A Common Cause (a work in progress--everything still entirely subject to change)

OoC: I've decided that I need some feedback on this as I progress, and posting it here as it's written seems simpler than emailing it out to people when each version becomes outdated so quickly. Everything, including the title, is still tentative, and things may be changed as I go along. If you want to read a complete story, run away from this thread now, and quickly. If you don't mind helping someone refine a work in progress (and possibly re-read sections after changes have been made), then continue on. I'll include a note at the bottom of any post that's been noticeably edited.

This fic features Louis Fritz, Cadenza Madrigal, Hunter Merridale, and various NPCs of mine (and each section is narrated by one of these characters in first-person perspective.) To understand most of it, I recommend you read "A Kindred Spirit" first (and then maybe "The Shadows' Favored" and parts of "Chinatown Rush" too.)

IC:

A Common Cause

The Minstrel’s Contribution:

Sweet, honeyed notes of Portuguese inspiration danced on the ear, like a water skeeter skittering across the surface of a pond, the stillness barely disturbed by its gentle movements; the melody teased the senses, caressing them, then pulling away at the mark of a rest on the imaginary sheet of fado music playing in the guitarist’s mind. It was soft, sensuous, and noninvasive; music one could drink to, music one could be lulled to sleep by, and music one could fall in love by.

When the mezzo-soprano voice joined, it came so softly and subtly that the moment where the instruments sang alone and when the voice came in was almost imperceptible; it was as if they had always blended in perfect harmony and complement. Men stared in awe at the exotic lady who stroked the instrument’s strings with such tenderness, moved by the music, lost in the words and the deep blue of her eyes, and mesmerized by the whorls of color in the flower of passion she wore by her ear. The melody began to die down as the lyrics’ poetic story came to a close, and the spotlight was cast upon her graceful fingers for the last measure; and before any knew it, the song had ended, and everything faded away into applause, hands moving while the brain that controlled them was still wrapped up in fantasy.

Cadenza Madrigal sat for a moment in the warmth of the light, her hands resting on the guitar’s smooth, curved frame; and then, with an air of decision, she stood, bringing the fretboard into her grasp as she nudged the stool she had sat on carelessly away with a foot and came to the short flight of stairs off the café stage. There, she was cast back into shadow; it was an oddly appropriate representation of her last few months, in the shorter form of commonplace events. She had tried to return to a normal life, a life in the light, after the conflict in Chinatown with the spirit of shadow, but those events had had a profound effect on both her and her world, and she had to accept her new reality. Nothing brought this home more than the everyday experiences she told me of.

She once spoke of mistakenly granting a bulldog she came across shadow magic in order for the little animal to evade an oncoming truck; and another time of being able to drop into the shadows wherever she wished, even in the starkest sunlight of the desert where none ever lurked. What the two of us could gather from these events was that the spirit, after being so thoroughly weakened in that fight, was transferring its powers to her--and after learning this, I never knew how to console her. How did one relate to a human that, in essence, was acting as regent for a governing spirit? It must be a terribly disorienting and overwhelming experience, and I would be a fool to think I could comprehend it.

She was in charge of the shadow magic of her world now--and there was no way I could make that any easier to grasp. My friend had, with the aid of the green-haired fencer and her own iron will, inadvertently transcended human limits. She may say it was all for the sake of preserving her own freedom—but her intentions matter not in the end. Whether it was ordained by fate, or a product of her will to be independent, she was ruling spirit of shadow on her Earth, if even only for a time. This was the fact that the cutlass’ dull glow had communicated back while Lady Cadenza lay in a pile of rubble in Chinatown. It had consented to coexist with a human.

As she came down the steps, she gave me an expectant look; at first, I thought she was waiting for some comment on her music, but then I remembered that I had asked for a meeting with her earlier. The account I’ve written now of her playing should serve as comment enough for my thoughts on the song; music’s effects sometimes must sink in first, and stew before they can be fully comprehended and expressed. It’s the song you find yourself humming weeks later in a stretch of absent-mindedness that is the song that has captured your attention.

“Isn’t that the three-line song of the fourth maid?” one might ask me incredulously, finding me singing a little tune from an opera to myself.

And I’d answer, “Really? I thought she was the lead.”

Brilliance knows no ranks; it matters not if you’re headlining the orchestra hall or strumming a few choice chords in a coffee shop. The most talented musician I ever knew was a nine-year old girl who played flute for copper coins on street corners.

“Well?” Cadenza was pressed to ask me; I had admittedly drifted off a bit to my own thoughts, and was unfairly wasting her time.

“I apologize, my friend, but you know I tend to wander. But come now, pray sit with me and we shall discuss the matter I have come to address over a pot of black coffee. I see from your song that you’re in better spirits, reaching acceptance even, and that’s good--we’re going to have to burn the oil well into the dark hours of early morning if we are to have an effective plan and sufficient supplies for our business.”

“Okay, enough vagueness, Fritz—just what is our business?”

I have a way of delaying facts that sometimes frustrated my more straightforward companion; but age teaches you to wait and take things in stride. Flashing a smile to ask for her patience, I gestured to a waitress, and soon we were seated at a glass table peering over mugs of dusky, steaming hot Arabian blend.

I laughed as I glanced across at the woman, seeing that she was doing her best to tolerate me until I was ready to speak. The past few weeks had truly reduced her to a bundle of nerves, masked by a tough but all too transparent façade. “Are you afraid I’ll only delay things more if you push me to talk? I wouldn’t dare mess with you again that way, my friend—I much prefer finding new ways to test your patience.”

She gave me the usual dry smile that came in response to my mocking—and then set me with that piercingly cold, no-nonsense look that she can instill into her otherwise calm expression whenever the need arises.

“All right, milady, all right—to our business, one which is near and dear to many hearts. There is a swiftly-growing movement in the world of Medina, specifically my native nation of Choras, called the ‘Magi of Friarsville’, who are nobly seeking worldwide tolerance for magically-gifted beings. I support this organization, and yet, I am not as optimistic—I know the old and stubborn and I know how they resist the coming of change. I merely strive for magical tolerance in the realm of Choras—knowing that others may follow, as those in other worlds followed movements like the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. This movement may not be as life-altering to all citizens—but it’s something I staunchly believe in and am resolved to see through. And I also believe that there seldom has been so worthy a cause that our special powers of inter-world travel through the Dome could do so much good for.”

When truly interested by something, my friend has a remarkable patience and even-minded talent for helping to refine ideas into a realistic and plausible course of action. She put this talent into application now. “That’s all well and good, Fritz, but remember again your allusion to history—a group of Friarsville farmhands and a wandering musician from Brantmill hold little power of influence in your time—who’s backing this movement? Who will make the king listen?”

“We have one of the highest lords of all of Choras on our side, milady, ardently bound to our cause: we have the good Prince Merridale himself.”

“Merridale? You, of all people, are calling Merridale ‘good’?” Her lips curved into a smirk at these words. “Only when he backs your movement, yes, now I see.”

There was no need to respond to the jab—it was merely her way of keeping me quiet while she continued to consider the matter. She knew Hunter had begun to accept magic since he first was brought to the Dome, but she could scarcely imagine that he had come so far as to fight for tolerance of it. In her eyes, people never changed that easily.

“We…ah, both recall your harrowing experience in Augusta,” I began, “all those months ago—we both saw the flint being struck below the very soles of your boots as we came upon the scene and saw you bound to that cross by those savage men. Merridale seems to have taken a liking to a girl of magical talents—and remembering that event, he hopes that she will never have to endure the same.”

I cringed in my subtle way under the shade of my hat; I hated to ever give the woman a further reason for distrusting people. I knew that telling her that the prince’s motives were more so on the side of the personal and the selfish, rather than the altruistic and the sympathetic would strengthen her cynicism—but it couldn’t be denied, and she deserved to be given a full account of the facts if we were going to request she throw her hat into the ring along with ours.

“As I expected, there was something to be gained for him—he wouldn’t have been concerned for mages in general. Witches are too ugly to have the sympathies of a shallow prince.”

“But you…?”

“I…will help. Like you said, it’s a worthy enough cause—I can look past others’ motives.”

My nervousness softened to a grateful smile. “You’re a good woman, Lady Cadenza.”

She sort of laughed at this; then she rose and stood, dismissively tossing the passion blossom away from her hair, having suddenly lost all desire for coffee or conversation. “So you tell me, Fritz. So you tell me.”

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The Magi of Friarsville.

They are a group mostly composed of young farmhands swayed to the cause by the kind elves of the south mountains and the lone witches dotted across the countryside, who proved to be their only support in rebuilding from the countless territorial wars in their area when the king and the nobles had failed them; most are not “magi” at all. But the rest of the group is a ragtag sort, comparable to that catch-all drawer one might find in a dresser, with bits of yarn, broken fiddle strings, a tin of old boot polish that has lost its color, and knick-knacks and pieces of things you cannot for the life of you discern the origins of stuffed away inside. They are not like the groups you’d find in stories, where everyone is neighbor to one another in a closely-knit group of like-minded individuals; in fact, the only things that truly bond them together are the group name, their general social station, and purpose, and even the first two seemed to different from person to person as if it were an opinion, and you had asked them what their favorite song was (some choosing to change the name of the group to include whatever town they were from, or in some cases, to their own native tongue.)

There was prominent among them a lady from the Song dynasty, called Qing-jao, whose name meant “Gloriously Bright”, but who was neither particularly intellectual nor cheerful; she was a quiet and austere young woman, simple in speech and rigid in manner, with all the pride and aloofness of that old and great nation; and leading alongside her, a rather rotund, ruddy-faced woman by the name of Gertrude McMurdo, whose hams shook whenever she shuffled from place to place, but who could throw a punch that knocked the largest of men off their feet, and who was mother to two magically-gifted children. These two very different ladies led a hodge podge of flaxen-haired, tobacco-chewing farmboys, mysterious but pure-hearted elves, inexperienced but enthusiastic magic users, and a few characters who couldn’t be sorted into any of the above archetypes in a group only a handful of months old.

And then, of course, there was us, the special forces, as we were seen by the general public; the heir of the land, the honorable young Prince Merridale, beloved commander of armies and defender of the chivalric way, flanked by three of his most trusted allies, the loyal officers Hildegard, Warren, and Slovsky; the enchanting gypsy of a foreign and modern world, the powerful mage Lady Madrigal, object of the country’s most fantastic and exciting stories, looking all the more exotic with her hair done elaborately, and garbed in an era-appropriate Song ruqun given to her by Qing-jao; and the grizzled old minstrel, the iconic wandering musician in myself, stretched as tight as my nerves could allow with the presence of my dear young protégé Miss Melody Ferrier along on this most dangerous errand.

This diverse company gathered around a small meal of bread and cold soup that Cadenza likened to gazpacho and that many of the elves couldn’t seem to stomach in one of Friarsville’s many hay fields, discussing whatever was on our muddled brains. Taking my fiddle under my chin, I played a few pieces of songs to lift our spirits that had gone bitter and dark with the evening; Qing-jao took a surprisingly strong interest in my western tale of an ugly but rich old man who had, despite the mean set of his brow and cruel look in his eyes, traveled all of Guardia continent finding young aspiring painters to selflessly sponsor with all his wealth.

“You sing us this, because know you that even though we look like not much, we can still make a difference? I like this message,” she told me earnestly once I had finished. The slim razor of a woman then bowed until her forehead touched the ground—a Song sign of respect for an elder. Hunter’s expression melted into a frown at this; his every internalized rule of chivalry shouted at him all at once to keep the woman’s face from the dirt, but I stayed his hand. Nothing was a greater sign of disrespect than keeping a Song from paying what they believed to be a rightful and due homage; you may as well have spat on the king’s feet as he rose the sword to knight you.

The lad hated to idly sit by and see the lady do what he considered a dishonor to herself, but such is the way of things when two contrasting cultures meet. It wasn’t the first time in our meeting that traditions and practices hadn’t meshed together perfectly, and it certainly wasn’t going to be the last; speaking honestly, the only person who seemed ready to accept it all was Lady Cadenza, looking as comfortable in her Song ruqun as if she had been born in it, and speaking at length with Officer Warren over the latest songs in the Chorastrian courts. She was a cultural butterfly, worldly and open-minded, and full of stories of her own land for the curious listener. It was in these moments that the lighter side of her showed; and I knew that, despite whatever she might say about this whole experience afterward, she really enjoyed the time she had getting to known these foreign people.

Lady Gertrude let the conversations run their courses until the last of the stew was slurped through farmhand lips, and then she, with her flabby arms aquiver, clapped her great freckled hands together to call the meeting to order.

In her deep, motherly voice, she began, “O fellow Magi of Friarsville, lend me thy ears! We come together this chilly autumn night to plan a course of action to bring too-long-awaited toleration to the magically gifted of our land—and will we go on undaunted by the skepticism and superstitions of our countrymen! So committed we have been to our cause, and so striking the resolve in our hearts, that we have inspired the dear Prince himself, and a powerful mage of a world beyond our own to join our cause! Let us hearken to their words now, and see what wisdom and passion they would like to share with us all.”

Eyes fell upon Hunter first; he seemed quite in his element, the crown prince delivering a speech to the adoring masses. He stood tall and proudly, hand over his heart, and proclaimed, “Your perseverance and your resolve have touched me, my friends, and I am very much honored to champion your cause all throughout the Renamor streets. Bar no passage, and close off no public square--I will see to it that we are heard, seen, and remembered by all—and I will not rest until we have guaranteed an audience with the King, my father, himself! He dismisses this as some silly, passing fancy, not just of mine, but of all the people--but we will prove to him that we come in earnest—and that we will not simply forget what we have strived for!”

A rousing cheer rode through the assembled, like a wave of electricity down the spine, voices and hands rising to exalt that prince of princes. Something in his way of speech reminded me of his father, and I couldn’t stand to look at him much longer in that light. Luckily for me, the mood changed perceptibly when the cheers faded away, and gazes shifted again to fall upon a much more reserved and realistic Cadenza.

She gave us all a long, grave look, searching our faces and holding our attentive eyes as she rose, and made an appeal to us; “I have but one thing to say to you all; and I hope Fritz will forgive me for bringing the history of other worlds back up again, but I’ve found that these situations repeat themselves in different forms all across the worlds of humans. That one thing is: don’t let this campaign end with an Edict of Nantes—don’t be satisfied with a temporary truce and a limited toleration that can and will only be broken later when it becomes convenient. Yes, that might last long enough for your generation to have peace—but by the time those children, like Melody sitting right there, have all grown up, it will be gone and things will be just like they are now, only the mages will have become comfortable and complacent where they are, and will only be caught off guard when the hostility returns. If you’re serious about this—then make things as permanent as you can. You can’t just change the laws—you have to change people’s minds. And that…is a far more difficult task.”

Eyes blazing brilliantly blue in this earnest speech, she finished and sat down again to silence, a little crestfallen and awkward but resolute in her words nonetheless.

Faced with this reminder of the difficulties they faced ahead, the Magi exchanged serious, meaningful glances amongst themselves. They could find comfort in the pomp and circumstance; in the glory of the revolution the prince had spoken of; but through the lens of history, they realized they had to take a harder look at just what they were doing. I write these words now with great respect for my friend’s boldness and honesty; few people could have given such a cold slap of reality to these farmboys with their inflated egos and delusions of grandeur. They would not be accepted in Renamor as the heroes they pictured themselves as—some Chorastrians would have to be led kicking and screaming through this whole thing.

The only sound for a time was the rustling of wind like a lyre through the hay; I saw Miss Melody give Cadenza a sympathetic look in this midst of all this, but the woman seemed unmoved by it. I might have done the same as the lass, but I knew that was not what the woman needed; her words might have seemed harsh when following a fluffy, inflated speech like the prince’s, but she knew the Magi needed to hear what she had said. Perhaps they could even be thankful later. If, when she reads this account, she tells me that she truly did need my support then, I will have a thousand apologies waiting for her, but realism was necessary and welcome in this group—someone had to keep our feet on the ground. The man that boosts your hopes up, only for you to fall short and fail in the end, is a most detestable deceiver, no matter what his intentions may have been; but the man that keeps you linked to reality is a valued adviser, and one that you should keep close to you to the end. The royalty of Choras, in particular, is notorious for the former.

As I looked out across the pensive faces, I could plainly see that Qing-jao, unfortunately, had not taken the same view of things as I did; she perceived the gypsy’s words as some sort of affront to her and Lady Gertrude’s leadership and the resolve and sincerity of their group, and it could all be read in the sharp look of her dark, quick eyes and the firm set of her thin lips as she glanced upon the Latina. I had a feeling then that these two young women, both fierce and formidable in their own right, would clash before long, either verbally or physically; and I could only hope that the fight I foresaw would not come at a crucial moment.

The tension amongst us all persisted for a moment; but then it was broken by a comically high sneeze from none other than Borrof Slovsky, loveable oaf with little sense of timing or drama. A few giggles started first from Miss Melody, and then it swept through the ranks of the farmboys like a winter cold, making their cheeks flush a ruddy hue as they reeled back and shook with the laughter; it was the wonderful quality of youth put to work to lift the spirits of those weighed down by their heavy burdens and cares. Lady Gertrude seized the metaphorical reigns again then, whipping back up those gathered into the discussion of plans and supplies, and straying away from the ideology and potential outcomes and repercussions. We already had enough to worry about with that questionable stew in our stomachs that night.

And so, I close my account now with this last chapter; the last chapter before we turned the corner and could no longer retract our slogans and campaigns without having left our indelible mark and message on some mind or some town, or even the whole of the kingdom itself.

This is a story that concerns many people, and so now, I shall allow those other people to lend their perspectives to the telling of this tale.

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The Gypsy’s Contribution:

I considered starting this with some old gypsy adage, or my views on the kingdom of Choras, but I’m sure there will be plenty of that in the parts to follow. Everyone will be writing about the “good Prince Hunter” or the “fierce Qing-jao” or making up some moving and passionate but ridiculously out-of-character speech on the value of tolerance for me to say—and so, I’ll leave that for them. Here, I’ll start with the people that won’t be mentioned much, if ever, by anyone in this story. The supporters stuck in the background; like the wooden beams of a house stuck behind the paint and flowery wallpaper.

See--no one really understands Choras’ “Three Stooges” quite like they should (no one cares to take the time), and that leads some to write off their contributions as nonexistent or accidental, like those that simply saw Bo’s sneeze as a socially clumsy, ill-timed action. I won’t argue that the man’s thinking processes sometimes take longer than it does for water to freeze at high noon in the Pé del Fuego Desert (literally the “Foot of Fire”), or that sometimes he’s unsure of what’s appropriate, but that sneeze was a characteristic Bo move; he sacrifices his own dignity for the sake of lightening situations and minds. My little speech—glorified and made long-winded in Fritz’ romanticized account to such an extent that it may as well have been wearing a flowing golden cape, or be named “Zorlo”—was no where near as beneficial to the Magi as Bo’s faux paus was in the big picture. He let the group lapse back into comfort and informality, where as I brought some of them to face something they weren’t ready for. The Magi had to bond as a group before they could face the tougher problems; and Bo allowed them to return to doing that.

He’s slow—but he can be oddly insightful.

Peter and Hildegard went overlooked too; while the farmhands were busy swooning over stories of Hunter’s war victories (really, the stories could only be impressive when you were drunk while listening to them—but the farmboys had that covered), the elves wrapped up in Fritz’s masterful melodies, and the new mages bothering me every second with questions and requests for training (one was convinced that a wand and pointed hat were required for anything), those two soldiers were volunteering their resources and their skills to the tasks that needed to get done. We—did I just include myself with them? I guess I did. Well, we had to find something the elves could eat as we moved further away from the mountains they lived in and entered the cold stone and mortar jungles of the cities—and they took care of that. We had to find bedding and clean water for people with a thousand different preferences and tastes—the farmboys liked their water cool straight from the river (with a little whiskey mixed in), and the elder Magi preferred it boiled, and others had their quirky cases of limb pain or supposed arthritis way younger than someone would really get it and needed extra pillows or some special quilt their mother knitted them ages ago—and they volunteered to take care of that. Some might find that sentence exhausting and confusing to just read—but imagine having to take care of the picky little problems merely hinted at in it. That’s just one of the things they took upon their shoulders.

But there were too many glory hogs around for anyone else to be noticed; Hunter, by choice (and birthright?) and, despite all our efforts to the contrary, Louis and myself. Qing-jao, too, drew much of the attention away with her naturally dramatic mannerisms and foreign practices. I think I had “besmirched”, as Merridale put it, her and the group’s honor and doubted their resolve more than a few times that evening, and even Bo could see that I wasn’t one of the Song’s favorite people. On principle, she couldn’t outright hate me—I was magic, and she didn’t want to hate anyone magic, because she thought it made her look hypocritical. At one point, even though we were talking about hating me, I think I had indirectly told her it was okay, because she was hating me for the prick I could be, and not because of the blood running through my veins, but she seemed to think I was setting her up to feel it was okay and then call her a magic…ist, or whatever they would be called, and stomped away.

From then on, I made sure that Qing-jao wasn’t the group’s chef. You could kill just about any human through their stomach—you just had to put enough seasoning to cover the suspicious taste they noted before their eyes rolled in the back of their head and their face went whiter than a fish’s belly.

It was nearly three in the morning when we stopped trying to pretend we were listening to Gertrude prattle on and finally went off to sleep. Gertrude, of course, was the last of us. Vaguely in my dreams I could feel the earth cease shaking when she finally stopped swinging her massive arms around and lay down; in the dream, it was the end of a minor earthquake.

I’m a light sleeper--in Rubato, you had to be. So sometime around four, I woke up suddenly to the disappearance of the little source of warmth near my back. I rolled over on my bed of leaves; and some part of my mind that wasn’t shouting at me to go back to sleep realized that Melody was no longer where she insisted on curling up an hour ago. My exhausted legs reasoned that she had just gone up to use the little girl’s bushes, and that there was no reason they’d have to get up and walk to search for her. When that stubborn, alert part of my brain retorted that Qing-jao seemed to be missing too, my legs asserted that she, too, had gone to use the bushes and to possibly protect Melody, and then promptly fell back asleep. It was up to my hands to give me some leverage to stand and look around.

There was hay; miles and miles of hay. And drunken farmboys. Miles and miles of drunken farmboys.

A few feet from me, there was Louis clutching his hat and snoring out something far from musical, and a crusty old witch who slept with her eyes open. A few seconds’ observation revealed the big green eye was following me around; I shuddered, and moved on. There was Hildegard and Bo and Peter, all sleeping in a defensive ring around their precious prince, as if they could stop an arrow from any angle while lying on their backsides. Bo made the circle more of a misshapen hexagon. Gertrude slept in the center of the whole crowd, her belly rumbling as she breathed. I considered asking her if she had seen Melody and Qing-jao go somewhere, since she was the last to fall asleep, but then remembered her penchant for never ending an answer once she had started, and thought better of it. I was on my own for the time being.

I looked around again. We were in a ridiculously big hay field in the middle of nowhere—and Melody was certainly still around an hour ago. She couldn’t have gone far. Of course, if someone (or something) had carried her off, that would be a different story. The pessimistic (or some say realistic) part of me chose that moment to wake up then, and reminded me that there were no, as my legs had asserted earlier, bushes around to serve as little girl’s bushes. And that tireless bastard called logic chimed in and stated that if Melody was around, and, well…safe, she would have been in plain sight. The hay wasn’t that tall.

Mierda.

The swearer had to get its two-cents in too—and that seemed as an appropriate time as any.

I staggered around the sleeping masses, squinting out across the sea of hay, as useless as I knew it was. I wondered if Qing-jao might have a scent of some sort I could follow…if I had had a dog of some sort. People always seemed to find lost people that way. After a few minutes of futilely searching through the hay (some of which I was growing increasingly sure was not hay—and realized that was why the farmboys had probably brought us here) I found myself wishing I had Algretta’s tracking device with me for the first time in my life.

Hitched up to a stake a few meters away from the crowd were some horses; the only one I was actually familiar with was Merridale’s Mannie, and I wasn’t about to wrestle with some bucking bronco when I was still only half-awake. The prince would probably have an aneurism when he found her missing (no search party ever seems to return before dawn, if they ever do), but Mannie it would have to be. I wasn’t walking.

The mare snorted when I ran a hand through her mane to gently wake her. I didn’t think anything of it; even the prince’s stately mount was entitled to be a slob at four in the bloody morning. After a day of carrying a pompous prat around all day and having to prance on demand, she probably did more so than most others. Animals could only restrict themselves to human etiquette for so long.

I threw a saddle across her back, and hefted myself on; the ground loomed before me for a second, and as the blood rushed to my head I realized she had reared up on her hind legs while I was getting on. Half-asleep, neither of us could really tell what was happening. I tapped her leg once, twice, and softly sang a few notes of one of her favorite songs, as best I could with only half my vocal chords awake. She calmed down.

So then I had a ride; I just needed a direction. Some part of me found the reality that I was now the tracker, instead of the one being tracked, ironic. The rest of me didn’t find that quite so amusing—and so irony was shut up and reassigned to formulating an idea. Where to go?

That question didn’t linger for long—but I wasn’t the one to answer it. Mannie’s ears perked up with a cacophony of crows and other birds in the distance, and just as I spotted the black rats with wings rushing out at all angles into the sky (birds do not always fly in chevron formations, bloody past science teachers—not when they’re scared out of their minds) the prince’s stately steed was off at a sprint towards the disturbance, mouth afoam and snarling. As a war horse, Mannie was far faster than she looked—she had to be, so that she never looked worth stealing to an enemy—and so I held on for dear life as we darted across the rolling hay fields, crushing some farmer’s livelihood under her hooves all the way. Stalks flew around us like the panicked birds.

I soon learned riding in a Song ruqun wasn’t easy; the flowered silk flaps up into your face and flies out all around you, obscuring your vision and giving you a nice little welt on the head with the jade ornaments hanging off the belt. It took the principles of aerodynamics and spat in their face—like riding with a parachute flowing out behind you. What is a ruqun exactly, some of you might be asking? Well, essentially it’s an era-appropriate kimono (often worn by Hispanian servants to the Song, as I was posing to be), only somehow it manages to be even less maneuverable. Women in this time period apparently loathe practicality.

The stretch of plains (or what I thought might have been plains, but could only tell by elevation and the general lack of tree branches smacking me as they would later) between the sparse woods we entered some time later and the hay field where the Magi camped was just a fluttering sea of red and purple silk lilies to me; so when we jumped over a patch of brambles and finally slowed down to enter a clearing, it took me a while to catch up with a reality where I wasn’t drowning in flowers and cloth (the special “hay” that I had only just left behind probably didn’t help matters either.) Mannie gradually came to a comfortable trot, sniffed around, and then stopped altogether, utterly confused but somehow calm. She had been practically rabid in her direction before (if foaming at the mouth was any indication), but animal instincts seemed to fail her then, almost as if she had just remembered she was a prince’s horse and such “base” things were supposed to have been trained out of her.

With some effort, she began to, as gracefully as possible, crane her neck around in countless directions, trying to find what had startled the birds before in the manner of some lost noble girl left to do her (gods forbid!) own grocery shopping in a common market. Even with this change in behavior, I could see that she was determined; most animals see another fleeing danger and follow, no questions asked—but an animal trained for combat searches for the area of most risk, and jumps into the danger headfirst. It seemed a little counter-evolutionary to me (weren’t the animals with traits that accelerated the coming of death supposed to well…die off?), but we had no other leads, so I let her go about her business.

We wandered for a while, ambling through the scraggly trees and looking around for some obvious cause for the birds’ fear, like a giant snake or some wolf scarfing down bird eggs, so that we could just write this whole adventure off with an, “Oh, that makes sense,” and go back to sleep. Something about the endless rows of trees and ocean of fallen leaves reminded our legs that it was bloody four--or maybe even later now--in the morning, and that we hadn’t slept for more than an hour. As we continued on, I thought I could almost smell the sorry excuse for gazpacho we had eaten earlier in the air.

Nossos spiritos, I thought, it’s coming back up.

The idea was terrifying. It had been disgusting enough on the way down.

Concerned over the prospect of having to taste the mixture of stale bread, vinegar, and oil mashed together for a second time, a few seconds passed before I noticed that the sound of leaves crunching under hooves had stopped; and as I glanced over to see why, my half-asleep mind reasoned that Mannie must have been feeling sick too, because she had paused again and tensed all over, her ears standing straight up and twitching on the top of her head. The fact that horses don’t generally eat soup wasn’t one that crossed my mind. Mannie flared her nostrils then (not a sight that aided my already-ailing stomach) and sniffed once, twice, and once more with decision and a slanting of the head.

A light went off in my brain at that moment—did she smell the gazpacho too? The “hay” hadn’t messed with my senses? If so, that meant Melody and Qing-jao could very likely be somewhere nearby.

The smell grew stronger for a second afterward, swelling to fill the entire clearing, and clear anyone’s mind of any thoughts but hopes that a sudden cold would strike them and their noses would be stuffed beyond all reckoning of scent. Then it was overtaken by this earthy odor I couldn’t place (and that could hardly be considered an improvement) before something like a spear-sized wasp’s stinger bit into the side of my neck and the world suddenly went dark, colorful, and…swirly.

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I awoke to the looming, angular, and tan face of a man who looked like he thought he had just done me a huge favor. The effect of this troubling vision (the guy had clicked his tongue and winked when I sat up) and the throbbing pain in my neck and head nearly sent me back into my spiraling world of bright crayon colors; but before I could fall back onto the rock I was propped up on and wonder how long the food poisoning from the soup would take to kick in, and think hey, you know, maybe the netherworld or hell or whatever wasn’t as bad as they say, and there might still be music or something, Qing-jao nudged aside the man (who I was now hoping just had some sort of facial tic) and shoved a palmful of smelling salt into my face.

“This help you get senses back,” she said, administering another handful with little to no regard for how badly ammonia could sting one’s eyes. With the inevitable tears welling up, I was barely able to hold her off from giving me a third dose.

Thinking I had recovered a few seconds later, I tried speaking, but all words fell apart into a fit of dry coughing. Qing-jao waited expectantly throughout it all for me to speak.

“First—who the hell is he, and what was he doing to me before I came to?” I demanded finally, pointing to tall, tan, and creepy.

“He?” she said, following my gaze, “He is Prateek. He suck the poison from wound in your neck.”

“The poison in my neck?”

Qing-jao obviously expected this reaction. She replied calmly, “Yes. We shot you with a dart full of henbane to stop and catch you. We not think you come along on own. But it only stay in long enough for drug-like effect to take hold, not death.”

“Henbane?” I repeated. It wasn’t a poison I was familiar with. Somewhere in my mind, the fact that the name contained two words I was familiar with registered, and my knowledge of Gaian/English and its bloody compound words went to work. A hen was the name for a female chicken—that was simple enough (even if it was a weird start.) And bane? That was a thing that caused destruction—or just the destruction itself; the end result and not the cause. But those two words put together? Well, the answer was something you blurted out in disbelief upon realization: “You shot me…with chicken poison?

It sounded like one of the most embarrassing things to be hit with ever.

And to my horror, Qing-jao nodded. “Yes, it is named like that, but hurt humans too. Mostly a drug. The farmer boys plant it with the hay. We see ruqun I give you, and shoot.”

I was shot with what the farmboys used to get high after dinner. How lovely.

“Yes, yes, I follow the part where I was shot with…well, where I was shot—but why? And where’s Melody?”

“These men,” Qing-jao spread her arms to encompass the clearing, and I could see more tan faces emerging from the bushes and grinning, “they come from Kajal, to see that magic is defended in the right way. To see that things are done in the right way.”

“Kajal…? Isn’t that the make-up they use in the east as mascara and eyeliner and such?”

The Song canted her head to the side, and looked around at the men like one who’s tasked with the job of educating the village idiot. “Ah, do you mean India? It very popular in Kajal. Some of the men here are wearing it.”

“Ah, yeah…India. That’s what I meant.” Qing-jao waited patiently as my mind ran through a quick equation; My Earth’s Indus equals standard Earth’s India, which apparently now also equals Medina’s Kajal. Inter-world travel never ceases to amaze.

Looking back up to meet the stares of the men, I muttered an apologetic, “Sorry, go on.”

She continued as if she had forgotten the interruption altogether. “The Magi—they not understand magic. The elves only care about their mountains—and the humans think they can just run in and chat problem over with the king. These men—they have no group name—are seeking those who do understand magic to help them do things right way. That’s why we brought you here. And that why I brought Melody.”

“You…have magic? And intend to involve a little girl in something like this?”

“The lightning bolt bends to my control. You may soon see just how much. As for girl, she has more to her than meet eye. You already know of magic potential she has.”

“Right. But that’s potential, and not actual…” the sentence ran away from me under the collective gaze of the Indians. Gone were the grins, replaced with the steeliest stares I had been given since my last dinner with the family (and I wasn’t sure whether the grins or the looks were more discomforting.)

Again, Qing-jao gave me that look of one dealing with the dumbest person around for miles, equal parts pity and exasperation. “Not worry, you. We and the girl return to Magi before morning. They not wake ‘till late. Then we wait to be contacted by Curry.”

“Curry?”

“Yes, he is—”

“---Never mind. I can see he’s the one that just started grinning again. Would it be stupid of me to think you’ll explain this all to me further later? I don’t like signing on the dotted line before I read the…”

“…Before you read the…?” Qing-jao had the expression of one who had absolutely no idea what was going to come next. I had almost forgotten that Medina didn’t have contracts in the sense modern worlds did. Or the same sayings.

“…Nothing. I just realized you wouldn’t get the analogy.”

The Song shrugged it off again. “You understand everything, in time,” she said, in response the question I had asked before my botched attempt at figurative speech. The Indians murmured in general agreement with this. The whole lot of them wore looks that said, “Hey, that’s good enough of an answer for you, isn’t it? Because if it isn’t, well then you should pretend it is. You really should.”

And for the time being, I pretended that it was. There was bound to be enough henbane shooters around to ensure that at least one hit wouldn’t be a lucky, merely hallucinogenic dose. And after having only just learned that I was clean of everything from Prateek aside from his offending lips sucking out the poison from my neck, I wasn’t ready to lie back on that rock and die just yet.

Melody chose that moment to wriggle out of the bushes into the clearing, pulling along Mannie who looked with stunningly humanlike asperity at the Indians as she trotted on out. All over her tan coat, more numerous than the milky beige spots, were smudges and handprints of “India”, some vaguely resembling letters of Romani. I tried reading a few, but they amounted to little more than disjointed symbols and words.

“Instructions,” Qing-jao said when she had caught my puzzled look. “We tell Hunter they are just smudges of coal if he see. They are instructions for the morning when we arrive, and can be washed off after.”

“Can you…read them?”

She looked at me as if that was the most ridiculous question she had ever been asked. “Yes. Can you not?”

She may not have understood the common use of inflections and tone in English, but the disdain-tinted surprise just echoed off that “not” perfectly, lingering in the air and waiting for the inevitable and embarrassing answer it knew would follow.

“Erm…well, no--not much. It’s sort of similar to Romani, but--”

The woman cut me off, as if she couldn’t bear to hear me utter another stupid word: “I will read instructions then. You just carry them out as well as you can. Make sure to listen so I not have to repeat. We won’t have much time.”

“But I still don’t know what we’re…” the sentence melted away under Qing-jao’s gaze. That seemed to be happening a lot lately.

“Just listen and do. No worry.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Melody was waved over to us then, and with Mannie and a black mare called Hokkien (which I later learned was the name for the Chinese version of blackjack—and had to question the kind of person who’d name their horse for a game people lost house payments over), we started back for the hay fields. We arrived over half an hour before the first of the farmboys awoke, and by then, Mannie had been washed clean, and Qing-jao had whatever our instructions were for that morning memorized to the letter.

All I could remember seeing were the words “muse” and “cleanse”—and at the time, I hadn’t the faintest idea what they could mean.

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