A/N: I really have no idea where this came from. The bunny ambushed me in the middle of the shower and I spent the last hour and a half hammering it out on my poor, abused keyboard instead of eating like I probably should have been considering the room is spinning. In other news, I got a new computer, a Mac desktop that is lovely even if Mac's annoy me. Oh, and finals are coming. Joy.

Legend

~This is set some time after Will of the Empress.~

The boy entered their kitchen silently and waited impatiently for Lady Sandry and her sister, the big Trader, to calm down. The two of them were very near hysterics as they watched their other sister chase their brother around the house, screeching something about 'worms' and 'linens' as she threw off enough sparks he wasn't certain how the house hadn't yet burnt to cinders. Eventually, all four of them were at least in the kitchen and he cleared his throat loudly to cut through the sounds of muffled giggles and some very inventive cursing.

Immediately, two glares were directed at him as well as a raised eyebrow from Lady Sandry.

"Yes, Pasco?"

He cleared his throat again, this time with simple nerves at having the four's focus on him.

"Lady, all the city's wild with stories of pirates coming our way, but you haven't said anything and you don't seem worried. I don't understand it."

Her smile was small but genuine and Pasco let a little of the tension fall from his shoulders. Her brother and sisters were looking between him and each other, apparently amused.

"Pasco, have you noticed any real worry from the people talking?" Oh dear, he thought. That was her teacher tone. She only used that when he was being silly and not seeing something obvious.

So, carefully and methodically, as harriers were taught, he went over every conversation he had heard and realized with some confusion that no one had seemed honestly concerned for the safety of Winding Circle or Summersea. Plenty for the outlying villages, but none of the old grannies or even his family of paranoid harriers had seemed worried for their own safety.

Befuddled, he met the Lady's clear blue eyes and spoke slowly, drawing out the words in uncertainty, "No, Lady. None."

Sandry smiled once more and asked him another question.

"And you don't know why that is? Think, Pasco. What, or who, do you think might have all of Summersea convinced they are in no danger?"

Pasco scrunched up his nose in thought, his eyes going a little unfocused and that, ironically, made the answer clear to him. As his eyes unfocused, the four mages before him seemed to blend into one multicolored being. Pasco's eyes went wide as every whispered tale of the four echoed in his ears at once. Legends, they were, though he often forgot when he was witness to scenes such as the one he entered upon earlier. They seemed too human for the tales to be real but looking at their eyes right then, he believed.

Cheerful green-grey couldn't hide the shadows of sleepless nights, of war and plague and returning from death. Level brown didn't bother concealing a smith's hammered arms or the strength that walked into a forest fire and walked out unscathed, victorious. Neither would sharp, cloudy grey disguise the roiling storms that ate a pirate fleet and collapsed the Namornese border.

However, it was his own teacher's cornflower blue eyes that somehow frightened and reassured him the most. Unbending steel lay tempered by compassion, painting pictures in his head of small caves and spun earthquakes next to memories of a nothingness that tried to eat her from the inside out but could never win.

She was smiling at him again and he just stared as she spoke, soft and sure, "You see, Pasco, no one would be foolish enough to attack the place we call home." For the first time, the other three spoke up.

"No one's that bleating stupid, kid." Green-grey winked.

"There are less painful ways to die." The redhead's voice was very dry.

"And have no doubt we would kill them. All of them." Level brown never so much as shifted.

Pasco couldn't hear their mindspeech, but he swore for a moment four voices murmured as one in his ears—kill them strike them burn them tear them pierce them oursoursoursours ours—and Lady Sandry's sweet smile was all he could see.