I<\/span><\/p>\n showed Ameiko the play Kikonu had been writing, or rather, the drafts of it that I had grabbed. I couldn\u2019t take all of it\u2014there were stacks and stacks and <\/span>stacks<\/span><\/i> of revisions\u2014but what I had was certainly enough.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI have seen some very bad plays, some of them <\/span>spectacularly<\/span><\/i> bad, but this? This exists in a world of its own.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt gets more unhinged with each revision, doesn\u2019t it? Not that it had a great starting point.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIf I had to endure watching this over and over, it might drive me to murder, too.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I plan on keeping it. For the memories.<\/span><\/p>\n OK, that is not very Shelynite of me, I admit, but Kikonu\u2019s motives were far from pure, here.<\/span><\/p>\n While most of my companions don\u2019t have close family waiting for them, both Anavaru and I do. Am I supposed to just disappear for several months, with no word as to where we are going? I can\u2019t do that to them. Sending a letter is an option, of course, but not one that I\u2019d feel particularly good about. Mom and dad already had a hard enough time with what we did. And what we are about to do? I just can\u2019t leave that way. I just can\u2019t. Besides, how smart would it be to put this in a <\/span>letter<\/span><\/i>? Knowing what we know?<\/span><\/p>\n Fortunately for the two of us, Ameiko also has responsibilities back in Sandpoint that she can\u2019t just abandon. Both the inn and her home need to be put under stewardship if not outright sold, and she can\u2019t do that from here. Since time is likely not on our side, she has hired a wizard here in Riddleport to teleport us back. Ana and I will travel on to Magnimar from there to see our families, then meet Ameiko in Sandpoint for the return trip on the 26th.<\/span><\/p>\n The wizard, a personable and handsome Taldan named Thadeus, agreed to this arrangement, and he didn\u2019t even overcharge us. Not that his services were cheap, of course, but I think he simply found the proposal interesting enough to actually want to do it. Later, Ameiko opined to me privately that \u201cthe opportunity to travel with three young women probably had something to do with that.\u201d I suppose. Maybe.<\/span><\/p>\n He needs about half an hour to prepare, so we are waiting in his sitting room while he packs and does whatever else it is wizards do before teleporting people across Varisia. As soon as he is ready, we leave.<\/span><\/p>\n A<\/span><\/p>\n na secured passage for us on the noon coach to Magnimar. While she was doing that and tying off a couple of loose ends in Sandpoint, I ran an errand of my own.<\/span><\/p>\n Sheriff Hemlock was in his office when I arrived. He looked very surprised to see me.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cKali! I heard some ridiculous rumor that Ameiko had talked you and your friends into going to <\/span>Brinewall<\/span><\/i>. On Sandru\u2019s caravan, no less. Thank\u2014\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I dropped a small stack of books and papers onto his desk with a light <\/span>thunk<\/span><\/i>. The top one read, \u201cA History of the Brinewall Colony\u201d in my handwriting.<\/span><\/p>\n The trip to Riddleport had taken four days, and I spent nearly all of it writing. So much so that my wrist was still aching. No one else may have cared about what happened to Brinewall after we left, but I did.<\/span><\/p>\n He stared at me.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re kidding.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNo.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He picked up the top booklet, one of my blank journals which I had repurposed for this task, and started flipping through it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe part you want is at the end.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cTell me,\u201d he replied as he jumped to the back and worked his way through the blank pages at the end to where my handwriting had stopped. He then flipped through them one at a time, briefly scanning each.<\/span><\/p>\n This is where I had to be careful. I was deliberately vague in my writings and needed to do the same here.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have all the answers, but we know Brinewall was attacked, first the town and then the keep. Foreigners were involved, along with outsiders in the literal sense. The corbies came later, though we don\u2019t know exactly when.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I pointed to the stack of papers. \u201cEverything we found is here. Letters, records, maps of the keep. I reconstructed what I could and marked the places that may still be dangerous.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He started to ask a question, but I cut him off.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t have much time. I\u2019m leaving soon. I\u2019m telling you this because <\/span>someone needs to know<\/span><\/i>. Someone who can do something about it. Brinewall stands empty again. Sooner or later, people will reoccupy it. I want them to be the right people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I didn\u2019t want to stay any longer. I didn\u2019t want to have to answer questions. I\u2019d already told one half-truth, and if I didn\u2019t leave now I\u2019d have to do worse.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI have to go. I\u2019m sorry. I know this a lot to dump on you and leave, but I also know it\u2019s in good hands.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I walked out without listening to his reply.<\/span><\/p>\n T<\/span><\/p>\n hadeus, Anavaru, and I talked for much of the journey, but eventually the conversation turned to wizardry, and Ana lost interest.<\/span><\/p>\n Thadeus had been a Cyphermage once\u2014the Cyphergate is <\/span>the defining feature<\/span><\/i> in Riddleport\u2014and during the trip he showed me an unusual spell that lets you share a language only among those included when it\u2019s cast. He offered to let me copy it from his spellbook in exchange for something from mine.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll take you up on that. I\u2026I don\u2019t know if I have anything you’d want, though.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou might be surprised. I see few adventuring wizards and my needs are often completely different. May I?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Adventuring?<\/span><\/p>\n I pulled out my spellbook and handed it to him. It was uncomfortable to watch another wizard look through it. I felt like I was being judged based on my spell choices. He would occasionally nod or make little sounds to himself like \u201cMmm hmm\u201d and \u201cMmm,\u201d which wasn’t helping.<\/span><\/p>\n He stopped when he reached one of the last spells in my book.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHuh.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I looked over. \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNothing.\u201d He looked back through several pages, then forward again. \u201cI was just noticing that you don’t have many spells that hurt people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI have some.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou have <\/span>one<\/span><\/i>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThat’s some.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He smiled. \u201cFair enough.\u201d He returned to the last page and said, \u201cAnd this one certainly makes up for it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I knew which one he meant. A rain of stones over a wide area was not exactly precise.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe’re going to be doing more traveling,\u201d I said. \u201cI need to be able to contribute. Especially outdoors.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He considered that for a moment, then nodded. \u201cWell, Kali, I think we can work out a trade arrangement here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n We spent the first couple of hours tonight copying each other\u2019s spells under the Lover\u2019s Moon. There\u2019s probably a cosmic joke in there somewhere.<\/span><\/p>\n I<\/span><\/p>\n t\u2019s been a long day.<\/span><\/p>\n We arrived in Magnimar just after noon and made arrangements to meet at 6 pm in the Seerspring Garden for the teleport back to Sandpoint. I knew my parents would be working, so I headed for their business office in Dockway. It was not the best place to have this conversation, but what choice did I have? A rhetorical question, obviously. None at all.<\/span><\/p>\n I wanted to get this over with, so I walked quickly and made only one stop on the way there: a bookstore to purchase two identical copies of a modest gazetteer on The Inner Sea. I would need those first. They were innocuous enough to not arouse suspicion, and a cursory scan of the text turned up enough of the right sort of words that I was confident they would serve their purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n Nothing really fazes mom, and it\u2019s something I\u2019ve always admired about her. She was meeting with someone I didn\u2019t recognize, a short, balding, middle-aged man, when I entered. She looked up, made eye contact with me, and then very casually said to him, \u201cMy next appointment is here. Can we pick this up again at a later time?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOf course! Of course! I\u2019m sorry. If I had known\u2026I\u2019ll come back tomorrow morning.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Everyone always apologizes to mom, whether it is their fault or not.<\/span><\/p>\n She left a clerk in charge up front and guided me back to their office where dad was working on something at his desk. He is a bit easier to surprise, but amazingly he held his composure until mom shut the door behind us.<\/span><\/p>\n And then I received the two biggest and longest hugs from them in recent memory. We all wiped away some tears.<\/span><\/p>\n A lot of people think mom isn\u2019t very\u2026affectionate? Maternal? But she really is. She just doesn’t show that side of herself in public. There\u2019s mom, and then there\u2019s the person she wants you to see.<\/span><\/p>\n Our conversation is a jumble in my head. It started about how I expected, asking how I was, if everyone was OK, what happened, and of course, how I was back nearly two weeks early. I avoided the details at first, just reassuring them that, yes, we were all OK and had made it back from Brinewall without lasting injury, and then settled in to tell the whole story. All of it.<\/span><\/p>\n I cast the spell I learned from Thadeus. Was I being paranoid? Maybe. My original intention was to have this entire conversation in Vudrani, but opportunity had landed in my lap, and I was not going to pass it up. This was much safer for all of us.<\/span><\/p>\n Both mom and dad looked concerned\u2014<\/span>very<\/span><\/i> concerned\u2014as I started, but I said, \u201cFor privacy,\u201d and they understood. And you could feel the tone shift in the room. I must have looked very serious at that moment.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis spell will only last about forty minutes. Dad, you were right when you said I hide things from you. I\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I stopped. There was no point in explaining it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNo more secrets.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n And I told them. Everything. It took nearly half an hour with their questions, but I told them. When I got to the Seal, they both turned pale. I remember thinking to myself, <\/span>Living through it wasn\u2019t much fun, either.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n They were silent for a long time, just looking at each other. And then dad nodded ever so slightly, and mom did, too. I wish I knew how they did that.<\/span><\/p>\n Finally, dad asked, \u201cAnd you are going with her.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n It wasn’t really a question.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Mom looked down at her hands. \u201cAcross the Crown of the World.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cTo Minkai.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Another one of those looks passed between them.<\/span><\/p>\n Dad sighed. \u201cI suppose asking you not to go would be pointless.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2026don’t know,\u201d I said. \u201cYou could ask.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n That earned the faintest smile from mom.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBut you would still go,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n I looked at both of them and said, \u201cYes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Mom took my hand. \u201cThen I am glad you came here and told us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n There was more they wanted to talk about here, a <\/span>lot<\/span><\/i> more, but I only had a few minutes left in the spell, and I needed to get this next part out. So I cut them off. It hurt to do that, but I had to.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI need a way to send messages to you that others can\u2019t read. At least, until I\u2019m able to master the spells to do it directly.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I pulled out the books and taught him the code: triplets of numbers, representing page, paragraph, and word number. It would take me forever to write, and I would be limited by the text, but they could decode it quickly and easily. It was not very sophisticated, but the meaning could not be revealed with magic, and you\u2019d have to know what it was and which book to use (the one I\u2019d chosen wouldn\u2019t stand out as being unusual for either of us) to do it by hand. And the numbers could be disguised in a phony business letter, or just sent as cryptic jumbles. It really didn\u2019t matter how. Sure, it was simple and stupid, but it would do. And we wouldn\u2019t need it for long, I hoped.<\/span><\/p>\n They left work early, and we spent the rest of the afternoon together. We talked a lot, of course, though I was careful with the details. There were more questions. More worry. More reassurance where I had it. It was not easy to do. We also shopped together, purchasing a couple of books on the Linnorm Kingdoms including a small gazetteer that didn\u2019t look terribly out of date, a stack of maps ranging from the practical (for the caravan) to the fanciful (for myself and Koya, as keepsake memories), and so on. We had an early dinner in Naos. And then\u2026it was time to say good-bye.<\/span><\/p>\n There is never enough time.<\/span><\/p>\n I think I can count the number of times I\u2019ve seen mom and dad cry on one hand.<\/span><\/p>\n I<\/span><\/p>\n decided Alex was right, so I visited Sefa this morning. When was I going to have another opportunity?<\/span><\/p>\n I took a page out of my parents\u2019 book and dressed to the hilt. Why not? I was derided by this family because of my heritage, so naturally I flaunted it. I chose my best sari, a deep red with gold accents and a 9-foot drape, over a matching choli.<\/span><\/p>\n I have no idea who the woman was that opened the door. I just announced myself as if I didn\u2019t care (which was easy, because I didn\u2019t).<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMiss Kali Nassim of Magnimar, requesting an audience with Mrs. Sefa Scarnetti.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The key is to be gracious and polite, no matter how many scowls it earns you. The worse you are treated, the more formal you become. Watching Titus glare at me as Sefa showed me to her wing of the manor was the highlight of my day.<\/span><\/p>\n After gently ribbing me for being overdressed for just a casual visit (\u201cI felt like making an entrance,\u201d to which she replied with a giggle, \u201cYou most certainly did <\/span>that<\/span><\/i>.\u201d), we talked for a couple of hours. For me, it was, for the first time in over a month, a regular conversation about nothing of consequence: motherhood in general, her baby specifically, living in Sandpoint, and more than a little reminiscing. Between that and watching her with her son, and then holding him myself, it was one of those moments that almost had me re-examining my life choices.<\/span><\/p>\n Almost. I had chosen my path, and I was happy with it, but I could certainly appreciate hers.<\/span><\/p>\n There was something I\u2019d wanted to ask her for a very long time. Several times during our conversation I almost did, only to let the moment pass. It shouldn’t have been this difficult. It was just a question.<\/span><\/p>\n Eventually, I worked up the nerve.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSefa, can I ask you something personal? You don\u2019t have to answer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOf course you can.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat made you decide you liked me?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n She blinked at me, clearly not expecting the question. Then she looked away for a moment, thinking.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI don’t know if I \u2018decided\u2019.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou must have.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI suppose\u2026I just stopped believing what everyone else said about you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n It was such a simple answer. For years, I\u2019d wondered what Sefa had seen in me that everyone else hadn’t. Some quality that made me worth taking a chance on, perhaps, or something I\u2019d done that changed her mind. But that wasn’t what she was saying at all.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOur friendship\u2026it changed my life. I wanted you to know that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThank you, Kali. That means a lot to me.\u201d She smiled. \u201cAnd I suppose I have you to thank for Alex.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n(Sandpoint, Late Morning)<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Erastus 24 (Lost Coast Road, Night)<\/h3>\n
Erastus 25 (Sandpoint, Evening)<\/h3>\n
Erastus 26 (Riddleport, Evening)<\/h3>\n