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It was Michal.
It took him a moment to recognize her, for all that they’d lived together for the better part of a year, for all that he’d seen her raise Horse in the Ward square, that day her whole life spun off its axis and landed her in the Citadel. When he did, his eyes flew wide. “Lore?”
But she was already bolting, already turning away, she’d known this was a mistake—
His hand on her arm, gentle. “Lore, are you all right?”
And she most certainly was not, perhaps hadn’t ever been, and Lore was sobbing, then, sinking to the ground like she had in Courdigne, gods when had she become this person? She’d gone twenty-four years without being someone who cried, someone who blubbered, and now she crumpled under the slightest pressure, all the scaffolding that held her up brittle as Mortem-fed rock.
None of this pressure could be called slight, Nyxara murmured in her head. Have some grace for yourself.
That echoed something she’d told Gabe, once, and just made her cry harder.
Michal’s hand on her shoulder, his worried voice calling back into the warehouse. The flutter of a faded scarf, the scent of the thick lotion Mari used on her hands to keep them from getting dry while she did paperwork, the clink of sea-glass beads and the roughness of a work shirt Val had owned for as long as Lore had known her.
Even through her tears, Lore expected their questions, expected worry and urgent requests for explanations. But none of those expected things happened. Just Val’s hands on her face, Mari’s on her shoulder. “Come on, mouse, let’s get inside.”
They led her to a made-up cot, and she lay down, and they pulled the covers up over her head. Against all odds, Lore slept.
“I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that whatever happened has something to do with the commercial ships suddenly being scuppered.”
Val’s voice, tilted low, like she didn’t want to wake someone. Lore assumed she was the someone.
“We don’t know that.” Mari, on the quick windup to irritated. “There’s no sense in borrowing trouble.”
“Seems more like trouble showed up on our doorstep,” Michal said ruefully.
Lore frowned under the blanket. Since when had Michal been part of Val’s crew? Why was he here, acting like he had more right to be than she did?
“Something must’ve happened at the Citadel.” Mari, again. “Something with her new fiancé.” She sounded sympathetic. Lore wished it was just romantic problems that had brought her back to her mothers’ door.
“Her new fiancé, the fucking Sainted King,” Michal said, with a rueful snort.
“And that is why I think it has something to do with the ships, and not just some lovers’ quarrel,” Val said. “Gods know Lore has never let those get to her head like this before.”
If Michal had something to add to that, he kept it to himself.
A scuffle of papers as Val gathered them up—they must’ve been going over monthly figures before they’d veered off into discussing Lore. “The King froze all sea travel, and then Lore shows up. Those two things have to be connected.”
“You’re right.” Lore pulled the covers off her head, sitting up and rubbing at her tear-and-sleep gummed eyes. “They are.”
Val didn’t seem surprised at all by her sudden waking; she simply gestured to Lore with an I told you so expression. Mari looked worried; Michal looked mortified, as if embarrassed to be caught talking about Lore at all.
She narrowed her eyes at him, then looked to her mothers. “Since when does he work for you?”
“Since we got a contract,” Mari said, coming to sit on the end of Lore’s cot. She smoothed her hand over Lore’s tangled waves. “More people than you’d think have tried to get on with us since then.”
“The joy of not having to watch for bloodcoats,” Val said, sitting on Lore’s other side. “At least, not as closely. Now, you were saying?”
She didn’t tell them everything. She didn’t think she could, it was too much—the goddess in her head, the god in Bastian’s, the threat of an apocalypse that she could only defer by getting as far away as possible. But Lore told them enough, embroidering the frayed edges so they didn’t stand out. Told them that she needed to leave the country, that things would go badly if she didn’t.
It was clear what that made them think, in the sidelong looks Val and Mari slid to each other, in the way Michal’s arms crossed tightly across his chest. “I will beat him up again,” he said, recalling that day on the docks, a boxing match that showed Bastian exactly who she was. “I’ve done it before.”
“It’s not like that. He hasn’t hurt me.” Bastian hadn’t; every hurt had been Apollius. “I just… if I don’t leave, something bad will happen.”
Another look between Mari and Val, this one considering. “Mouse,” Mari said quietly, “would this have something to do with your… with how…”
“Your Mortem problem?” Val said, doing away with niceties. She grabbed Lore’s hand, looked at the gray skin of her palms, frowned. “Or do you still have one? It seems that the rest of the city doesn’t.”
