Mertle curled up under the blanket, struggling to remember when she’d dozed off. Sleeping in the musty old armchair was never comfortable and she tried to avoid it if possible. She’d only sat down to… to what? Thoughts crawled through the last dregs of sleep as she forced herself to wakefulness.


    Tummy had been kind enough to bring her favourite blanket and put out the candles and forge fire. Normally, he would’ve seen to his work regardless of her sleep.


    The quiet had woken her.


    She groaned, trying to stretch out her legs; instantly regretting it. He’d taken her boots off?! The icy air in the workshop bit her toes.


    Tummy must’ve cleaned the forge and not refired it.


    That meant she’d slept for… oh dear, it must’ve been bells. She’d snuck back to the Agora sometime at first light, all her goals for Tianna accomplished for the day.


    What did I do yesterday? Fatigue blended the days together, sleep a rare commodity that she really should thank Tummy for.


    The first group of adventurers had returned from Bastra’s pass where Vulniu’s caravan changed guard. All was in order, the caravan making good time through the high snows and well ahead of schedule. It would reach Solstice sometime early Thaw, maybe even before the early floods.


    From there, the ruse continued. She meant to find her missing friends, worried for their safety.


    Mertle went out to the Sisters to have yet another chat with an increasingly frustrated Aliana of Tohman. No, they hadn’t treated anyone like the two described. They’d get word out to the lady pyromancer if they did. Lady Aliana seemed to enjoy the whole cloak and dagger spectacle they made of most visits. Probably broke down the monotony of her daily trudge.


    From there to the Guild. Then on to the Agora, and ultimately to the Meadow to eat herself sick. Then the complicated task of sneaking out of the apartment once the enchantment wore off, careful not to alert Verti or any of her eagle-eyed daughters.


    With no window in their workshop it was hard to figure how much time had passed but she felt somewhat rested for the first time in a tenday at least. She couldn’t hear Tummy’s snoring anywhere, so he was either out or manning the shopfront.


    At least six commissions waited on her work desk, the most advanced one only half-finished. Its due date had gone by… three days prior? Four now, if she’d been asleep for as long as she feared.


    Mertle was used to sleeping in the cold. Often, she preferred it. Spending half of her life in service to the Sarrinare aelir’matar had shaped her in ways that seasons in Valen couldn’t even begin to dispel. But as much as she wanted to stay under the blanket and drift back to sleep for some bells more, she had work to do.


    He’d also undressed her. Figured. Her apron was ink-stained and greasy, probably laying somewhere thereabout. Instead of groping blindly for it, she clambered out of the chair, stretched, and donned the blanket as a mantle while she made her way to Tummy’s forge.


    Kindling was already stuffed inside and she tripped over the box of charcoal laid out. The first match struck didn’t catch. The second burst to light so suddenly that she saw spots. A few pumps of the bellows and soon the forge was alive and hot.


    I need a bath. She’d get one when going back as Tianna. Guilt flashed for how she could indulge at the Meadow and Tummy had to make due with the bucket and ladle. Modernity hadn’t reached quite as deep as their little corner of the Agora.


    She nestled a small kettle in the reddening coals, then lit a candle from the forge fire to take back to her work desk.


    She would finish some of commissions first thing today. Two were just inscription jobs that she could knock out before getting a bite to eat, another carry-over from worse days. First the work, next the food. Or she’d choke, though the lash was an ocean and a continent away.


    “Where’d I put my graver?”


    One day she’d see about getting her tools a nice, organised box. One day she’d also learn to read properly. And paint. And one day the Daughter and Mother would move backwards across the night sky and the aelir would burn their Olden trees and the elend would rise up against their oppressors.


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    Was it too little sleep that made her mood so sour? She forced a smile. That feels better. She bent over the work, enjoying the forge’s heat on her bare back. Long days being Tianna brought old memories of being many people. Mertle was a skin she preferred to the rest. A quick, painful pinch just beneath the ear gave her an unpleasant enough shake to banish her darker thoughts back into their box.


    Being Mertle was a freedom she’d earned and some lack of rest wouldn’t take that away.


    “Now, why would anyone want something like you?” she asked the gambeson laying folded on her desk. She studied the order more carefully, Tummy’s hand mimicking poorly her own coding. “Cut resistant. Flame resistant. Acid-proof. Acid? What acid? There’s a million acids. Imbecile.”


    Starting the work centred her. It was pleasant work. Simple, if she kept her attention on it. Connecting the enchantments came easily, one entrapping word after another until the effect functioned as intended. Sil’s ink accomplished most of the complicated stuff. Working erased the distance. No matter where Sil was now, part of her was here. It was enough to make the candlelight flicker a tiny bit brighter.


    She smiled as a word misted to nothing and sunk into the fabric. It made it tougher, able to deflect a blade without splitting. This was from Tallah’s research, something the sorceress had brought back from… what was that place named? Salmek. Bad place with more than a million ghosts flitting about.


    Ghosts… Not something to think on when one tries to cheer up. What’s the matter with you? Her own thoughts admonished the lack of discipline. Phantom pain needled across her face.


    “Mergara, ya awake back there?”


    If she weren’t, Tummy’s huge knock and booming voice would’ve made sure she now was. Good thing she’d finished the engraving or she would’ve likely messed it up.


    “Aye. What?” She called back, a tinge more annoyed than she wanted.


    It took a moment for her attention to grab onto the moniker he’d used. Mergara. Curse the night and its venom. Someone was out-front and it wasn’t a familiar face. She cast about for her apron.


    “Get out here. Visitors. All important like.”


    Storm Guard then. Not something to drop on an elendine before her coffee. On that thought, and while looking for clothes, she used a pair of tongs to fish her kettle out of the red-hot coals. There was barely enough water left to fill half of a cup. Three teaspoons of coffee would sharpen her enough to mind her tongue with such esteemed visitors.


    Maybe wearing more than the apron and trousers would be wiser?


    “Mergara?”


    “Getting dressed,” she answered. “I’m in my knickers.”


    Muffled voices echoed from beyond as she tried, all at once, to sip her coffee, pull on a vest to hide the more complicated-to-explain tattoos, and run a hand through her messy mane. Two hands weren’t quite enough so she reached the door with the roof of her mouth scalded, the vest buttoned up wrong, and her hair tangled around her horns. A look into a shiny piece of breastplate confirmed the message just-woken-up-don’t-ask-me-complicated-things. It would do.


    “Yes? What?”


    First, she stared at the giant. It was impossible not to. Not many people in Valen could come eye-to-eye with Tummy and look about half-again wider. A wild vanadal with a bone crest so ridged, pitted, and dented that it was hard to even understand where it began atop his gnarled skull. His cloak hung on him oddly, parts jutting out where they shouldn’t, like… oh, right, exactly like armour. He wasn’t filing down his carapace. Whoever fitted him with actual clothes must’ve been a master of the craft to work around that sort of bulk.


    He was having a polite conversation with Tummy. A nasty-looking atagan—steppes weapon, of course—lay on the table between the vanadal and the smith, and Tummy had a second one in his hand. Not many weapons looked anything but ridiculous in his meaty-hands, but this one was a thing of frightening beauty.


    “You’ve been ignoring your upkeep.” Tummy hefted the weapon closer to his goggles, speaking softly. “It’s nicely shined, but the hilt’s loose. Look, there’s pitting here. See it? Blade’s warping too. You’re riskin’ it just not doing the job when needed.”


    “How much t’ fix both of ‘em?”


    Tummy drew a sharp breath, shook his head and put the weapon back next to its twin.


    “I ain’t fixing it. I’ll make you new ones if you want, but I ain’t touching that work. Out of respect, you understand?” He rapped his knuckles on the table, a sign the vanadal seemed to understand as he pulled the swords back.


    “Bit hard to part wi’h these, if I’s honest. Been swinging ‘em a long time.” It was odd hearing a vandal speaking softly, and even odder seeing one from the steppes so far away from Nen.


    As he shifted his cloak to get the weapons back into their sheaths, Mertle counted four other concealed weapons on him. Mostly knives. No gloves on the low arms. A non-traditionalist. Even his stance screamed of how dangerous he really was. What a trail of carnage someone like that must’ve cut across two continents to be here now.


    She sipped her scalding hot coffee and cleared her throat.


    “How may I help you?” she asked in her most bemused tone.


    “Ah, you’ve joined us. Good evening.”


    Mertle nearly spilled the coffee on herself at the sound of the second voice. Her gaze swivelled down from the vanadal’s crest and met Captain Quistis Iluna’s black eyes.