retorted.
Kiki let out a tittering laugh, then did a triple roll and a flip, then settled back into place …
… now flying upside down and backwards, her toes pointed in our direction of travel.
In fact, we were very ‘fast fast’ at that moment, while flying at an altitude where mortals couldn’t possibly even breathe, much less converse. Frankly, the air was too thin for speech. It wasn’t space, or even the mesosphere. We were still in the stratosphere at this altitude. But any point in the stratosphere is too high for mortal functions like the human voice. I’m not sure how the physics actually worked out for our conversation, but I suspect it involved fairy racial skills and mana rather than acoustics. It might even be a variation on the spiritual voice. I’m not entirely sure, because I was doing it instinctively.
“Kiki try hard!”
“You’re barely moving your wings!”
Past Kiki’s sapphire-tinted dragonfly wings, I could see only occasional islands of light speckling the broad expanse of the Duchy of Pendor. The moons had not yet reached the first quarter, so only ten percent of the moonlight of a full moon was illuminating the planet below us, leaving only a faint impression of the ground. The technology of magic is widespread enough in Dorian lands for the towns to be marked out by artificial light, but it was nothing like the glittering spread one sees from extreme altitudes on Earth. Or perhaps it resembled what one would see above the Australian Outback or the Amazonian Rainforest.
The moons were getting low, but still gave barely enough light to show the thin band of atmosphere forming the arc of the horizon before us. At least, it was visible to my eyes. A mortal might not see anything but the fact that the stars were occluded below that arc.
When we left my mountain, I wanted to try Fan Li’s high-altitude hypersonic flight method right away, forgetting all about the Great Labyrinth spell. Fortunately, Kiki came along, apparently having promised Kanon that she would look after me. She was able to help me navigate after I discovered myself headed rapidly toward the Great Demon Plains rather than Narses, then bound for the Great Southern Sea after I tried to correct.
It was well after sundown by then, because they had held me there for several additional hours, ostensibly so that Gaia could give the amulet a thorough checkup. I don’t believe for a single heartbeat that Gaia required that much time. It had just been their excuse.
Their real purpose had been to give me rest. My ears were ringing from the painful revelations. Especially about my father and my groom-to-be’s mother. I wondered if Rod knew.
After our tea, once the others went their separate ways, Immortal Mother directed me to come closer, and I found myself in her gentle embrace. The things she communicated to me as she held me were all stated in Immortal thought-forms, impossible to write out in words, but I can summarize the gist of it.
You worry needlessly about too many things. You are a strong and capable woman.
Don’t pretend you cannot maintain your spiritual vessel. This belief comes from your fear of growth, not your power of reason, and it is false.
Behind you stand a faithful and reliable team of incarnations, in whom you should put your trust.
The gods whom you distrust are none other than the brides and groom whom I permitted you to marry. Even when their intentions are unclear, their love and concern for you are honest.
By the time I bid her goodbye and left my mountain, I had come to understand what was the heart of the problem that Fan Li had brought me here to address.
The heart was none other than a silly juvenile Elder who had let the unknown scare her into paralysis.
I’ll bet anybody reading this is saying, Well, duh! I suspect if those words were in Fan Li’s vocabulary, she would be saying the same.
But it’s an awful lot of unknown, you know?!!!
So, per Immortal Mother’s advice, I kept my spiritual vessel expanded. She had been my first teacher on such matters, after all. She should know what she’s talking about.
It would take a lot of practice to learn how much I could maintain in the outside world. A size that allowed for Fan Li to become aware would be too big to maintain full-time at first, but Daq, or Sirth, or Kwelabi were all possible even if I kept it relatively small.
Lhan was also possible. Earlier, before I left the Garden Pavilion, I had summoned back my newest remembered incarnation to get to know her better.
She lived before Kwelabi and after Daq, the oldest incarnation I knew other than Senhion. Daq possessed surprisingly high spiritual training for a man from a technological age, and Kwelabi had been a highly skilled shaman, so Lhan would have also possessed the potential to grow into a strong spiritual expert.
But Luck interfered, casting her as a helpless slave too pretty for her degenerate owner to ignore. Her short few years were sickening to absorb, but I refused to ignore them. She deserved to have her grievances remembered.
The pervert first had his way with her when she was only the equivalent of an Earthly eleven-year-old. She wasn’t even bleeding yet. But when she did begin, it resulted in her giving birth at her world’s equivalent of an Earthly thirteen.
Poor Lhan knew nothing about her world. From her perspective, it consisted only of her home plantation, where slaves grew bananas and beans, and the surrounding mountains where she and her fellow slaves often went to perform various jobs. Her baby must have survived, since her last memories before succumbing to fever were of seeing the crying newborn girl in the midwife’s arms. She was never even able to hold her.
Perhaps she emerged due to my anxieties about pregnancy. The child had little to offer me in terms of advice, but she was the embodiment of every fear I had been carrying. Lhan’s owner would not treat the baby she left behind any differently than any other slave despite being her father. She despaired for the baby’s future just as I had been doing.
I sent Lhan back to sleep before I left Sky Ocean. Now, Kwelabi was active, so that he could review the surveillance records from my two [Vampire Sigil]s. I was managing the hypersonic flight on my own after learning it from Fan Li in the simulation network.
His report began reaching me as Kiki and I descended upon Narses. Most of it was useless. I put it on hold when Kiki asked me a question, just as we landed.
“Big Sis go to Old Grump house?” she wondered.
I burst out laughing. “Old who?”
“Old Grouchy Monster. Chase Kiki.”
“Uh huh,” I nodded. “I wonder what you did to him?”
I mean, why would Father care about some random pixie? She had to have done something.
“Kiki good girl!”
“Hm…” I voiced my suspicions while giving her a side-eye. By the way, she was hovering in the air next to me. She folded her arms and set her jaw, staunchly rejecting all accusations.
I couldn’t see anyone through the french doors into my suite, so I decided to stay on the balcony and explain it to her.
“Anyway, your ‘Old Grouchy Monster’ is my father.”
“Huh?” She looked seriously confused. “Big mistake, Big Sis! Papa in Heaven!”
“My father in this life,” I explained. “Just like Deharè was my mother in this life.”
“Mmmm,” she frowned, her crossed arms and her wrinkled face tense as she concentrated. “Other mama? Other papa?”
I really have no idea what Kiki’s intellectual capacity is, exactly. I assume she’s at least as smart as a dog or a cat. Probably quite a bit smarter; she demonstrates fairly advanced reasoning on occasion. But she also demonstrates weird holes in her intellect, places where she seems to struggle with very simple concepts.
“This body has its own mama and papa, Kiki. The demons made me sick and I died, a long time ago. I was born into other worlds, over and over, until I was strong enough to come back here to be an Elder again.”
Her little brow wrinkled up, struggling with the idea.
“Mama and Papa are still Mama and Papa, but each time I live in a new world, I get a new mama and papa. Now I have new ones here. Except both are dead already.”
“Old Grump dead?”
I nodded. “If that’s my father, then yes. So is Deharè.”
Her eyes grew huge. “Princess dead too? But Princess there!”
She pointed straight at Gaia’s amulet.
“She wasn’t inside an amulet before, right?”
Kiki tipped her head, then seemed to understand. Then her face really wrinkled up.
“So Princess Big Sis baby, but Princess Big Sis mama?”
I laughed. “You know she’s also my granddaughter, right? She’s Oberon’s daughter.”
“Baby daughter?” she responded, surprised.
I snorted. I had never heard her calling the Fairy King by a name before. She calls him ‘Baby’?
We were one person when he was born, so does she consider him her baby? But he calls her ‘Auntie’…
“Didn’t you know?” I wondered.
“Mmmm,” she mulled, concentrating hard. “Maybe?”
I had to know. “Is he your baby or my baby to you, Kiki?”
She shrugs. “Kiki not Sen, so Kiki Baby Auntie. Big Sis Baby Mama!”
Like I said, advanced reasoning. She’s a real mystery.
Kwelabi broke into our discussion with an alert.
– The Viscount seems to be in an altercation, Your Highness.
He passed detailed information across to me in an instant.
Viscount Amalis had gone into the Lower Town to meet up with ‘Beretin’, apparently a business partner or fellow noble. He brought with him several constables and house knights. An argument ensued, much of which wasn’t intelligible without knowing the context, but several points had become clear in the shouting.
Amalis wanted proof that the attack had not come out of the shipping basin that was his responsibility.
Beretin had failed to find the missing cargo that should have been on the many sunken riverboats that Amana claimed to be the source of the attack. The lack of that cargo supported my sister’s claims.
The sudden appearance of the Royal Prince had turned the issue into an emergency and Amalis was now desperate to find that proof. He now suspected Beretin of working with my sister to falsely place the responsibility for the attack on him.
At this point, it had just been a verbal row, but Kwelabi interrupted us because it had suddenly turned violent. Amalis had charged out of the meeting, intent upon raiding Beretin’s warehouses, hunting for contraband. Specifically, he expected to find the missing cargo, recovered by Beretin’s people with Amana’s knowledge in order to put the blame on the Viscount.
I didn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle he had put together to reach that conclusion. I did catch that he was reasoning that the alleged contraband coming into Beretin’s hands for free was supposed to be his motivation for helping Amana. Why he thought Amana was after him was unclear, as was how he came to identify Beretin as the culprit.
But something was up with Beretin, because suddenly, the two sides were in an armed clash to prevent Amalis from getting into the warehouse he was trying to raid.
I bounded into the air, sprinting toward the location of my [Vampire Sigil] on the Viscount’s back. I didn’t know which side was good guys or bad guys, but I couldn’t have another battle suddenly taking place in my mother’s capital!
Kiki flew side-by-side with me. I told her, “Stay in stealth!” then raised my [Vampire Cloak] as well.
She vanished from my sight, but I had a vague impression of where she was. Before, I couldn’t see through her stealth at all, so that was a sign of my growth.
Narses is a very crowded town, with a large population but a very compact geography. I dashed across the Lower Town and reached the waterfront district and the warehouse in barely a minute.
Mages were maintaining a shield in front of the Viscount while armed men fought duels with the types of swords that city patrolmen and bodyguards tended to carry. Rapiers and estocs, in other words. Beretin was nowhere to be seen at the moment.
Looking for the missing Beretin, I probed into the warehouse that they had stopped Amalis from raiding, only to receive a rude surprise. Strong anti-probing magic covered it, preventing my fairy senses from intruding!
Until that moment, I hadn’t been certain, but I was, now. Whatever other sins Amalis might be guilty of, he honestly believed he would find his proof in this warehouse. And the facts that it was shielded by magic one didn’t normally see being used on a warehouse and that it was defended by men willing to take up arms against the local lord were at least two points in favor of his position.
I decided to enter the fight on his side.
