C. E. Murphy - Wayfinder

“Call my guard back,” Emyr said after long moments. “Sound the retreat. Hafgan’s army will not press the advantage. They are as weary as we, and it will cause worry that we fall back. I will hear what the truthseeker has to say.”

Lara lowered her gaze and murmured “Thank you,” an instant too early. Emyr spat his final words as though they were knives: “And if her answers are unsatisfactory, I will see her executed before dawn.”

The Seelie court had changed in the months she’d been gone. Months for them: it had been only weeks for Lara, though a more complex and busy few weeks than she could otherwise remember. But in that time something darker had come over the Barrow-lands.

They did not, as she expected, retreat to the pearlescent Seelie citadel hidden in deep oak forests. Instead there were encampments at the borders of the meadow, tall silken tents bright against the tree-line. Bright until Aerin rode them closer, at least: then Lara could see the stains and worn points that spoke of travel and use. Their lifted spires and swooping peaks aflutter with bright banners were magnificent, but in places the banners were threadbare, and the cords that held tent doors open were yellowing with lack of care. In the hours Lara had spent with the Seelie, their penchant for maintaining unruffled beauty had impressed her. The small signs of deterioration struck her as symbolic of deeper fraying within their society.

Despite the threat hanging over her head—and there’d been no mistruth in Emyr’s voice, making it credible—Lara laughed into Aerin’s shoulder. She knew almost nothing about the Seelie. Certainly not enough to read meaning into details of well-worn battle gear, but she had, at home, studied psychology. It was difficult not to apply human psychoanalysis to an alien race.

Aerin pulled her helm off, sending threads of white hair around her face as she glowered over her shoulder at Lara. “Something amuses you?”

“Only my own arrogance. Aerin—” Half a dozen topics fought for precedence, and Lara settled on an apologetic, “I’m sorry for hitting you. I completely misunderstood what was happening that day. I thought you’d driven Dafydd into the Unseelie army on purpose. That you were a traitor.” An echo of the horror she’d felt then came back to her, feeding on her new concern for Dafydd. Lara clenched her teeth, fighting it down. She needed to be clearheaded now, not tangled with emotion. Struggling for something nonconfrontational to say, she blurted, “Your nose looks all right.”

Aerin’s mouth thinned. “I gathered that was your assumption, when you ordered me arrested. All Seelie have some talent for healing themselves. I’ve come away from greater injuries unscathed.”

“Recently?”

A spasm crossed Aerin’s face. Rather than answer, she urged their horse forward again, guiding it through the encampment until they reached what was unmistakeably Emyr’s tent. No larger than the others, its fabric walls were sheened blue, as though glacier ice had touched them, and the snapping banner that flew from its peak showed the white citadel in outline. Aerin gave Lara a hand, dropping her from the horse’s back as readily as she’d lifted her earlier, then swung down with a grace so far beyond Lara’s capability she couldn’t even envy it.

“Rub him down, if you will,” the Seelie woman said to a guard who stood at attention. “He’s seen no battle, but he’ll go in again more readily if he feels spoiled.”

“Do horses really look that far into the future?” Lara asked as the guard led the animal away.

“Any beast as wound with magic as our horses certainly can, if they wish.” Aerin flipped the tent flap open, gesturing Lara in. “We keep them happy, so when we ride to battle we know it’s to battle we go. You’ve ridden with us before.”

Lara made a sound of agreement as she stepped into the tent. The Seelie horses did something inexplicable to the distance they traveled, diminishing it, as if each step they took covered six or eight paces. According to Dafydd and Aerin, the horses themselves worked the spell, so it was easy to believe a badly tended animal might decide to go elsewhere rather than take itself into the dangers of battle.

Easy to believe . She pressed the heel of her hand to one eye, partly adjusting to the dimness inside the tent, but more in weary acknowledgment of a phrase she had never used before. Her truthseeking talent had always shown her the world in terms of black and white, of true and false. Nothing was easy or difficult to believe; they simply were . Only in the past few days had she begun to hear and use shades of gray in the form of half-truths or vernacular phrasing.

“Are you well, Truthseeker?”

“Well enough.” Lara dropped her hand, glancing around the tent’s interior as Aerin let the entrance door flap fall back into place. It was markedly cool within, and she wondered if every Seelie tent was affected by the element its owner wielded. Probably not: Emyr’s tent was dominated by a scrying pool and a table of maps, beyond which hung another door flap, pulled open to reveal a sumptuous bed with a deep silver tub at its foot. This was the king’s tent and the king’s tent alone. Lara doubted many others in the army were as singularly well-provided for, and therefore as able to leave an impression of themselves in the air itself. “Where’s Emyr? I thought he wanted to talk to me.”

“His majesty,” Aerin said with the slightest emphasis, “is bound to no one’s whim. Not even a truthseeker’s.”

“I didn’t mean …” Lara sighed and glanced around for a chair, finding none. The tactical meetings she presumed were held in the front part of Emyr’s tent must not last long, then, or his commanders would spend uncomfortable hours standing with increasingly itchy feet. Unless Seelie didn’t suffer from that kind of circulation problem, which seemed probable. Lara thrust her chin out and glanced roof-ward, trying to pull her thoughts into a semblance of reason.

Half a dozen tiny globes hung in the tent’s peak, offering the soft silvery light she remembered from the Seelie citadel. She had no idea what powered them. Magic, clearly, but whether it was an individual’s will or if they were somehow manufactured, she couldn’t imagine. Either way, the light they offered was flattering, even to the merely mortal. “I just wondered if I had time to get cleaned up. Not that I have any other clothes with me.”

Aerin, as if given permission, turned a curious eye on Lara’s outfit. Her dress was a classic style, boxy shoulders and a narrow waist above a full skirt, and it fitted perfectly. Or it had, before it had been torn and made filthy by climbing mountains. Lara had a sudden image of herself looking like a battered but beloved old-fashioned doll incongruously clutching the staff as though it were a weapon. She fought the impulse to twist the staff behind her back. It would only draw attention to it, especially since it stood taller than she did.

“Is this what women in your world usually wear?” Aerin asked eventually, and eyed the staff. “And how they …”

“Accessorize,” Lara supplied, but shook her head. “No to both. I dress conservatively, compared to a lot of people, and the staff—”

“Is of Seelie make.” Emyr flung the door flaps back and stalked in, his armor not daring to so much as rattle and spoil the entrance. He was as tall as Lara remembered, though the armor lent breadth to his slender form, and made him that much more alarming. “That weapon has not been seen in our lands in aeons, Truthseeker, and it is, should you wonder, most of the reason you still live.”

Air rushed from Lara’s lungs, leaving stars in her vision. “It is?”