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February 14, 463 H.E. - 23rd year of the reign of King Jonathan IV and Queen Thayet
Rajmuat, Kypriang Island, the Copper Isles
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The part of Lianne's brain which she generally held responsible for coherent thought seemed to have taken a very sudden and inconvenient holiday. Entirely of their own accord, her feet rushed forward, her arms flew out, and before she could totally register what she was doing, her hands were wrapped around Liam's neck and she was hugging him fiercely. For several moments, they stood very still; her arms wound around his neck, his around her waist, and she was swept with a sudden feeling of deep relief that made even the aching in her neck and shoulders fade away.
Then, as soon as that emotion rose up within her, a new one took its place, and she stepped back abruptly once her mind began to work again. She looked from Liam to Jasson to Alan, who was looking past her – presumably at Aly – with a very closed sort of expression, and struggled to vocalize the question stubbornly clinging to the tip of her tongue.
"What are you doing here?" The words flew from her mouth without permission - though once she had asked, it did seem like the best place to start.
"What are we doing here?" Liam repeated, the smile slipping away and his face quickly shifting towards astonished. "What are you doing here?"
"I was kidnapped," Lianne said, staring at him. "What's your excuse?"
"What, you were kidnapped by Aly?"
"Oh, you caught me," Aly drawled somewhere to Lianne's left.
Lianne pursed her lips. "Aly rescued me. Hiresh kidnapped me."
"I knew it!" Jasson said, triumphant.
"Of course you knew it," Lianne pressed her fingers to her temple and cursed the headache she knew was about to hit her. "Otherwise you wouldn't be all the way out here, would you?"
"We came to find Aly," Liam explained.
"On a whim?"
"No," Jasson said, shooting Lianne a look that implied their reasons should be quite obvious. "We thought she might know where you are."
A sudden thought struck Lianne, and she frowned at Jasson. "You aren't even allowed off palace grounds."
"Why would you think," Aly began, still out of Lianne's sight, "I would know where she was?"
"You're joking, right?" Alan asked, speaking for the first time and looking incredulous.
"I'm a squire, Lord haMinch's punishment doesn't hold." Jasson cut in.
Lianne blinked, startled. "Whose?"
"Mine." Alan said, glancing at her sideways briefly.
"But –"
"Don't ask," Liam cut Lianne's puzzled question off with a slight shake of his head
"Did you get permission to come after me?" she asked instead.
Liam looked slightly uncomfortable. "Yes."
"Liar," Lianne retorted.
"Well at least it's her," Jasson's muttered comment made almost no sense to Lianne, and she raised her eyebrows at him.
"All right, stop." Alan's voice was clipped and sounded tired. He was running a hand through his hair and looking exasperated when Lianne turned to him. "Look, we came here to find you," he said, addressing Aly, "So you could help us find her – you already have, excellent, that makes everything much easier." He glanced about, adding. "Can we please just take that at face value for now?"
Lianne nodded along with her brothers, though she was a bit surprised by Alan's apparent lack of patience.
He visibly relaxed a little in the shoulders and offered a very thin smile. "Thank you. Now, excuse us." He crossed to Aly in long strides and drew her aside further down the row of stalls. They began conversing immediately, though the tones they spoke in were too low for Lianne to hear what was being said.
She turned to Liam, slightly more composed now that the mutual interrogation had been at least put on hold. "I'm sorry," she said after a pause. "I wasn't expecting you to be – um - here."
"We didn't either," he said, glancing briefly as Jasson. "We had been planning to get Aly as a guide and then start asking around the city. You were in the Palace?"
Lianne shook her head, taking a few steps forward and then wearily sinking down onto a bale of hay pushed up against the wall. "I wasn't even on this island."
"How'd you get here, then?" Jasson asked, tone demanding.
"On a boat?" Lianne knew the reply was weak, and flushed slightly under the nearly identical skeptical looks it earned her. Fiddling with the hem of her tunic, she took a few steps towards a low bench set between a gap between two stalls. "Believe me, if I could make sense of anything that's happened in the last few days, I'd tell you. Aly's –"
"No, I think this is a perfect time to talk about it." Alan's voice, sharp and sounding angrier than Lianne was generally accustomed to, momentarily rose enough to be heard. Lianne couldn't see anything other than his back, but it was tense, and just beyond his arm, Aly looked thunderous. Her reply was too quiet too be heard, but the tight line of her mouth was telling.
"What?" Jasson sat down beside Lianne on the bench carelessly, his question drawing her eyes away from the apparent argument.
"She hasn't been exactly forthcoming. She barely tells me a thing."
Jasson reached for her hand, turning it over in his own critically. "It must be frustrating, not being told anything. How'd all this happen?"
"Mithros," Liam sighed, rolling his eyes skywards briefly. "I get the point, all right? Just…let it go." At Lianne's quizzical look, he went on, "He's been on about being 'kept in the dark' the whole trip."
"Well I was!" Jasson protested.
"From scrubbing," Lianne said, holding her hands out before her and greatly hoping her topic change – a not all together subtle effort, she knew – would be noted.
"Scrubbing what?"
"If you would stop being so stubborn and listen for once –" Aly snapped.
Alan cut her off abruptly, voice carrying extremely well. "To what? You aren't telling me anything!"
When Aly's voice was once again too quiet to be heard, Lianne was left sitting in silence and looking in the general direction of the pair curiously. Beside her, Jasson shifted and Liam, leaning against a nearby stall, cleared his throat very quietly. Lianne didn't need to look to know they, like her, were both watching. After a beat, the trio exchanged mildly uncomfortable glances.
"Ah…" Lianne began, looking from one to the other. "Do we know what this is about, then?"
Liam shook his head, running a hand through his hair awkwardly. "Not a clue. He was happy enough to be seeing her before we got here."
"Maybe he's upset she didn't tell us Lianne was here," Jasson said knowledgably.
"How do you figure?" Lianne asked. "We've only been here two days."
Jasson shrugged, nonchalant. "Oh, well, I'd just imagine he'd be frustrated, not having been told, and all."
"Jasson," Liam said slowly, eyes closed and a long suffering expression across his face. "Just…leave it alone, all right?"
"Besides," Jasson went on, undeterred, "There is a certain bond between knight-master and squire that –"
"Oh, shut up."
"Right," Lianne, still somewhat confused, sat up a little straighter and looked from one to the other. "Can someone explain how you and Alan suddenly get on well enough that you're actually his squire?"
"Who said anything about us getting on?" Jasson asked.
Raising her eyebrows, she chose her words carefully, "Well…maybe I've gotten the wrong impression, but I always sort of thought that type of thing worked better when you didn't constantly bicker."
Jasson rolled his eyes. "We do not constantly bicker."
"Yes, you do," Liam wearily retorted.
"You really do, Jasson," Lianne couldn't help but add.
"Jasson is Alan's squire," Liam pointedly began, effectively silencing Jasson, who was looking extremely defensive and had opened his mouth to argue, "Because he was being very stubborn about us leaving, and it got to the point where we could either bring him legitimately or leave him behind as a liability."
"Liability?" Jasson looked outraged.
"Well you either would have told or followed –"
Lianne raised her hands and finally snapped, "Stop. I can't take it anymore. Either stop fighting or just don't talk to each other, I don't care."
The two boys exchanged looks, both having the decency to at least look nominally sheepish. Liam, after a pause, finally sat down on the bench as well, which Lianne took as a potential truce, at the very least. "Sorry," he said. "Two weeks on a very small boat…"
"You'd be cross, too." Jasson finished.
In the brief pause that followed, Aly's voice was just loud enough to be audible as she said, "Please don't start on that again."
"I am glad you came." Lianne, uncomfortable with the frequent awkward lulls, spoke mostly just for the sake of the noise. "I didn't think anyone was going to."
"Why wouldn't we come after you?" Liam asked, looking to her in surprise.
She shrugged, tracing a blister on the palm of her hand absently. "Aly said she didn't think anyone knew I was missing."
"Oh, that," Liam said, as if conceding a point. "Well, yes."
Lianne looked at him, raising her eyebrows and making a concerted effort to soothe her own annoyance. She wasn't sure what it was that kept almost half of what anyone said to her lately from making any sense, but was beginning to classify it as her least favorite of the unfortunate growing trends in her life. "I don't follow."
"There's this…fake you at home."
"A fake me?" Lianne repeated, wondering if she had perhaps misheard.
"Right," Jasson cut in. "It looks just like you –"
"And acts," Liam added.
"I was getting to that," Jasson said, making a face before he continued, "And acts just like you, and, you know, is running around being you."
"How does that work?" Lianne asked, swallowing a knot in her throat. The knowledge that someone else was off living her life at home – and managing to stay largely undetected, it seemed – was already working its way into the back of her mind and settling there unpleasantly. A slight shudder drew goose bumps across her forearms.
"It's some kind of living illusion," Liam explained. He must have sensed Lianne's unease, and the comforting hand he laid against her back did make her feel a little better. "Like a mirror image. Except it doesn't have any magic."
"That's how I realized it wasn't you," Jasson said
The emphasis Jasson had placed on being the one to see through the illusion did not go unnoticed by Lianne, and she rested her hand briefly on Liam's knee, applying slight, placating pressure and hoping the look she gave him would be enough to hold off another disagreement. "I've never heard of anything like that."
"It's called a simulacrum." Alan said.
Lianne looked up. Unnoticed by her, he had moved to stand several feet away, resting his weight against a wooden beam. Despite the casual look to his loosely folded arms, his shoulders were tight and his face too expressionless to see natural. Able to recognize this quiet, controlled sort of anger, Lianne didn't want to risk making it worse, and said nothing.
"Right, that's it," Liam nodded. "I can't ever remember that."
"It's basically a magical copy of every part of you. It's tricky to make one of someone else, and ever trickier to attach any sort of Gift to one. Other than that, the good ones are flawless." Off Lianne's puzzled look, Alan went on to explain, "Numair's excellent at them, so of course Thom was completely obsessed for months. Wouldn't shut up about the things."
"Where's Aly?" Jasson asked, abruptly and, Lianne thought, rather tactlessly.
Alan seemed to share the opinion, making a face at Jasson and sighing ruefully. "Why are you here? I make my own problems."
"You make mine, too." Liam reminded him.
"Aly is off finding us food," Alan said, tipping his head to rest against the wooden beam along with the rest of him wearily. "So we can at least eat on the road."
Jasson slumped in his seat, slightly stunned. "We have to leave already?"
"Oh, we shouldn't have even come, what were we thinking," Alan proceeded to go on as if rattling off a list, "Have I looked in a mirror lately, have I looked at either of you lately, she's only a servant, she can't put us up here…" Interrupted momentarily by Lianne's extremely skeptical and quite unladylike snort, he allowed a small grin for the first time, nodding. "That's what I think."
"She's completely…" Liam began to mutter, then paused as he thought better of it. Instead, he glanced sideways, meeting Lianne's eyes. "Do you have anything you need to get before we leave?"
"Actually," Alan said, face going tight again, "She's not coming."
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Author's Notes: Don't kill me! Another cliffie, I know, I know, BUT! Instead of a crazy long wait, for which I am immensely apologetic for, like the one between the last chapter and this one, chapter 20 will be up by April 13th at the latest. Send all thanks to Hikki, ladies and gents, who sat down and betaed what turned out to be a chapter so big I had to break it up into two. Without her, teh storie wuld look like this. See you all in two days with the second half!