Hi, everybody!
Aaaaand we're back! With a new cover (above)! After a short time jump, we find Val & company back from the city of St. Sylvestine... well, back might not be the right word. In the aftermath of Duke Ansibald's crushing defeat (and death), the Duchy of Aurilicht finds itself on its back foot and Val's adoptive family trying to stay out of harm's way. But staying out of harm's way isn't exactly Val's cup of tea, is it? With that, we open in a small woodland valley to the east of Verdenlecht...
-Ovid
Chapter Thirty-Three: Outmaneuvered
Val crept through the woods after Linney. Maybe crept was the wrong word. Neither she nor Linney were trying to be quiet, though they made very little sound. Once you cultivated a strong affinity for natural magic, the woods basically got out of the way for you and your footfalls made no more sound than if you were walking on a plush carpet. The two girls were doing hunting of a sort, though their quarry was unlikely to get spooked by the noise and bolt.
Linney spotted some mushrooms she liked the look of and crouched down, rooting through the nearby leaves with a stick. She took the choicest shrooms for her sack and continued on through the woods.
"So you're an apprentice holy woman?" Val asked.
"I'm an apprentice alchemist," Linney clarified. "I'm not sure how you'd be an apprentice holy woman."
"Good point."
Val wasn't even sure what made somebody a holy woman - what separated hubris from a legitimate blessing? Whatever it was, people seemed to think Ma Finea had it. She was the holy woman outside of Gratha's Pass, the one who would give you your tattoo on the solstice if you showed promise in alchemy.
"Why have I got to show that I can do alchemy anyway?" Val asked. "Can't I just get the nick and we'll see if a tattoo comes out?"
Linney shrugged. "That's not how Ma does it, so I guess not."
Linney was about Val's age, a dark-skinned girl with piercing pale eyes, probably descended from the Khasun people in the south, though she may have had some Sheore, too. Val was half Sudren and half something else - she couldn't have told you what, since her father had died before he could spill the beans on her lineage. Most people in Sudria weren't Sudren, and it had been that way for a long time. People from all over the world had converged to colonize the northern half of the continent. Linney's tattoos took up most of her back, larger even than Ginn's sizable alchemy markings…
Val didn't need more tattoos, per se. Her whole body was covered with markings proclaiming her as a witch, but most of that was the mark of natural magic, for which she had some freakish affinity. That's apparently what happened when you inherited the soul of an ancient sorceress-queen. An ancient sorceress-queen who seemed to think that Val ought to be the next ruler of a united Sudria, which she didn't see happening anytime soon.
"Those feaster's berries are rare," Val said.
"You've got sharp eyes," Linney said. She picked the choicest berries and dropped them into her sack. "How can you tell these aren't false feasts?"
"The false feasts have lighter blue coloration at the base of the berry. The herbalist ought not to use those in medicines, but they make a fine pie when baked." Val quoted the passage almost word-for-word from Mother Reede's Herbarium.
Ginn and Ma Finea had sent Val and Linney out to forage for herbs while they spoke. But Val wasn't stupid… it was pretty clear that this was part of Ma's test. Linney was going to go back and report to Ma on whether Val was any good at picking out alchemical ingredients. Apparently, if you were attuned to alchemy, you got a sense for what would be useful and when. Val wasn't sure she had that quite yet, but she definitely had a vague inkling of when something was worth noting - she'd known the feaster's berries were the good type before she even glanced at their base, though she couldn't have told you what had whispered that.
Violet meowed. That meant, Ginn is calling for you. The two girls were out of earshot, but they apparently weren't out of earshot for a cat.
"They're calling for us," Val said.
Linney nodded. "Okay. Can you pick that holy nettle for me? I think you're taller than I am."
As far as Val could tell, she and Linney were exactly the same height, which was a perfectly-average height for an almost-thirteen-year-old. Linney just wanted to see if Val could pick out the right nettle among the several nearby shrubs. Which Val could have guessed without any alchemical sense whatsoever. She stood on her tiptoes and plucked the sole cluster of snow-white nettles from the top of the nearby shrub and dropped them into Linney's sack. The apprentice alchemist cinched it shut and the two girls crept back through the woods, this time with Violet the calico cat taking lead.
+++++
The woods around Gratha's Pass were different from the Eastlands Woods, where Val had got her first two tattoos. The woods grew right up the sides of the valley that had given the town its name. They were in the mountains and the temperature was merely warm despite its being the afternoon of the solstice. Back in Verdenlecht, it was so hot that people spent half their time winding their crank-driven fans up and the other half of the time cooling down in the shade as the fans whirred away. Only rich folks could afford chem-powered fans, which could run all day and all night. The Vinzennos had one such fan for Ginn and Ette's bedroom, though Val had half a mind to build her own. She was pretty good with machines, after all.
Ma Finea and Linney didn't own a single fan, not even a crank-driven one. They lived in a cottage up on the mountainside, but you could see the town in the valley below if you looked through the trees. It was a modest town of perhaps five thousand, but everybody there knew about Ma and there was a well-tread trail to her door. There was nobody at her cottage today, of course, on account of it being the solstice.
They arrived in the clearing around Ma's cottage to find Ginn trying to mollify Galvan, who was Val's step-brother. He was two years older than her, having just turned fifteen and wasn't at all happy at having been dragged along with his mother and his step-sister. And, frankly, Val couldn't blame him. She wasn't sure why he was there, either.
"We never do anything special on solstice aside from go to temple," he said. "Why are you being like this?"
"Because it's an important day for your sister and it's nice to be supportive," Ginn said. "She was at your party when you made senior apprentice."
It was an important day for Val, but she wouldn't have been too broken up if Galvan had spent it in Verdenlecht doing whatever he liked. Ginn knew that, and Galvan knew that his mother knew it - Val's mom was up to something, but she wasn't quite sure what. She'd just have to let things play out.
Galvan had stopped pointing out that Val wasn't his real sister at some point, too. Everybody knew that - Val had been with her family for less than a year. But family ran deeper than blood, and so Galvan was Val's brother whether he liked it or not, and whether she liked it or not. Unlike most people, Val had chosen her family, which had to mean something. And, if she was being honest, Galvan was pretty tolerable most of the time.
Val and Linney exited the woods. Linney emptied her sack on the big wooden table in the yard and began to sort through their find. Val continued past and over to Ginn, who ushered her into the cottage.
Ma Finea was inside, hunched over her alchemy bench, adjusting glassware and carefully adding different extracts and powders to a series of fluid-filled columns. If Val had to guess, the woman looked about sixty, but it was hard to tell because her head was shaved bare and her face might have always looked like it was hewn from solid granite. She had one gray eye and one black eye, and Val was uncertain which, if either, was the good eye.
"Linney didn't come in to tell me you're an idiot, so I suppose that means you pass muster."
Val bounced on the balls of her feet. "So I get the tattoo?"
"Eager, aren't you? But not so fast, little miss… I've got a few final tests for you." The holy woman gestured Val over. There, in front of the alchemy rig, Ma had placed an array of about twenty powders, pastes, and extracts in a little carrier. "I need one final ingredient for a potion that'll make a person sleep like a baby the whole night through. Which should I add?"
Val took a moment to ponder the question before pointing to the little jar of ruddy paste. "That…"
Ma slapped Val's hand with the flat of a spoon before she could finish. Val's whole body tensed and it took considerable willpower to keep her combat instincts in check. Not only was it very bad manners to throttle a holy woman in her own cottage, she probably wouldn't give Val the tattoo afterwards, either.
"You just said that because you knew it was waxaway root. We want the person to go to sleep for a night, not forever. Which of these would you add? Let your senses guide you."
Val let out a breath and concentrated on the array of ingredients in front of her, waiting for one of them to pop out. Whatever alchemical sense she had, it was failing her now. She was getting nothing whatsoever. Maybe she'd imagined that sense out in the woods? Maybe she was so used to hardening leather that she had some mundane instinct for how to harden armor. Maybe she was a complete dud when it came to alchemy and she wouldn't get a tattoo after all? She furrowed her brow and tried to think through the problem, tried to remember all of her alchemy and herbalism. Could it be a trick?
She turned to Ma's big alchemical rig and scrutinized it. She crouched in front of the cloudy blue distillate in the decanter. Aha!
"I wouldn't add anything," Val said eventually. "The finished potion is already gathering in the decanter."
Ma Finea nodded, her dark eye tracking Val. "So it is. Very well… while that decants, off with your shirt and belly down on the table. It seems you're owed one tattoo.
+++++
After the ritual was done, Ma spread a tiny dab of salve over the nick - no need to waste a healing potion - and congratulated Val. With her nature tattoos in place, it was hard to determine the extent of her alchemy patterns, but when she faded them away and positioned the mirror just right, she got a pretty good glimpse of them. She'd hoped that the alchemy tattoos, a radial pattern of jagged colored panes, would spread across her whole body just like the vines and flowers of her nature tattoos had, that she would be some incredible alchemical phenom. But instead, they'd spread to encompass about two-thirds of her upper back. After accounting for differences in body size, it was about the size of Ginn's tattoo… though, if she was being fair, if Val was 'only' as good an alchemist as Ginn at age almost-thirteen, that was pretty impressive in of itself.
"Thanks, Ma," Ginn said as they prepared to leave. She and Ma embraced and Ginn kissed her on the cheek. "We'll stop by again before we head back to Verdenlecht."
Realization dawned upon Val as they started along the path back into the valley. "Is Ma Finea your actual ma?"
Ginn chuckled. "No, don't be silly, Val. My ma died ten years ago. No, Ma Finea's my great auntie on my pa's side."
"Ah."
Since family was deeper than blood, that meant that Val was related to a holy woman. That almost made her slightly-disappointing tattoo size worth it. And, really, that was hardly disappointing - she'd just have to practice harder and it would grow with her skill.
Since Ma Finea didn't exactly have room at her place, they'd been staying at Greatwheel Inn in Gratha's Pass. It wasn't the worst inn in town and it wasn't the best, and since there were only three inns in total, Val deduced that this made the Greatwheel the okayest one. Neither Val nor Galvan were thrilled about the three of them sharing a room, but Val had slept in plenty of worse places and Galvan wasn't going to whine if Val was committed to being stoical.
During the mornings, before it got too hot, the innkeeper let them give combat classes in the nearby field. There was a sizable streetball field (if you could even be said to be playing streetball if you were playing on a field) near the big waterwheel that gave the inn its name. The three of them taught combat classes out in the soft grass by the great creaking, churning wheel and, though Val wouldn't have minded playing a little fieldball, she wanted to keep in practice and the lessons were paying their way so they didn't have to dip into Ginn and Ette's savings for the trip.
At first, the only people who were interested in the classes were tough men - former soldiers or simply big men who'd been in some brawls - who thought it was funny that a middle-aged woman, a teenaged boy, and an almost-teenaged girl thought they could fight. After the fourth or fifth time that Val tossed a man twice her size on his back without doing anything that looked fancy, people took notice and enough made the suggested donation of a pfennig per lesson to cover their inn tab and stabling fees, if only barely.
Val and Galvan ran through a demonstration of their next drill, which was a knife defense. Obviously, the best defense against a knife, if you didn't have your own, was to have armor and then run away. But that wasn't always an option. Val disarmed Galvan and tossed him on the ground, and then they switched roles to show that boys could do knife defense, too.
"You're getting better," Val said.
Galvan helped her to her feet. "Thanks," he said. "I have a good instructor."
"Mom?"
"Her, too."
Even though Galvan was Ette and Ginn's son and looked like a taller, leaner, younger version of his old man, his interest in fighting was mostly academic. He had no interest in following Ette into the security business, which is what Val was there for. Galvan was an apprentice leatherworker… a senior apprentice leatherworker… and he was pretty good at it, too. He'd made the hardened leather jacket that Val wore pretty much everywhere when she was on the road. It was a dark doublet-style jacket with a big, intricate seal of the United Kingdom of Sudria detailed on the back. Obviously, Val had done the hardening herself, and from what she could tell it was about as protective as unhardened steel plate, if not a bit stronger, and a lot more comfortable. Combined with the boots, which had been her solstice present, Val figured she looked pretty sharp for a battle-witch.
By noon, they were on their horses and making their way down the River Road. Val thought it a bit odd, because Ginn had said she was going to visit Ma before they returned to Verdenlecht, but they rode right out of town. It was possible that Ginn had snuck out before dawn to say goodbye, but Val doubted it.
Val's suspicions were further raised as they approached the fork back to the trade road and Ginn indicated that they should keep going as they'd been going, along the River Road toward Port Rumm, which was where the River Rumm emptied out into the ocean and pretty much the opposite direction from Verdenlecht.
"What's that way?" Val asked.
"Port Rumm," Ginn said. She pointed to the sign: Port Rumm 53 mi.
"Yes, mom, I can read," Val said. "Why are we going there?"
"With the fighting in the east, Verdenlecht isn't safe. My brother lives in Port Rumm and can take us in for a few weeks…"
Val was almost too stunned to say anything. Of course she knew about the fighting in the east and she knew there was a chance the Bolearic forces would try to take the capital, which was the whole point of going back. She couldn't very well help fight off those bastards from the Pale Order if she was a hundred and fifteen miles away in Port Rumm.
"Mom, I can't leave my apprenticeship for a 'few weeks'!" Galvan huffed. "I could lose my position!"
"How can we help fight the Bolearics if we're away from the fighting? I'm a battle-witch!" Val said.
"I'd rather you lose your position and be safe than keep it in a war zone, Galv. And you're not a battle-witch, Val. You're not even thirteen."
"I am, almost. And I'm supposed to be the queen…"
Ginn wasn't impressed by this argument - she didn't doubt Val's vision or her tale of the crumbled statue of Sleeping Queen Friyja that had magically announced Val's birthright. But she reasoned that Val was much too young to be a queen and there would be plenty of time to do queenly things when she was fully-grown. Maybe a very long time, given that Gifted with an affinity for natural magic (which Val had in spades) didn't age normally - Ma Finea would be celebrating her hundredth birthday in the autumn but didn't look anything past late middle-age. For now, the fate of a United Sudria was somebody else's responsibility and the safety of Valkyrie Valicent-Vinzenno was Ginn's.
"I could just ride back myself," Val said.
"We could just ride back ourselves," Galvan amended.
"You could," Ginn agreed. "But I would be very, very disappointed."
They continued down the River Road for another mile. "I want to help dad defend Verdenlecht," Val said eventually. If Ginn was going to use emotional blackmail, then Val could play that game, too.
"He's meeting us in Port Rumm," Ginn said. "He might even get there before us."
"Niko…"
"Sabine and Nikoli are coming with him," Ginn said.
Val sighed. That settled it. If her whole family plus Auntie Sabine and Niko were going to be in Port Rumm, there really wasn't much point in being anywhere else. She was still unhappy at the prospect of leaving her other friends behind, but Niko was the only one who made Val blush and gave her wonderful butterflies in her tummy whenever she thought about her face… her beautiful, smiling face as she leapt through the air to execute precision-perfect blade exercises. Her strong thighs as she shimmied up a practice wall in tight leggings. Oh, Niko…
"Fine, I'll go to Port Rumm," she said.
"Backstabber!" Galvan huffed. Val knew that there were at least two girls back in Verdenlecht whom he was sweet on and, the poor boy, neither of them was going to Port Rumm. Though he could always seek out other interests…
As if reading Val's mind, Ginn said, "there will be pretty girls in Port Rumm, too, dear."
"It's not about that," Galvan said, but he didn't offer an alternative.
They continued down the road, Ginn leading the way and Val and Galvan riding side-by-side and glaring at their mom from behind. It had been a dirty trick, but Ginn had deftly outmaneuvered her kids.
OvidLemma
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-Ovid
Hi, everybody!
Aaaaand we're back! With a new cover (above)! After a short time jump, we find Val & company back from the city of St. Sylvestine... well, back might not be the right word. In the aftermath of Duke Ansibald's crushing defeat (and death), the Duchy of Aurilicht finds itself on its back foot and Val's adoptive family trying to stay out of harm's way. But staying out of harm's way isn't exactly Val's cup of tea, is it? With that, we open in a small woodland valley to the east of Verdenlecht...
-Ovid
Chapter Thirty-Three: Outmaneuvered
Val crept through the woods after Linney. Maybe crept was the wrong word. Neither she nor Linney were trying to be quiet, though they made very little sound. Once you cultivated a strong affinity for natural magic, the woods basically got out of the way for you and your footfalls made no more sound than if you were walking on a plush carpet. The two girls were doing hunting of a sort, though their quarry was unlikely to get spooked by the noise and bolt.
Linney spotted some mushrooms she liked the look of and crouched down, rooting through the nearby leaves with a stick. She took the choicest shrooms for her sack and continued on through the woods.
"So you're an apprentice holy woman?" Val asked.
"I'm an apprentice alchemist," Linney clarified. "I'm not sure how you'd be an apprentice holy woman."
"Good point."
Val wasn't even sure what made somebody a holy woman - what separated hubris from a legitimate blessing? Whatever it was, people seemed to think Ma Finea had it. She was the holy woman outside of Gratha's Pass, the one who would give you your tattoo on the solstice if you showed promise in alchemy.
"Why have I got to show that I can do alchemy anyway?" Val asked. "Can't I just get the nick and we'll see if a tattoo comes out?"
Linney shrugged. "That's not how Ma does it, so I guess not."
Linney was about Val's age, a dark-skinned girl with piercing pale eyes, probably descended from the Khasun people in the south, though she may have had some Sheore, too. Val was half Sudren and half something else - she couldn't have told you what, since her father had died before he could spill the beans on her lineage. Most people in Sudria weren't Sudren, and it had been that way for a long time. People from all over the world had converged to colonize the northern half of the continent. Linney's tattoos took up most of her back, larger even than Ginn's sizable alchemy markings…
Val didn't need more tattoos, per se. Her whole body was covered with markings proclaiming her as a witch, but most of that was the mark of natural magic, for which she had some freakish affinity. That's apparently what happened when you inherited the soul of an ancient sorceress-queen. An ancient sorceress-queen who seemed to think that Val ought to be the next ruler of a united Sudria, which she didn't see happening anytime soon.
"Those feaster's berries are rare," Val said.
"You've got sharp eyes," Linney said. She picked the choicest berries and dropped them into her sack. "How can you tell these aren't false feasts?"
"The false feasts have lighter blue coloration at the base of the berry. The herbalist ought not to use those in medicines, but they make a fine pie when baked." Val quoted the passage almost word-for-word from Mother Reede's Herbarium.
Ginn and Ma Finea had sent Val and Linney out to forage for herbs while they spoke. But Val wasn't stupid… it was pretty clear that this was part of Ma's test. Linney was going to go back and report to Ma on whether Val was any good at picking out alchemical ingredients. Apparently, if you were attuned to alchemy, you got a sense for what would be useful and when. Val wasn't sure she had that quite yet, but she definitely had a vague inkling of when something was worth noting - she'd known the feaster's berries were the good type before she even glanced at their base, though she couldn't have told you what had whispered that.
Violet meowed. That meant, Ginn is calling for you. The two girls were out of earshot, but they apparently weren't out of earshot for a cat.
"They're calling for us," Val said.
Linney nodded. "Okay. Can you pick that holy nettle for me? I think you're taller than I am."
As far as Val could tell, she and Linney were exactly the same height, which was a perfectly-average height for an almost-thirteen-year-old. Linney just wanted to see if Val could pick out the right nettle among the several nearby shrubs. Which Val could have guessed without any alchemical sense whatsoever. She stood on her tiptoes and plucked the sole cluster of snow-white nettles from the top of the nearby shrub and dropped them into Linney's sack. The apprentice alchemist cinched it shut and the two girls crept back through the woods, this time with Violet the calico cat taking lead.
+++++
The woods around Gratha's Pass were different from the Eastlands Woods, where Val had got her first two tattoos. The woods grew right up the sides of the valley that had given the town its name. They were in the mountains and the temperature was merely warm despite its being the afternoon of the solstice. Back in Verdenlecht, it was so hot that people spent half their time winding their crank-driven fans up and the other half of the time cooling down in the shade as the fans whirred away. Only rich folks could afford chem-powered fans, which could run all day and all night. The Vinzennos had one such fan for Ginn and Ette's bedroom, though Val had half a mind to build her own. She was pretty good with machines, after all.
Ma Finea and Linney didn't own a single fan, not even a crank-driven one. They lived in a cottage up on the mountainside, but you could see the town in the valley below if you looked through the trees. It was a modest town of perhaps five thousand, but everybody there knew about Ma and there was a well-tread trail to her door. There was nobody at her cottage today, of course, on account of it being the solstice.
They arrived in the clearing around Ma's cottage to find Ginn trying to mollify Galvan, who was Val's step-brother. He was two years older than her, having just turned fifteen and wasn't at all happy at having been dragged along with his mother and his step-sister. And, frankly, Val couldn't blame him. She wasn't sure why he was there, either.
"We never do anything special on solstice aside from go to temple," he said. "Why are you being like this?"
"Because it's an important day for your sister and it's nice to be supportive," Ginn said. "She was at your party when you made senior apprentice."
It was an important day for Val, but she wouldn't have been too broken up if Galvan had spent it in Verdenlecht doing whatever he liked. Ginn knew that, and Galvan knew that his mother knew it - Val's mom was up to something, but she wasn't quite sure what. She'd just have to let things play out.
Galvan had stopped pointing out that Val wasn't his real sister at some point, too. Everybody knew that - Val had been with her family for less than a year. But family ran deeper than blood, and so Galvan was Val's brother whether he liked it or not, and whether she liked it or not. Unlike most people, Val had chosen her family, which had to mean something. And, if she was being honest, Galvan was pretty tolerable most of the time.
Val and Linney exited the woods. Linney emptied her sack on the big wooden table in the yard and began to sort through their find. Val continued past and over to Ginn, who ushered her into the cottage.
Ma Finea was inside, hunched over her alchemy bench, adjusting glassware and carefully adding different extracts and powders to a series of fluid-filled columns. If Val had to guess, the woman looked about sixty, but it was hard to tell because her head was shaved bare and her face might have always looked like it was hewn from solid granite. She had one gray eye and one black eye, and Val was uncertain which, if either, was the good eye.
"Linney didn't come in to tell me you're an idiot, so I suppose that means you pass muster."
Val bounced on the balls of her feet. "So I get the tattoo?"
"Eager, aren't you? But not so fast, little miss… I've got a few final tests for you." The holy woman gestured Val over. There, in front of the alchemy rig, Ma had placed an array of about twenty powders, pastes, and extracts in a little carrier. "I need one final ingredient for a potion that'll make a person sleep like a baby the whole night through. Which should I add?"
Val took a moment to ponder the question before pointing to the little jar of ruddy paste. "That…"
Ma slapped Val's hand with the flat of a spoon before she could finish. Val's whole body tensed and it took considerable willpower to keep her combat instincts in check. Not only was it very bad manners to throttle a holy woman in her own cottage, she probably wouldn't give Val the tattoo afterwards, either.
"You just said that because you knew it was waxaway root. We want the person to go to sleep for a night, not forever. Which of these would you add? Let your senses guide you."
Val let out a breath and concentrated on the array of ingredients in front of her, waiting for one of them to pop out. Whatever alchemical sense she had, it was failing her now. She was getting nothing whatsoever. Maybe she'd imagined that sense out in the woods? Maybe she was so used to hardening leather that she had some mundane instinct for how to harden armor. Maybe she was a complete dud when it came to alchemy and she wouldn't get a tattoo after all? She furrowed her brow and tried to think through the problem, tried to remember all of her alchemy and herbalism. Could it be a trick?
She turned to Ma's big alchemical rig and scrutinized it. She crouched in front of the cloudy blue distillate in the decanter. Aha!
"I wouldn't add anything," Val said eventually. "The finished potion is already gathering in the decanter."
Ma Finea nodded, her dark eye tracking Val. "So it is. Very well… while that decants, off with your shirt and belly down on the table. It seems you're owed one tattoo.
+++++
After the ritual was done, Ma spread a tiny dab of salve over the nick - no need to waste a healing potion - and congratulated Val. With her nature tattoos in place, it was hard to determine the extent of her alchemy patterns, but when she faded them away and positioned the mirror just right, she got a pretty good glimpse of them. She'd hoped that the alchemy tattoos, a radial pattern of jagged colored panes, would spread across her whole body just like the vines and flowers of her nature tattoos had, that she would be some incredible alchemical phenom. But instead, they'd spread to encompass about two-thirds of her upper back. After accounting for differences in body size, it was about the size of Ginn's tattoo… though, if she was being fair, if Val was 'only' as good an alchemist as Ginn at age almost-thirteen, that was pretty impressive in of itself.
"Thanks, Ma," Ginn said as they prepared to leave. She and Ma embraced and Ginn kissed her on the cheek. "We'll stop by again before we head back to Verdenlecht."
Realization dawned upon Val as they started along the path back into the valley. "Is Ma Finea your actual ma?"
Ginn chuckled. "No, don't be silly, Val. My ma died ten years ago. No, Ma Finea's my great auntie on my pa's side."
"Ah."
Since family was deeper than blood, that meant that Val was related to a holy woman. That almost made her slightly-disappointing tattoo size worth it. And, really, that was hardly disappointing - she'd just have to practice harder and it would grow with her skill.
Since Ma Finea didn't exactly have room at her place, they'd been staying at Greatwheel Inn in Gratha's Pass. It wasn't the worst inn in town and it wasn't the best, and since there were only three inns in total, Val deduced that this made the Greatwheel the okayest one. Neither Val nor Galvan were thrilled about the three of them sharing a room, but Val had slept in plenty of worse places and Galvan wasn't going to whine if Val was committed to being stoical.
During the mornings, before it got too hot, the innkeeper let them give combat classes in the nearby field. There was a sizable streetball field (if you could even be said to be playing streetball if you were playing on a field) near the big waterwheel that gave the inn its name. The three of them taught combat classes out in the soft grass by the great creaking, churning wheel and, though Val wouldn't have minded playing a little fieldball, she wanted to keep in practice and the lessons were paying their way so they didn't have to dip into Ginn and Ette's savings for the trip.
At first, the only people who were interested in the classes were tough men - former soldiers or simply big men who'd been in some brawls - who thought it was funny that a middle-aged woman, a teenaged boy, and an almost-teenaged girl thought they could fight. After the fourth or fifth time that Val tossed a man twice her size on his back without doing anything that looked fancy, people took notice and enough made the suggested donation of a pfennig per lesson to cover their inn tab and stabling fees, if only barely.
Val and Galvan ran through a demonstration of their next drill, which was a knife defense. Obviously, the best defense against a knife, if you didn't have your own, was to have armor and then run away. But that wasn't always an option. Val disarmed Galvan and tossed him on the ground, and then they switched roles to show that boys could do knife defense, too.
"You're getting better," Val said.
Galvan helped her to her feet. "Thanks," he said. "I have a good instructor."
"Mom?"
"Her, too."
Even though Galvan was Ette and Ginn's son and looked like a taller, leaner, younger version of his old man, his interest in fighting was mostly academic. He had no interest in following Ette into the security business, which is what Val was there for. Galvan was an apprentice leatherworker… a senior apprentice leatherworker… and he was pretty good at it, too. He'd made the hardened leather jacket that Val wore pretty much everywhere when she was on the road. It was a dark doublet-style jacket with a big, intricate seal of the United Kingdom of Sudria detailed on the back. Obviously, Val had done the hardening herself, and from what she could tell it was about as protective as unhardened steel plate, if not a bit stronger, and a lot more comfortable. Combined with the boots, which had been her solstice present, Val figured she looked pretty sharp for a battle-witch.
By noon, they were on their horses and making their way down the River Road. Val thought it a bit odd, because Ginn had said she was going to visit Ma before they returned to Verdenlecht, but they rode right out of town. It was possible that Ginn had snuck out before dawn to say goodbye, but Val doubted it.
Val's suspicions were further raised as they approached the fork back to the trade road and Ginn indicated that they should keep going as they'd been going, along the River Road toward Port Rumm, which was where the River Rumm emptied out into the ocean and pretty much the opposite direction from Verdenlecht.
"What's that way?" Val asked.
"Port Rumm," Ginn said. She pointed to the sign: Port Rumm 53 mi.
"Yes, mom, I can read," Val said. "Why are we going there?"
"With the fighting in the east, Verdenlecht isn't safe. My brother lives in Port Rumm and can take us in for a few weeks…"
Val was almost too stunned to say anything. Of course she knew about the fighting in the east and she knew there was a chance the Bolearic forces would try to take the capital, which was the whole point of going back. She couldn't very well help fight off those bastards from the Pale Order if she was a hundred and fifteen miles away in Port Rumm.
"Mom, I can't leave my apprenticeship for a 'few weeks'!" Galvan huffed. "I could lose my position!"
"How can we help fight the Bolearics if we're away from the fighting? I'm a battle-witch!" Val said.
"I'd rather you lose your position and be safe than keep it in a war zone, Galv. And you're not a battle-witch, Val. You're not even thirteen."
"I am, almost. And I'm supposed to be the queen…"
Ginn wasn't impressed by this argument - she didn't doubt Val's vision or her tale of the crumbled statue of Sleeping Queen Friyja that had magically announced Val's birthright. But she reasoned that Val was much too young to be a queen and there would be plenty of time to do queenly things when she was fully-grown. Maybe a very long time, given that Gifted with an affinity for natural magic (which Val had in spades) didn't age normally - Ma Finea would be celebrating her hundredth birthday in the autumn but didn't look anything past late middle-age. For now, the fate of a United Sudria was somebody else's responsibility and the safety of Valkyrie Valicent-Vinzenno was Ginn's.
"I could just ride back myself," Val said.
"We could just ride back ourselves," Galvan amended.
"You could," Ginn agreed. "But I would be very, very disappointed."
They continued down the River Road for another mile. "I want to help dad defend Verdenlecht," Val said eventually. If Ginn was going to use emotional blackmail, then Val could play that game, too.
"He's meeting us in Port Rumm," Ginn said. "He might even get there before us."
"Niko…"
"Sabine and Nikoli are coming with him," Ginn said.
Val sighed. That settled it. If her whole family plus Auntie Sabine and Niko were going to be in Port Rumm, there really wasn't much point in being anywhere else. She was still unhappy at the prospect of leaving her other friends behind, but Niko was the only one who made Val blush and gave her wonderful butterflies in her tummy whenever she thought about her face… her beautiful, smiling face as she leapt through the air to execute precision-perfect blade exercises. Her strong thighs as she shimmied up a practice wall in tight leggings. Oh, Niko…
"Fine, I'll go to Port Rumm," she said.
"Backstabber!" Galvan huffed. Val knew that there were at least two girls back in Verdenlecht whom he was sweet on and, the poor boy, neither of them was going to Port Rumm. Though he could always seek out other interests…
As if reading Val's mind, Ginn said, "there will be pretty girls in Port Rumm, too, dear."
"It's not about that," Galvan said, but he didn't offer an alternative.
They continued down the road, Ginn leading the way and Val and Galvan riding side-by-side and glaring at their mom from behind. It had been a dirty trick, but Ginn had deftly outmaneuvered her kids.
OvidLemma
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