Chapter 16: Qilani II (Part 3).

  ****

  Along the Sotria river, Month: 94, Year: 226.

  “Don’t listen to that fool Achello,” the voice murmured. “I can give you what you want. I can get your people behind those walls.”

  Qilani nearly fled the room, until that last promise rooted her in place.

  Is the dagger… speaking to me?

  “You wanted a blessing from Auron, didn’t you?” the voice coaxed. “Well, now I'm here. And I can get you what you seek.”

  Qilani edged closer, breath unsteady. She had never heard of a relic that spoke back.

  “How are you speaking to me?”

  “Magic, naturally. But that’s not what matters. Stop listening to that miserable lord. His word means nothing.”

  “How do you know?” Qilani asked, feeling absurd for questioning a dagger.

  “I know a crook when I see one. And that Lord Achello is as crooked as they come.”

  Qilani hesitated and the dagger took the silence as an invitation to keep talking. “All you need to do is find something on him, something he wants to keep hidden. Then, you'll have that rat eating from the palm of your hand.”

  Qilani sheathed the dagger and hurried out, hoping she wasn’t too late to reach Lord Ottelio.

  “Lord Ottelio! Lord Ottelio!” Qilani called as she burst onto the deck, breath fogging in the frigid air.

  Fortunately, he still stood by the rail with Onahi, deep in conversation and in no hurry to disembark.

  “Sorry. Am I interrupting?” she asked, slowing to a halt.

  “Of course not,” Onahi replied, stepping aside so the young lord was no longer shielded from Qilani’s approach.

  “Wait, you should hear this too,” Qilani said, looking at her fellow worker. She wanted Onahi beside her, to lend both support and the right words in the Haksari tongue.

  They both turned to her, expectant.

  Qilani unhooked the dagger’s sheath from her thigh and held out the whole assembly. “I claimed a relic of Auron,” she said. “But it's not one of the ones the captain seized. I found this one in the ravine just outside Kalista.”

  She drew the blade free. Onahi leaned closer, brow furrowing. “I don’t know… it doesn’t feel like Auron’s magic. Looks ordinary to me.”

  “I thought so too,” Qilani said. “But it spoke. To me.”

  She explained how the dagger had guided her, how it suggested a way to deal with Lord Achello.

  “I don’t know…” Onahi murmured. “I had never heard of a blessing of Auron that spoke directly to its user either.”

  “Your blessing lets you vanish and twist light into illusions,” Lord Ottelio said, lifting Onahi’s gloved hand as if presenting evidence. “Tell me how a talking dagger is stranger than an illusion-making gauntlet.”

  Before she could argue, he pressed on. “And Uncle Achello has been accused of embezzlement and tax evasion before. My mother is convinced he’s guilty, they just never found proof.”

  Onahi exhaled in surrender. “Fine. But if we do this, it’s just the two of us. Princess Sulaye stays here. She’s safer on the ship than sneaking through a castle with us.”

  “Thank you,” Qilani said, fastening the sheath back to her thigh.

  “Before we go, Lord Ottelio. Do you have these ingredients?” Qilani asked, handing him a small list written on folded paper.

  Once everything had been gathered, the three of them slipped back through the gates and into the castle. Only Ottelio, Onahi, and Qilani; no Drakvari warriors, no princess. The escort led them through a series of quiet corridors to a chamber where a massive stone slab dominated the room, its surface etched in Solenya script.

  The guards poured liquid into a basin set behind the stone and stepped aside. As they withdrew, the carved letters flushed a deep red, and a fragile warmth pulsed out into the cold air.

  “It generates heat through magic,” Onahi explained, noticing Qilani studying the glowing stone. “They’re big and need proper installation, so you can’t put one on a ship. But some Haksari buildings have them.”

  “Even so,” Lord Ottelio added, “the rooms grow colder as the long night drags on. So you'll have to use blankets and furs either way.”

  Lord Ottelio dismissed the guards and stepped out, leaving the two Drakvari workers alone. Qilani sat on the edge of the bed, looking over the room’s size. “A dozen of us could fit in here if we slept close,” she murmured. “It feels wrong that just the two of us get to use a room like this while the rest freeze outside.”

  “I know,” Onahi sighed, letting herself fall back onto the bed. “Haksari can be real jerks sometimes. But you do have a plan, right?”

  Minutes trickled by as the two of them lay side by side, listening for footsteps and muffled voices beyond the door. Better to wait until their overseers grew drowsy, just a few more minutes to be safe.

  “Why did you take the job of living among the Haksari? Weren’t you scared?” Qilani asked, breaking the silence as they waited.

  “Of course I was scared.” Onahi gave a soft laugh. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories we’re told about the Haksari back in Kalista.” Another laugh escaped her. “The predatory, treacherous and Drakvari-eating Haksari.” A short silence. “But the offer was there and nobody seemed to be willing to take it. So… after much internal deliberation … I just went for it.”

  “Turns out they’re not so different from us,” Onahi said, smiling at some private memory. Then she corrected herself. “Actually, they are quite different from us, but not in the ways that count.” She turned to face Qilani, “In reality, they are far from the monsters the books and stories describe. Sure, some are jerks and indeed treacherous; but some are sweet and caring, just like Drakvari. At the end of the day, they are human, just like us.”

  “Sweet and caring?” Qilani asked. “Are you talking about Lord Ottelio?”

  Onahi smiled and placed her palm on her forehead. “Otto?” She inquired. “I would classify him in the jerk category. Definitely.” She caught Qilani's look, understanding that she wanted further explanation. “He used to tell me all sorts of lies just to make fun of me with his friends for believing him.”

  “Once he told me that if you hugged a tree's trunk hard enough, it would drop its fruits for you. Another time, he told me that dogs were baby horses.” She sighed. “Gosh I was gullible, I guess that's what happens when you grow up in a place where nobody can tell lies.”

  Qilani laughed, the conversation stalling for a moment. “What was it like… living among them, in one of their cities?” Qilani asked, genuine curiosity in her tone.

  “Awkward. Scary. Mostly awkward at first,” Onahi chuckled. “Then it just became normal. A new kind of normal.”

  “Do tell!” Qilani said between a laugh. “Awkward how?”

  “Well…besides Otto's little pranks…” Onahi hesitated, cheeks puffing with suppressed laughter. “For example: I thought Lady Corinna was everyone’s mom. Everyone’s. Like in Kalista. I just assumed the whole city had one mother.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “I operated under that assumption for months.” She laughed at herself.

  “Turns out, each Haksari woman has her own babies. Just two or three individual babies. Which means most people don’t share the same mother at all.”

  “And then there was the tailor’s dress,” Onahi continued. “He sent it for Lady Corinna, so I gave it to a boy and told him to take it to his mother. He did. Except his mother wasn’t Lady Corinna. Lady Corinna never saw the dress. I found it later on some completely different woman, looking very proud of it.”

  “Only then did I realize how many situations I’d been misreading.”

  Qilani nearly choked on her laughter while trying to hush it down. “So… most Haksari have a different mother? Even inside the same city?”

  Onahi nodded.

  “How does that even work?”

  Onahi laughed. “Weirdly. But it works for them.”

  She hesitated, then winced at another memory. “And then, there was a time during a long night, just like this one. I woke up and couldn't sleep anymore. The halls were completely empty and it was too cold to go outside. I was so bored that I went to Otto's room, just for company. I saw him in his bed but he wasn't breathing. I searched for his pulse and he didn't have any, he was also very cold. I was terrified and started shouting and shouting. When the guards finally arrived, I was on top of him, trying to resuscitate him.”

  She buried her face in her hands. “Turns out he wasn't dead, it's simply that Haksari enter a hibernation of sorts during the long night. They can fall asleep when the long night begins and wake up when it's over, as if nothing had happened. It's really creepy. It's almost as if they were dead.”

  She exhaled, eyes drifting upward. “But you know… I don’t regret taking the Ferano assignment."

  A soft snore echoed from the hall outside.

  Onahi and Qilani rose from the bed and tucked pillows beneath the blankets in their place. Onahi’s gauntlet shimmered; light bent around them like a cloak of shadow, and they dissolved into obscurity as they slipped out the door.

  The guards outside were already fast asleep, slumped against the walls, the tea Lord Ottelio had given them working as intended, steeped with the same sleeping herb the dagger had recommended.

  “Your friend’s magic is wonderfully convenient,” the dagger remarked as they moved unseen through the corridors.

  They reached Lord Ottelio’s room, where he waited just outside, and together they approached a locked wooden door of Lord Achello's workplace.

  Qilani jammed a hairclip into the keyhole, hesitating; until then the dagger murmured guidance in detailed, methodical steps. Her hands obeyed before her mind caught up.

  A muted creak announced the lock’s surrender. They eased through the door and closed it quietly behind them.

  They had entered the Lord’s office.

  “What are we looking for?” Onahi asked, letting the illusion around them dim into a soft light so they could see. The room was cold, crowded with books and mostly dark despite her magic.

  “I’m not sure,” Ottelio murmured. “Books, records, anything compromising.”

  Onahi rifled through the papers on the desk, but the dagger urged Qilani elsewhere. Go to the shelves in the back.

  Qilani nodded toward them, and Onahi joined her. Dust clung to the spines of dozens of ancient books, except for one, a plain brown volume with a leather cover untouched by dust.

  Open that one, the dagger whispered.

  As Qilani’s fingertip brushed the cover, the world lurched and reformed around her, just as it had the first time she touched the blade.

  Suddenly she was looking down at the same book, only the hands turning its pages weren’t hers. Through another person’s eyes, she watched those unfamiliar hands tuck folded documents between the pages before closing the volume with a quiet, satisfied grin.

  Qilani blinked back into herself. “What was that?” she whispered.

  “What do you mean?” Onahi and the dagger asked at once.

  Qilani pulled the book from the shelf and carried it to the desk. She recognized the spot instantly: it was the very desk from her vision. She sat, opened the book, and the world seized her again.

  It was the middle of the day, and unlike the present, it was warm and comfortable. Qilani could even feel the air and warmth vividly. Two men pitched a bridge repair at double its worth, with a promise to deposit gold directly into Achello’s accounts. She saw through Achello's eyes and felt through his palms as the Lord shook their hands with a smug flicker of satisfaction.

  Then it all vanished. The cold returned, the room dark once more, and the book lay open to the exact page the lord had seen it in her vision.

  “Lord Ottelio,” Qilani whispered. “Will this work?”

  He unfolded the hidden documents and skimmed the contents. “This…” His eyes narrowed, then widened. “This is perfect.”

  “Really?” Onahi blinked. “Enough to make him let everyone in?”

  Ottelio’s mouth curved into a mocking grin. “More than enough to make him roll over like a puppy.”

  He straightened. “Return to your room. I’ll handle the rest.” He continued with a few satisfied words to himself as he continued to inspect the book. “Oh dear uncle. What am I going to do with you?”

  Qilani and Onahi returned to the room they had recently left, they had come and gone so quickly that the sheets were still even a little warm when they lay again. But neither of them was willing to sleep until they knew the outcome of Ottelio's negotiations with Achello.

  “Do you really think Ottelio can do it?” Qilani whispered. “Get them to open the gates?”

  “Of course,” Onahi said. “You can trust him with this kind of thing.”

  Qilani breathed out, comforted by how easily Onahi said it. Perhaps trusting a Haksari wasn’t as strange as she’d once believed.

  Her gaze lingered on Onahi. “Could I ask you something?” She contemplated asking her about the rumors about her that lord Achello had mentioned earlier.

  “Sure.”

  “Never mind.” Qilani continued, finally deciding to ask some other time as it seemed to be a rather delicate matter and she didn't want to make her fellow worker uncomfortable.

  “All right.”

  The wait didn’t last long. Bells rang through the corridors, followed by a knock and a handful of Haksari guards inviting them to a ceremony outside.

  Lord Ottelio waited on the other side of the hall, just at the edge where one reached the central plaza outside. He looked towards them approaching and then smiled smugly. Onahi smiled widely in response, and hurried to approach him. They shared a couple of hushed words in the language of Solenya, both of them barely containing the laughter.

  When Qilani reached her two partners in mischief, she realized she was stepping into what seemed like a garden, but was now covered in frost. She saw the courtyard below. Lord Achello emerged on the other side, wrapped heavily in fine fabrics, and stepped onto a broad balcony overlooking the city. A handful of citizens braved the chill to watch from the square below; far more observed from behind shuttered windows, mostly out of the colds way.

  He raised his voice for all to hear. “Citizens of Lamor! In these difficult times, Solenya rejoices at the height of our righteousness and the generosity of her faithful. This long night, we open our gates, our hearts, and our homes to the less fortunate people of Kalista, who stand at our walls in need. Tonight, we set aside the divisions between Drakvari and Haksari and remember only our shared humanity…”

  His speech continued for several minutes, full of pious flourish and civic virtue.

  “What a hypocrite,” Onahi whispered, her voice smothered beneath Achello’s sermon on virtue.

  “Hypocrisy is the backbone of Haksari politics.” Lord Ottelio interjected as he lifted his arms.

  “I guess we Drakvari are not so different from you in that regard.” Onahi said with resignation.

  Moments later, the gates admitted the workers and warriors of Kalista. Mounted Haksari paced alongside them, while archers lined the walls and rooftops, alert, armed and vigilant, however restrained. The city watched too: mixed faces of pity, discomfort, and resentment towards their leader.

  “At least they’re letting everyone in,” Qilani exhaled in relief. “At least no one will freeze to death inside.”

  After lord Ottelio said his goodbyes and left towards his chambers, the guards escorted them back to their shared room. Once there, they explained that a few of their sisters from Kalista would join them shortly, while others would be settled in nearby chambers. Extra blankets and supplies would be brought to make the long night bearable.

  Onahi thanked them and requested that Princess Sulaye be sent to their room.

  Glad that everyone would survive the cold of the long night now, Qilani glanced down at the dagger that had carried them through the ordeal. “Thank you. For everything. I owe you.”

  “You will pay later”, the dagger replied.

  “All relics of Auron have names,” Qilani said. “What is yours?”

  You may call me Maliane.

  To mother, Lady Corinna Calesso of Ferano.

  I write to you from Lamor, to wish you well and to ease your concerns of our whereabouts.

  I am safe, and so are those under my command. The journey along the Sotria had unexpected setbacks, and circumstances compelled me to make swift decisions, but I believe we acted in accordance with both our duty and the treaties that bind us.

  Events unfolded quickly, but without complications. Foreign Drakvari crossed into our territory pursuing a princess of Kalista, leaving us little choice but to support the daughters of queen Kalista. I know how such matters may look on paper, but on the ground it was clear what had to be done. They are here with us now, sheltered in Lamor as well.

  I must note that Uncle Achello proved unexpectedly accommodating. While he voiced understandable concerns, he ultimately chose generosity and humanity, allowing all parties to remain within the city during the Long Night.

  Once the long night passes, we will continue along the Sotria. With the river guiding us, we should reach Ca?rovof ahead of Princess Uquoia's forces. I intend to warn Lord Creese personally of the impending attack, so that preparations may be made and unnecessary bloodshed avoided.

  I wish the best of journeys to you and father when heading back to Ferano.

  With love, your son,

  -Otto.

  Thank you very much for taking the time to read my story.

  I’m a medical doctor who writes as a hobby, hoping to one day create an immersive world like that of Tolkien, Herbert, or Rowing.

  I post a new chapter every two weeks, always trying to keep the quality high.

  Thank you very much for your feedback.