Chapter 172: Thirteen This Time

I slept for an hour, possibly two. It was hard to tell, because when I opened my eyes the sun was already up and someone was knocking on my door with enough confidence to be irritating. I pulled Dream Haven over my head. The knocking continued.

"Dead," I said.

"Sorel."

"Still dead."

"Open the door."

"No."

The door opened. I needed to start locking things.

Sorel came in with her bag, took one look at me, and stopped. "You look terrible."

"Thank you."

"Did you sleep?"

"Yes."

"How long?"

"Enough."

"Alash."

I moved Dream Haven a little further over my face. "An amount."

I could feel her staring at me through the pillow. Eventually she walked over and pulled it down.

"This is theft," I said.

"This is medicine. Sit up."

I did, mostly because arguing required more energy than I owned. She checked my chest first. The strain was nearly gone, which was good. Then she looked at my eyes, which was less good.

"You didn’t sleep."

"I did. This morning."

"It’s morning now."

"Earlier this morning."

Sorel closed her eyes. "You have a treaty signing tomorrow."

"I’ve been informed."

"You need sleep."

"I was trying."

"You were hiding."

"Those activities overlap."

She stared at me a moment longer, and then gave Dream Haven back. "You have nothing scheduled for two hours. Sleep."

That sounded excellent. Then quick footsteps came down the corridor, and the door opened again, and Lyssairia stood there. She looked at Sorel, then at me, then at the pillow already halfway over my face.

"They’re here," she said.

I was already standing.

***

The western gate was crowded. Thirteen rescued beastkin arriving under Crown escort had drawn attention, because everything at Halden drew attention. Soldiers lined the inner wall. Foreign Office officials had appeared with folders. Several beastkin representatives were waiting near the gate, some I had seen the day before and some I hadn’t. Renn was already there with Elizabeth beside him, and James, Sophie and Daphne were behind her.

James shrugged at me. "We heard."

"Everyone hears everything here."

"Yes."

The outer gate opened. A Crown rider came through, then another, and then two wagons. They weren’t prison wagons; I checked. They had open sides and canvas roofs and Crown markings, and a healer rode beside the first and another walked beside the second.

Then I saw Saera, sitting near the front of the first wagon. The younger child was beside her, awake this time, and her eyes found me almost at once, and then dropped to Dream Haven. I tightened my grip on it.

"No," I said.

Sophie looked at me. "She hasn’t asked."

"I’m preparing."

The child smiled, which was dangerous.

The wagons rolled through, and I counted. I didn’t mean to. One, two, three, four. By the time the second wagon was through the gate I had reached thirteen. All of them. Some still wore bandages. One man had his arm in a sling. The woman with the injured ankle was on her feet before the wagon had stopped. The younger child looked healthier than she had two days ago.

Thirteen. The last time someone had sent people across a border because of me, I had counted three going out and none coming back. I hadn’t known, until that moment at the gate, that I had been waiting four years to count a number that came out right.

Then someone walked through the gate behind the wagons, and I forgot everyone else was there.

Mia wasn’t riding. Of course she wasn’t. She walked beside the second wagon with two Crown soldiers and a Cat I didn’t recognize, as though thirteen people and two days on a hard road were an ordinary morning’s work.

Lyssairia had been different. I had known she was waiting in that room. I’d had stairs and a corridor and several seconds to become annoyed enough to manage it. Mia simply walked through a gate.

Her eyes found me, and she stopped. So did I. The wagons went on around her, and people moved between us, soldiers and healers and officials and thirteen people being guided toward the buildings that had been made ready for them, and Mia didn’t look at any of them, and neither did I.

She looked me over once, slowly: my face, my clothes, Dream Haven, and my face again.

"You got taller," she said.

"Barely, apparently."

Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Lyssairia."

"Yes."

"She said that?"

"Yes."

"I’ll speak to her."

It was so exactly the way she used to say things that something in my chest hurt. I walked toward her, and she waited, and when I stopped in front of her neither of us said anything at all. She looked older. I probably did too. That seemed unfair.

"I got your note," I said.

"I assumed so."

"It was rude."

"It was short."

"It was twelve words."

"You counted."

"I read it a great many times."

For a second nothing happened. Then Mia raised one hand, and I expected her to take my ear, the way she used to. She laid her palm against the side of my face instead. I stopped breathing. Her hand was warm. She looked at me for a long time, as though she were checking that every part of me was where she had left it.

"You came back," she said, very quietly.

There were several answers available, and most of them were bad. "Eventually."

Her thumb moved once against my cheek. Then she pulled me forward and held on.

It wasn’t gentle, and it wasn’t rough. It was simply firm enough that moving wasn’t an option. Dream Haven ended up squashed between us. I stared over her shoulder at nothing. Behind me, nobody made a sound; they were learning. For several seconds my arms stayed at my sides. Then one of them moved, and I held on too. Not much. Enough.

Her grip tightened, once. I felt her breathe in, and out, slowly, the way you do when you are making sure you will be able to speak afterwards. Then she let me go, and neither of us mentioned it.

She looked past me then, at the four people standing behind me: Elizabeth, James, Sophie, Daphne. I watched her eyes go from one to the next, and come back to me, and I watched her lips move without any sound. Five. She didn’t say it aloud. She didn’t need to.

Then she looked at Dream Haven. "A different pillow."

"A better one."

"Of course."

Lyssairia had come up beside us. "That’s what he told me."

Mia turned her head. "You told him he was barely taller."

"He is."

"I’ve changed my mind about speaking to you."

Lyssairia’s ears moved. "That sounds convenient."

They stared at each other, and I looked between them. Four years, and nothing had improved. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so glad of something.

"Your riders met us on the road yesterday," Mia told Renn, who had come over. "We had already left."

"The magistrate agreed to that?"

"Eventually," said Mia, and Renn decided, visibly, not to ask how.

***

Saera refused to go inside until she knew where everyone was going. I had expected that. The Foreign Office official hadn’t, which was his mistake.

"The western guest barracks have been prepared for..."

"No," said Saera.

He stopped. Saera looked at Mia, and Mia looked at the official.

"No," she agreed.

The man blinked. "May I ask why?"

"You may."

He waited. Mia didn’t go on. Elizabeth stepped forward before international relations could collapse a day before the treaty.

"The western rooms are inside the diplomatic compound," she said. "There are Crown guards on both entrances. Beastkin representatives may come in freely once their names are registered, and the same healers stay with them."

Saera looked at her. "You checked?"

"Yes."

"Yourself?"

Elizabeth paused. "Yes."

Saera nodded. "Then we see them first."

The official opened his mouth, and Renn shook his head, and the official closed it again. All thirteen went to look at the rooms together. Nobody separated the children. Nobody demanded names at the door. Nobody touched anyone without asking. I noticed all of it, and so did Saera.

The younger child walked beside her for half the distance, and then broke away and came straight to me. I looked at Sophie.

"This is somehow your fault."

"I haven’t done anything."

The child stopped in front of me, and looked at Dream Haven.

"No," I said.

She looked at me, then at the pillow, then back at me.

"No."

She held out both hands. I sighed, and Dream Haven expanded, and thirty seconds later she was sitting on it in the middle of the courtyard while two Crown soldiers pretended not to stare.

Mia watched. "Still terrible at saying no."

"I said it twice."

"And then gave her the pillow."

"She ignored me."

"She is six."

"Exactly. Unreasonable."

The corner of Mia’s mouth moved. Saera saw it too.

"You’ve met," she said to me.

"We’ve had negotiations."

Saera looked at the child sitting on my pillow. "You lost."

"Completely."

***

It took most of the morning to settle thirteen people. There were examinations and documents and clan verifications, and questions about where each of them wanted to go after the signing. Several of them didn’t know, and that answer seemed to confuse the officials. It didn’t confuse Mia.

"Then write that," she told the clerk.

"Write what?"

"That they don’t know."

"I need a destination."

"They don’t have one."

"I need..."

Mia looked at him. He wrote that they didn’t know.

Saera’s line was confirmed first. The two Cats from the gate knew the South Reed families, and one of them had known her brother. That nearly became another problem, because Saera did not trust him at once, but he didn’t seem offended by it. They spoke for almost twenty minutes before she let him close enough to touch her shoulder. I looked away. Some things deserve fewer witnesses.

By midday, the thirteen had become someone else’s responsibility. Not abandoned, and not forgotten: placed somewhere with beds and healers and Crown guards and beastkin who knew their names, and enough officials that losing them would take truly impressive incompetence. The third choice. Make sure the right person has it, and then leave. I had said that to Elizabeth two nights ago as though it were simple. It was much less pleasant to follow than to say.

***

I found Mia outside, sitting on the low stone wall at the edge of the western courtyard, alone. That surprised me. I walked over, and she looked at Dream Haven, which I had recovered.

"Is the child finished with it?"

"For now."

"Congratulations."

"It was difficult."

I sat down beside her. For a while neither of us spoke, and it wasn’t uncomfortable. Mia had always been good at silence, though not in the way Daphne was. Daphne waited because she knew people would eventually say something useful. Mia waited because she had already decided whether the thing needed saying at all.

I reached into my storage ring and took out the folded paper: thirteen names. I held it out to her, and she took it and unfolded it, and her eyes went down the page. Saera, and twelve more. When she reached the bottom, she folded it again along the same crease.

"I know their names," she said.

"I know."

"Then why give me this?"

"Keep it." I looked at the paper in her hands. "There are thirteen this time."

Her expression changed. Barely, but I saw it.

"Yes," she said.

"Bring all of them home."

Behind us the courtyard was noisy: soldiers calling to each other, wagons moving, someone hammering something that almost certainly didn’t need it. Mia looked down at the paper, and then at me.

"All of them."

"Yes."

"That is the intention."

"I don’t like intentions," I said. "They’ve disappointed me before."

Mia was quiet. Then she put the paper inside her coat, against her chest, and kept her hand flat over it for a moment after it was there.

"They do not leave my sight," she said, "until they decide where home is."

That was better. I nodded. She studied me.

"You’ve changed," she said.

"Lyssairia says I haven’t."

"Lyssairia enjoys being wrong."

"I’ll tell her you said so."

"I encourage it."

That was the Mia I remembered, and for a few seconds it was easier. Then she said, "She told me the two of you talked last night."

I looked at her. "Of course she did."

"Not everything."

That was somehow worse. Mia looked out toward the western wall. "Enough."

I understood. Nyra, Caelum, Vessa. My hand tightened on the edge of Dream Haven. I had carried the next sentence for four years without ever once saying it aloud, and it came out smaller than I expected.

"I couldn’t bring them back."

Mia looked at me. I kept my eyes on the courtyard.

"I tried, with Nyra," I said. "The wound was closing. I thought if I used more mana..."

"Al."

I stopped. Her voice had changed. It wasn’t softer; it was quieter.

"They were not twelve," she said.

I looked at her. "What?"

"You were."

I didn’t say anything. Mia turned toward me fully.

"You were twelve years old."

"I know how old I was."

"Then remember it."

My jaw tightened. "I could heal."

"Yes."

"I could fight."

"Yes."

"I wasn’t helpless."

"I did not say you were."

"Then..."

"I sent three grown warriors into a war with one instruction," said Mia, and her eyes didn’t leave mine. "Bring him home."

Something pressed behind my ribs. Not mana, and not the strain from the Barrier. Something worse.

"You came home," she said.

"They didn’t."

"I know."

Two words, and nothing after them. That was worse too. I looked away, and Mia let me. For a long time there was only the courtyard: people, boots, wheels, a flag snapping somewhere above us.

"I told Caelum not to do it," I said. Mia didn’t ask what. "He said he’d protect me without dying."

"I know."

I looked at her. "You know?"

"He complained about you before you left."

That surprised me enough to cut through everything else. "Caelum complained?"

"At length."

"He hardly spoke."

"He spoke to me."

"What did he say?"

Mia looked ahead. "That the human child he was supposed to escort had ordered him not to die."

"I didn’t order him."

"You were a duke’s son."

"I was twelve."

"Those things can be true at once." She paused. "He said you looked very serious when you said it. He thought it was funny."

"That’s rude."

"Yes." And then, more quietly: "He also said that he would try."

I waited. She knew what I was waiting for, and she didn’t make me ask.

"Nyra said you slept too much," she said.

"She let me."

"She did." The corner of Mia’s mouth moved. "She complained about it too. Nyra always complained about the things she intended to go on doing."

I thought about a forest, and Nyra sitting watch while I slept much longer than I should have, pretending she hadn’t noticed the sun was up. My throat felt wrong.

"And Vessa?"

Mia looked at Dream Haven, and that was answer enough.

"No," I said.

"The night before you left, she came to me and asked whether stealing from a diplomatic guest counted as a diplomatic incident."

I stared at her. "What did you tell her?"

"That it depended on whether she was caught."

"She was caught."

"She told me she would not be."

"She spent four days trying to count my pillows."

"So I have heard."

"She never worked it out."

"Good," said Mia. "She would have been unbearable." She considered it. "More unbearable."

The laugh came out of me before I could stop it, small and wrong, and it hurt. I put a hand over my eyes. Mia didn’t say anything. For several seconds I couldn’t tell whether I was laughing or doing something else. Probably both. It went on for longer than I wanted it to, and Mia sat beside me through all of it without moving, the way she had once sat at the mouth of a cave while a frightened human boy pretended he was only tired.

Eventually it stopped. I lowered my hand. She was still there.

"I miss them," I said.

It was the first time I had ever said that. Not that they had died, or that they had protected me, or that I remembered them. That.

Mia looked down at her hands. "So do I."

That was all. It was enough.

***

Elizabeth found us twenty minutes later. She stopped when she saw Mia, then looked at me, then at Mia again, and I could see the diplomatic part of her rearranging itself.

Mia saw it too. "You can sit."

Elizabeth blinked. "I wasn’t..."

"You were deciding whether this was official."

A pause. "Yes."

"It is not."

Elizabeth sat. I looked at her.

"You obeyed very quickly."

"She sounded certain."

"That’s how it starts."

Mia ignored me. Elizabeth looked toward the building where the thirteen had been taken.

"Are they satisfied with the arrangements?"

"For today."

"Only today?"

"They spent months being moved without being asked," said Mia. "I will not decide their tomorrow for them today."

Elizabeth was quiet for a moment, and then nodded. Mia studied her, not rudely, which would have been easier, but thoroughly. Elizabeth bore it for almost ten seconds.

"Is something wrong?"

"No."

"Then why are you looking at me like that?"

Mia glanced at me, and I immediately looked innocent, which has never once worked.

"You are the princess," said Mia.

"The First Princess."

"I know." Mia looked back at the building. "Saera trusts you."

Elizabeth didn’t answer at once. "Somewhat."

"For Saera, that is trust."

That seemed to mean something to Elizabeth. Mia stood up.

"The signing is tomorrow."

"Yes."

"You will be there." She looked at me. "So will he."

I frowned. "Was that a question?"

"No."

"Good."

"You were going anyway."

"Regrettably."

Elizabeth very nearly smiled. Mia didn’t.

"Rest today," she said.

"No," I said, and both women looked at me, and I realized my mistake. Elizabeth folded her arms. Mia’s expression didn’t change at all.

"You have not slept," she said.

"I slept."

"When?"

"This morning."

"For how long?"

I looked at Elizabeth, who looked delighted. "An amount."

Mia nodded slowly. "Go."

"I have responsibilities."

"No, you don’t," said Elizabeth at once.

"What about tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow is tomorrow."

"That sounds irresponsible."

"You taught me that."

I had. Mia pointed toward the officers’ residence. I looked at her hand, and then at her.

"You know I’m fifteen now."

"Congratulations."

"That means you can’t order me around."

"No," she agreed. A pause. "Go and sleep, Al."

I stood up. Not because she had told me to, but because I had independently reached the same conclusion at exactly the same moment. Obviously. I took three steps, and stopped. Mia was still sitting on the wall with one hand resting on her coat, over the list.

"All of them," I said.

She looked at me. "I heard you the first time."

"Good."

I started walking again, and behind me she said, "Al."

I turned. She held my eyes.

"All of you too."

For once, I didn’t have anything clever to say. I nodded, and went upstairs.

The signing was tomorrow. The thirteen were here, and so were Mia and Lyssairia. Somewhere between twelve and fifteen, I had apparently gathered enough people for "all of you" to mean something. I wasn’t sure when that had happened, and I was far too tired to investigate.

Dream Haven was waiting. For once, so was tomorrow.