There was one person amongst the many thousands who found the idea of arriving at Hearth’s Bay for the harvest festival almost unbearable. She had been commanded to appear by a man she barely knew. Barely any explanation was given. The letter gave a meager promise that her expenses would be taken care of. It is likely that she would not have gone at all if not for the fact that working for the young son of Duke Feugard bordered on unbearable.

The Misty Isles were rapidly collapsing under his watch, with growing discontent in the main city. He had tried to repeat Lucius’ gambit with the gold mine, only to learn that releasing prisoners into essentially a foreign land fomented nothing but trouble. In just a few months of management, everything Lucius had built up stood on the verge of collapse, save for the plantations. Those survived his management simply by relative independence. The ignorance of youth struggled to cross from one island to the next and the follies were contained to the port.

Which unfortunately included the gold processing factory.

Thus, Kajsa found herself standing upon the deck of a mercantile ship, gripping her little parchment and staring at the milling crowd. Bodies flowed like a churning mudslide, shoving crates of goods deeper into the city. Somewhere in the walls beyond was her previous employer. With her childhood memories still sealed, she found herself holding nothing more than the hope that his second summons would go as well as his first, that she would find a future with him, after having left her notes for her successors.

It did little to bolster her courage to march into the very seat of her former faith, until a skaldish man cupped his hands around his mouth. “Kajsa! Girl!” Leomund Tolzi hollered as he waved from atop a mooring post. One of the dockmasters tried to push his way over to scold him, but struggled as much with the crowd as any visitor to the city.

The alchemist picked up her little trunk of luggage and hurried down the gangplank. The grain merchants had acquainted her with some of the latest fashion, and prompted her to travel light, abandoning the southern clothes that wouldn’t suit the looming winter. “A familiar face, you couldn’t imagine my relief!” she said as he hopped from one railing post to the next before landing on the pier beside her.

The northern berserker grinned. “Somebody had to fetch you. The city has gone mad. If something were to happen to you, the young lion would rip the city apart in a rage.”

Kajsa assumed that was a joke and laughed as he took her luggage and threw it over his shoulder. “I hear he has quite a reputation for war now.”

“He should have a reputation for theatrics. Come along now. We’ll get you to the inn in time to change and do your womanly things to be pretty. You’ve a part to play tonight!”

Struggling to keep up beside Leomund, she asked, “What do you mean? What am I to do? The letter said nothing!”

“Little enough, little enough!” Leomund said as he clapped a free hand around her shoulder to pull her against his side. “The king plans to hear the boy’s story tonight at the feast. You’re to corroborate events, you see?”

“Yes,” she said, although she did not.

Leomond laughed and pulled her onto a sidestreet. It was the kind maneuver that could get a vulnerable girl killed, but it was also the kind of place that made a sneaktheif think twice when sizing up Leomund. He was a true Grendel at this time, and would have welcomed a backalley murder to slake his throat.

That impulse he kept hidden. “Your hair is different.”

Kajsa hung her head. Some of her hair had fallen from the tight bun and draped down to her cheek. She twisted it around her finger, looking at the transition from black to blonde. “I can’t imagine what happened. Maybe something in the food? I certainly didn’t mean for this to happen. It’s not dyed or bleached.”

“It looks good on you. Did you know Lucius made his girl dye her hair?”

Kajsa perked up, her mind leaving the danger of the city. “Miss Canta?”

The grendel laughed. “Soon to be Misses Solhart, you know? They’re set to make it official this winter. But yes, her scarlet had to be hidden. You should have seen her. She was ready to rip the boy’s scalp off.”

“I am literally surrounded by people able to protect me. It’s you that should dye your hair! You’re the one they already tried to assassinate!” Aisha shouted as she backed herself into a corner of the bathhouse. They were a day’s march north of Puerto Vida. Lucius had determined that taking a barge against the current wasn’t fast enough to justify the danger of so many troops being unable to maneuver. The key reason was of course the chronic seasickness of the wastelanders.

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Lucius snarled, but he could make little progress toward her. The inlaid marble of the ancient bathhouse was polished smooth by the centuries and he could find few places to plant his wooden leg for traction. They had put the army down for the night in the sandy park outside the ostensible abbey of the Shepherd, but the place had little religious aspect to it. In fact, the connection was originally urban legend. One of the Yellow King’s grandfathers had slipped in that very bathhouse and snapped his neck. It might have been a successful assassination attempt for all I know. No serious historian looked into Giordanan politics and survived long.

His ghost most certainly did not haunt the place however.

“You’re carrying our child. You’re a bit more vulnerable than I am.”

She scoffed. “Peg leg.”

“It’s regrowing!”

The two of them were in naught but small clothes, a privilege of leadership, but they weren’t quite alone. Lupa was the first to stick her head in, striding through the steam with naked confidence that could only be born of a life among the thoughtless.(1) “Shall I grab her?”

“Please,” Lucius said.

“That’s not fair! And come on, there are non-permanent hair dyes you know! Why not mix up some fire ash. That washes out you know!”

Lucius scoffed back at her. “So that when spies see a woman with black hair but red roots they wont’ immediately realize you’re someone being kept hidden? This is temporary too, in a sense.”

“You got it from Amurabi! I’d sooner trust coal soot, thank you.”

Lucius paused as he signaled Lupa to close in along the opposite wall. Doubt assailed him. His hesitation was like a gap in military formation.

Aisha darted between him and Lupa, diving head first into the bath. She surfaced like a river crocodile, pacing away.

Lucius took Lupa by the arm and stopped her from following suit. “Fine. Fine, we’ll do it your way,” he said. “Help her dry off, would you?” he asked, leaving the two women for the moment. He exited the bath with naught but a towel around his body, wobbling on his peg leg. The stump had regenerated more since it had been sized for him, and he was wondering if he needed a carpenter to hack off the bottom when someone joined him in the dressing room of the bath.

The building had guards stationed around it, but they had been instructed to allow Leomund through. What caught the boy most off guard was that the northman didn’t make a quip about the antics. The shouts had surely echoed enough for the berserker to hear, but the Skaldheimer approached somberly.

“What is it?”

“Was it worth it? Going to the desert.”

The boy turned his gaze away, maintaining a stoic composure as he dressed. “We’ll know when we reach the city, with the bishop in tow.”

“It cost my brother his life.”

“He lost it fighting. It could happen to any of us.”

“Not to you,” Leomund said.

Lucius made a point of smacking his prosthetic leg on the stone as he turned around, wet clothes stuck to his flesh. “I’m aware, or would you like me to remind you of the various ways I can fail to die?”

Leomund crossed his arms as he said, “I understand that you weren’t given much time to prepare for the battles down south. This will be different. Diplomacy is even an option. You’ll be the one picking the fields of battle and how.”

“Ambushes aside,” Lucius said.

“Aye, ambushes aside. But what that means is the decisions you make will be getting people killed by your command.”

Lucius understood the northman was testing his resolve, checking what cracks had formed if any. The damage had not been to his resolve, only in his confidence with me. “Come with me. I have something to show you.” The two of them left the bathhouse and strode through the complex to the sturdy building he had taken as his temporary residence. Along the way, he gave a few orders to prepare the materials that would be needed for disguises, but soon had brought Leomund back to privacy, to where his one trunk of personal belongings lay.

He fetched from it the vial that Anubi had given him, the mind-opening drug of grieving he called a birra da cimitero. “Should be as potent as anything Amurabi could conjure up, if not more,” he said, handing the sealed vial over.

Leomund held it to the light of the window. “Poison?”

“Alcohol, he said. A fine material to toast Nikolai. Properly.”

“Then we should drink tonight!” the northman said and wrapped his mighty hand around the stopper.

“No,” Lucius said. “I’m offering that as payment. It’s very rare. I need you to do something for me. I’ve asked Aisha to slip away and she’ll need someone to keep her safe.”

“Safe from what, boy?” Leomund asked, returning the vial.

“Everything. And let me ask you something. Do you work for Amurabi? Or do you work for yourself? Is there still anything he can offer you?”

Leomund put his finger to his lips. Years had taught him to always assume I was listening, only recently had he begun to worry about that. They couldn’t forge a contract between one another, but each could act in their own personal interest, could make assumptions about the other after years of shared history.

“I’ll keep your girl safe, boy.”

While she did her best to hide it over the following days, the steam of the bathhouse waged war upon her immune system and laid her low with illness. She was but one of many minor victims as the wastelanders experienced common, filthy life.