I had no idea where I was. But one thing seemed clear enough: wherever the necklace had sent me, it had apparently decided this was somewhere safe. That was the only explanation I could construct that made any sense, and I was willing to work with it for the moment.
*Arvid is going to think I left on purpose.*
I stood in the dark alleyway and considered that thought with more honesty than was entirely comfortable. Could I claim it wasn't intentional? I had said the words. I had asked to be taken out of there, and the necklace had obliged. Whether I had known it would comply was another matter — but the desire behind the words had been genuine enough.
Perhaps I had escaped on purpose. Perhaps I had simply escaped in a way that allowed me to tell myself otherwise.
I shook my head and let the thought go.
I needed to go back. That was the practical reality. The evening had been arranged, Arvid was expecting me, and disappearing into an unknown part of the city without explanation was not a position I could maintain indefinitely. I focused inward and set the intention to teleport — reaching for the familiar anchor of my chambers, the specific weight and texture of that space I could usually locate without effort.
The resistance I met was immediate and complete.
Not external — internal. My own heart, apparently, had opinions about this, and they were not aligned with the task I was trying to complete. Every time I reached for the anchor, something in me pulled back, and the working collapsed before it could take hold. I tried twice more and achieved nothing except a clearer understanding of my own reluctance.
I stopped trying.
The night air moved through the alleyway in a slow current — cool, carrying the layered smells of a city's less curated spaces. Not entirely pleasant. I breathed it anyway.
*Take a walk. Clear your head. Then go back.*
Simple enough. I turned away from the direction of the city sounds and walked toward the open end of the alley.
It let out onto a broader space — farmland, from the look of it, bordered by wooden fencing on both sides, with a wide gravel road running between the fields. Wide enough for two carts to pass each other comfortably. The air here was considerably better — open and cool, carrying the clean smell of earth and growing things.
I assessed my surroundings and drew a quiet conclusion.
Still within Arpa's outer boundary, but beyond the second wall. The farms, the road, the quality of the silence — it matched what I had seen from the carriage on the road to Fonta. I had simply arrived on the wrong side of the city from the one I'd departed.
I started walking.
Gravel shifted softly under my conjured shoes. The sky above was moonless and thick with stars — an extraordinary quantity of them, the kind of sky that appears only when there is no competing light to diminish it. They sat there above the open fields in complete indifference to everything happening below, and I found that oddly steadying.
I had been walking for some minutes when I noticed the carriage.
It emerged from a turning further down the road, moving at a steady pace in my direction. Growing slowly but continuously larger as the distance between us closed.
My first thought was practical: they might offer a ride. It was late, I was on foot and clearly not where I should be, and most people operating a carriage at this hour were not looking for complications.
My second thought arrived as the vehicle drew close enough for me to make out the emblem on its side.
A silver eagle, a serpent locked in its talons.
The Silver Eagle merchant guild.
I stopped walking and stared at it for a moment. The merchant district was the better part of Arpa away from here. What reason could that guild's carriage have for being on a farm road outside the second wall at this hour? The question arrived and declined to answer itself, and my interest, which had been mildly curious a moment ago, sharpened considerably.
I changed my appearance before I raised my hand.
The transformation was instinctive and quick: a young man in his twenties, black hair, pale skin, silver eyes — more or less what I imagined I might have looked like if I had been born differently. I adjusted my vocal cords to match and let the rest settle into place. Then I stepped into the middle of the road and raised one hand.
The driver drew the horses to a reluctant stop.
"Forgive the interruption," I said, pitching my voice with the mild embarrassment of someone who has made an avoidable navigational error, "but I find myself considerably further from the first wall than I intended to be. If you were heading in that direction and could spare the space, I would be genuinely grateful for a ride."
The driver's expression communicated that he was not delighted by this development. He let out a sound that was not quite a word and turned to the small window behind him, sliding it open and relaying my request to whoever was inside, in a language I didn't recognise.
A reply came from within. Brief, flat.
The driver turned back and looked me over with the unhurried assessment of someone deciding whether I was worth the inconvenience. Then, with a curtness that made his feelings on the matter perfectly clear: "Get in."
"You are most kind, sir, truly — thank you—" I was already moving, reaching for the door handle, pulling it open.
The smell reached me before anything else did.
Sweet. Thick. The particular cloying sweetness that I had inhaled in my chambers no more than an hour ago, half a second before the room had dissolved around me. The smell of the necklace. The smell of active magic, specific and recognisable now that I had encountered it once with full attention.
I had never known magic to have a scent before that moment in my chambers. My own worked entirely without one. But this was unmistakable — the same signature, the same quality, drifting from inside this carriage as clearly as perfume.
I controlled my expression and stepped up.
A small magic lamp swayed at the centre of the carriage's interior, casting a low, amber-edged light across red velvet cushions worked with gold embroidery. The space was generous — easily large enough for eight people to sit in reasonable comfort.
Only one person occupied it.
He was sprawled across one entire side of the carriage with the unconscious ease of a man entirely at home in his own space — legs extended, taking up rather more room than strictly necessary, his tunic open at the front in a way that suggested he had not been expecting company or had simply stopped caring. His silver-blond hair was slightly disordered. His pale blue eyes fixed on me the moment I appeared in the doorway, and they didn't move.
For a disorienting fraction of a second, I genuinely did not recognise him.
Then I did.
Reichert.
But this was not the Reichert who had bowed at a precise ninety degrees in the construction yard that morning, or who had opened the jewellery case with meticulous ceremony. This man looked nothing like a polished guild leader performing the carefully constructed role of a successful western merchant. He looked like someone who had taken that role off along with his outer coat and was simply existing without it for a while.
I stepped inside. The door closed behind me. The carriage resumed its motion.
"I must apologise for the imposition, dear sir," I said, settling into the seat across from him with the slightly self-deprecating manner I had chosen for this version of myself. "I'm afraid I misjudged the distance considerably."
He said nothing. His eyes tracked me with the particular quality of someone gathering information without appearing to do so — not hostile, not warm, simply attentive in a way that was more systematic than casual.
I let the silence sit for a moment and then filled it.
"Henry Delgon," I offered, with an easy nod — the name of a real man, a western visitor from the Kingdom of Helga who had passed through Selon a month prior and already departed, whose name had appeared in an envoy report I had seen on Arvid's desk. If this man knew anything, he would not know that. "And yourself, if you don't mind my asking? I'd like to know whose generosity I'm in debt to."
The carriage moved steadily along the gravel road. Outside, the stars continued their indifference.
He looked at me for a long moment — the kind of look that is deciding something rather than simply seeing something.
Then, finally: "Yegney Zaren." A beat. "Zaren is fine."
I held the name up against what I knew of him and found that it fit nothing. No Reichert in it, no Dorken, no Silver Eagle. A name that belonged to a different person entirely, offered without explanation or apology.
A pseudonym, then. Or something older than that.
I kept my expression pleasantly unrevealing.
"Mister Zaren," I said. "A pleasure."