After their initial landfall on the edge of the Shrinking Sea, Aralim and his companions hiked across the grassy hills and scattered sands on the fringe of the Expanse. Each evening, Aralim wiped dry grains from his calloused feet and shook out half the desert from his sandals. The hills seemed to protect them from the worst of the wind, but their footsteps shifted more often than finding tread. On the seventh day of their gruelling travel, they at last reached the town of Crossroads.
Of course, nothing could follow such an adventure with convenience and ease-of-business. The red-badged guards at the gates of the highway station stopped them with a dozen questions. The first—where was their red coin?—seemed in vain. They had not walked on the Crimson Highway even a single step. The guards eyed them suspiciously and the hold-up continued. There was a fee, Aralim learned, for arriving with claims of off-road travel. There was no way to know that they had not trespassed on the Crimson Highway.
When he was finally asked if anyone could vouch for him, Aralim named the post master from the Quill House. After a half-hour delay, the dispatched sentry returned to affirm Aralim’s story. At last, they were permitted entry to Crossroads.
The Quill House was Aralim’s first destination, of course. He had not received a single letter during his stay in Tal’lashar, and, although the distance of some thousand miles usually prevented usual correspondence, he had expected to receive word from Rattar or Miresh. When he finally stood before the post master’s desk, the man sighed. “At last,” he said, and set a bundle of letters on the top of his desk. There were five there, Aralim noticed, tied together with a strand of thin twine. “I’ve held some of these for over a month. A few coins, I—er—would request.”
Likely, the greedy fellow was remembering Aralim’s first visit, where he had asked for no payment.
Aralim rewarded him with a few valuable iron coins and took the bundle eagerly. His road-weary companions hurried toward an inn, so he forced himself to wait until finding a common room table to unroll the scrolls. The Quill House administrator had faintly recorded a date of arrival on each, so Aralim could conveniently find the order.
“From Miresh,” Aralim told Devran as he glanced down the page of the first correspondence. The first letter was brief and continued the trend of the last letter she had sent to Aralim. Miresh wrote about her continued studies with Enarrin, and Rattar’s continuing trend of secrecy, concern, and apparent scheming. The letter quickly slipped into a line of complaints about Master Enarrin. The master mage was holding the young girl back on certain topics, it seemed. To Aralim, it seemed Rattar might have uncovered ongoing issues in the Three Courts of Rema; his secrecy was likely another scheme like he had once orchestrated with Brallo Ma’kreo. As for her worries, Miresh could only truly be held back if she allowed herself to be.
The second letter, to Aralim’s surprise, was from Rattar. He focused on it with wide eyes as he read it twice. “Aralim, I must firstly apologize for my poor tutelage of Miresh of late. I know it has not been what was promised, but events in the east have absorbed my attention. Events have been set in motion that could plunge that part of the world into chaos that would last generations.”
Aralim blinked. To what was Rattar referring? The undead in Yarik? He had to assume not, as that issue had been averted. What was happening south and east across the continent from Aralim? He peered back into the letter. “After considering all our options, I have decided to apply my abilities to these dangers. I will be leaving Rema for a time, to go to Starath and assist however I can. I only pray Miresh does not follow me into such a risky undertaking—hence my distancing from her.” Leaving Rema on his own meant that Rattar was leaving his Crux: his strength and his security.
“What is it?” asked Devran, sitting across the tavern table from Aralim. He had read the words in his head, and waved dismissively to the writer. Devran hmphed and watched him continue his reading.
“I must ask a favour of you,” Rattar’s writing continued. “Upon your return, my friend, please remain in Rema. Until I return, do not stray or set out on another venture. Not only for Miresh’s sake, but for the Emperor’s. Keep him focused; keep him with us. He will lose touch again without the efforts of friends. A recent spree of criminal activity threatens the city’s peace as well as Tag’na’s. Lastly, if I do not return, you can seek answers to the questions you surely have from the prisoner in the Opal Valley. Haste and fortune to you. Rattar.”
Aralim leaned back in his chair. ‘The prisoner in the Opal Valley’? ‘A spree of crime’? he wondered. What was going on in his absence? He looked at the Aura blankly, and then back at the letter.
“Are you going to eat that?” Nill asked, pointing toward Aralim’s table placing. A bowl of untouched soup sat there. Aralim blinked, shrugged, and opened the third letter. As he started reading, Nilless grabbed his bowl with a laugh and dug in with a spoon.
The third letter was another from Miresh. She had forgotten to write about her latest vision in her prior letter, due to her frustration with Enarrin. Without much small talk, she recorded the details of the vision for Aralim: a hand missing fingers tossed the knife she had seen in her first two visions onto a table, next to a pair of custom-made dice. She said that from the tone of the vision, she felt the person was intentionally discarding it; it had not simply been placed there. She didn’t include any further details of the foretelling, but commented that, though she was learning enough, Enarrin had been the one to send this letter, too.
“It would be easier to find if it stopped moving,” Aralim muttered. Has it been gambled and lost, then? He sighed.
Devran blinked and glanced over at him. “What?”
Aralim shook his head and cracked the wax on the fourth letter—this one with the seal of Ko, not some Aura or Imperial sigil. To his surprise, it was from Hayan. His old friend and substitute-Selected had written excitedly about his plans to marry Arith, the woman he had been seeing since Aralim’s departure. He noted that the date was set to late 1480, to accommodate Aralim’s return—though Aralim skimmed through that portion of the letter. Weddings didn’t matter much to him. Later, Hayan recounted an unfortunate closure of his latest theatre run. There had been repeated attacks in the neighboring market district, part of a crime wave sweeping the city. This had been mentioned in Rattar’s letter too, and greatly concerned Aralim—he had never heard of anything like this in the Eternal Emperor’s capital. Hayan said the guards were having trouble keeping it under control and many complaints were being voiced at the Third Court.
The last letter was dated inside by a full moon later than even Hayan’s letter. The Quill House master had written its arrival date on the outside—it had been received on the 17th, only six days earlier. It was another letter in the calm printing of Aralim’s young friend.
“Aralim,” Miresh wrote. “I have not felt so lonely in a long time. Rattar is gone now, and you have not even begun your return journey, according to the Emperor’s Aura. Enarrin is a knowledgeable tutor, but he is not a friend. The Emperor himself tries to keep me company, but my only real friend is Riela.” There seemed a longer space between the phrases, as though Miresh’s quill had wandered as she considered her words. Then they continued: “Her parents have guests over constantly, even at strange hours. I am beginning to suspect a connection between them and the gangs that plague the streets these days, even though Riela’s parents are Selected. I have begun to distance myself from Riela because of this, though not at the cost of my martial arts lessons. My bruises heal quickly now, thanks to temperament and magic. With everyone at an arm’s length, I cannot wait,” these words were scratched neatly through with a line of ink, “am eager to see you again. Safe travels, Miresh.”
The fifth letter curled up again. One-by-one, he curled each up once more. Miresh always astounded him with her progress on the Path. While even Rattar could only offer warnings about the criminal organization blossoming in Rema, Miresh had already found a way ‘in.’ He smiled in spite of himself. Then he removed the oil-burning canister from his lantern, set it on the table in front of him, piled the letters in a licked-clean bowl from Devran, and set them ablaze. The only one he kept was the wedding invitation. It seemed the only one that contained pleasantries—and no secrets.
“Good news, I suppose?” asked Grendar. The chief of their guards had been sitting to Aralim’s immediate left the entire time, but turned sideways to examine Aralim’s visible reactions. Somehow the smile seemed to register with the sergeant more than the ashen stench of the glowing parchment.
Aralim shrugged and nodded. “Miresh’s training is coming along, it seems. It will be good to see her again.” And that was all he felt the sergeant needed to know.