Chapter 153: Not the Same Place

The west became familiar slowly, which was worse than if it had happened all at once.

At first it was only the hills. Then the trees changed, and the road stopped being somewhere I had never been and started reminding me of places I had. Not the same places. Close enough.

I sat against Dream Haven and watched through the window, while the others pretended not to notice I had been awake for nearly an hour. Nobody commented. I appreciated the restraint.

Outside, the road climbed between two low ridges of thin grass and scattered trees, and my legs began to ache from memory. I frowned.

[Nothing is wrong with your legs.]

’I know.’

[Then why did you check them?]

’Trauma.’

[...]

’Training trauma.’

The System considered this. [Master Valerian made you run up hills.]

’Repeatedly.’

[You survived.]

’Physically.’

The road bent, and for a second I saw a different hill: steeper, rockier, with Valerian standing at the top of it. My memory had kept him exactly as he was then, arms folded, waiting, disappointed before I had started. I had been twelve, maybe thirteen, sweating and furious and dragging my pillow behind me because he had made it heavier again.

"Again," he had said.

I had looked up the hill, then at him, then at the hill again. "I just did it."

"You walked the last third."

"I arrived."

"Again."

"I dislike you."

"Run."

It had been one of our warmer conversations. I smiled before I could stop it, and Sophie noticed.

"What?"

"What what?"

"You smiled at a hill."

James opened one eye. He had been attempting to sleep, badly. Elizabeth stopped reading, and Daphne looked out of the window. The hill went on being a hill.

"I know one like it," I said.

Sophie leaned toward the glass. "From when you lived out here?"

"From training."

"With your master?"

"Unfortunately."

James sat up. "I thought your master was a healer."

"He believed healing people was easier if I first understood why they needed healing."

James stared at me. "That makes no sense."

"It made even less sense while running."

"What did he train?" asked Daphne.

"Everything he could think of."

"Why?"

I thought about it. Valerian had given me several answers over the years. Most involved discipline, some involved survival, and at least one involved how much I complained.

"He thought I relied on mana too much."

James grinned. "So he made you run."

"He made me do many terrible things."

Sophie looked delighted. "Like what?"

"No."

"You brought it up."

"The hill brought it up."

Sophie smiled and turned back toward the window.

***

We spent the night at Waystation Twelve, which was smaller than Nine, with fewer walls, fewer guards, and no bathhouse. Civilization was clearly weakening the further west we went.

In the morning, before the convoy left, the five of us did our cultivation under supervision. The Academy had sent Instructor Sorel with the escort for exactly that purpose: a narrow woman with greying hair and the ability to hear a breathing mistake from across a room. I disliked her immediately. Not personally; professionally.

"Again," she said.

I opened my eyes. "I completed the cycle."

"You rushed the final turn."

"I did not."

"You did."

I consulted the System.

[You did.]

I closed my eyes again.

Across the room, James sat on his own mat, running his circulation slower than the rest of us, exactly as Sorel had instructed. The old channel damage hadn’t disappeared just because time had passed. He never complained about it, which somehow made it more noticeable. Elizabeth sat near the front with Sophie beside her, and Daphne by the wall. Five D-Grey cores on five mats, and five people who looked entirely ordinary as long as I ignored everything that mattered.

I started the final turn again, slower. Instructor Sorel moved on, and the System stayed quiet.

***

By mid-morning, we reached the first village where anyone seemed to know why the convoy was heading west. I knew because a woman threw flowers at Elizabeth. Not violently. Mostly. They hit the carriage window and slid down the glass.

James stared. "What was that?"

Elizabeth looked out. "Support."

"Support has stems."

"It usually does."

Sophie laughed. More people stood along the road ahead, a few dozen at most. Some waved. One man held up a strip of white cloth with a rough blue mark painted across it, and another had tied the same cloth around his arm. I didn’t recognize the mark. Elizabeth did.

"A border peace mark."

"Official?" said James.

"No."

"Then how do you know it?"

"My father receives reports."

Sophie waved back, and a little girl at the roadside waved even harder. Sophie nearly hit James again, but this time he leaned out of the way before it happened. At least he’d learned.

Not everyone was waving. An older man stood outside a smithy with his arms folded and watched the Crown carriage pass without moving. Someone had painted a word across the wall beside him, TRAITORS, and most of it had been scrubbed away, but not enough. Sophie stopped waving.

James saw it too. "So much for everyone wanting this."

Elizabeth’s expression didn’t change. "Nobody said everyone did."

Two buildings further on, a shopkeeper stood smiling under a white cloth hung over his doorway. Mixed feelings, then. People usually had them.

Daphne watched the village fall away behind us. "How close are we?"

"To the border?" said Elizabeth. Daphne nodded. "Several days."

I was still looking out the window. "Less."

Elizabeth turned to me, and I regretted speaking.

"How much less?"

"Depends where you’re measuring from."

"The treaty site."

"Several days."

James looked at me. "That was useful."

"I try not to make a habit of it."

Elizabeth kept watching me. I went back to the window. She had noticed again, which was wonderful.

***

Marrowfield was not a field. I found this misleading. It was a town large enough for stone walls, two watchtowers, three separate market streets, and a central square so crowded that Commander Renn ordered us not to leave the escort without permission. I approved of that last part, because it meant less walking.

The convoy slowed near the southern gate, and people gathered anyway. The Crown carriage drew plenty of attention. Elizabeth, sitting in ours, drew the rest. Somebody shouted her name. Somebody else shouted something I couldn’t make out. A third voice I heard perfectly well.

"NO BEAST TREATY!"

The carriage went quiet. The shout came again from somewhere at the back of the crowd.

"KEEP THEM OUT!"

A mounted guard turned toward the sound. Commander Renn raised one hand, and the guard stayed in formation. No panic and no dramatic arrests, just a man yelling in a town. Then someone else shouted, "OPEN THE WEST!" and a few people cheered, someone booed, and someone laughed.

James leaned toward the window. "This is going well."

Elizabeth didn’t look amused. "This is normal."

"You have a worrying definition of normal."

"People disagree."

"Usually with less shouting."

"You haven’t attended court."

"Fair."

Sophie was watching the crowd closely now, not frightened but thinking. "There are more white cloths than signs."

"Yes," said Elizabeth.

"So there’s more support?"

"No." Elizabeth folded the route packet. "It means more people are willing to show support."

That quieted Sophie. I looked at Elizabeth, and she caught me doing it.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"That is rarely true."

I looked back out the window. A butcher had tied white cloth over his door. The next shop had nothing. The one after that had a tiger’s head scratched into the wall beside the entrance, old and half painted over. I knew that mark, and my stomach tightened.

Daphne saw me go still and followed my eyes to the wall. "Do you know it?"

I should have said no. Instead I said, "Tiger faction."

James turned. "The beastkin?"

"Yes."

Elizabeth looked through the glass. "That mark is inside human territory."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"It could be old."

"It could be," she said, and she didn’t sound convinced. Neither was I. The mark slid out of sight behind us, and I kept looking at the place where it had been.

***

We stopped in Marrowfield for lunch. Commander Renn refused to let us into the market, James protested, Renn looked at him, and James stopped. I continued to approve of the command structure. Food was brought to a private yard behind a Crown administrative house: bread, cheese, cold meat and fruit, and no stew, which was an improvement.

I was halfway through a second piece of bread when Sophie sat down beside me, rather than across from me, which was suspicious.

"What?"

She looked offended. "I didn’t say anything."

"You moved."

"People do that."

"Not usually toward me."

"That’s sad."

"It’s comfortable."

She ignored that for about five seconds. "Were you really here for years?"

I kept eating. "Near here."

"How near?"

"Near enough."

"That answer is getting annoying."

"Good answers require effort."

She picked up an apple. "Did you like it?"

That stopped me. The question wasn’t difficult; I had simply never asked it of myself. I thought of Valerian’s house, the storeroom, the stream, and the small hill behind the house where the grass always grew too long. The shade tree I used to sleep under when Valerian thought I was gathering herbs. The village patients, the old ones who complained while I healed them and the children who cried before I touched them and cried harder afterwards, because healing itched. And then the rest of it: Mia’s cave, Lyssairia, Nyra and Caelum and Vessa, Garron, my father. The border held too much for a simple answer.

"Parts of it," I said.

Sophie waited.

"There was a tree."

She blinked. "A tree."

"Good shade."

"That’s the part you liked?"

"Mostly. And a stream."

"Also for sleeping?"

"Sometimes."

"What did your master think?"

"He believed the tree was enabling me."

Sophie laughed. "What happened to it?"

"The tree?"

"Yes."

"I don’t know."

It landed oddly. I had left, and years had passed, and the tree had presumably gone on being a tree without me. I didn’t like not knowing.

Sophie bit into her apple. "We could go and see it."

"We won’t pass near it."

"How do you know?"

I opened my mouth, and shut it again. Sophie smiled slowly.

"The main road stays north of where I lived," I said.

"That’s very specific."

"Maps exist."

"You didn’t read the route packet until two days ago."

I looked at her. She looked unbearably pleased with herself.

"Elizabeth is influencing you."

"Thank you."

"That wasn’t praise."

"I’m taking it anyway."

I went back to my bread, and she let me.

***

After Marrowfield the road narrowed. There was less traffic and more soldiers: no marching armies, but patrols, pairs of riders, and small checkpoints. Crown insignia appeared more often, and so did old defensive posts, some manned and some abandoned long enough for vines to climb their walls.

I recognized one. Not the building itself, but the shape of the land around it: two low hills, a dry channel between them, and a stand of pale trees further west. My chest tightened, and I sat up. Daphne looked over, then Elizabeth, and James followed because everyone else had.

"What?" said Sophie, leaning toward the window.

I didn’t answer. The carriage crested the hill, and there was a stream, smaller than I remembered, or perhaps I had been smaller. There was no shade tree. It was the wrong place for Valerian’s house.

A different memory came instead. Three weeks of walking with the escorts. The human border finally close, and relief arriving too early. Movement between the trees. Bear soldiers, and Garron, and Vessa behind him with his hands around her throat.

I stopped breathing for a moment. Not dramatically; my body simply forgot to.

[Alash.]

’I know.’

The System didn’t add a joke.

The stream flashed between the trees, and the road bent south. The place I remembered wasn’t exactly here, but it was near enough. Nyra falling. Caelum. Vessa. The explosion. Water everywhere. My father standing between me and Garron.

I pressed my thumb into Dream Haven, hard.

Sophie noticed first, and her voice came out softer than usual. "Alash?"

Everyone was watching me, and I had no useful lie ready.

"I came through this region."

James glanced outside. "When?"

"Before I went home."

The carriage stayed quiet. Then Elizabeth asked, "With the beastkin escorts?"

"Yes."

That was all, and nobody asked anything else. Not even James. I looked back out of the window. Trees replaced the stream, and then fields, and then another hill, and I kept breathing until it was automatic again.

***

An hour later, Commander Renn stopped the convoy at a checkpoint. There was no danger, only paperwork, and apparently danger and paperwork used the same whistle. Two short calls meant dismount and regroup. Daphne remembered the instruction before anyone else and went straight to the nearest escort marker, and James and Sophie followed her. Elizabeth gathered her skirts and stepped down. I brought Dream Haven. Renn noticed, and said nothing. Our relationship remained excellent.

The checkpoint captain and Renn talked beside the lead carriage, quietly at first and then less quietly. James tried to listen. Elizabeth didn’t need to try. I sat on a low stone marker, and Sophie stood beside me.

"Road problem?"

"Probably."

"How do you know?"

"Paperwork face."

She looked over at Renn. "What does that look like?"

"Like danger, but flatter."

She studied him. "I see it."

A few minutes later Renn came back, wearing an expression so normal it told us nothing.

"Change of stop tonight."

"Why?" said Elizabeth at once.

"Waystation Fourteen is full."

"Full of what?"

"Crown logistics, and two companies rotating toward Fort Halden."

That made sense. The signing was getting closer, which meant more soldiers and more officials and more of everything.

"Page six," I said.

Elizabeth looked at me. "You read the headings."

"Headings exist for a reason."

James looked annoyed. "So where are we staying?"

"An estate."

I looked at Renn. That was worse than a waystation. "How much estate?"

Renn stared at me. "Enough."

"That isn’t a measurement."

"It is for you."

I was being persecuted by authority. Elizabeth stepped closer.

"Whose estate?"

"Lord Corvin Merrow’s."

She knew the name. I saw it at once. It wasn’t fear; it was recognition, and her face changed by almost nothing, which was enough.

James noticed as well. "You know him?"

"By reputation."

"What reputation?"

Elizabeth looked to Renn, and Renn answered instead. "Old western family. The Merrow estate has hosted Crown parties for generations, and it’s on the approved lodging list."

That sounded safe.

Sophie looked at Elizabeth. "You don’t like him."

"I didn’t say that."

"Your face did."

Elizabeth gave her a look, and Sophie smiled.

"Is he against the treaty?" James asked.

Renn’s expression hardened slightly. "Lord Merrow has made no public statement against the Crown’s policy."

Public. Elizabeth heard it too.

"Has he made one in favor?"

Renn looked at her. "No."

Nobody said anything for a moment.

"We’re guests for one night," Renn went on. "The estate is secure. The road from there rejoins our approved route tomorrow morning, and Crown riders used it last month without incident."

The explanation made sense. I stood up.

"Does it have beds?"

Renn looked tired. "Yes."

"Then I support Lord Merrow."

Elizabeth closed her eyes. James laughed, and Sophie shook her head.

"For one night," said Daphne.

"That’s enough support."

We went back to the carriage.

***

The Merrow estate came into view near sunset. It sat on a broad hill above the western road, surrounded by dark fields and long stone walls. Too comfortable to be a castle and too large to be a manor, it had a central house of pale stone three floors high, with tall windows and two square towers that looked decorative until I noticed the arrow slits near their tops. Apparently, out west, even houses expected to be attacked eventually.

The gates were already open. Servants waited inside, and so did guards in Merrow colors, dark green and silver. Renn’s riders went in first, then the Crown carriage, then ours.

I watched the estate draw closer, and it felt familiar. There was nothing magical in it. It was only the old border feeling: a large human house, too many walls, and too many people pretending everything was normal. The System said nothing.

The carriage stopped. A man in dark formal clothes came down the front steps, older than my father and younger than Theoran, grey at the temples, and smiling.

"Lord Merrow," said Elizabeth, looking through the window.

James straightened his coat. Sophie fixed her hair. Daphne checked the courtyard before she looked at the host. I stayed where I was.

Elizabeth turned to me. "We’re getting out."

"I know."

"You haven’t moved."

"I’m preparing."

"For what?"

"Standing."

She stared at me. I sighed, sat up, and let Dream Haven shrink under my arm.

Outside, Lord Merrow kept smiling while Commander Renn walked over to greet him.

One night. A bed. Dinner. Then back to the road.

I stepped out of the carriage with Dream Haven under my arm.