I don't think anyone actually reads this, but I'm pretty sure I'm still writing it. It's hard to tell among the countless notebook pages I have covered in spidery scrawl, haha. Still, I know the plot is horrendously slow, but it's actually starting. Soon. I swear.

Chapter Nineteen
Take A Step Back
(Leah)

It had been good to get a few minutes to myself, but I never liked them to be longer than that. A few minutes pretty much covered my need for private time. After Bay, had left I stayed in the yard for a while, cycling through stretches and combat sequences, but then the littlings came out to do their morning practice. I didn't want to get in the way, so I left the yard and headed for the mess. There were bound to be a few of my friends lazing around there. Denton Dobo, at least.

Sure enough, he was there. Denton was half-dwarf, but he made the most of his seeming handicap and hide. By rights, he should have been a master, but hierarchies in the school were dumb. He always said it was to do with treatises and his status in both human and dwarf communities, but I figured it was just plain meanness. He waved me over, then closed his book and slid it to one side.

"You didn't say much good morning meal," he said, raising one eyebrow reproachfully. "Still tired out from your journey?"

I shrugged, then slumped onto the bench on the other side of the table. "Sorry, but I haven't really got any stories to tell. I did do something dumb, which got me into a bit of trouble—but that was about the most interesting thing that happened."

The din of midday began to swell, drowning out Denton's deep-throated chuckle. He tugged thoughtfully at his beard and gave me a conspiratorial wink. "Ah, but the dumb things you have done in the past have often rivaled the thrill of ancient glory tales."

If Bay had been there and said something like that, I would have had to kick him under the table. Not just for being rude, but also because he could do with strengthening his leg muscles. Denton's legs were like tree trunks, though. Instead, I grimaced at him and stole his book. "Not this time. I just got a broken tinderbox out of the deal."

While he went on chuckling at me, I thumbed through the book. I couldn't read dwarfish stone-scratch, but looked nice as, in an old-timey, traditions being kept up way. Denton seemed anxious to have it back, though, so I shut it and handed it over. He set it back in the place I'd snatched it from.

"What kind of book is that?"

He glanced at it, as though surprised. Maybe he'd thought I didn't read enough to care about what other people might read. I could have taken offense, but then, every dwarf I'd ever met had held the opinion that humans barely read at all. Denton was getting a little more flexible on the issue, but he was mostly at the school. Few of us were particularly scholarly. He set a rough-skinned hand on the book, then looked back at me. "It is a guide."

"To what?"

"Conducting oneself with minimal awkwardness."

I left—I couldn't help it. As Denton when red beneath his beard, I shook my head and apologized a few times. "It's just, you've never been awkward. You seem more at ease than most of the really senior students. Some of the masters, even. Did you write that book or something?" I meant it. Out of most of my friends, Denton was the one with class. He knew which fork to use when there was more than one, and he carried himself like the founder of the school.

The redness faded to a sort of proud pink. "Oh no. This book was a gift from my grandfather, when I left the mountains. I've no idea who wrote it."

I was told my appreciation. "I wish we had something like that written in Naravan… Or at least classes on the topic. My brother could definitely use the help." The big dork. I looked around the mess hall, alert for any sign that he'd be coming back soon, or already had returned. All I saw was the familiar mass of students, moving about as though only the smallest things mattered. The ceiling felt so low in the mess hall, I felt four inches high, as though my body was adjusting to keep me from smacking my head. I wondered if Denton felt the same, or if it affected him the way it did me.

For a few moments, I just looked around, memorizing the walls and what was in between them. People were always coming and going, and lonely and then graduating. It had gotten so that you could meet someone by the gates, hold hands and fall in love in the space of an hour, and spend the next weekend saying goodbye. Familiar faces only stayed familiar if you pick your friends carefully. I looked over at Denton, knowing I was smiling faintly. He was my careful pick. I liked seeing him around all the time, and knowing that he had favor places to be at specific times gave me a kind of glowy feeling of permanence. Sometimes I tried to join him, or at least follow his example, but it was hard to remember.

Besides that, it Denton picked a favorite place that might attract a bunch of newcomers he didn't want to share his company with, all he had to do was look and gruff, move stiffly, and bristle his beard. Maybe grumble a bit in the dwarf tongue, if they were stupid. I was stuck looking small, female, and a little clumsy. And we were about the same age. Hardly seemed fair.

"Are you falling asleep, Leah?"

I gave myself to shake. "Sort of. It's this being home again situation. I thought adventures went less smoothly."

The bench creaked as Denton shifted his seat, moving it closer to the table. His eyebrows were knitted in a thoughtful expression that included a thick-lipped frown. "Don't be so eager for a bumpy adventure," he said, the rumble of his voice softened into a whisper. "I promise you, you will like it so very much when trouble comes about."

Behind me, someone dropped a glass and made a terrific shattering clash against the wooden sections of the floor, followed by a few whoops as the dumber students apparently felt the need to comment on something that didn't remotely involved them. I didn't turn around. Things like that were always happening in the mess, it was where it had gotten the name. It was also why so much of the war was made of hard-packed earth. The walls were higher than the dorms too, although I didn't know why that was.

Denton picked up his book and open to a marked place near the middle. "If you would like, I'd be more than happy to translate a bit for your brother."

It took me several seconds to figure out why he was offering. He waited patiently, with a sort of twitching angle to his head, as though he wanted to glance over my shoulder. Then the fingers on the table, occasionally pausing to scratch in grooves in the ancient stone. "Thanks, Denton, but I don't know if it'll help him any. My brother is clueless."

"Well, thanks."

To my utter shame, I jumped. I used the moment to turn around, but it was still obvious. Bay stood with his hands on his hips looking just a little like an irritated cook without an apron, his hair a wild mess. His face was red, and he was panting slightly. I grinned at him and inclined my head towards Denton. "My good friend here has offered to give you a guide to life."

Some of the redness fated, but not much probably because Denton was chortling into his beard. His hair was a little gingery, like ours, but there was more brown to it, kind of like the earthy tone over the rest of him had tried to cast influences over his hair and beard. Bay looked like a tomato next to him, made it almost impossible to hold in a laugh. When my poor brother shook his head at me, failing to look properly reproachful. "Miss Marja's summoned us, Leah."

Two warring reactions got stuck in my teeth. The first was the obvious desire to tell my brother to naff off, but it came from been his sister, and the fact that I was with one of my friends. However, the second, the reasonable one, also remembered that answering Miss Marja's summons would have to eventually involve Pie-Face. Not a pleasant prospect, after all, he had somehow gotten everyone else on his side. I raised a single finger in the half-hearted salute, then sighed, "Oh fine."

"I thought you'd be… er, excited. Or something." They glanced at Denton. "If you to want to spend the day together, I'm sure M—"

My ears reddened faster than I could swing my legs over the bench to clip his knees, but they got there soon enough. "Right, time to go. Can't keep the boss waiting." Fully aware of how manic and overall red my face was, I waved to Denton as I rose to my full height, and grabbed Bay's arm and yanked him out into the main yard.

As soon as we were out of the cool, gripping temperature of the mess hall, I tugged harder so that Bay stumbled a few steps in front of me. His eyes were wide, obviously bewildered. Umber's… Brothers did not know anything. I gave up before I started, and breezed past him. Completely forgetting that I didn't know where we were supposed to go. After I had stomped my way to the gates, I waited for him, tapping my foot and making a pleasantly intimidating cloppy noise, only partially ruined by the inevitable slap of sandal leather.

When he did catch up, I flipped my hair—or would have, if I ever let it hang loose. "Where are we meeting her, anyway?"

"Ring Square. Why did you—"

If you'd wanted answers, he should have withheld the information I had asked for. I'd tore off, not running, but striding fast enough that he would have been stopped by a city guard if he had followed me very directly and at a similar pace. It was a busy day for this season, in this city. The guard was more active, in the market was a riot of colors in a pretty ugly way. People who could tell a ripe melon from a fractionally overripe one at fifty paces with seems to be incapable of seeing with the same eyes that pink and orange were not a classically tasteful color combination. Still, the melons were the important thing, once you got away from the stand. Little swirls of wispy smoke rose up in weak tendrils from strips of meat searing on a nearby grill, the crackling hiss as the juice and fat fell into the heat source seemed to underline the smell and give it a thicker body. I held still and breathed it in, letting the smell of the insufficiently spiced food fill my nose and meet me dizzy.

"Excuse me…"

The voice was familiar. With my eyes shut, it was easier to place it and give it a physical appearance that matched the timbre so well I couldn't have invented him a better face. Although I still couldn't quite help thinking that Cadence's existence as a man was practically a tragedy. I opened my eyes and smiled up at him, idly wondering if one of us had recently changed size. He certainly looked taller. "Good morning."

Looking at this…person was sort of like listening to music. You couldn't do it in pieces unless you wanted to feel incomplete for the rest of the day. Everything about him made me think of candles and silk sheets, even his well-worn, balding boots. He effected some kind of bow I'd never seen before, then straightened. I looked down and his boots again and realized that he was standing on an incline, while I had found my way into a dip. "We waited for you," he said, rather cheerily.

Marja was standing behind him, holding a wrapped bun. I could see bits of the shredded meat poking out. I sighed again. Bay had found it unfairly easy to give up meat, but I didn't always fail to miss it. But I'd had a big breakfast, which helped. She ate almost absentmindedly, as though bits of her ran on automatic and left the rest to handle the important things. In between mouthfuls, she spoke to everyone as a group. "I don't much like been idle," she said, glancing around the marketplace and apparently judging the bustle. "But I don't have very many business interests here. Naravi is not exactly a trade hub."

"Maybe not, but you can always put Cadence to work crooning and telling tales." The bun was gone now, but the smell lingered, releasing new waves of it and she crushed the brown paper in her hands. I tried to close my nostrils, with little success.

The bard blushed, then reached over his shoulder, presumably to rub his neck. But then he brought his arm back down, and there was a transparent and blue flute clasped carefully in his hand. It was so…reflective that it was almost like he'd taken a thin strip of the morning light out of the sky, but when he held it lower and more or less sheltered in his own shadow, I could see letters like vine patterns etched into the shiny surface. I leaned forward, hands on my knees. "What's that?"

"It's a crystal flute," he explained, holding aloft again. "Enchanted against a breaking, of course. But it doesn't need anything to enhance the sound."

To prove his point, he agrees the flute to his lips and began to play. For the first few moments, the din of the crowd almost drowned him out, but then if those nearest started getting quieter. It was like watching a storm end, but with your ears. The first solitary notes poked through the surrounding chatter, then grew steadier and stronger as they gained purchase and confidence. I did my best to keep my head where it was, but Bay didn't seem to have the same grip. My brother was enthralled, which was pretty spooky, and Marja looked like she'd just had a very pleasant and bizarrely serene thought. I shook my head slightly, grasping my internal discord with both hands to steady myself.