When Wren came hurrying back, she had her bow slung over her shoulder, along with a quiver of arrows, and was carrying both halves of a paired dreamstone. Liv was fairly certain that she’d kept close track of just how many sets Master Grenfell had made – one had been for him to communicate with his nephew, Isaac, during the leadup to the war against Lucania. That set had been useless for months, until Caspian Loredan had returned Isaac’s seized half while they were in Freeport. It had happened between the two older mages privately, and Liv only knew because Grenfell had asked Liv to see that Isaac’s wife received the returned stone.

  There had also been a set of stones split between Matthew and Thurston Falkenrath, which had been brought back to Whitehill by Keri, Wren and Ghveris just prior to the battle at the south pass. Matthew had both halves, the last Liv knew – though it wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d sent one to Triss’s family, or to her brother’s fledgling barony. A third set had been used by Master Grenfell to stay in touch with Liv and Sidonie, during the time that they were on the run from Lucania, and Liv kept half of that stone with her even now.

  The final set – and the one that Wren had been given – had been used in an attempt to communicate with her father. That was, Liv was certain, the one that the huntress had brought now, and she immediately thrust one cracked half of the stone out to Ghveris.

  “So that you all can reach me if you need to,” Wren said, before Liv could even ask. “And so that I can know when all your enchantments are set to rights. I’ll worry the whole trip, otherwise.”

  Ghveris looked between Wren and Liv, hesitating.

  “That’s a good thought,” Liv said. It was a struggle to keep a grin off her face, but she managed it. “I’ll let you know if I need to pass anything on to Wren, and you can tell me if she needs anything.” She nodded, encouraging the ancient war-machine to accept.

  “That is reasonable,” Ghveris said, after a moment’s consideration. “And it is better not to disturb your dreams unless necessary.” He extended his enormous gauntlet, turned it palm side up, and opened the articulated fingers. Wren placed the stone within, and it looked like little more than a broken pebble.

  “Alright, send me on then,” Wren said, striding into the middle of the white stone.

  Drifts of snow had piled up over the sigils, and if Liv hadn’t been able to feel right where the one she needed was, she would have had to hunt for it. She used the toe of her boot to kick snow aside until she’d revealed the carving, then kneeled down and pressed her palm to the stone. The moment light began to shine up through the drifts, Liv scampered back off the waystone to watch Wren leave.

  “Check in with Ghveris once you’ve got to the tribe,” Liv called, and Wren had time to nod once before she was obliterated in a column of blue that stretched up into the sky. Then, with Ghveris, Kaija, and her guards at her heels, Liv conjured a plane of coherent mana, which they rode up into the sky toward the mountain peak.

  ?

  Though she would have preferred a trip to the hot springs, Liv made directly for her makeshift solar on the first floor of the castle. She was pleased to see that the workers from House Isakki had continued their steady progress during the time that she and her companions had been gone: the second floor was now clearly distinct from the unworked stone above, with entire sections of raw stone removed to make way for the fittings of great glass windows. The work was in various stages of completion, which left Liv to hope that they’d blocked off the second floor from the first, lest the entire edifice be filled with cold winter air.

  Someone must have thought of it before her, for the corridors, warmed by V?r engraved tiles in the floor, were practically cozy. Liv noticed that she was leaving small puddles of water behind her, as the snow and ice from her boots melted, and winced. When she’d left, there hadn’t even been a full cleaning staff yet, just soldiers who did their best. She slipped her boots off the moment she was inside the solar, leaving them to one side of the door to dry.

  Thora and Miina had clearly been there before her – or at least let someone know that Liv was coming – for there was a roaring fire in the hearth, a tray of hot tea and snacks on the side table, a pair of slippers for Liv to step into, and a neat stack of parchment on the desk, with three fresh quill pens and a bottle of ink set to one side.

  “I’m going to send most of the guards for a rest,” Kaija said, stepping off to one side so that Ghveris could pass through the door. Liv had made it a condition of every step of the design process that her friend should be able to fit into every room, every corridor, and through every doorway, even when her architects had complained. She hated having to see him constantly ducking and turning sideways at Castle Whitehill, and practically everywhere they went, and she’d wanted him to be comfortable in at least one place.

  That meant that the Antrian juggernaut was able to settle himself onto a sturdy stone bench just in front of one window, which had been placed there just for him. A cushioned pad had been set on the top of the bench, not because it made any difference to Ghveris, but to prevent the sound of enchanted steel scraping against granite.

  “That’s fine,” Liv said, settling herself into the chair at her desk. She poured herself a cup of tea and took a sip. “In the unlikely event that anything threatens me, Ghveris is right here.” She looked down at the report on the top of her stack, and saw that it was the proposal she’d asked for from Bryn Grenfell and Coram Athearn. Liv lifted it off the top and began reading.

  A few moments in, Miina, having changed out of her travel clothes, slipped through the door. “I saw a message off to let Matthew know you’re back,” she said, coming around to get herself a cup of tea. “Who do you want to speak to first?”

  “If Bryn and Captain Athearn can be easily found, bring them,” Liv murmured, half her attention still on what she was reading. “I also want to speak with Soile, but Keri needs to be back for that. Is Basil back from Freeport?” The steward, rather than follow them to camp at the college, had been left to close up Acton House before making his own way back to Bald Peak with Vivek Sharma and what permanent staff had come with him to Lucania.

  “I’ll find out.” Miina tossed back her cup of tea, then swept back out into the corridors, closing the door behind her.

  One person that Liv didn’t have to call for was Arjun, who joined her in the solar perhaps a bell after they’d arrived back at Bald Peak. “Your guard is recovering nicely,” he told her, before crossing the room to take a seat in one of the cushioned chairs by the fire.

  “Harold?” It took a moment for Liv to pull herself out of the reports she was reading and change track to what her friend was talking about. “That’s good to hear. If House Asuris is able to get working limbs sorted out at the Foundry Rift, I’d like to offer one to him. Tea?”

  Arjun nodded, and Liv poured him a cup. She stood from her chair, crossed the room, and handed it to him.

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  “Thank you.” He took a sip with obvious pleasure. “How was the trip? I heard you nearly died once, but that was before you went on to Coral Bay, so I’m sure that I’m a bit behind.”

  “It was only the once,” Liv grumbled. “And I didn’t nearly die. I wasn’t even wounded. I just didn’t know how to re-assemble my body until Keri helped me. That’s entirely different.” But as much as she tried to make a joke out of it, the idea of existing as nothing but a swirling storm, unable to ever take form again, still frightened her.

  “Harold said you exploded into a blizzard, and then tore out through the hole in the tower,” Arjun said, his eyebrows raised. “Where you proceeded to do… whatever living blizzards do, I suppose. Cover everything in snow? Did it all stay, after you reformed, or did you have to–” he waved his hand. “I don’t know. Suck it up?”

  “It stayed,” Liv admitted. She took a seat on the cushioned bench next to Arjun’s chair. “As did the icicles on the tower, and the ice-slicks down in the courtyard.”

  “Have you tried it since?” Arjun asked her.

  “No.” Liv shook her head. “I didn’t want to make any sort of experiments while we were in Lucania – especially something I don’t have control of.” She sighed, and leaned back on her cushion. “It was almost really bad. I know everyone’s been telling me that it would be a problem if I died, but that drove it home. I had nothing else to do but think about what was going to happen to the alliance, to Whitehill, to Ractia, if I couldn’t find a way to come back.”

  “We would find a way to keep going,” Arjun assured her, leaning forward. “We would, Liv.”

  “But I haven’t done the sort of things I should have done to make that easier,” Liv argued back. “Lucania has an heir, at least. I don’t.”

  “You have Matthew and Henriette,” her friend pointed out.

  “That solution has all the same problems it did after we won at the pass,” Liv told him. “He won’t be able to keep the alliance together. And as much as I love my brother, he’s not personally powerful enough to keep Lucania, or any one else, from attacking us.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem, now that the great council’s finalized the peace terms,” Arjun said.

  Liv shook her head. “Julianne taught me all this. If you don’t have an heir, your position is weakened. People need to have that confidence, that even if you fall, there’s going to be someone to carry forward. I haven’t wanted to think about it, but that’s me being selfish.” She sighed. “How about you, though? I haven’t seen you in weeks. How is the hospital project coming along?”

  “Well,” Arjun said. “Like everything else here, we can’t get anything built fast enough, but I have plenty of healers, between the college and House Esteri, and even a few members of my jati who’ve chosen to stay here. We’ve started to see patients from all across the alliance, coming in by waystone, though it's only in small numbers at this point.”

  “You don’t sound as happy as I thought you’d be,” Liv said, after a moment spent examining her friend’s face.

  “No, it’s good – we’re doing good work,” Arjun said, though he wore a frown. “I’ve just been thinking…”

  “Thinking what?” Liv took a sip of her tea.

  “When I went to Coral Bay, I wanted to learn magic,” Arjun said. “I felt like people back home were too bound up in the way things had always been done before. I had a goal. Even after we had to flee Coral Bay, there was always something we had to do, right in front of us. Even if it was only defending Whitehill, or pressing forward until we got to Ractia, the steps along the way to those things were things that had to be done.”

  Liv nodded. “The urgency is gone. The clarity. It’s one of the reasons I was worried the alliance would fall apart, if we didn’t do something to bind everyone together.”

  “It’s not just that,” Arjun said, after a moment. “I’ve been following you for so long now, Liv – more than a year, since we left Coral Bay, but really even before that – that I’m not so certain what it is I actually want to be doing.” He almost seemed to panic, once he realized what he’d said. “Not that I regret anything we’ve done. It all needed to happen. It’s just–”

  “It’s alright, Arjun,” Liv told him, as gently as she could. She tried not to show it, but she felt a stab of pain at the memory of Rose leaving her. Did you even think about taking one moment to ask me how I might feel about you putting a crown on your head? Had she been taking Arjun for granted, just assuming that he would be happy setting up a hospital for her?

  She’d certainly asked him to stay behind, not once, but on several occasions, now. The one thing that made Liv feel battle was that Arjun hadn’t actually left her yet, which meant there was still time to do better.

  “Listen,” Liv began. “You can do whatever you want, Arjun. Don’t feel like you have to do something for me, if you don’t want to. If you need to take a little while to think out what you want, do that, and then I’ll support you whatever it is.”

  “I want to be recognized as a full mage, in my own right, at the very least,” her friend admitted, after a long moment. “That means culling an eruption, which means taking a bit of time away from the hospital.”

  Liv stood, walked back to her desk, and refilled her cup with fresh tea. “Would you like to come to Godsgrave with us?” she asked. “We’re going to need healers. Someone else can take charge of the hospital while you’re gone. And there’s only a few people I trust at my back in a rift.”

  “You would be welcome, Arjun,” Ghveris rumbled, from where he sat on his bench, cradling the dreamstone Wren had given him in both hands. “We do not know what condition my people will be in. It could be dangerous to move them.”

  “And the rift itself is going to be horrible,” Liv pointed out. “I only saw pieces of it in the dream Jurian gave me, but even that was enough to make it clear we can’t go in without a good plan, and making certain we’re ready. Even the air is enough to hurt people.” She looked over to Ghveris. “I’m not even certain your armor could keep you safe. Do you remember how much sand used to get in there, when we were in the desert?”

  Ghveris gave an exhalation of steam, which Liv interpreted as a sort of shudder at the memory.

  “Is it actually erupting?” Arjun asked. “Does it erupt? Has anyone ever actually culled that place?”

  “We don’t even know,” Liv admitted, raising her open, empty hands. “Everyone who went there with Jurian is dead now. But if there really are three dead V?dim there, it's going to be the strongest rift any of us have ever gone to. Jurian showed me beetles and centipedes in the tunnels, but they also found wyrms there. That’s what ended up killing half his party.”

  Arjun tapped his fingers against the cup of tea in his hands. “That’s actually part of what worries me about the idea,” he admitted. “Not the wyrms; we’ve fought those before, and we can fight them again.”

  “We may not even need to kill them,” Liv broke in. “I want to try bringing a few members of House Iravata to tame them.”

  “It’s worth trying.” Arjun shrugged. “But I was talking about the corpses. Before we take you anywhere near that place, Liv, I want to get you up to the ring. I want to know whether your body is still changing, or whether you’ve reached some sort of balance. Particularly after what happened at Freeport. You did exactly what Celris did, when the two of you fought. He was a living storm, you told us that yourself.”

  “The dowager was able to turn into a flock of birds, and she certainly wasn’t a V?dim,” Liv pointed out.

  “No, but we also don’t know what Ractia did to her,” Arjun said. “And I don’t want to take any chances. You already have a hard enough time existing outside of a rift, Liv.”

  “The new enchantment array helped with that,” Liv argued. “It kept me feeling well all the way through the time we were in Freeport. It wasn’t until the very end of our stay at Coral Bay that I started to get headaches.”

  Ghveris turned to look at her. “You did not tell us that you were starting to weaken,” he said, sharply.

  “Because it hadn’t gotten very bad yet,” Liv said. “I know my limits pretty well at this point. If it was going to be a problem, I would have told you.”

  “Unless your limits keep changing, because your body keeps changing,” Arjun said. “No, on this I’m going to take a firm stand. You won’t go anywhere near Godsgrave until we’ve had a chance to compare your body now, to what Elder Aira found when she first put you on that table. Which means we need to have her meet us up in the ring.”

  Liv could feel her eye twitching. “We don’t have time,” she protested. “We need to get to Varuna during the dry season, and that gives us less than four months to work with.”

  “An army will not move tomorrow,” Ghveris said, utterly betraying her. “The Red Shield will not be here tomorrow. We must choose what supplies we are bringing. There is time.”

  “Fine.” Liv sighed, and admitted defeat. “You have until Wren brings Soaring Eagle back here, Arjun. I’m yours to study.”

  here. I am more available there than I am here.

  Dramatis Personae

  Livara T?r Valtteri Kaen Syv? - Guildmage, former scullery maid at Castle Whitehill, the bastard daughter of Maggie Brodbeck and Valtteri Ka Auris. Mountain Queen, and Lady of Winter. Confronting the political realities of feudalism/monarchy. [35 Rings of Mana, not counting mana stored in items.]

  Arjun Iyuz - Journeyman Guildmage from Lendh ka Dakruim; his jati specializes in healing magic. Having a bit of an early midlife crisis. [18 Rings of Mana]

  Ghveris, the Beast of Iuronnath - Formerly a Great Bat in service to Ractia, now the remains of his body form the heart of an Antrian juggernaut. If he could narrow his eyes at Liv, he would have. [Mana Battery: 10 Rings]

  Kaija - Former Armorer at Kelthelis, captain of Liv's personal guard. Her job gets so much easier the moment Liv is back home. [21 Rings of Mana]

  Miina t?r Eilis, of House D?ivi - Daughter of Eilis, niece of Eila, cousin of Liv, Lady in Waiting. Quietly enjoying her (mostly) off screen fling. [21 Rings of Mana]

  Wren Wind Dancer - Daughter of Nighthawk, cousin of Calm Waters. "Here's my number, call me!"