Lucky Rabbit

On the way out, Pandy threw several Minor Heals in the direction of the pale, prematurely aged woman who sat staring blankly out the window covered in yellow curtains. The first few landed for the full twenty points, and the third for sixteen. Mira sat up a little straighter, some color actually returning to her cheeks. Her gaze didn’t regain its focus, however, and she didn’t jump up and dance a jig, which would have been a very satisfying conclusion.

Minor Heal failed.

Target has reached 100% of their maximum HP.

But you can keep trying if you want.

I’m here for you.

“Oh, are you leaving already?” Mira asked as Saskia led Pandy to the door. Turning her eyes toward Augustus, she smiled. “I feel better than I have in days, Auggie. I do hope you’ll come back for another chat sometime. Don’t let Saskia frighten you off. Her bark is… well, it’s not worse than her bite, but she barks quite a lot more than she bites, so the odds are in your favor.” She chuckled, and Augustus bowed to kiss the thin hand he lifted gently from her lap.

“I truly enjoyed our time together, Mira,” Augustus said. “I’ll visit again, and bring you some Moonberry preserves.”

The color on Mira’s cheeks deepened into a blush. “Oh, no. Moonberries don’t grow here, so the preserves are terribly expensive. Marek used to buy a jar for me on my birthday, but-”

Augustus shook his head. “I have a friend who sells imported foods, and now that I know about these Moonberries, I bet he can find some for me.” He lowered his voice. “You just have to know the right person to ask, eh?”

She laughed. “Well, I won’t turn them down. I don’t think Luca even remembers what they taste like, and I’d love to share them with him before I-” She stopped, turning her eyes down to her hands, then raised them, staring over Augustus’s shoulder as she smiled again. “In any case, I look forward to your visit.”

“As do I,” the charming chancellor said, before coming to Pandy’s side. Only then did Saskia straighten up from where she was peeking out through the curtain over the other window. Coming to stand behind the door, she unlocked it and yanked it towards herself in a single motion, then jerked her chin in a ‘Get out’ gesture. Pandy and Augustus got, and the door locked behind them with great finality.

Together, they walked about half a block before Augustus said, “Well, that was interesting.”

Pandy glanced at him. “What were you two talking about?”

He gave her a teasing smile. “Food is usually a safe topic, along with the weather. We agreed that it was a lovely day for a festival, then talked about our favorite festival foods. She doesn’t like foods that are too sweet, which is why she enjoys Moonberry preserves so much. Apparently they’re quite tart.”

“But they don’t grow here?” Pandy asked, sidestepping another small horde of children who seemed to have spawned just out of sight, around a corner ahead.

“No indeed,” Augustus said. “So I asked if she remembered them from childhood, and she informed me that she’s never lived anywhere except Knightmere. Which I had guessed from the way she speaks, but it was good to have it confirmed.”

Pandy thought about that. “If the preserves are expensive, she wouldn’t have bought them on a whim, especially if she doesn’t like sweet things. Did someone recommend them to her?”

 With an approving smile, Augustus said, “Bought them for her, in fact. A young man she once knew gave her a jar as a courting gift. Apparently it was a good one, because she married him.” He watched her as if waiting for something.

They walked along a bit longer. They’d left the crowds behind them now, and the streets were surprisingly quiet. Every now and then, a carriage would trundle past, probably heading to another Grange display, and the few people they did see looked relaxed and happy.

Eventually, Pandy said, “Either her husband was well-off enough to eat imported goods regularly,” Augustus shook his head, “or he came from wherever the Moonberries grow, and they weren’t expensive there.”

“Or he was a traveler, and got some as he passed through there, which is possible,” Augustus said, “but if Saskia is really his sister, he probably grew up there.”

“Where, exactly?” Pandy asked, feeling like he was trying to get her to reach some conclusion she was never going to come to on her own. She came to a stop in the middle of the street, just in time for a carriage to come straight for her.

Augustus pulled her to the side in time to avoid a repeat Truck-kun experience, and said, “They’re from East Altheric. Specifically, the northern side, near the mountains. Moonberries like cooler weather and longer winters than we have here, and grow best at altitudes of at least five hundred feet. People from the north tend to have coloring more like those of us from West Altheric, so it may well be that no one even knew where Marek came from.”

He glanced thoughtfully back the way they’d come. “I’d very much like to know if Mira’s husband disappeared before or after his sister came to live with them, and specifically why he’s no longer with his family. I didn’t get the feeling he’s dead, at least not certainly dead, maybe just… elsewhere.”

Pandy stared at him. “You got all that from Moonberry preserves?”

Augustus twinkled at her. “That and the fact that his sister has an East Altherican accent, name, and appearance, and Mira called herself his wife, not his widow. The preserves just filled in some of the details.”

She caught at his sleeve. “Wait, can you speak East Altherican?”

He grimaced. “Not as well as I’d like, but yes. Why? Did Saskia say something to you?”

Pandy bit her lip. She was fairly certain at least some of the words Saskia used weren’t particularly complimentary, but it had been bothering her for a while, and other than Thaniel, there was no one she trusted more than Augustus. She tried to remember some of the words Saskia had said when she wasn’t quite so excitable. “What does, um, volkhentar mean?”

“That one I do know,” Augustus said. “That’s their word for elementalist.”

She filed that away. “How about durakha?”

His lips twitched. “Dummy, or perhaps fool. Did she call you that?”

Pandy cleared her throat. “Of course not. I must have gotten the wrong word. Yachest yut ebyá?”

Now his brows drew down. “Ya chestyu tebyá?” he said, emphasizing the pause between each word. Pandy nodded. “I honor you,” he said. “It’s a phrase used to greet those of a higher rank than the speaker, but it can also be used when someone is just trying to emphasize how weak they are, so the more powerful person will see it as beneath them to kill or injure the lower ranking person. When did she-”

Quickly, before he could finish the question, Pandy said, “Tenebrak?”

One corner of his mouth went up, while the other went down, and she knew he knew what she was doing, but he said, “Dark, as in Dark elementalist, tenebrak volkhentar, or Dark elemental, tenebrak stikhan.”

Pandy thought about it. Saskia seemed to be confused about whether Pandy was actually an elemental or an elementalist. She definitely showed more fear when she thought Pandy was an elemental, which probably explained why the price for her original order was so low. Feeling Pandy’s hair must have made the woman realize Pandy’s new appearance was an illusion, so she decided Pandy must just be an elementalist, rather than… what? What kind of elemental could look completely different from one day to the next? Pandy had a bad feeling she knew the answer to that, which was why she just couldn’t quite bring herself to ask what vrazhul meant. She did have one more question, though.

“Why do you even have different languages?” she asked. When Augustus raised his brows, silently urging her to continue, she said, “Back on… Where I come from, there are lots and lots of languages, but ones that come from close to each other tend to be similar, and usually even share some words. East and West Altheric were one, big, happy country just a couple of hundred years ago, so why do you even have two languages? I mean, sure, languages change over a few decades, much less centuries, but this language and the one we speak don’t sound anything alike.”

“Ahh,” Augustus said, then, “you said you had somewhere else to go today. Should we start heading in that direction, and I’ll explain on the way?”

Pandy blinked. He was definitely right, and instinctively, Pandy reached for a cellphone that wasn’t there so she could check the time. Finding no phone, she stared up at the sun, which blazed cheerfully in a clear blue sky and told her exactly nothing. “What time is it?”

He looked up as well. “Just a bit after noon. The shadows have just begun growing longer again.”

Now Pandy looked down, seeing the smudge of shadow clinging to their feet. It was short and wide and kind of blobby, but it was there. “Do we have time to get to Golden Park by two?” If not, she still had two more years to get there before Clara did, but it would definitely throw off her plans if she had to wait for the next Fall Festival.

Augustus nodded, looked down the side streets, and grabbed Pandy’s hand, pulling her along after him. They ran two blocks, with Pandy marveling at the fact that she didn’t trip over her feet, a cobblestone, or a hamster with dysentery the entire way. She wasn’t even out of breath, and neither was Augustus – a fact that spoke far more highly of his level of fitness than her own, since she’d actually just stopped breathing at all about halfway through the first block.

“There are always carriages for hire here,” Augustus said, drawing her after him as he turned the corner. Indeed, there were several carriages, and when Pandy glanced around, she could easily figure out why. There were a number of small restaurants lining the street, and most of them had tables out front, with fashionable ladies and gentlemen sitting at them, sipping tea.

“Lanthorne Court is a few blocks in that direction,” Augustus said, pointing down the street. “People come here to eat after shopping, then realize they’re too tired to walk back and catch a carriage there.”

Striding forward, he raised a hand to catch the eye of a bored driver who was laying out cards on the seat beside him. “We need to get to Golden Park quickly,” Augustus said, and the other man instantly brightened, sweeping his cards up and tucking them into his jacket pocket.

“Sure. That’ll be three silver,” the driver said, and, jumping down, opened the carriage door to usher his customers inside. Money exchanged hands, the driver closed the door again, and a moment later, a flick of the reins caused the carriage to move forward as the horse harnessed to it began to trot. Meanwhile, Augustus pulled the thin curtains closed across the open windows and then settled back, smiling at Pandy.

“It shouldn’t take more than half an hour to reach Golden Park,” he told Pandy. “But I suspect you may need to save some of your spell for when we arrive. If so, you’re welcome to take your other shape while I tell you about Old Altheric.” His lips twitched. “I’m becoming used to lecturing a rabbit by now.”

Pandy wasn’t sure if he was serious or just teasing her, but they’d actually spent quite a while with Saskia. Too long, really. Pandy definitely should have come back to speak to her another time. But who knew if the Needle and Tread would even be open when she got another chance like this, or if Gwen still would have been working there?

With almost two hours of time left on Shifting Faces, Pandy should have had plenty of time to take care of her business even after spending half an hour in the carriage with Augustus, but somehow she actually felt a bit safer as a rabbit. After all, if she was human, he would reasonably expect her to talk to him, and the more she did that, the sooner his romantic bubble would burst, and he would realize she was far from the perfect woman he imagined her to be.

While she knew it would probably be best for both of them to get it over with, she just didn’t want to, so she thought, Once her transformation was complete, and she settled onto the cushion – which smelled unpleasantly of feet and onions – Pandy looked at Augustus expectantly.

He chuckled, then began to speak. “You’ve seen at least one map of Old Altheric, in the book Beeswick showed you when I was ‘missing’.” He rolled his eyes, just a bit, indicating that he hadn’t needed anyone to come after him, and he absolutely would not now be a rotting corpse in the underground If Professor Beeswick hadn’t sent Pandy to find him. Pandy rolled her eyes back at him, and he grinned unrepentantly.

“So you know that there was a chain of mountains along the north end of Altheric, and a desert that lay in the shadow of those mountains. At the time, the verdant land surrounding the desert all belonged to Altheric, and so the people who managed to survive that harsh climate were left mostly to themselves. They had their own language, their own traditions, even their own god.”

Uh oh. Pandy could already see where this was going.

“But then King Walter the Third had a brilliant idea. The royal castle was small, and old, and King Walter had never done anything to distinguish himself from the Walters who came before. So he decided to build a great palace – one worthy of Altheric and its ruler. But when he told his councilors about his glorious plan, they pointed out one tiny flaw.”

Augustus paused, lifting a brow at Pandy, but she was a rabbit, so he answered himself. “How did King Walter plan to pay for this edifice? The people and the nobles were already being taxed, and the taxes were going to necessary infrastructure and programs. There was no extra. The councilors expected this to be enough to deter their king, but he suggested something radical.”

Again the pause, and this time Pandy twitched an ear in a ‘go ahead’ gesture.

“Tax the desert-dwellers,” Augustus said. “Technically, they were already being taxed, but it wasn’t being enforced, because no one knew exactly how many people lived there, or what they actually owed taxes on. But King Walter had an army that mostly walked in parades and otherwise laid around and got fat, so he told them to go out and perform a census of the desert people.”

He sighed. “They did, though it was far from the simple task he thought it would be. In fact, it took three years, and by the end, he had so angered the desert-dwellers – who received no benefit from the taxes they were being told to pay – that they were beginning to attack and rob the small towns surrounding the desert in order to get the money he was demanding. Of course, those villages then not only couldn’t pay their own taxes, but needed assistance from the crown to rebuild.

“Walter paid no attention to any of this, however. He was like a horse with the bit between its teeth. He had decided that the desert people would pay taxes, and pay taxes they would. It wasn’t even about the palace any more – it was about his own honor, and how the history books would describe him. Was he King Walter the Weak, King Walter the Witless, or King Walter the Worthy?”

Augustus leaned back, sighing. “Another two years passed before the first tax coffers came in, and their contents were far short of what was needed to balance the cost of acquiring it. Still, Walter counted it a success, and enacted a series of laws to make certain the people of the desert would continue ‘paying their part’. And then he died, leaving the throne to his son, Lawrence.”

Pandy perked up. Unless this was a different Lawrence, then she knew what happened from here, or thought she did.

Augustus nodded. “Yes, the very same Lawrence who was king during the war that divided East and West Altheric. And you will notice that the desert lies in between them to this very day, though the arable lands along its southern end were lost to neighboring countries during the confusion after the war, a fact which continues to cause tension between us and those countries to this very day. But you asked why East Altheric speaks a different language, and while it took a while to reach this point, the answer is: because the people of the desert won the war, at least in East Altheric.”

Pandy’s whiskers quivered, and her ears stood straight up. Wait, how had the desert people – who she couldn’t help but imagine as tiny, hooded figures who spoke in guttural meeps – won a war they hadn’t even been involved in? The war was between those who supported Lawrence and his evil wife, and those who supported Nora and Ismara, not a bunch of nomads, or tribes, or whatever they were.

“You see,” Augustus said, leaning forward, “Lawrence’s wife was one of the desert people, and while she ruled, her people infiltrated every part of Altheric. They left their desert and were made ministers, nobles, even members of the royal council. They moved into towns they had once raided, and the people could do nothing. Laws were made to protect them from any retaliation or prejudice.

“After the war, most of the old nobles went with Nora, forming West Altheric, and bringing their old ways and language with them. Many of the commoners died or fled as well, leaving vast amounts of land to the desert people, who, ironically, were uninterested in it. They weren’t farmers. They were warriors, hunters, and herders, and given the opportunity, they returned to their desert, at least for the most part. Some did remain behind, however, and since they now outnumbered the other people, their language and traditions gradually took over, until now there are people like Saskia, who aren’t desert-dwellers themselves, but bear their blood and speak their tongue.”

The carriage came to a shuddering halt, and Pandy barely had enough time to think, before the driver threw open the door and said, “Here y’are. Golden Park. And I hope you have a lovely day of it, Sir, Madam.”