The Thorn (wlw)

16 - Pen Pals

"Trade and business are going well. I went to the tavern the other day and someone clapped me on the back to tell me that fishing won't need to supplement the town anymore. You've outdone yourself."

Leonore was barely listening. "I have to tell her."

"No, you don't."

"Of course I don't, but won't it be easier for the both of us?"

"I'd rather not let the world know I've been hiding my identity for the better part of my life."

"It's not the world, it's Terry. Terry's kept all my secrets. Terry knew I liked women before my mother ever did, and she didn't even tell the Queen."

Gabriel sighed. Leonore, having trod upon the knight's toes so thoroughly, backpedaled. "I know. It's not my decision. But won't you consider? It's on my word, and on Terry's life."

The knight smiled, despite herself. "I don't think you can swear on someone else's life like that."

They were in their bedroom, because it was the one place they could have a private conversation without the risk of eavesdroppers, accidental or not.

Leonore moved to slip into her jodhpurs. Rapunzel jumped into one leg before she could put it on. She picked up her cat and said, "Hey, buddy. Hiding in my trousers? That's right, we have bigger problems."

"She's darling," said Gabriel, eager to change the subject. "When did you start caring for her?"

"Since she was small, which wasn't that long ago. My mother gave her to me. Did you know that she's a familiar?"

Gabriel said, "You're a witch?"

"Well, not me." Leonore paused, cautiously. "My mother just said she was a familiar, and that she was bound to me."

The story in Dranath was that Queen Carmilla, before she was queen, escaped her education at Yraad to—allegedly—pursue the waylaid arts, which she also abandoned for the mysterious commoner lover who fathered Leonore.

Even Leonore didn't know the whole truth.

Gabriel took the cat and lifted Rapunzel to her face. "Did you hear that, baby? You're magick."

Lifetimes ago, the great persecution of witches in Old Aurune meant that the arcane in their blood had thinned. Witches and their magick still exist now, of course, in the blood arts of village healers, the dream-trances of wandering hermits, and in many other ways, but none were celebrated.

Witchery left a bad taste in the mouth of the modern world.

She shook this off and said, "Who is Guire?"

Gabriel let the cat jump out of her arms. "High Prince Guire, younger brother to Guile."

"And the older one is who my mother married?"

"Yes," said Gabriel. "Briefly."

"Died soon after," mused Leonore, staring at a point in the wall. "And so Hierstag the Lesser comes for his vengeance."

Gabriel sat on the bed as Leonore wheeled toward her. "Did you know Terry said he was looking for me?"

"High Prince Guire? And you can't say Hierstag like that, not with that acid. Some of your people are Hierstag. I might be Hierstag, actually."

Leonore made a gesture of frustrated acknowledgement, flapping her hands about. "Yes, yes. The one left alive. What interests him in me?"

Gabriel hummed in thought. "He couldn't get to the Queen, so perhaps he wants the next best thing. The culture in those mountains is so steeped in debt and revenge and making a show of it. And it's not unpopular, the notion that the Queen was the reason of the Prince's demise, especially in the vague North."