Like A Dream Come True

Synopsis

Mikhail felt himself yawning halfway down the corridor, knew from the last outburst what sudden drowsiness meant, walked faster, and went in without knocking. The guard inside stood with his eyes open and nothing behind them, and the woman on the bed sat up in the mask and the long robes, and it was not Gwenivere Velmont.

The Slumbering Queen wanted to talk. They had got off on the right foot, she said; his tutelage had done Haudh-Gwenn a great deal of good; they need not be enemies. She had left him a gift, and he should come again once he had found it. Her home was under siege. It was all taking too long. Then she was gone, and Gwen woke dizzy with no notion of any of it, and the guard sent for her tea was down the corridor chatting, having forgotten he had been sent.

Gwen would not be helped. She had asked not to see Koa, believed she was slowing everyone down, and refused flatly to be told any part of the plan, since whatever she knows her dreams may carry across. She refused Mikhail’s mind-shielding spell too, until he explained that it needs a Chantry dream-catcher for fuel, at which she thought she might have woven some at her house in Haudh-Gwenn.

Elsewhere in the fortress a stranger leaning on a wall asked Aldo for a private word and turned out to be Rheem, who cycled through three faces in as many breaths. She was bored. Koa had her learning swordplay she has no use for, Edrick had banned her from drinking, and she had been changing shape for entertainment. She also let slip that she knows Beltran’s routines, having read them off Whent while he slept. Aldo offered her an audition if she stayed amusing.

The audition was a costume. Aldo built himself a Koa as convincing as Rheem’s, and the two of them went to find the real one, sitting alone at the water basin singing, having just been handed back the bracelet he gave Gwen. Rheem struck him in the head. His rage came up at once and he had the real Rheem in his hands, certain the Queen was reaching for him again. His judgment stayed clear enough to recognize her, and he let her go, and asked what the point had been.

The point, with three Koas in one room, was Beltran: a man who cannot tell which enemy in front of him is real can be led somewhere. Ground rules were set (no wearing a teammate’s face unasked, no more reading minds) and Rheem agreed to both, then read Mikhail within the hour and found a man who edits every sentence before he says it so it will not land badly on Koa.

Leon Yaegar’s office had a visitor in it already. Hanza had come from Veren in answer to the party’s letters, to fortify the base and drill its people, and she brought better news than herself: there are men in Veren who will sell Idirian stock at fair price and help against Beltran quietly. Cavalry was priced, considered and declined: it would empty the coffers for a handful of riders. Her other suggestion, that the militia blunt its arrows and dull its blades, was declined more gently: they could not afford the disadvantage, and the men coming for them were paid volunteers rather than anybody’s puppets. She had believed the version of the Valiant Few that has reached Veren, in which they carry children out of fires and spare every enemy.

The larger question was whether to move everyone to Wraithblade Keep: walls, a forge, a river, a fire that never goes out, and ground that would make Beltran arrive tired. Leon would not do it, and his reason ended the argument: the keep is where the sword was forged, and one of the ones they intend to pull down. You do not settle your people on top of a curse you are planning to break. So: stay, go to Haudh-Gwenn, thin Beltran’s lieutenants, take the sword, and break the curses after.

On Gwen, Leon offered something he had watched for. The Queen fights for the body by refusing to sleep, which is destroying her, and only surfaces when Gwen falls all the way under, so a strict, regular sleep might, against sense, leave Gwen the stronger. And only guards of Peren descent should stand over her, being harder to put down.

They gave Rheem her choice and left her to sleep on it. In the morning she was at the stable in Koa’s face and Koa’s dirty clothes, finding out whether she could fool his horse. She was coming. She picked up javelins, learned them by watching a man hold one, and rode out.