PART III: The Earth Cave

Melmond Manor, Twenty-five Years Ago

Beneath the tall oak that shaded the training yard, Redden sat. He closed his eyes and sent his senses out toward the aether. He could feel the flow of it, swifter near the manor house with its busy inhabitants, more sluggish in the swamp beyond the gardens which was the extent of his reach. He found an aetheric current that seemed workable and focused on seizing it, pulling it toward him, drawing it in.

He couldn't always get it to work, an oddity he imagined he would understand better if he had been a real mage, able to see the aether he felt, but today he was lucky. The aether came when he called. Now to shape it, he thought, trying to reconstruct the spiral pattern from the diagram in the book that lay open in his lap.

A voice near his ear very loudly asked, "What's with all those squiggly lines?"

His eyes snapped open. Redden cursed as the aether slipped from his grasp, the half formed fire spell blooming in front of him, catching light to the very page his brother was pointing out as he crouched beside him. Cid fell back, laughing uproariously as Redden flung the book to the ground and frantically threw dirt over it. He cursed again when the fire was out and he could see that most of the chapter he was working from had been ruined. "Damn it, Cid! Are you trying to get yourself lit up? You know I'm no good at this yet!"

"I'm sorry!" Cid said, clutching his side as he laughed himself to tears. "Your face! You should have seen your face!"

Redden tried to scowl, but his brother's humor was contagious. He punched Cid lightly in his well-muscled arm. "I see my face every time I look at you, idiot." That wasn't entirely true. Though they had looked identical as children, these days Cid was stronger and bulkier, and his sun-bleached hair hid the fact that both of them, only twenty years old, were prematurely going gray.

Additionally, Cid smirked far more often; he was doing so now. "Yes, sure, but I still have eyebrows."

"What?" Redden dropped the book as he raised his fingers to his brow and felt the singed hairs breaking against his fingertips. "Titan's teeth!"

The oath set his brother off again. Redden waited, rolling his eyes as Cid composed himself.

"Oh," Cid said, wiping his eyes one last time. "Oh, I truly am sorry. If I'd known you were up to fire already, I'd have been more careful. The book wasn't valuable was it? Will you be able to replace it?"

"It's just an Adept's," Redden said, shrugging. "They're all of twenty gil. Which you'll be paying."

"Is that a fact?" Cid said. He stood, and Redden saw that he had two practice swords with him. He tossed one and Redden caught it out of the air. "Tell you what. Show me that you've worked as hard on your swordsmanship as you have on those spells, and I'll pay twice that."

They had the yard to themselves. It was one of the reasons Redden liked to go there in the afternoons: it was almost always abandoned at this time of day. Lord Westen's men tended to do their training first thing in the morning, when it was cooler. As one of Westen's wards, Redden trained with them sometimes, but he didn't care about it as his brother did. Cid never missed a day.

Redden sighed as they squared off against each other, knowing he was in for a bruising before they even began. Cid fell easily into a ready stance that Redden still had to think through: were his feet wide enough apart? Were his arms in the right place? Was his center of gravity low enough? He never won these fights, sometimes wondered if he offered his brother any challenge at all, but Cid never complained. There were two things in all the world Redden knew Cid loved above anything else: his brother and his sword.

Well, three things, and judging from the pleased look that stole over Cid as he faced the manor, Redden assumed that third thing was coming up the path toward them.

"You're not beating up that poor boy again, are you?" a lilting voice called.

"On the contrary," Cid said, abandoning Redden as he approached the young woman who stopped at the fence. "I'll have you know this is a dangerous red mage. I face him at my peril."

Jayne smiled indulgently. "Is that so?"

"It is," Cid said, smirking again. "In fact, I think you should kiss me. For luck."

Redden rolled his eyes as Jayne turned an attractive shade of pink. As often as the two of them flirted like this, one would think they were both beyond silly blushes, but Cid flushed as well when Jayne leaned over the fence to plant a chaste kiss on his cheek.

The two of them stood staring dreamily at one another until Redden interrupted them. "None for me, Lady Westen? I think I need a good luck kiss more than he does."

Cid reached back to thump him in the arm just as Jayne's pretty face crumpled into an expression of disgust, as if he'd just asked her to eat a bug. "Ew! No!" she said. Cid smiled triumphantly.

"We're twins! How can you kiss him and recoil from me?" Redden said.

"Because you're nothing alike," said Jayne. She squinted at him as though she didn't recognize him all of a sudden. "What happened to your eyebrows?"

A shout from the guards at the manor's gate interrupted Cid's laugh. An oxcart driven by a filthy, ragged-looking man came through, the man gesturing to the back of the cart as he halted the beasts. The cart was full of people, all as haggard-seeming as the driver. Several of the gate guards hurried over to them, others hurried toward the manor. Redden glanced at Cid, and without speaking, both of them vaulted the training yard fence and ran toward the disturbance while Jayne ran for the house.

For a time, Redden was focused on helping the men down from the cart. Many moved slowly, obviously injured, and Redden realized that at least some of the grime that covered them was blood. He pulled from the space within him where he knew he would find a Cure spell, thankful that he'd stuck with his white magic studies at least that far.

"-in the mine," he heard one of the men say. "It was in the mine."

Cid leaped into the cart, going to the last few men left in it, but when he reached them, his face turned grim. "These men are dead," he said.

"What's going on here?" came Lord Westen's commanding voice as he marched with determined steps down the path from the manor house with Jayne in his wake.

"We were mining the south cape," the cart driver said, his voice shaking. "We broke through into another cave. There was… there was something in it."

"What do you mean?" Westen demanded.

"My lord, I think we found the underworld."

Melmond Harbor, Present Day

As the ship pulled into the harbor, Kane stood at the prow, just out of Oscar's reach. The ochu growled as it waved its viney tentacles toward him, the two stubby ones Jack had used to make Aryon's elixir already an inch longer than they'd been a week ago. Shipman stood nearby, tempting the foul little monster with bits of meat, but it seemed intent on eating Kane. The pot rocked back and forth as the cat-sized plant voiced its displeasure. You and me both, friend, Kane thought.

He looked down as a hand softly touched his arm. "Is our company so terrible?" Lena asked quietly, smiling shyly up at him.

Nothing like having a soul reader around to make you aware of your temper, he thought. He had been well aware of his father's temper that morning. Lord Redden's patience had been fraying as they neared Melmond, but it had finally snapped when they'd seen the Rot along the coast as they sailed in. He'd growled as fiercely as the ochu, taking out his anger on everyone, including Kane. Cole and Felder, still fearful of the red mage, had sequestered themselves in the galley with Biggs. Jack, meanwhile, was hiding in the hold again and had been there since before Kane awoke. When Kane had gone to check on him, not only had the mage tersely sent Kane away, he had stated quite firmly that he would not be coming out for the duration of their stay in Melmond.

Which left Kane at the prow with the ochu and the only two people on the ship with nothing better to do than keep out of the way. Kane sighed, shoving his irritation down. "Sorry," he said. "I just… Do you ever feel like no one wants you around?"

Lena arched an eyebrow at him, her smile becoming a one-sided smirk. "What, you mean like when my handsome guardsman friend doesn't want to stand with me?"

Kane chuckled, embarrassed. "Fair point."

"Are you sure Oscar's not hungry? He sure sounds hungry! Maybe he's sick?" Shipman said behind him.

"I promise he's fine, Thadius," Lena said. "He's not growling because he's hungry. He's growling because he's a wild thing. Jack keeps telling you an ochu isn't a pet."

"How do you know he's a he?" Kane asked.

Lena looked at him innocently, but her too-wide eyes betrayed a subtle sarcasm. "Because Oscar's a boy's name."

Kane laughed. "Naturally." He watched the men busy about the ship, the dock workers below, all working together to bring the Sahagin Prince in. They were tying off now, lowering a gangplank. The docks were bustling, but they weren't as crowded as Kane thought they should be, as there was space to accommodate far more ships than the low number he saw. He heard more growling beside him, but not from the ochu. Lena blushed as her stomach rumbled loudly. "Did you skip breakfast?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, her smile looking guilty as she chewed her bottom lip. "I'm waiting until we go into town."

"Whatever for?" Kane said, intrigued, trying to recall if his father had ever mentioned the local cuisine. "I hadn't heard anything special about the food here."

Lena clasped her hands in front of her, like a child awaiting a gift. "Oh, it's wonderful! Father Branford and I stayed a week here on my way to Cornelia when I was younger. I'll never forget the food! They do such things with fish!"

Kane smiled at her shy enthusiasm. The girl did love her fish. "Well, I'd offer to buy your lunch, but I seem to be a little dry of funds at the moment."

Lena's own smile widened. "I'll buy for you then. First tavern we see, as soon as we're off this ship!" She made a thoughtful face. "Should we find a place to watch the revels? When do you suppose they start?"

Kane made no effort to hide his surprise. "I wouldn't have thought you'd be interested in the Midsummer revels. Doesn't all that decadence violate white mage philosophy?"

"I'm not suggesting we participate, by any means, but I would like to see them." Her blush deepened. "Do you think… Do you think Jack will come?"

Kane recalled the mage's sharp words to him in the hold, and he felt his smile morph into something manic as he plotted his revenge. Staying in the hold, are you? We'll see. "I don't know. I suppose you could always ask him."

Shipman moved in to stand at the railing between them, looking out at the nearest buildings with a dubious sneer. "I don't think we want to eat at any of these places."

For the first time, Kane looked properly at the harbor district. Melmond's harbor appeared to have been built over swampland. There was no real shoreline, only a muddy marsh. The docks extended far out into the bay, with wooden walkways leading from them into the city. He didn't see a single structure that looked to be in good shape; in fact, many seemed as if they were decaying. He saw more than one collapsed roof, and the air smelled strongly of rotten fish.

"I wonder if that's from the Rot I've heard so much about," Lena said.

"It was, the first time around," Kane's father said, startling all three of them with his sudden appearance. He stood just behind them, buckling on a sword belt that held a sword Kane had never seen before, of poorer make than the one he normally carried.

Before Kane could ask about it, Shipman said, "The first time? You mean they've been like that for more than twenty years? What kind of run-down place is this?"

Lord Redden gave the boy a flat stare. "This is my homeland you're talking about." He glanced briefly at Lena before he turned to Kane, sighing as he spoke, as if every word was a chore. "There's some kind of blockade at the end of the docks. The captain and I are going to check it out. Stay aboard until we get back."

"Yes, sir," Kane said, but his father was walking away before the words were out of Kane's mouth.

"Oh, my," Lena muttered as Redden left them.

Kane huffed out a frustrated breath. "I don't suppose you know what has him so… so…"

"Irritable?" Lena supplied.

"Not the word I was reaching for."

Lena patted his shoulder, her sidelong glance saying that she knew which word he was reaching for and wouldn't repeat it. She sighed and said, "No, I'm sorry. Only that he doesn't want to be here."

"Coming to Melmond was his idea!"

She shook her head. "I know. I can feel that it's hard for him. Some painful memories, I think. But that's as much as I can figure out."

Kane nodded. He knew little of his father's past, only that he'd grown up here, that he'd had a brother who died here.

"Do you think he was mad at me for saying it was run-down?" asked Shipman, shoulders slumped in dejection.

Lena pulled him in for a hug. "He's not mad at you."

The three of them were quiet as they looked out at Melmond once more. The city seemed lively enough, for all that it appeared worn. People moved along the wooden walkways, visiting the shops and street vendors with a hurry to their steps as if there wasn't enough time in the day. Like they're all too busy to fix the damage, Kane thought. "I understand it wasn't always like this," he said. "There's supposed to be some great culture in this city. And the queen is from here, you know."

"Really?" said Shipman. "How'd she end up as queen?"

"Politics, I guess," Kane said. "Her father was Lord of Melmond at the time. It's not as if she and I ever chat over tea. She's never liked me much."

"That's not so," Lena said gently. "You just remind her of someone."

Kane frowned. "Who?"

Lena shrugged. "I'm not a mind reader. But she can't look at you without remembering this other person, and that bothers her."

Kane frowned, thinking. He knew even less about the queen's past than he did his father's. He spent several minutes conjuring up every memory he could of his interactions with Queen Jayne, trying to examine them from this new angle. Shipman grew fidgety after a time and wandered off, leaving him and Lena alone, but they didn't talk, only stood at the railing as he gazed absently at the city and she looked down at the murky, brown water of the harbor.

They were still there when Kane's father returned, scowling as he came up the gangplank. "What'd you find?" Kane asked him.

"A registrar," said Redden. "It seems the Rot's driven people from the countryside into the city. The crowding's led to a rise in crime. Leiden's decided everyone within the city's walls has to carry identification papers."

"Does that help?" Kane asked, scoffing. "Did the criminals all sort of line up to report their names?"

"I never said Leiden was a clever man, but that's the law here."

"Sounds painless enough," said Lena, her smile wavering in the face of Lord Redden's mood. "Will it take long?"

Redden turned tired eyes to the girl, an expression Kane knew meant his father was in no mood for an argument. "No time at all for you," he said in a steely tone. "You're not leaving this ship."

"I-I'm not?" Lena stuttered. "But I wanted to see the city!"

"You're not. We don't know enough about this plague they have here. It's supposed to be particularly deadly to white mages."

Lena opened her mouth to say something else, but closed it again. Her meek expression reminded Kane so much of a kicked puppy that he spoke out for her. "Father, Jack spent his entire spring in Melmond before he came to Cornelia. He said he never saw any plague in all that time. You and I both know that plague nonsense is a cover for something else, just like we saw in Elfheim."

Redden glared at him. "That doesn't change the fact that there are no white mages left alive here. It's a bad time to be a mage in Melmond, black or white."

"What's the word on red mages, then?" Kane asked.

Redden made a noise that was almost a growl. "We're trying not to attract undue attention. The last thing we need is the interest we'd draw by announcing a white mage at the registrar."

"Who says we need to tell anyone what she is?"

Lena laid a hand on Kane's arm, face serene as she tried to calm both men. "Lord Redden, surely you know my oath requires me to at least investigate this plague while I'm here?"

"You'll get your chance," he said impatiently. "But not today, and not in the city. I need to check a few things here while the captain resupplies the ship, but then we're sailing out again. A few hours, at most."

"But if we're only here for a few hours, couldn't I at least walk about the harbor district?" Lena said. "Kane and I-"

"No," Redden snapped sharply. "Stay put. We don't have time for trouble."

Her hand was still on his arm, and Kane felt her fingers twitch. She was making a face he'd seen Sarah make before, her mouth set in a line, her eyes ever so slightly narrowed. Unless he was mistaken, the white mage was more hurt than she would let show. Therefore, he was surprised when her only response was, in a level voice, to agree with his father. "That seems wise."

Kane stared at her, but she gave the slightest shake of her head.

"Good," said Redden. "Let's go, son."

"But," Kane began, but his unformed protest died when Lena withdrew her hand and turned her back on them to look over the railing once more.

He followed as his father fell in step with Gabbiani, the two of them talking as they walked up the dock. Gus and Maxell walked with them, the two largest members of the crew both carrying cudgels, acting as bodyguards for the shorter captain. The dock ended in a short wooden gate, in front of which a man at a table waited with a pile of papers, the registrar his father had mentioned. Orin and Shipman were already there, speaking to the man. When they received their papers and stepped aside, the captain and the two huge pirates approached the table. It was then, when no one else was listening, that Kane addressed his father. "You didn't have to speak to her that way!" he said, fists clenched at his sides.

"In what way?" Redden asked. He seemed confused by the question, and that infuriated Kane further.

"You were cruel to her! She was looking forward to seeing the city. You've hurt her feelings!"

"Oh, for Titan's sake!" Redden said, sighing. "We've talked about this, son. She doesn't have feelings. I know she looks convincing, but you're merely projecting-"

"That's not true!"

Redden closed his eyes, speaking with the level patience of a man addressing a small child, or a particularly thick student. "It is. It was true of Lady Aliana, though you don't remember her well enough to believe me. It was true of Lord Minwu before her. That man didn't even feel hunger; he would have starved to death if Cascius's father hadn't fed him on a schedule. The Cornelian archives are full of stories like that, Kane. I've read them. In three hundred years of records, no soul reader has ever had feelings of her own." He looked at Kane then, reaching out to squeeze his son's shoulder, and his eyes betrayed a weariness Kane hadn't seen beneath his father's anger earlier. "Now, we have a job to do, people we need to speak to, before we can get to the bottom of what's happening here. The sooner we sort it out, the sooner we can all go home again."

Kane looked back at the Sahagin Prince, at the lonely figure in white who stood forlornly at the ship's railing looking down at the water, and he shook his father's hand off. "Go, then. I'm staying with her."

He heard Redden call his name as he walked away, but the older man didn't follow him. Kane didn't look back until he'd reached the ship. He could see his father in his red cloak at the registrar's table, but then the registrar stood, offering him some papers, and he went through the wooden gate with Orin and Shipman, glancing back only once, and only briefly, before he proceeded into town.

"Kane?" Lena waited for him at the top of the gangplank, concern in her eyes. "I hope I didn't cause problems between you and your father."

"He was out of line," Kane said, stepping up the wide board toward her. "I'm sorry he spoke to you that way."

"Oh, that's alright," she said, looking down at her feet. "He has a lot on his mind right now."

So quick to forgive, Kane thought, shaking his head. "Yes, he does. But do you know what's on my mind right now?" Lena looked at him expectantly but said nothing. "Lunch," he said. "You promised me lunch."

"Oh? But we promised your father I'd stay on the ship."

"Did you promise such a thing? I didn't hear it. I only heard you agree with him when he said it was a good idea. That's not a promise. Not like the one you made to me. You keep your promises, don't you?"

Lena's eyes widened. "B-but…" she stuttered. "But you heard what he said! It's not safe for white mages!"

"So leave the robe," Kane said.

She looked down at her white sleeve in confusion, as though the garment had barked at her and she didn't know what to think of it.

Kane laughed. He placed a hand on each of her shoulders and looked her in the eye. "Lena, it's broad daylight! No one here knows you're a white mage, and you'll have me to guard you. Don't you trust me? Let's just grab a meal or something and head right back. We'll be gone all of an hour."

She blushed, ducking her head as a slow smile spread over her face. When she spoke, her voice was like a small silver bell. "Can we still invite Jack?"

Kane grinned. "Leave Jack to me."

Jack sat in the floor of the hold, knees pulled up, letting his head rest against the edge of the crate behind him. He could sense the rats inside it - only six he'd managed to recapture; a seventh slept peacefully behind a stack of boxes across from him, but he lacked the energy to get up and retrieve it.

Catching the rats took longer without Lena, but he'd been too embarrassed after his display that morning to ask for her help. How many hours had he been at it now? Reading the aether for long periods of time was always exhausting, but it had been harder while he was also struggling to keep the ice down. Though he'd drawn power from each rat he found, he hadn't begun to feel normal again until the fourth one.

Drawing from the rats wasn't as effective as drawing off of a person. The aether of a rat was so similar to the raw aether that it took considerably more of them to fill the hollow, and the effect was short-lived. The trick had made the past several days aboard the ship bearable, and had allowed him to spend time among his friends without keeping constant guard against his emotions. It wasn't until Thad had released the rats that Jack realized how much he'd come to rely on them in such a short time. I'll be down here for the rest of my life, Jack thought, bumping his head repeatedly against the crate.

He heard heavy footsteps overhead, the sounds of someone running toward the hold, and Kane's glowing yellow aura appeared at the top of the stairs. "Jack!" the guardsman called. "I need you! You have to come out here!"

Jack didn't bother to move. "We've talked about this," he said. "I'm staying down-"

"Jack, it's Lena! She's gone!"

"Gone? What do you mean, 'gone'?"

"Father told her to stay on the ship, but, well, she really wanted to see the revels, and when my back was turned, she… well, she left!"

"Alone?" Jack was on his feet before the guardsman finished speaking. "How could you let this happen?"

"Hey, you weren't exactly up here keeping an eye on her! I never expected her to head off on her own! It's completely unlike her! Father's going to kill me if he finds out! Can you follow her aether trail?"

"Of course I can!" Jack grumbled, grabbing his staff from where he'd left it beside the stairs and heading up.

"Great!" Kane said, as they reached the middle deck together. "You'll have to leave the coat, though. Father said it was dangerous for mages in the city right now. The coat might attract attention."

Jack nodded, seeing the sense of it, and shrugged out of the leather coat, tossing it toward the corner that held the hammock where he slept. "Fine," he said, adjusting the cuffs of the gray, long-sleeved shirt he wore underneath.

"The staff, too," Kane said. "Can you manage without it?"

Jack looked down at the staff he carried, tentatively drawing his mind away from it. The aether held, but he could feel the hollow stirring in his soul. "Not for long. Let's hope she hasn't gone far."

"That won't do," Kane said, frowning. "What if you had another magic weapon to carry around? Like, a magic sword, perhaps?"

Jack cocked his head. "Where are we going to find something like that?"

With his usual cocky grin, Kane gestured toward another hammock nearby, the place where Lord Redden slept, and Jack saw Redden's sword nestled atop a pile of the bard's other things. "You saw the way he used it against Cole and Felder. It's a focus object, right? Will it work?" said Kane.

Jack picked up the weapon and looked at it through his aether sight. There were indeed focus spells woven into the blade, vague and basic, not tied to any particular element, not even as strong as the spells on the dagger he had discarded before they left Elfheim, but still, they might be enough to hold him over until he could get back to the rats. "I think I can use this," he said, nodding. He nearly dropped the sword as he belted it on, his left hand with its missing fingers fumbling with the weight of the blade as he tried to position it on his left hip, but he got it on his second try. "Let's go."

It took nearly all of his concentration to read the aether without drawing on it, without triggering a corona, but Lena's blue aura shown clear amidst the blur of colors around the dock. Recent, he thought. Maybe she's still close. He was so focused on finding her that he didn't see the man at the table until Kane grabbed his arm to stop him from walking right past.

"Hold on there, young sir. You'll need papers," the man said, smiling. He was an older gentleman, wrinkled and sun-spotted, with a fringe of white hair around a bald spot, a beak of a nose, and not an ounce of fat on him. He readied a quill pen over a scroll in front of him. "Your names, please?"

Jack looked down at the paper. It appeared to be a list of people who had come this way recently. He saw in a clear script at the bottom, "Lena Mateus, 17, servant".

"Kane Carmine," Kane said, pulling Jack in closer to the table. "And this is my brother, Jack Carmine."

The old man pursed his lips. "Carmine, is it? Any relation to the West Hills' Carmines?"

"Never heard of them," Kane said. "Jack?"

Jack shook his head.

"No matter, no matter. I'm sure it's a common enough name. What are your ages?"

"Eighteen," Kane said.

The man looked at Jack, squinting.

Kane kicked Jack's ankle, prompting him to speak. "Twenty," Jack said.

"And what shall I note down as your occupations?"

"Soldier and scholar," Kane said, pointing first at himself and then at Jack.

"Very well. It will only take me a moment to write these up."

Jack pulled Kane back a few steps, watching to see if the man appeared to be listening. He waited, to be sure, but the old man seemed engrossed in his calligraphy. Eventually, Jack whispered, "Brother?"

Kane smirked. "I owe you my life. The least I can do is give you a real name. I didn't like to think of you putting that other one in writing."

Redden did say he'd choose for me, Jack thought, remembering the fireside conversation weeks ago that had all but slipped his mind in the aftermath of the events that followed. Truthfully, he'd given no thought at all to choosing a name for himself. "Thank you," he said. "It's a good name."

The guardsman scoffed, punching him in the shoulder. "Damn right, it is. Mind you, these papers are the biggest joke I ever heard. Did you hear the man? Names and ages? That's all it takes?"

"I still don't understand what they're for," Jack said.

"Just something the local lord's come up with to solve a recent criminal problem, from what I understand. Couldn't possibly work, and I'm speaking from my experience as a city guard."

Jack nodded, thinking quietly to himself about Lena running loose in a city with a known "criminal problem."

"Young sirs? Your papers," the old man said.

Papers in hand, Jack stepped swiftly past the table. "Come on, before I lose the trail," he said.

"Are you likely to?" Kane asked, seeming more worried than he had before. "I thought it would last a few hours?"

"It will," Jack said, passing through the short wooden gate that cut off the docks from the rest of the city, focusing on what he could see of Lena's aura. "But so will the auras of every other person in Melmond. If I don't follow Lena's while it's fresh, I'll never find it under all these others."

"Gods!" Kane said. "I had no idea! I never would have-" He stopped speaking, but Jack didn't think much of it, concentrating on the aether, gripping the hilt of the sword at his waist to help him maintain control.

Away from the docks, Lena's aura was harder to track. Melmond was a busy city, particularly so near the harbor. The blue trail Jack followed was crisscrossed by so many others that if he hadn't known her well, he would have lost it already. They'd only gone two streets over when they reached a market, and Lena's aura was thick about the place. "She must have stopped here," Jack said near a stall selling masks for the revels. He surveyed the crowd, hoping for a glimpse of her red hair.

Kane, too, seemed to be searching, eyes darting back and forth. "Where is that girl?" He made a frustrated sound deep in his throat. "Have you noticed the white mages seem to be in danger everywhere we go?"

"Of course they are," Jack said. "All their guards are gone."

"What guards?" Kane asked.

Jack shrugged. "It's in the black mage's Oath. 'To build, to guide, to guard'. They're who we guard. If all the black mages have been driven out, of course the white mages suffer."

Kane stared at him, face blank.

"What?" Jack asked.

"Nothing. I just feel like I understand you a little better now."

Jack rolled his eyes at the guardsman, then he closed them, relying solely on his aether sight as he scanned the colored auras of the people in the crowd, until he found the point of pale blue light that belonged to her. "There she is," he said, pushing through the press of people to reach her as Kane followed him.

Sometimes, Lena really couldn't bear the crowds: the emotions flowed over her like a swift river, sweeping her along no matter how she struggled against it. She had days where she wanted nothing more than to hide in her room and never see or speak to anyone, to only feel what she herself was feeling.

But today was not one of those days. A week on the ship, on the rough waves and salt breeze of the open ocean, had cleared her mind as well as a long swim could. Today, she felt the emotions of the people of Melmond as they prepared for their favorite holiday, and all seemed bright and wonderful. It was easier for her to visit a crowded market on a day like this, when the mood was festive. Like a beautiful song being sung by dozens of voices: too loud, it hurt, but she couldn't stop listening to it.

Like home, she thought. She'd been not quite Thad's age, little more than a child, when she left it, yet she remembered it like this. There weren't as many people in Onlac, but most of them were happy. Life there revolved around the boats and the day's catch, music and dancing in her auntie's tavern of an evening. It was almost like every day was a festival day.

Why can't cities be like that? she thought, caught up in the colors, the smells, enjoying the feeling, for once, of being part of the crowd. She passed a stall selling masks made of fabric and feathers in every color of the rainbow, some small, only to cover the eyes, others large enough to go over her whole head, shaped like the heads of animals and characters from children's stories. She spent several minutes admiring them before she moved on.

The streets were muddy away from the docks once she left the wooden walkways behind, and she saw that many of Melmond's citizens wore tall wooden clogs over their normal shoes. She found a shop that sold them, but recoiled from the price written on the sign in the window and decided she would have to make do with watching her step.

She stopped near a man selling fried shrimp, and her stomach rumbled. "How much?" she asked.

"Three for a copper, miss."

"Is Cornelian money alright?"

The man assured her it was, so she bought six.

She took the small snack in its folded paper cone to the stoop of a building nearby, and she sat on the steps and watched the people as she ate. Her mind began to wander, picking up hints of their lives: this one had a new baby at home, and this one wasn't looking forward to some task or other. Don't start that, she told herself, tightening the hold on her senses to slow the emotions accumulating in her mind so that she could enjoy her outing as long as possible.

She heard someone call her name, and when she saw Kane and Jack approaching, she stood to greet them, smiling. "Jack! You came! I wasn't sure you would."

The mage stopped, surprise in his eyes. "You… you were expecting us to follow you?"

"Of course I was! That was the idea."

Kane sucked in a breath through his teeth. "Lena, I may not have been entirely truthful in my quest to get him off the ship."

Jack slowly turned his head toward Kane, one eyebrow raised as he glared severely. "You lied to me?"

Kane's shoulders slumped. "I told her to go ahead of us. I knew if you thought I'd lost her, you'd track her down."

"Did it ever occur to you that I might not be able to follow her aura trail in a city this size?" Jack said, his voice a low hiss as he looked about to be sure no one else was listening.

"I know that now!" Kane said, shrugging. "We just wanted to have a bit of fun."

"And I wanted to stay on the ship!"

"Please don't fight!" Lena said. She laid a hand on Jack's arms, crossed in front of his chest. "We can return to the ship if you don't want to be here. I know you're uncomfortable around people."

Kane began to argue, but Lena was focused on Jack. He looked down at her, blue eyes peering over his gray scarf, a lighter gray than that of the shirt he wore. He was blushing. He seemed smaller without his coat, less imposing without the line of it accentuating his considerable height, noticeably slimmer than Kane. "My lady," he said, and even his voice seemed smaller than she was used to it being. "I would have come if you had asked me."

Her heart fluttered.

"Great! Let's find a place to eat. I'm starving," said Kane, striding off.

Jack sighed, wordlessly offering her his arm, and the two of them followed.

Author's Note: 11/4/16 - It's November and for some of you that means NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is underway, but I'm going to follow the example of author Ursula Vernon and try NaNoFiMo instead: National Novel Finishing Month. Instead of writing 50k words on a new story, I'm going to try for 50k words on THIS ONE. Because come Christmas, I'll have been working on it for a year and, dear holy Bahamut, it's not done yet. You know, when I started this thing, I thought I'd have it knocked out by April…

Anyway, do I think 50k more words is going to finish this thing off? I have no earthly idea. Sometimes, it feels like I'll be writing it forever. I have an outline, I know what happens next, but the chapters just get longer and longer.

It's. Just. So. Long.