Aryennos cocked his head, looking towards the stairs. “Was that the door?” He got up and went to the railing, pulling back the end of the curtain. “You got through?”

  “I did!” Terenei called back. “There is a fearsome lineup at the post office right now. People wanted to let me go right away once they recognized me but that’s just silly. Nathan’s awake?”

  “Sort of? Those potions really had side effects.”

  “Coming.” I heard footsteps on the stairs, and his voice sounded closer. “Still upset about Serru?”

  “I think it’s complicated by feeling responsible? And maybe worse associations with death than we thought, or something?”

  “Nathan, you are no more responsible for the decisions those two make than I am, and less so than I am for yours and yours for mine, for that matter, since we’re both choosing to interact in ways that influence each other. You are not choosing to interact with either of them, you’re just trying to get home. But logic might not work after all those potions, so let’s try this.” I tracked by sound as Terenei perched on the chest; I heard paper rattle. “I literally just picked this up and haven’t had time to read it yet. Can you hear, Heket?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was coming from the top of the stairs; I cracked open an eye to look, and saw her sitting on the top step, leaning against the wall.

  Terenei cleared his throat.

  “I’m home and safe. Do whatever you need to, in order to convince Nathan of that, because I’m not certain it would be easy for him to really accept even under better conditions. Tell him thank you for having the sense to make the decision he did, and just to confirm absolutely clearly, I would rather die that way a dozen times than ever be a mossling again at the mercy of that unspeakable hateful thing. As soon as I finish sending messages, I’ll be going home to put together what I need for travelling, stocking up on tents and travel bars, and coming to meet you as quickly as I can. Keep going. I’m going to send Zanshe a message expining everything and ask her to meet up with you in Crystal Pass so you have a guide in the Highnds. It will probably take her a day or two longer than it will take you, but do not under any circumstances try continuing into the Highnds without her. All the warnings you have heard have solid foundations. She can get you to the Quincunx before I can reach you and I don’t want Nathan to have to wait that long. Other than you she’s my oldest and most trusted friend and she knows what she’s doing so listen to her and pretend it’s me saying it. I know the road she’ll be trying to take and I’m not even going to be stopping to gather anything on the way. Not all the... mossling groundhogs? What? Not all the mossling groundhogs in the world will keep me away. What’s she talking about, groundhogs?” His tone turned deeply perplexed, then I practically heard the shrug as he went on. “I promise, I will find you. It’s just going to take me a few days. I expect all of you intact when I do, so stay safe! That’s the end, other than a list of things to buy in Crystal Pass and where to get them. Groundhogs?”

  “That’s for me,” I said, and heard how ft my own voice was. “Before I met her, I encountered a mossling groundhog.” No one else knew about that, right? We’d never gotten into it with anyone, just that I’d woken up here and we’d met and she’d decided to help me. If no one else knew it, did that mean it had to be from her, for real?

  Considering the zombie trio in Ottermarsh and the mossling otter and the multiple mosslings in the festival raid, I had more reason than just Serru to want desperately to believe that what I was being told about death was the truth.

  But I still kept seeing, over and over, knife, blood, moss, stillness. It still felt too real to dismiss. My experience insisted unequivocally that there was no undoing death.

  More recent experience said that there was a way but it was horrifyingly unnatural.

  And the fact remained that there would never have been a raid if I’d practised what I preached and genuinely concentrated on getting home. There’d be no question at all because Serru would still be with us.

  “Oh! Okay, that makes more sense.” Paper rattled. “I also have one from Zanshe. She says, I got an extraordinary letter from Serru but you know what it says. I’m going to have to make a small amendment to the pn because I can’t get away immediately. In Crystal Pass, go to this address and ask for Anezke. I’ll let her know. She runs a wagon of goods back and forth between Crystal Pass and other towns, including Brightridge. She’ll get you here and anyone can tell you where my house is if you ask. I’ll make sure I’m free by then and packed and ready. I’ll get you to the Quincunx as safely and quickly as I can, and stay with you until Serru joins us. From the tone of that letter, I don’t think that will take her an hour longer than it absolutely must. Please thank your new friend for me for keeping Serru safe. See you in two or three cycles!”

  “See?” Aryennos said. “I told you, inconvenient but not catastrophic.”

  “I would say,” Terenei said, “that Serru is angry but too determined and focused to waste time on that. We’ll be without her for a few cycles, but we have a pn for how to keep moving during that time. So. Aryennos, maybe you could go tell your family that Nathan’s awake and what Serru said? We can leave in the morning. There’s enough room in the wagon to nap if necessary, since it’ll just be the two of us up front, and you can have the back...”

  “I’ll be there also,” Heket said. “But Myu and I don’t take up much space and there will still be room.”

  “You aren’t going home?”

  “Serru was worried about leaving you alone on an isnd. I’m not going to leave you to travel without her. I’m not the traveller she is, and I certainly don’t know the Highnds, but I understand pnts and terrain and the outdoors in general better than anyone who lives almost entirely in a city. I think I should stay with you until you meet up with Zanshe.”

  “All right, and thank you. I don’t think anyone’s going to...”

  “You’re safer at home,” I said. “So is Myu.”

  “Myu and I are not that fragile,” Heket said. “And you may need us. We are not going to be chased away.”

  “I’ll go get them caught up,” Aryennos said, getting up. “I’m sure at least someone is still awake. I think they only stayed because we’re still here anyway, so they’ll likely leave right after us, but I don’t know which way they’re going.” I heard his feet on the stairs.

  “And you,” Terenei said briskly, “up you get and come have something to eat. There’s a Recovery potion on the stand beside you, I suggest you drink that first. There’s plenty of food. We can spend the night resting and making sure we have everything packed up, so we can leave early. Come on. You cannot stay curled up in bed indefinitely. I know that many potions takes a toll, but you’ll feel better faster once you start moving around and get some food into you.”

  Annoyingly, despite my strong inclination to tell him to come back in the morning, I really needed the bathroom.

  With a groan, I uncoiled, pushing the bnket back. Sitting up felt like a superhuman effort.

  Maybe the hyper energy that came with my felid form would make it more tolerable?

  I tried bringing up my dispy, but the white lines were heavily fuzzed and streaked, and nothing would respond to my hand. My mana bar had filled a lot less than I’d have expected after a long heavy sleep, probably no more than a tenth, as near as I could estimate with the painfully-low crity.

  I sighed and let my hand drop. “Well, no switching forms. That’s as bad as after that episode in Coppersands. Which neither of you was there for, so never mind. The whole dispy is useless at the moment.”

  “Fortunately,” Terenei said, “you don’t currently need it.” He got up and came over to offer me a hand. “You’ll just have to rely on other resources for the time being.”

  I closed a hand around his and let him pull me to my feet.

  Then I blinked at him.

  “You’ve been crying.” His violet hair was in a loose and messy tail; his practical travelling clothes showed no particur signs of being rumpled, but I saw no jewellery or accessories or makeup of any kind, not so much as earrings or a scarf. There remained hints of redness around his eyes, just a lingering suggestion of a bloodshot sclera. I said a word that they definitely did not have. “However I’m feeling, you watched your best friend...” I trailed off and wrapped both arms around him.

  Being Terenei, he snuggled into it.

  “I don’t have much experience with death,” he admitted. “And that one was bad. Listening to Aryennos helps. So does knowing she’s safely home and will be back with us soon. I’ve mostly just been asking myself what she’d be telling me to do if she were here and then doing that.”

  “Leaving you to hold things together wasn’t fair. I’m sorry.”

  “You’ve been unconscious! Quite understandably, all things considered. Stop feeling guilty for absolutely everything, you’re including far too much that you could not possibly be responsible for. If you feel like being helpful, your first job is to look after yourself. Drink that Recovery, get cleaned up, get fed, walk around a bit. I know your emotions are still going to be a mess for a while, and I’m quite sure we don’t really get exactly what you’re feeling right now, but that’s a good pce to start.”

  I didn’t want to let go, but I did need to get down to the bathroom, and he had a point. Several of them.

  It didn’t make the horrible gnawing certainty that it was all my fault go away. It didn’t make the image in my mind’s eye of Serru colpsing and dying go away.

  But Terenei had that second one too, and if he didn’t have the guilt, he did have a longer history with her and less of a history seeing violence and death. He couldn’t babysit me while I wallowed in my own morass.

  “Gotcha. Heket? Could I get by, please?” I asked it while picking up and uncorking the swirly-coloured potion to swallow in one gulp.

  Something odd in my workroom caught my eye on my way to the stairs, and I made a mental note to come back up and investigate.

  The kitchen’s gss-doored cupboards were filled; I didn’t look but it seemed likely that the local version of a fridge, which was basically a wooden-doored cupboard with two interced triangles, one white and one pale blue, on it, and the local version of a freezer, which was a smaller cupboard that had a third creamy-yellow triangle plus a hexagon around them, were as well.

  The bathroom had running water. Wherever Aryennos and his parents had found to set it up, it was in reach of the river. As the house reached full size, apparently it drove a narrow spike deep into the ground that disposed of any waste well below any level that could do harm, not something that would have worked universally by the physics I knew but it made sense here. I used the toilet, washed my face, and generally tried to persuade myself that I was at least somewhat presentable.

  Food could come after I checked what I’d seen upstairs.

  Resting on the counter, with a soft bck case under it of that not-really-leather material, was a guitar.

  The wood was richly bck with red highlights and absolutely gleaming, with a starburst design in pearly white wrapped around one end of the sound hole.

  Except that it wasn’t a proper starburst.

  It was a six-armed star, although in the centre there was a subtle etching of an interced five-pointed star instead of a snake around a staff.

  Beside it was a sheet of paper folded into a tent, with my name on the outside in a bold bck hand. I picked it up and flipped it open.

  Well done, Nathan. As bad as I’m sure you feel, you should consider being proud of yourself. You’re increasingly difficult to shop for, you’ve made friends who are taking excellent care of you, but perhaps this will be of use to you.

  It wasn’t signed.

  “Guys? Has anyone been up here?”

  “No,” Terenei called from downstairs. “We’ve had no reason to. Any gifts not food are in the living room. Why?”

  I brought guitar, case, and note downstairs to show him and Heket.

  “That’s beautiful,” Terenei said admiringly.

  “And quite clearly meant for you,” Heket observed. “Since Aryennos’ parents went back to their campsite, no one but us has been past the open floor downstairs.”

  Unmade three zombies, got an amazing reward of the house we were currently in.

  Protected Myu and freed a mossling otter, got a bag that changed form with me.

  Freed dozens of mosslings and lost Serru, got a gorgeous but less practical reward.

  “My parents are... oh wow, that’s a master’s work of art,” Aryennos said. Distracted, I hadn’t even noticed him returning. “Where’d it come from?”

  “That’s the question,” Terenei said. “And since Nathan found it upstairs with a fascinating note, I think we have to assume that as with the house and bag, it comes from either the world’s creator or an assistant.” He passed the note to Aryennos.

  I left the case on the counter, slung the strap—which was red and bck and white with a repeated pattern of healer hearts, alchemist flowers, paramedic pentagrams, and six-armed stars—into pce, and tested the strings. They were metal, and they were coloured: the top one was red, and they ran downwards, the next orange, yellow, green, blue, a rich amethyst at the bottom.

  It responded like it came from a dream, smooth and clean, and the sound was bright and clear. It almost made my poor pying sound good.

  “It’s definitely like the house,” Aryennos said. “Something that could be made by an expert, although not easily, and perfectly suited to Nathan personally. And that note suggests it too. Can I keep this note with the other one?”

  “Go ahead,” I said, setting the guitar down on its case. “I’m getting these treasures but I’m hoping to be home with my family within a couple of weeks, so I hope you can figure out who gets what and put them all to use. I’m in no condition to py right now. Maybe ter.”

  “Food is more important,” Terenei said.

  “My parents say they’ll come over early to say goodbye,” Aryennos said. “They’re going the other direction. They’re all gd you’re awake and hoping you recover quickly.”

  I nodded. Lovely as the guitar was, it didn’t suddenly make the world okay. “All right. Any suggestions on what to eat?”