The Ruby Dolphin had a three-D model of a dolphin over the door, in what I thought might be deep red gss. It was striking, anyway.

  Inside, Serru scanned the room, then gestured. “Jaelis is already here.”

  In the centre of the room was a semi-circur stage, on which a band was pying; the other half of the circle was a dance floor, with several people making good use of it. Around that were tables, something like two-thirds of them occupied.

  The aquian who rose to greet Serru with a hug and a not-at-all-sisterly kiss had the usual height and slender streamlined build. Hair of a vivid rich green had been braided with flowers; skin the pale violet of wild lics had been painted with the shadows and highlights and business parts and leaves of flowers, but not the flowers themselves, which was a fascinating subtle effect. Most aquians I’d seen wore wrapped garments that were around knee-length, but Jaelis was wearing a more fitted ankle-length deep-purple-and-white skirt, close over ens hips, and from mid-thigh down it both fred dramatically and was slit up both sides; a row of cing extended up from each slit to the waist, which might be holding it together. Bead jewellery glittered around throat and one ankle and in both ears; around one wrist was a wide gold-and-silver band that didn’t match with the rest.

  I saw ens webbed hands wander, sliding across sleek tex fabric stretched over curves. Serru seemed perfectly amenable to that, and no one else acted like it was at all noteworthy even though we were in public, but I’d seen other public dispys of affection in settlements. Clearly it was considered acceptable and normal.

  Once she could breathe, Serru introduced us. Well, she started with Terenei, but only got his name out.

  Jaelis caught both of Terenei’s hands and pulled him close for a hug, which of course he accepted and returned with enthusiasm. “I’ve heard lots about you, and I’ve seen some of your art! Thank you for my gorgeous portrait of Serru. I’ve been meaning to get down to Coppersands to see if I could meet you.”

  “You’d certainly be welcome in my family’s house, for Serru’s sake and because I know some of the ingredients my grandfather needed and couldn’t get for a while came from watery kinds of pces she couldn’t have reached alone.”

  Jaelis ughed. “A few days off work for a short camping trip with an expert is just a vacation. If we spend a bit of time gathering and splitting whatever it sells for, and it helps people to help other people, that’s a bonus.”

  “This is Nathan," Serru said, "a gatherer and paramedic, who is dealing with some personal business right now and I’m helping which is why I’ll only be here tonight. And that’s Aryennos, who’s helping as well. He’s a librarian.”

  Jaelis offered both hands in a clear invitation for a hug; I went along with it. “Well, if you need to travel, you found the right companion to do it with. Whatever it is, I hope it gets resolved quickly. Maybe next time through you can stay longer.”

  “I’d like that,” I said.

  Aryennos accepted a hug as well. “I’m pretty sure I’ll be back over this way. I haven’t been to the Gss Shallows before. It’s a lot more interesting and beautiful than I thought.”

  The tables turned out to be round, and rge enough that we could just shift chairs around a bit to have room comfortably for five.

  The aquian who came to take our order greeted Jaelis by name, and Jaelis in turn clearly knew the menu well and helped us decide what to order.

  “Didn’t you mention a felid friend as well?” Jaelis asked Serru.

  “She’s with friends who live here,” Serru said.

  “Nami and Sumi,” Terenei supplied. “Nami was quite enthusiastic about joining us but they’re staying home long enough to make sure the children are all fed and put to bed and they’re coming ter.”

  Jaelis nodded. “There are plenty of adults around who could, but I would not be surprised if they have a routine that they prefer not to change. Sumi’s youngest hasn’t been weaned yet, either.” En chuckled. “I’m not sure if a routine would be for the comfort of multiple felid children who like to know what to expect when, or so the adults can make certain that everything gets done properly and nothing is missed. Once the little ones are all settled, it should be easy for Nami and Sumi to escape for a while.”

  “The children might be getting an excellent bedtime story,” Terenei ughed. “Heket’s a storyteller when she’s not being a farmer.”

  “She’s getting to spend some time with them anyway,” Serru said. “A few things she said sounded like maybe she doesn’t see them as often as she’d like, so that’s good. She helped us out, I’m gd we could help her with this.”

  “Did you do your usual loop innd?” Jaelis asked. “I hope so, we’ve been hearing about some serious disruption in the middle of the Shallows coast.”

  “Right through the middle of the disruption. That’s how we met Heket. We ran out of open paths, and she’s from near the southern edge of the destruction. It’s a mess down there.”

  “Word has it that there were zombies involved.”

  “There were. Nathan has a healing ability that also unmakes zombies and mosslings. I think we can assume that the Zombie King does not care for that.”

  “Truly? I’ve never met one of our too-rare healers who can do that.”

  “It’s a contact-based ability,” Terenei said, “that combines Antidote, Panacea, and Cleanse. If we can get an alchemist with the right specialist skills to listen, maybe they can create a potion that includes all three and works on contact. We know that the combination works. It just needs two things in particur. We need a stable way to put them together without neutralizing each other, which they normally do. And we need to make sure it doesn’t need to be ingested, which might be tricky since only Cleanse normally works externally as well. Those are problems but they are specific ones and determined masters have solved bigger ones.”

  Wait, had Terenei just implied that the ‘personal business’ my friends were helping with involved finding the right alchemist? Well, we could hardly expin that I was hoping it would turn up in my levelled-up formus. But if it didn’t, either with upgrading my tools or after the fourth site, maybe someone really could do exactly what Terenei was describing. I’d seen any number of amazing things people here had created, after all.

  “That would change the whole world for the better,” Jaelis said. “We’d still need to be alert, but having a way to set someone free and keep everyone else safe would be... I can’t even think of a word. If every warden had a couple of those in their basic kit, and every frequent traveller... No wonder the Zombie King doesn’t like you. I don’t imagine the Moss Queen does, either. Be careful out there. Please.” En id a hand over Serru’s and squeezed. “Don’t make yourself a target. No accidents.”

  “Always,” Serru said. “And where could I be safer than beside someone who can cure a moss infection?”

  Our attentive waiter brought our requested drinks, interrupting that subject, which might be just as well.

  En also brought a folded piece of paper. “I was asked to give you this,” en said, passing it to me.

  Curiously, I opened it.

  I’m pretty sure you’re starting to get HER attention and that is not good news for you or your friends. We really REALLY need to talk alone and you’d rather talk to me than her, I promise. Get away from them and I’ll find you.

  “Who gave you this?” I asked the waiter.

  “An aquian I’ve never seen before. Dark grey skin, dark reddish hair cut short and rather ragged above shoulder-length, no skin art.” En gnced back. “I don’t see en now.”

  “That doesn’t sound familiar to me either,” Jaelis said. “Certainly distinctive, though. And working in the post office, I see everyone local. Is something wrong?”

  “No.” I shoved it into my bag. “I’ll deal with it ter, it’s nothing important.”

  The conversation drifted onto more general kinds of catching up, and my attention drifted as well—while I could do reassuring chat with a patient to distract and calm them, I never was a natural at small talk, and secrecy and unfamiliarity combined ramped the difficulty rating considerably.

  Instead, I watched Serru. At home, I’d expect someone to act like a different person when a romantic or sexual partner, current or potential, was around. Everyone wants to show their best self, to catch and hold reciprocal interest, right? I was sure I’d done it, although I hadn’t recognized it at the time.

  Serru didn’t. She did orient more towards Jaelis, but they had clearly not seen each other in a while and she had said this was one of her oldest and closest friends. Besides, the rest of us had been travelling together for a while, and it was understandable to make sure en was included. Her body nguage and ughter suggested that she was comfortable and rexed. I wasn’t sure I could even say there was more physical contact than usual, since there tended to be a lot of that by default with Terenei around.

  Jaelis saying my name jolted me into blinking and refocusing. “Yes? Sorry.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Oh. Yes. My mind was wandering, sorry. Just paying attention to...” What was harmless? “... to the music. They’re putting a lot of energy into it, it sounds great but I’m wondering how long they can keep that up. It’s still early.”

  “There will be a second band coming in ter. I happen to know that will be one of my favourites. The Five Winds Music Festival starts... actually, I think it’s tomorrow. We’re on the primary Shallows route to it. For the past fortnight we’ve had any number of musicians and bands along with the usual reted performers of other sorts travelling through. With so many musicians and dancers and storytellers and jugglers and I don’t even know what all else at this time of year, we’ve developed ways to make them feel welcome. Teachers invite them to schools to talk or demonstrate or both, we have several parks that are designed to be comfortable for performing outside and located where people will notice, and establishments like the Dolphin split the entertainment into early and te.”

  “Five Winds Festival?” Aryennos echoed, and he sounded startled. “That’s near here?”

  “Halfway between here and Crystal Pass. It’s hard to miss the turnoff for the Festival Grounds. Why?”

  “I think my father’s band might be at it.”

  “Might be?”

  “Well, they have in other years. Not every year but most. I haven’t talked to him tely, and it’s hard to keep track of where they’re going next. Most of the year they stay in the southeast Midnds and a short way into the Grassnds and Forest, near family, but they do take a couple of months to travel farther and sometimes they go to specific events at any time.”

  A music festival.

  The phrase conjured images of crushes, mosh pit injuries, heat exhaustion and dehydration, panic attacks, anaphyctic reactions, drunken brawls, overdoses on unfamiliar drugs or drugs from unfamiliar sources, and people just generally pushing themselves past reasonable limits. Always know where all exits are, and pn routes and means to get someone out in a crisis, although crowds could make that dangerously problematic...

  Some of those things were literally impossible here. The rest were likely to be greatly reduced by the default tendency to be aware of and thoughtful of other people.

  What a concept: a music festival where one could actually pay attention to the music, not to survival.

  “We might be able to stop by there,” I said. “It’s almost on the way. How long does it st?”

  “A week,” Jaelis said. “Which band is your father in?”

  I left Aryennos to answer that while I thought. He would probably be happy to see his father, and I could hardly criticize that given my own current quest. It might be fascinating to meet one of his parents. And a music festival here would almost certainly be extraordinary. I caught Serru’s eye and gave her a questioning look; she shrugged, with a faint smile that suggested to me that she wasn’t surprised.

  “It will be an extra dey if we stop,” Serru said. “But it might be worth it. We can talk about it in the morning. We do need to stop at the school, but if nothing else, we might be able to spend the night at the festival.”

  “I don’t want to slow us down,” Aryennos said, visibly torn. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “It’s your family,” I said. “And you haven’t seen them in a while. I’m pretty sure we can survive a short detour. It won’t be the first and I doubt it will be the st. But, like Serru said, we can figure it out tomorrow.” I couldn’t imagine a music festival here that had a cover charge, let alone needing to buy tickets to get in. I wasn’t sure they’d even have a single main stage for headline acts, or anything of the sort, really.

  “I suppose it partly depends on how much research I can do and how quickly I can do it.”

  “Research?” Jaelis said.

  “People have tried before to come up with ways to treat zombies and mosslings,” Terenei said. “We know Nathan’s way works, but there are, as you said, always stories of other individuals with solutions. Virtually always healers, which is interesting, don’t you think?”

  “I heard a story of a florian once,” Jaelis mused. “They were able to sever the connection to the Moss Queen and essentially poison the infection so it died over time, although it sometimes left scars that healed slowly.” I saw Jaelis’ webbed hand tighten around Serru’s, and that shifting of weight might have been another touch under the table.

  I really should have remembered to ask Terenei about that while I’d been acquiring my new skin art, instead of getting distracted by sensations.

  Everything pointed in only one direction anyway. Serru tended to know more about the Moss Queen than the Zombie King. Terenei and now Jaelis, both of whom had known her a long time, considered it a good idea to offer an extra bit of reassurance when discussing mosslings. And one of the first things she had told me was how common it was for someone to have been caught at some point by one or the other, especially when alone outside.

  “Florians don’t turn up on the Grassnds often,” Aryennos told me, his tone completely casual. “There’s not enough trees to make them comfortable even along the water. They’re uncommon even in the shallower parts of Greenelk Forest, really. They have such an affinity with pnts of all kinds that it’s a bit of a surprise more don’t have ways to stop her.”

  Somehow my friends were implying a whole backstory for me without ever precisely lying. I really hoped Serru didn’t mind the semi-truth being created for her friend.

  “Or they do but we don’t see it,” Serru said. “Florians are not typically the most sociable folks even with each other, though there are of course exceptions. The most unusual aspect of the one you heard about might have been that they disagreed strongly enough with the Queen and cared enough about others to act on that, not that they could do so.” She shrugged. “Anyway. We’ll be at the school tomorrow to investigate other earlier attempts at resisting those two, and we may be able to arrange a festival visit. Right now, I believe I see our food coming, and that interests me more.” She looked sideways at Jaelis, and smiled. “Best to eat well and have lots of energy for ter.”