"You must be reasonable, Natalie, we are all going to the same Academy campus, so it would be ridiculous to take separate carriages," Nathan said patiently.

  "Absolutely not," I said, impatiently. "You promised me that after the feast we would have a chance to speak on the way home. I would speak with you in private, brother."

  He smiled genially. "I'm certain that anything you can say to me, you can say in front of Lachel."

  "Absolutely not," I said, irritated. "What I am to discuss is not for common consumption and not for any ears but your own, and most particularly not those of Princess Lachel Freckentop."

  He pursed his lips and tilted his head slightly. "You have resented her since we first knew of her. Is it because of that Dandston woman?"

  I turned to where Princess Lachel Freckentop stood, just five feet away, with her hands folded in front of her while she watched us argue on the sidewalk in front of a church in the middle of the night. I looked back at Nathan. "Nathan, this is something we can discuss in a carriage ride home, together, yes?"

  "With Lachel," he corrected.

  "I don't mind sharing," she said brightly.

  I've already decided to kill this girl. It's a done deal in my mind already. But damn near everything she says pushes me to shift my focus from "an indirect plot to have her destroyed in such a way as can't be traced back to me" to "exploding her right here on the sidewalk".

  "Princess, I appreciate that you would like to take the ride back with company as it is a long and tedious trip, but I do need to speak to my brother in confidence," I said. I'm not quite gritting my teeth.

  "And an unnecessary expense, three ride at the same price as two," she said with a smile. "Father says that wealth is no excuse for waste."

  I sighed. "You really are both going to insist, aren't you?"

  Nathan reached to pat my shoulder, but I stepped away like I was looking down the street for a carriage. Behind me, he said "It's not a matter of insisting, Natalie, it's just that it doesn't matter, so we might as well do it the easy way."

  I hailed down a hire-cab and let down the running-board with one foot. The hand that was opposite both of them swept a motion and a spell to conjure electrical energy. I opened the cab door, and I let Nathan offer me a hand up into the inside. Lachel came next, and he offered her a hand up, and I took her hand to help her inside. She smiled and accepted my touch.

  And then I tazed her unconscious.

  She dropped insensible into the padded seat. Nathan gasped and leaped up the steps to her side, but I was already arranging her comfortably into a corner.

  "What happened?!" Nathan demanded, shocked and worried.

  "She's had a very trying day and she fell asleep," I said. "Sit down. Driver! The Academy!"

  Nathan was thrown into his seat by the cab's movement, but I was braced in place with my flight, holding my balance while I folded her hands comfortably. A shock of electricity can't actually knock someone out, not safely. To literally tazer her into unconsciousness, I'd take serious risks of stopping her heart, burning her flesh or giving her brain damage. Instead I used it to stun her severely, and while she was rocked by the shock, I just curved the air around her face so she got restricted oxygen and fell asleep. Hypoxia is a much easier way to regulate someone unconscious without killing them.

  And then when she was actually asleep, I just undid my work and let her sleep naturally.

  Nathan just sat there, staring, scared, holding her hand and checking her pulse. "She's fine," I assured him. "Now, she's in the carriage, we're in the carriage, we're all headed back to the campus, and there's plenty of time for us to discuss the events of this evening. Look, an ideal outcome."

  He turned to glare at me, still holding onto her wrist. "Did you do this to her?!" he demanded.

  "Did you give me an alternative?" I demanded, as I sat down across from them. "We're going to have that talk now, Nathan."

  There was a long pause as emotions shifted onto and off of his face, working through his thoughts. "I," he said after a long pause. "I think I need to leave this carriage and make sure that Lachel is all right. You and I can talk tomorrow before church."

  "I'm not asking much," I said quietly. "Discover the source of the blight. You have the tools available. If you will do that, everything will be fine."

  "Is that all you have to say?" he said. There was an ultimatum in his voice.

  In all our lives, I've never stood up to him. Not to his face. Not like this. I might push, but I would fold. This was the first time he had seen me put my foot down and keep it down. But apparently, one time is all it takes. Maybe this was always waiting. Maybe if we'd had an argument that I did not lose when we were seven, then we would have fallen out at seven years old. If I had stood my ground at nine years old, maybe he and I would have hated each other for the lasts six years. I feel like maybe our entire good relationship has always been built on me capitulating.

  Or maybe it's because I just tazed his girlfriend unconscious in front of him like some kind of maniac. In my defense, I pushed really hard to not have it come to this. If anyone had treated me like my words mattered-

  Whatever.

  "I think it's enough," I said, and in a blaze of sheer white light, I vanished.

  I implore you to learn from my lesson: don't rely on the Dramatic Exit One-Liner Mic Drop if you have to see the same person the next morning first thing. It takes a lot of the impact out of the moment. I bring this up because Sevenday morning I rose, groggy, and whisked myself through a whirlwind of washing up and preparations, and ate a couple mints to keep my blood sugar up. Then I walked out into the courtyard, where Nathan was standing, waiting for me in his nice church suit, arms crossed and glaring at me.

  Basically, I blew up at him last night, said some harsh things, scooting towards "never take this back" material- but I'm his ride to church the very next morning. So now he's had all night to think of his comebacks.

  Maybe I did not plan this out as well as could be planned, but I had been really pissed off last night.

  "Nathan," I said, trying not to let my voice sound too cold.

  "Natalie," he said, making no such efforts. "This was when I agreed to speak. You'll not need to assault anyone to have this privacy now."

  I flustered. "It was one- look, we could have- never mind. Let me cut right to the moment: you've got a mission to attend to, and you're shirking it. The most important days of your life so far and you've been goldbricking for the sake of promenading about with the fifth heir of the throne currently funding a trade war against our duchy and our people!"

  And if you would do your damn homework you'd understand that this is so much worse than it seems! But telling him outright that the Dominionist Faction was responsible for the Berry Blight would shortcut his questline and disrupt his leveling progression. And, I need to get him used to acting on his own without me spoon-feeding him clues.

  Nathan looked disappointed. "Natalie, she's not responsible for what her parents have done. She's a nice girl, and I can't hold a grudge against her based on her father's politics."

  "You can!" I insisted. In frustration I thew my hands in the air, fingers curled as if to grab some sense from the air itself. "And you really should! You understand that you and I are extensions of the duke's office and throne! We have a responsibility and we carry a share of liability we inherit! These are beliefs you have quoted to me. Just hold her to the same standard you hold yourself to!"

  He shook his head. "Forgiveness and mending needs to start somewhere, and if finding a path to political peace through personal proximity can-"

  "A parsimony of proximity, you pillock! You're not going to end a trade war by swanning around on society assignations while her father is still emptying his prisons to send thieves to our land with a posted bounty for our caravans!" I tried not to shout. "And you're still ignoring your mission!"

  "Not my mission, Natalie," he said with a sad, pitying smile. Pitying. "I don't have a mission, Natalie. Mother and Father sent me to the Academy to get an education and to make social contacts to carry my future as a duke of the realm. That is my responsibility. Not blights or paperwork or investigations, and not midnight rendezvous with thieves in a basement that wish to kill me with chipped knives." He glanced up at the bright sky. "I am not trapped by your visions, sister. You are. I still have my own mind and path. I can do whatever I want. Your futures are not my problem."

  My stomach plummeted. He did not care about the plot, the story. He was going to focus on the school story, and the romance options, and ignore the whole plot arc as background. He locked in as a spy, gave us the hardest run the game would offer, and now he's abdicating the entire plot.

  Or....

  I broke out in a wide smile. "Ah. Of course! This is reverse psychology, right? Where you propose one thing so that I'll push the other direction, tricking me into doing what you'd really want by pretending otherwise! Very clever! Well, you already know that I'm not going to help you directly with this Blight matter, but I suppose I can give you some hints that you would not otherwise have gotten. Come on!"

  And I waved a hand, opening the round portal into a place of harsh, hurtful light.

  He started. "No, this wasn't a trick, Natalie. No psychology of any kind, reverse or otherwise. I'm not compelled to the path you see for me."

  "Right, yes, of course," I said, nodding. I caught his wrist in my palm. "C'mon, let's go see."

  "See what?" he said. "We're supposed to head to Skydown for church."

  "Sure, we'll get there in a minute," I said, and tugged him with me across the threshold. Just before I had to cover up my eyes, I saw the doubt and hesitation on his face.

  We stepped back out into wilderness, a stand of orchard trees that were grown feral and untrimmed, and wreathed with parasitic vines and webworm. These made up the back yard of an abandoned inn, once a prosperous place that served the needs of dozens of travelers and travailers. But decades ago a shift in trade routes had almost entirely shut down this road, all traffic went through the parallel road just a few miles west. And with no road, no inn; the owners had shuttered and shut the place and moved to greener passengers.

  All of which made the Three Weeks Inn a marvelous place for bandits and highwaymen to set up headquarters for raids on the prosperous new road to the west.

  And there were signs that such had happened: stables were recently repaired, trees had been cut and then set across the roads as barricades, a hole in the roof was clumsily patched with a tarp. And behind the building, a dozen wagons all turned over and tumbled, rotting in the damp clammy shadows. Baskets and barrels were tossed about, emptied. The air smelled of cold smoke, old mud, and festering trash.

  "This is not Skydown!" Nathan exclaimed, glaring around.

  "We're actually surprisingly close to it," I said cheerfully. "As the crow flies, that is. Regular roads would take a while to bring you there from here. But I have shorter roads to walk. Nathan, you know a great deal about cranberries, right?" I watched the inn carefully, and the orchard woods.

  "I do, actually," he said, suspiciously. "Why?"

  "Cranberry bogs?"

  "Yes."

  "The pests that eat those bushes?"

  "I do," he said, still staring at me. "But they're mostly regulated, they may eat leaves but rarely destroy the fruit. Cranberry farmers take pains to cultivate spiders that feed on intrusive insects."

  "That's right," I said. "Now, we've got this blight going on, which is not carried by insects, correct?"

  He relaxed a bit. "That's true. We have little luck so far figuring out how this pestilence is being transmitted, but we've eliminated the normal vectors."

  "And, you've read what happens when people eat the infected berries?" I prompted. A phantom wind moved through the silk-shrouded canopy of the trees.

  He had been relaxing a bit, but now he was tensing up again. "Yes," he said. "And it's not good at all."

  "Hah," I said, sadly. "Oh, Nathan. This is going to be a shock for you. Here," I said, and handed him a rapier. "Tell me if the balance is all right."

  He took the sword by reflex, and swished it through the air. "A bit point-heavy," he said. "You could build up the pommel a bit."

  I curved the steel and shifted the sword's proportions to suit him. He nodded and turned it a few times. He slowed, stopped, and stared. He looked at the steel in his hands. "Natalie," he said, very calmly now, "why did you just hand me a sword?"

  "The terrible ailments that the berries cause to people who eat them also affects insects that eat the leaves," I said casually, gesturing for the power to curve stones. "And just like the farmers have found out that you should not feed the diseased berries to livestock, and you should not eat the livestock fed on those berries, the cranberry farmers are rapidly learning that the spiders that nest there should not be feeding on the diseased insects."

  The trees to our side began moving again, but this time the movement was too purposeful to mistake for the wind. A segment of the webworm-shroud tore away and started moving downward. It was long, and fat in the middle. And as it jostled a bit, a pair of booted legs swung down from the end, swaying back and forth.

  A human form, cocooned in spider's silk, hanging in a tree like a bumblebee saved for later.

  "And, as the bandits in this hideout have discovered, it's almost impossible to transport baskets of cranberries without bringing some of those spiders along," I continued with some satisfaction.

  Eight legs emerged, four on each side, and they moved with a delicate dexterity, ten feet long, segmented, hairy, and tipped with serrated curving claws. They crawled in sequence, down the trunk of this tree. The bottom two reached the chilled packed mud of the ground, and the rest followed in turn, and the thing started advancing on us, the chitinous elbows of its limbs rising above it before arching down. The victim's head lolled down in the front, dead and desiccated, mouth open in an everlasting scream. Patchy brown hair hung nearly to the ground, but his or her face was distorted, cheeks ruptured to make space for new eye sockets that glared at us with red-glowing malevolence. The ears were torn away, shoved aside to make room for the clicking mandibles that twitched as the creature advanced on us. The corpse was transforming into a huge and terrible undead arachnid, and the human's useless legs dragged on the ground behind. A rock caught one of the boots and tugged it off, exposing the cadaverous ankle and then the mummified foot.

  Nathan stared in horror but was moving into a fighting posture with no hesitation, already turning his sword as he started working out where the weak spots would be.

  The creature was mostly a bloated ambiguous shape, wrapped in gossamer threads, with a few human features showing here and there, and spider's eyes and jaws distorting the human face and long spider legs jutting out from the cocoon around the rib cage. Nathan leaped in the balestra form and lunged out at full extension, and the sharp tip of his sword speared down through the cadaver's throat, penetrating deeply into the body's core. He had already seen the difference between fighting monsters or fighting swordsmen, and he leaned deeply forward into the lunge, as one should never do against an armed opponent. He whipped back upright and added that momentum to his cross-step retreat, and landed almost ten feet back from his attack, warily watching the mummified spider-thing.

  It staggered, and something dark and oily started leaking from the wound, but it continued moving closer, more slowly now. Nathan made another darting attack, and this time struck the corpse's mouth, the sharp tip breaking through bone. The monster sagged to the ground, dead at long last.

  My brother turned to me, glaring accusingly. "What is that?!"

  "That's happening in a hundred places across Meadowtam," I said calmly. "As nearly as I can reconstruct it, the bug ate the berries and the spiders ate the bugs. The berries were harvested and shipped out weeks ago, before the blight was announced. Spiders went along for the ride. The bandits caught the caravan, and ate the food they captured. The blight started taking them over, and they were helpless when the undead spiders that were smuggling along with the shipment came after them. The spiders immobilized them, and started burrowing in, eating."

  He kicked at the cadaver. "What kind of blight can do this?"

  "Do you really need me to explain to you again that I expect you to answer that question for me?" I chided.

  "Natalie!" he barked, and kicked the monster again. "This is serious!"

  "I know," I said. "I've been taking it seriously for my whole life." I just let the words fall on the ground, uninflected.

  "And you could stop all-" he started, pivoting to glare at me.

  "Ah-ah-anh," I interrupted, waving a scolding finger. "First of all, no, I never had the ability to stop all of this. That information was withheld from me. The only method I had to prevent this situation, was to go straight to the top and kill the people responsible years before this began. And I promise you, that is not the good outcome. Second of all, this is not all of it. Remember the day you came to me with asparagus and you were terrified because that was not the end of the tragedy I've seen? Well, we're still in early days, Nathan. This is going to have downriver effects for years." I paused, glanced over his shoulder. "And third of all, there were twelve bandits in this gang."

  He whipped around and struck up his garde position, moving to cover himself and find his fighting footing. Several more of the trees were disgorging human-huntsman hybrid husks, and something else was dragging itself around inside the abandoned shell of the Three Weeks Inn.

  I hovered my status bar over them, and rather than giving me ratings for each creature, the whole combat was rated as Strength 7, Damage 20. So, not a stupendously difficult fight, but if you're not entirely ready for it this is certain death. And it's only worth one experience point for the whole group.

  Well, here's a chance to make him feel involved. And I'm positive that he's a low enough level for this to be worth some experience. I ripped the fieldstones out of the inn's outer walls and levitated them around me, dozens of head-sized rocks weathered by sun and rain. I flicked them out and battered at the spiders, but not with bone-breaking force, just to knock them back. And I targeted all but two of them, the one nearest to Nathan and another some twenty feet back.

  With skill and daring he faced the first adversary, stabbing and retreating, keeping himself well clear of the jaws that drooled with necrotizing venom. He moved carefully to stay clear of danger, and conserved his endurance as well. That's a good sign, most people in their first real battles let the adrenaline control them and go too hard, wear themselves out early. I still tend to do that if I get too invested. I don't have good instincts for this stuff, and I tend to get injured in dumb ways. So, I prefer to sit well back and stay safe.

  I channeled owl's essence to boost my senses and Awareness, just in case the skelespiders tried something sneaky. I used flying rocks to bump them back and corral them, forcing them all to one side to keep an eye on them, and allowing them forward to engage my brother only a couple at a time, measuring them out.

  With a heavy slash of his rapier he severed a leg, and then pierced its head for the killing blow. The next one, I used a heavy rock to hold it in place while he picked his target. With me controlling their advance and watching his back, he was able to kill the next eleven monsters in just over five minutes.

  Even with his training and practice, he was panting and out of breath by the end of the fight, his sleeves torn, dripping sweat. "Monsters," he panted. "In Meadowtam."

  "Indeed," I said, bringing a cool breeze around to help soothe him. "For a century or more everyone has been quite certain that all the monsters of the world were pushed back beyond the borders, guarded by the marchwardens. No threats to any of us except from our fellow man. And now, unexpectedly, there are new monsters emerging within striking range of the villages and roads. What, dear brother, is to be done about this?"

  "You're mocking me," he accused.

  "I did not make a mockery of you," I replied easily, and let him draw his own conclusion from that innocuous phrase.

  "You brought me here to fight monsters?"

  "I brought you here to impress upon you the seriousness of this situation, if I could," I said. "And to impress upon you how important this matter is to me, and to everyone else."

  I dispelled the sword, and I mended his clothing. I swept away the sweat from his skin and a strong wind blew over him in just the very specifically controlled way needed to fix his hair just as it had been. "Now, Nathan, follow me to Skydown. I think you need to visit the church."