Sara was woken by the unexpected tones of a rainstorm pattering against her tent, soaking the canvas until it drooped low with the weight of water. Her eyes blinked blearily open, searching for some sense regarding the occasion.

  There wasn't much to be found. They were nearly a month into the Tulian dry season, which sted through the north's spring and summer. Though she hadn't yet lived through one of the famed six month droughts, generally speaking, the name called to mind a distinct ck of storms.

  Lightning briefly lit the walls, followed shortly thereafter by a sharp crack of thunder. Evie's ears pricked up, tracking the sudden boom, her eyes peeling open.

  "...well, that's rather unexpected, isn't it?" She murmured.

  "Yeah." Sara smacked her lips. "Not compining, though. They won't be fighting in this."

  "Nor immediately after, if it turns the fields to mud."

  "Mm."

  As the only clocks which existed in this world were built with rge, ponderous pendulums, unsuited for bringing on the march, Sara had no idea what time it was. There was light outside, meaning the sun had at least risen, but beyond that she had no idea. She also didn't know when the rain had started, beyond the fact that it had been long enough to soak her tent. Already water was beginning to drip through in the corners, spshing gently against whatever happened to be beneath. While Evie stretched and pulled herself from the comforting embrace of sleep, Sara went about the room pulling chests and tables away from the leaks, piling them up on the slight hump of grass in the middle of the floor. If nothing else, living in Tulian had given her an appreciation for the measures required to keep personal effects dry.

  Seeing as no runners had come to wake them, they took advantage of the unforeseen shower. After donning her own set, Evie helped Sara into her armor, which was as borious a process as always. Normally she didn't think much of Evie's habitual paranoia when it came to personal safety, but in an active warzone, they were in tacit agreement. There was no way she was leaving her tent unprotected.

  And so it was that she stepped out into the rain dressed in bcksteel, a drumroll of water droplets immediately welcoming her to the wider world. She turned her head skyward for a brief moment, trying to judge the time, but all she got for her trouble was a stream of water blurring her vision through her visor's eyeslit. In any case, the clouds were too thick, hiding the sun's position. It may as well have been noon, for all she could see.

  When she looked back down, her eyes caught on the pitiable sight of a runner girl doing her best to shelter her ears between her shoulders. She was soaked to the bone, dripping water in heavy rivulets into the mud puddle beneath her feet, but she'd stalwartly kept her station. Seeing Sara's bck helmet turning her way, she sketched a hasty salute, flinging water every which way as she snapped to attention.

  "Ma'am!"

  "At ease. And damn, kid, sorry about that." Sara looked about. "We normally have lean-tos or something for y'all, or at least we did during the rainy season... Shit, I'll have to see if we even brought them. Didn't expect this storm."

  "It's no problem, ma'am!" The girl immediately insisted, holding her at-attention pose.

  Sara imitated an incorrect buzzer. "Nope. Big problem. Don't want you coughing up a lung before the day's over, kid. No point in losing anyone to rain, of all things." Sara jabbed her head towards the quartermaster's area. "First order of the day: go get yourself a raincoat, pronto. Then let the Colonels know I want a strategy meeting as soon as possible." Sara held up a wait-a-moment gesture as the girl prepared to sprint off. "And get the coat first. If you're feeling bad about missing duty because of your own comfort, imagine how you'd feel when you're stuck in a sick bed meant for injured soldiers. Understand me?"

  "Yes, ma'am!" The girl said, snapping off a sharper salute before spinning on a heel, darting towards the quartermaster's tent. She was a good runner, Sara noted. She darted between the rows of tents and meandering soldiers with natural ease, barely slowing from a dead sprint the entire way.

  Sara frowned behind her helmet, grumbling. "Still don't like it."

  Evie's ears flicked beneath her rain coat, stirring the grey fabric. "Using so-called children in the army, Master?"

  "Not 'so-called,' Evie. That girl had to be, what, thirteen?"

  "Two years older than when my training with a bde began."

  "There's a damn big difference between learning from a fancy master swordsman and joining a literal, actual army."

  "She is not a soldier, Master. She is a message runner, which entails far fewer risks."

  "Kids shouldn't be in danger at all."

  "Says the woman who found employment at a criminal enterprise during her own misbegotten youth."

  "A chop shop is not a criminal enterprise," Sara insisted, repeating the word mockingly. "It's just, like... regur crime, y'know? Basically one step worse than tax evasion." She scrunched her face up. "And you said sixteen wasn't a kid, anyway, remember?"

  "In Sporatos, tax evasion is a hanging offense," Evie replied, pointedly ignoring the second part of Sara's counterargument. "Regardless, your stories and illusions have shown me more of your world than you seem to appreciate, Master. Is operating heavy machinery without proper qualification and training so much safer than jogging back and forth in a well-kept camp? A scent of hypocrisy is drifting on the wind, Master."

  "Never shoulda told you so much about that," Sara mumbled, trailing off into a series of low grumbles.

  Despite Evie's comparison, Sara still couldn't get the existence of messenger runners to sit right with her. Even when retively safe behind fort walls, there was just too much a smack of child soldier in the job for her liking. The only reason she'd allowed it in the first pce was because, in a depressing turn of events, it was probably safer for the runners than the life they would have otherwise been living. After the storms and subsequent colpse, Tulian had no shortage of street-running orphans scrabbling for each and every scrap. Steady pay, consistent supervision, and an entry point into society that was seen as legitimate by the general popution was basically a godsend for the kids. She'd tried to get them into pseudo-orphanages, which the kids promptly refused, just as any legitimate business refused to employ a gaggle of lifelong thieves without any appreciable skills. If the only life they'd ever led was one of begging and pickpocketing, their future prospects were dim. The army was a chance at a better life, and not just in a bullshit American-propaganda way.

  Didn't mean she had to like it, though. Half the reason she'd spent so much effort on the crystal matrix was so she wouldn't have to rely on the runners in the midst of battle. At least when the fighting started, they'd be safe in camp with the noncombatants.

  Realizing she was just standing pointlessly in the rain, Sara turned to Evie. "Let's check the armories while we wait. I know I sent out instructions for cleaning the muskets, but I'm worried."

  "Is the powder really so corrosive that a single day is a risk, Master?"

  "No, but I don't care. I've got half a mind to order them used in emergencies only. Every musket we lose is a tragedy."

  "Of course." Evie began to tread through the less flooded paths on the way to the nearest armory. "But remember, a weapon that one fears using in battle is no weapon at all. I will remind you, Hurlish is already training other smiths to produce muskets. While they will no doubt be unable to match her production rate, the losses are not irrepceable."

  "Yeah, I know. I'm just paranoid." Sara blew out a long breath, surveying the camp with only vague interest. "I wonder how that's going, actually. Hurlish should've gathered up a crew by now."

  Evie's ears flicked in amusement beneath her coat. "Likely involving a considerable amount of profanity, irritation, and unachievable expectations."

  Sara snorted. "C'mon, she's not that bad. She was a great teacher with me. Patient, kind, the whole nine yards."

  "That's because you can actually live up to her impossible standards, Master, and even when you do not, her irritation is moderated by the otherworldly perspective you offer. If you'll note, her other apprentices are treated with considerably less care."

  Sara made a face. "You sure? I never noticed her being a hardass."

  "Perhaps your standards for such are different, Master. To my ears, she seemed rather... brusque."

  "Compared to most foremen I knew, she's an angel."

  "From the expnations of your religion you've provided me, comparing her to an angel is far from the most reassuring analogy."

  "That's... huh. Yeah, I guess they weren't all that great. But anyway, I'm sure she's doing just fine. Really, can you imagine her actually getting angry at some kid for screwing up?"

  "Yes."

  "But, like, really angry?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh, come on!" Sara pointed at her raincoat. "You're fucking with me. You're holding your tail under there so I can't see it thumping, aren't you?"

  "Yes."

  Sara cackled. She was about to take the argument further, but was stopped by Evie stiffening, her head cocking towards the wall. Sara immediately froze, following her expression, searching for whatever she'd heard.

  It reached her a moment ter. A commotion atop the wall, the rain-soaked guards cmoring and shoving one another, jostling to get a view of something. Trading only the briefest gnce with Evie, they set off at a jog, heading for the wall.

  A Sergeant saw her coming, hustling down the stairs to meet her halfway. As she came to a stop, the woman saluted, something which Sara hurriedly waved aside.

  "At ease. What's up?"

  "Not an assault, General," the Sergeant barked, thankfully alying Sara's foremost concern. "But maybe something stranger. There's a fg being hoisted in the Sporaton camp." The woman's stance shifted, her eyes darting to the side. "I'm not familiar with most fgs, ma'am, but..."

  "But?" Sara prompted.

  "Looks like the fg of parley, ma'am. Best to confirm for yourself, though."

  Sara's eyes widened. "That fat cocksucker finally shit himself hard enough to talk?"

  Taken entirely off guard, the Sergeant tried to hold back her startled snort, only managing to turn it into an awkward sneeze-cough that sounded a bit like a choking dog.

  "Never mind," Sara said, cpping the armored woman on the back as she hurried past. "We'll take a look for ourselves. Appreciate you passing the word."

  Still coughing, the woman gave a thumbs-up, trailing after them at a much slower pace.

  --------------------------------------

  Hurlish

  --------------------------------------

  "The fuck do you mean, you made the barrel the wrong size?"

  The junior smith cringed further down, nearing a straight-up apologetic bow. "It's just... well, when I was hammering the barrel, I put it in the leftmost slot, rather than the–"

  "There are only two slots. How did you put it in the wrong goddamn one?"

  "I just– I don't know, I knew it was the right sided slot, but I was hammering from the other side, so it actually ended up in the left–"

  Hurlish threw her head back and groaned. "You were hammering it from the wrong side? The hells were you doing? You'd have to bend over the glowing goddamned barrel to do that."

  "I... yes, ma'am, you would."

  "Fuckin' gods..." Hurlish smmed the door to her office, which she'd been peeking out from, and set her current project down into its hidden drawer. Making sure it was locked, she returned to the door and flung it open, striding out into the forge proper.

  The entire area was a loud, cnging mess, the chaos of several dozen smiths working at stations that were too close together. The air was filled with the tones of jarring hammer strikes and roaring fires. Gouts of steam rose in spiral hisses as glowing iron was quenched, sending geysers skyward to roll against the wooden ceiling. Hurlish had to shift and turn as she squeezed through the rows, the unseasonal rainstorm having forced the smiths in from the rger courtyard to share what roofed space was avaible. She followed the junior smith– Verek, she thought his name was– back to his station to inspect his fuckup.

  "Goddamn, kid," Hurlish swore as she approached. "You really did manage it. How the hell?"

  The kid, who was actually in his mid twenties, a couple years younger than Hurlish, at least had the decency to look ashamed.

  "Was hurryin', ma'am," he meekly replied. "Wasn't thinking right."

  "That's for damn sure."

  Hurlish grabbed a pair of tongs, using them to pull the still-glowing barrel off the anvil. It was a strange sort of anvil, substituting its ft top for two rows of long cylinders cut lengthwise into the metal. Once heated to a cherry glow, a ft piece of iron could be pced on top, allowing a smith to pound their hammer along in a line, so that the metal would be forcibly conformed into the open cylinder. It was a rough, tiring process, requiring most lower Level smiths many hours and countless stages of heating and reheating to complete. Most of the newer crew could only finish two musket barrels per day, perhaps three, if things went particurly well.

  Looking at the botch job on dispy before her, Hurlish doubted Verek would be finishing even one. As he'd said, he'd hammered the metal into shape on the wrong cylinder, curving the barrel into the entirely wrong size. The anvils had two slots, one for the standard muskets that had already been distributed, and one for a pnned set of lighter, smaller weapons, of a caliber more appropriate for a flintlock "pistol" or "carbine." Now that Verek had tried to pound a full-sized musket into the smaller slot, there would be no salvaging the job. He'd gotten halfway down the barrel before realizing his mistake, the thicker metal used for the muskets now bent and ruined. The only ammunition a completed version might ever fit would've been the size a of a pea.

  "You're gonna have to toss the whole damn thing," Hurlish said. "Send it back to the furnace, get it melted down. Start over, and this time make sure you hammer it on the Right. Damn. Slot."

  Verek defted, Hurlish's grim pronouncement confirming what he'd already known. The day's work was wasted. He nodded tiredly. "Yes ma'am. I'll not stop until I've finished at least one today."

  Hurlish stopped, pivoting on a heel to gre down at him. "Wrong," she snapped. "You'll leave at dusk, when everyone else does. You work yourself to the bone tonight, you'll be tired tomorrow, and then you'll end up making some kinda new, even more dumbass mistake. If I see you here after dark I'll beat your ass bck and blue."

  Verek blinked in surprise, but seemed too dejected to even respond to the threat. "Yes ma'am," he repeated again, turning back to the ruined barrel. Hurlish handed him his tongs, which he used to pick up the metal, weaving out from under the cover of the roof to head towards the bst furnace. Rain, falling in heavy drops, hissed when it struck the still-glowing iron.

  "...told you," came a quiet voice, emanating from Hurlish's breast pocket.

  "I think that was far closer to proving my point than yours," replied a second voice, as familiar as the first.

  Hurlish felt a grin creep up her face as she pulled the crystal out and held it to her lips. "Y'all gossiping about me?" She asked.

  "No," Evie said, in the same breath that Sara said, "Yes."

  Hurlish chuckled. "What was the bet?"

  "That you're some kinda hardass to your apprentices," Sara said.

  "Which that conversation so helpfully demonstrated," Evie added.

  "That?" Hurlish grunted, turning back towards her office. "That was barely anything. Kid fucked up, I told him so, and now he's gonna fix it. Simple as can be."

  "True, but you were hardly polite about it," Evie argued.

  "You think that was rude?" Sara asked incredulously. "You should see what most shops are like. I've met foremen that made a habit of screaming so hard they oughta been spitting blood by the end of the day, and that was when people were screwing up things a fraction as important as that kid."

  "Just because some are worse doesn't mean a mild improvement is reasonable," Evie said. "I would certainly be petrified to report any error to Hurlish, were I in her apprentice's pce."

  "Then you're not cut out for smithing," Hurlish stated simply. "All that polite noble backtalking got you too soft, Kitty. Most folk that end up running their own forge end up hauling a hefty ego along with it. Compared to those sorts, I was practically sweet-talking the kid."

  "Of course you would side with Sara," Evie huffed. "You're not likely to criticize your own process."

  "Nope," Hurlish agreed. She entered her 'office' once more, which was in reality the original forge which had been selected for her. Now that the Tulian smiths were working on joint projects, they spent most of their time out in the open courtyard, leaving Hurlish to arrange her forge as she saw fit. With a couple of magical locks from the Artificing Union and some metal bracing added to the walls, she had a hell of a lot more security and privacy than she'd ever had before.

  "So, you just pulled the crystal out to chat, or is there a point to all this?" Hurlish asked, retrieving her current project from its hidden compartment.

  "Wondering how the musket production is going," Sara replied. "We've already lost a few to accidents, and I'm betting that'll only get more common as they wear down. I want to know if we'll be able to keep up with the loss rate."

  "Definitely will, at least at the start," Hurlish replied, pulling the project out and setting it on the desk. A octagonal barrel had baffled her at first, but after working on it for a while, it made more sense than she'd expected. She turned it over, poking the internals while she spoke. "We've got a damn good backlog, thanks to your bullshitting. Got most of the smiths worth a damn making the springs and trigger mechanisms, while the kinda-decent apprentices are stuck fitting it all together."

  "But once we run out of reserve barrels?"

  Sara had, of course, anticipated the need for more muskets than Hurlish could secretly stockpile, no matter how impressive her output was. With how hard she could hit the metal, she could easily finish ten, maybe eleven muskets in a day, and that was when she was doing it part-time, still putting in an appearance at her public forge to work on traditional weapons. If she went at it all day, she'd probably get more than twenty done, a number which had just about blown Sara's tits off.

  At the end of it all, though, twenty a day wasn't enough to equip an army of five thousand, much less the grander ideas Sara had pnned. To make up for it they'd commissioned several projects across the city, Sara and Evie creating clever little lies for what they were really for.

  Seeing as the barrels were the most time consuming, Sara'd gone around to the rural smiths (preferring the more isoted sort, to ensure they didn't chat as much with their fellows and start piecing something together) and cimed she was making, of all things, a "fire fighting system." She cimed that she needed shittons of long, straight pipes, reinforced to hold high-pressure water from the water towers, and that they'd be run all across the city. They needed to be exactly the same size and shape, supposedly so that repairs could be carried out quickly, and their sturdiness was justified by how much force was going to be pumping through them. The lie was made more believable by the fact that simir systems apparently existed in Sara's old world, so she could easily answer any questions the smiths had about the supposed fire fighting system's workings. That the dimensions of the pipes didn't make any sense for such a system hardly mattered; the smiths had no way of knowing it. That lie had gotten her a solid stock of smoothbore gun barrels piled up.

  What had been harder was stockpiling leaf springs, strikers, trigger mechanisms, and wooden stocks. Sara had managed to get away with ciming that she wanted a shitton of springs from for some novel type of door lock for the Peasant's Theatre, and even added the nice touch that no, the smiths couldn't know what kind, 'cause that would tell them how the lock worked, which'd defeat the purpose. The stocks on the other hand hadn't really had a good lie to be made; she'd hired some broke-ass carpenters from podunk vilges for that, paid 'em well, and said that if they told a soul the money'd stop coming. That'd worked well enough. As for the actual triggers and strikers, that'd still been on Hurlish. There was no convenient excuse to be made there, not even that the triggers were going to be used in crossbows, seeing how different they worked. It might've thrown people off the trail for a while, but when the Tulian Army kept walking around with a very prominent ck of crossbows, the jig'd be up. So Hurlish had done those parts herself.

  "Let's see..." Hurlish mumbled, shuffling papers around on her desk until she found the figures Evie had tallied up for her. "Yeah, we got about sixteen hundred barrels waiting to be put together, about as many stocks, and... shit, a bit under a thousand of the little bits for firing and crap."

  "Think the new smiths can make up the difference?"

  "Sure, probably, but then they won't be getting practice on what they need to learn for making muskets all by themselves, just bits and pieces. They'd catch up quick enough, but then we'd have to retool and retrain, which'd mean we'd not be making anything for a while."

  The crystal hummed on the desk, rattling slightly. "Don't see much way around it. How about you two?"

  After a moment's consideration, Hurlish frowned. "No. I don't."

  "None that would be satisfactory, Master."

  "Oh?" Sara asked, intrigued. "What about ways that wouldn't be 'satisfactory?'"

  "Highly unadvisable. I shouldn't have said anything. But we could send out some of the fleet to neutral isnd city-states to hire smiths to ease the transition. Assuming there was no dey in the process, they could arrive within two weeks."

  "But we'd have to rope foreign nationals in on the whole thing," Sara finished for her. A sigh. "Shit. Don't like that. It's one thing to get some trusted, vetted people in, like with the Carrion Artificers, but I don't like rando smiths getting a leg up on arms development. Most of the oceanic city-states use sve bor on their ships, too, so that's outta the question."

  "And any Carrion colonies are too far away for the vessels to return before Hurlish's training and transition has been completed. As I said, I shouldn't have spoken."

  Habit had Hurlish gncing away from her work as she spoke, making pointless eye contact with the crystal. "I could make up the difference, y'know."

  "How do you mean?"

  "I could finish up the triggers and shit on my own. I'm quick enough for it. I mean, if we had any jewelers left in Tulian, they'd be perfect, but I'm a good second choice."

  "And stop what you're working on now, though?" Sara scoffed. "No chance in hell. That's way too important to pull you off for basic shit like that."

  "Could get it done, though."

  "You could solve half of our problems yourself if it's all you worked on, babe, but until we figure out magic cloning, you're gonna have to prioritize."

  "Really shoulda trained up the apprentices better," Hurlish grumbled, setting aside the tiny mechanisms she'd just pulled from her project. She'd learned to keep them in a small bowl, so the minuscule screws wouldn't roll off the table into oblivion, never to be seen again.

  "You couldn't have, not without telling them half the most important shit in the world."

  "Still, though."

  "Don't worry about it." There was a shuffling noise, the sound of the crystal rubbing against cloth, and Sara's voice grew farther away. "Looks like it's not a bluff, Evie."

  "Stranger and stranger, Master."

  "What's up?" Hurlish asked.

  The shuffling noise came again, Sara's voice growing louder. "Old Kingy over there suddenly decided to talk, after I blew holes in half his precious little knights. Judging by the fact it's a parley fg, it's not a surrender, which is a damn shame."

  "He's actually gonna talk to you?" Hurlish hummed. "Good for him. Didn't think he had the balls."

  "Yeah, well, he won't for long, if I get my hands on them. Easy way to cut the royal bloodline off right there."

  "He already has two daughters of age, Master."

  "Then I'll gut punch them 'till no healer in the world can put their ovaries back together. Not that hard, really."

  Evie hissed. "We are in public, Master."

  "Yeah?" The sound of the crystal rubbing against crystal and cloth came again, and though she sounded farther away, Sara's voice grew louder. "Anyone here got a problem with me ripping the royal Sporaton brats a new one?"

  A raucous cheer came in response, sounding amusingly tinny when filtered through the small crystal on Hurlish's desk. Rolling her eyes, Hurlish picked up the crystal, bringing it up to her lips properly.

  "Enough showin' off, babe. You got anything else you need from me?"

  "No, not really," she said, her voice returned to normalcy. "Not unless you can get me timetables on the new weapons getting up and working."

  "Nothing confident yet. Some are going better than others. I'll send 'em off as I finish them."

  "Alright. Thanks, hon. I'll talk to you ter, alright? I gotta go get prettied up for diplomatic bullshit."

  Hurlish snorted, dropping the crystal back into her breast pocket.

  With a groan of a wooden chair not quite meant to support her growing weight, Hurlish sat down, adjusting the enchanted glow that lit her desk.

  As she picked back up her work, she decided she hated screws. She pinched one between her fingernails now, bringing it up to the light. She'd had to forge it herself, of course. A tiny, tiny spiral ribbed the central spar, looping itself dozens of times before the quarter-inch length met its end. She didn't even want to think of how many tries it had taken for her to get it right.

  Like so much of what Sara had shown her, it just wasn't meant to be made by hand. It was designed with the assumption that its creator would have on hand custom tooling and intricate machinery, many examples of which would be dedicated to the singur purpose of making more irritating little examples of the damned screws.

  Finishing her inspection, she set it back down, blowing out another long, irritated breath. The screw was good, just like the eleven other she'd made for this project. All she had to do was assemble the thing and it'd be ready to be shipped off to Sara. She wondered if her next Advancement would end up guiding her more down this path. It was already looking like it; after so many years with her Css being "Bcksmith", the st two Champion-boosted Advancements had seen it shifting to a different specialty: "Weaponsmith." She supposed it was only fair, since it'd been months since she'd made anything even close to a hammer or hoe. The closest on that front had been Sara's welding dagger, which was still, y'know, a dagger.

  Taking a deep breath, Hurlish steeled herself for the bor of finally fitting all the tiny bits together to make their considerably rger whole. She prayed to the gods above that it would work on her first try, but she doubted it. No doubt there was plenty more fiddly bullshit in her future.

  Ah, well. At least it'll keep 'em safe.

  -----------------------------------

  Sara

  -----------------------------------

  The first meeting point suggested by the Sporaton forces had been a small rise next to the thin river which split Midwich Valley, roughly equidistant between the two forces. Evie had refused this without even consulting Sara, sending the runner off with a rather direct message:

  "If the King truly thinks us such fools that we will be willingly exposed by proximity to his cavalry in such manner, he is welcome to accept our word of his safe conduct, such that he may stand unarmored under the guns of the fort and walk away as unmolested as he would intend to leave us were the positions reversed."

  After being sent away and a brief intermission as a reply was formualted, the runner had returned, this time suggesting a point of meeting two-thirds of the way to the wall, on a particurly marshy bit of ground, so as to inhibit a surprise cavalry charge. It was also, Sara assumed, a distance that they thought safe from musket fire, though clearly within cannon range. She supposed they thought rolling out the cannons would be something easily enough noticed, so that they could either charge or flee before the cannons were in position to fire down on them.

  Unfortunately, they were correct on both counts. Sara quickly tasked Colonel Shale with finding some way to correct this, then continued her preparations with Evie.

  The feline was spending the hours before the meeting scribbling madly across stacks of parchment, moving with such haste that her handwriting was less than fwless, the first time Sara had seen such. She stayed by Evie's side as Sara wrung her own hair out and then combed it back, repeating the process with a series of finer combs each time.

  The camp's quartermaster was, meanwhile, scrambling their way across the camp, searching for anyone with tailoring experience to alter Sara's few dresses that had somehow survived the months since she had been in Sporatos. She'd put on too much muscle since she'd st worn them, and the fit was all wrong. Sara didn't much care, what with her divinely-crafted body that would have the most pious priest abandoning celibacy, but had to admit that a good dress would at least help impress any of the particurly vain nobility present at the meeting.

  That was yet another point she disliked about the entire arrangement. She shouldn't have to be dressing so fancy. The subtext of the request for a meeting had implied it was to be a purely military discussion, something akin to negotiating the exchange of prisoners, but King Sporatos was clearly going to be bringing quite the entourage. As Evie expined it, when leaders of two armies met, so too were the leaders of two nations meeting, giving the entire thing an inherently political air, something no self-respecting noble of rank would willingly be excluded from. Even as the King and his ckeys negotiated with Sara, so too would his underlings be jockeying for position, trying to please their betters or undermine their rivals.

  This put Sara in quite a conundrum. For months now, thoughts of "precedent" had been infecting her thoughts. She was the leader of a nation. Though it felt wildly arrogant to view herself like it, if she succeeded in fending off the Sporaton invasion, she'd eventually be seen not just as the Tulian Republic's founder, but its savior. Fending off the Sporaton army almost single-handedly, introducing new technology just to do it? She'd be George Washington on crack. No matter how much she publicly decred that her actions were temporary expediencies in the face of war, everything she did, every step she took, would someday be looked to as an example. Nationalists and proto-fascists would justify their actions by comparing themselves to her, while actually decent people might hold back in making the right moves simply because she didn't do it herself, hundreds of years before. No matter how she tried to publicly downpy her own authority, there was still the undeniable fact that she was in charge, and that meant historians and politicians alike would be analyzing her every move for centuries to come.

  If the people of this world saw the meeting as a purely military matter, like she did, she would happily have brought along her Colonels and a number of her Lieutenants, wanting their input on any strategic decisions. Doing so, however, would imply to the still-feudal society of Tulian that those she brought with her were figures of not just military, but political importance.

  She wished she could bring along civilian authorities, her equivalents of the Secretary of State and Congressional Speaker or something, but that was impossible. She'd been so consumed with war preparations her governmental hierarchy was... sketchy, to say the least, with what titles and jobs she'd assigned even having the qualifier "Preliminary" tacked on.

  As officially written, Vesta was the "Preliminary Minister of Finance," Evie the "Preliminary Steward of State," (a title which had baffled Sara by seemingly appearing as if from the aether), and Sara was the "Preliminary Governess." Hers was also the shakiest title of all, seeing as the "governor" position was one which she intended to eliminate wholesale. Beyond that, there were the various Union heads, elected by practitioners of their craft, and the entirely unofficial vilge heads of Tulian, who were usually nothing more than the person whose decisions were least likely to be argued over in a given vilge.

  Beyond that? It was a free-for-all. Effectively a city-state, Tulian was small enough to virtually run itself. Food came in because people needed to eat it and goods went out because people wanted to buy them. Abandoned houses were repaired on Sara's dime, and up until the farming popution had sheltered in the capital, there had been so many empty lots that families basically moved into whichever they stumbled across, no paperwork required. Beyond surreptitiously correcting a few potentially dangerous accumutions of power, she'd let things chug along unimpeded.

  And now she was forced into a meeting which would, by simple virtue of who she invited, decre who she thought had concrete authority in the spdash Tulian government. If she brought her Colonels, that would imply to many among Tulian's popuce that they were equivalent to high-ranked Knights, or even Counts and Countesses, a thought which she ideologically despised. She obviously couldn't bring Vesta, seeing as she was a week's ride away, and even if she had, that would be conferring even more political power to an unelected individual. Hell, she already didn't like having herself in charge, as paradoxical as that seemed. She already worried about some Caesar cocksucker forming a military dictatorship during the next war, because "Hey, that was how Sara the Champion did it, and it worked great, so why not give it a second go? Pinkie promise I'll peacefully let go of power at the end, everyone."

  Sara shook her head, tearing herself out of the clouds. At the end of the day, there were only two people in the entire camp which wouldn't be seen as gaining more power from attending the meeting: Sara and Evie. They'd both been acting with unlimited authority for months, so monopolizing the parley would be no big surprise. They'd go it alone, and anyone else relevant would listen in over the crystal matrix.

  Of course, that also meant they'd be attending unguarded, sitting amongst the absolute elite of the Sporaton Knighthood. As Evie blithely warned, even her level– Thirteenth, now– wouldn't garner so much as a blink from King Sporatos and his elites. In single combat against the King, much less a group melee, Evie admitted she'd be dead before she could draw the breath to gasp.

  Which, y'know, didn't exactly fill Sara with confidence, seeing as it had been weeks since she'd come remotely close to beating her girlfriend in a duel. They were ultimately trusting the King's word that he would honor the terms of the parley, and staking their life on it, at that.

  Nothing to do for it, Sara forcefully reminded herself. After all, she was the Champion of Amarat. Defeating Sporatos outright was next to impossible with her current means, and the entire war goal from the start had been to force the massive kingdom to the negotiating table. A temporary parley, while as likely to be a request to allow Sporaton forces to collect their dead from the field as anything else, was something that could not be passed up.

  Tugging her comb through her hair one st time, she peered over Evie's shoulders, reading along as she wrote. "You almost ready?"

  "How much time do we have left?"

  "A half hour, maybe. Longer, if we're fine with being fashionably te."

  "Diplomatic affairs rarely follow the same protocols as socialite gatherings, Master."

  "Not like they're gonna leave 'cause we were a few minutes te though, are they?"

  Feline eyes rolled. "I would not recommend it, regardless. Give me only a few more moments."

  Evie's pen continued to scribble line after line, bck ink drawing looping calligraphy that was far too beautiful for the sins the letters described. The sterile nguage Evie had chosen struck her as incredibly amusing, knowing the votile pit of rage from which the writing was dredged up. She was torn between encouraging her girlfriend to stop holding back and really y it on, or praise her for the self-restraint on dispy.

  True to her word, Evie finished a handful of minutes ter, waving the papers out to dry before aligning them in a neat stack, which she deposited in a hip satchel. The pin leather container was at odds with her dress, which was of course utterly resplendent. One of the few she had chosen to take from the wealthier of Nora's captured vessels, it had been retroactively tailored into the style of House Eliah. Burgundy and navy blue intermixed in graceful lines, their points of joining demarcated by glittering gold threads, some of which drooped off her arms to form intricate loops beneath her arms. A small metal wire kept its form no matter how she moved, and seeing as she'd be walking through tall grass to the meeting point, she'd pinned the hem up to her calves, adding a dash of scandalous impropriety to what was otherwise a picturesque garment of noble decorum. Much of the embroidery, Sara noticed, featured peaked Vs or waving S shapes, which she assumed were there to represent the feline ears and tails of the former House Eliah, emphasizing the rarity of their bloodline's attributes.

  Sara's own clothing, by contrast, was far more more modern in its make. A glittering pink dress that seemed to have been taken straight off the red carpet, alien to Sporaton sensibilities, yet recognizably beautiful no matter which cultural lens one viewed it from. The fact that it was supported by sheer ce looping behind her neck did nothing to hide its plunging neckline, which inexorably lured the eye towards her generous chest. The sleeves grew looser and looser the closer they got to her wrists, dangling uselessly a foot or so off her body at the end, and when she moved, the inset crystalline beads shattered the light into a rainbow of colors.

  She also, coincidentally, rather hated it. It was about ten steps past her usual femme comfort zone, while also evoking a level of wealth that she was actively trying to purge from the face of the pnet. She'd stuck with it on Evie's insistence alone, accepting the argument that the impression it would leave on the Sporaton party far exceeded the incredibly minor implications of wealth and status she preferred.

  Sara did, however, ftly refuse to put in the earrings Evie had picked out for her. There was simply no way in hell she was going into a situation that might end with a fight wearing earrings, much less the gaudy loops Evie suggested. They would've looked great on Vesta, maybe, but Sara? A general, a leader of people? Absolutely not.

  Finally stepping from their tent with Evie at her side, she felt a sudden urge to hide behind her diminuitive girlfriend. This was not how she wanted her troops to see her. For the gods' sake, she was wearing heels. To a military parley. This was absurd.

  Evie put a hand on the side of Sara's back, pushing her forward, and Sara took what strength she could get from the comforting touch. Taking a deep breath, she straightened her spine and walked forward, Amarat's Blessings keeping her from reflexively cowering out of sight. She could even, if she really tried, pretend she didn't feel Evie holding back another eye roll.

  "Screw you," Sara murmured through grit teeth, "This looks ridiculous. I should've just shown up in armor."

  "Too te now, Master," Evie hummed back, tail bobbing happily as she matched Sara's gait. "You'll just have to suffer through looking presentable for a few hours."

  "Armor is presentable."

  "Some armor is," Evie admitted, before tapping a finger on Sara's nose. There was a metallic cnking noise as her cw was stopped a few inches short of contact. "Yours, however? Less so."

  "Whatever. Let's just hope they give me an excuse to drop the bullshit."

  "Mind your temper, Master." Evie paused as they reached the hole in the wall, accepting her rifle from a Sergeant that ran up with it, still furiously cleaning the barrel until the moment it left his hands. She looked it over with a careful eye, nodded once, then slid the strap over her shoulder, opposite the hip that held her rapier's ornate sheath. Satisfied, she slipped her arm through Sara's crooked arm and began striding forward. "Remember, what they consider an offense and what you do may vary greatly."

  "Y'know, I doubt the King is getting a lecture on political niceties right now," Sara pointed out, stepping over one of the corpses which y festering upon the field. A former knight, stripped of his armor under cover of darkness, had begun to bloat with rot.

  "King Sporatos has had decades of experiences to learn such lessons, Master," Evie countered. Then she sniffed disdainfully, tilting her head as if to acknowledge some point. "Though I must admit, perhaps a reminder of certain lessons would do him some good."

  "Think he's that bad at this shit?"

  "No," Evie said after a moment's consideration. "No, he is competent. He would not have held the kingdom together through my mother's rebellion otherwise. But he is rigid in his thought, unwilling to compromise. If he had been willing to cede to certain points earlier, the rebellion would never have occurred in the first pce. Many of the upper nobility, not just my te mother, have legitimate grievances regarding his decisions."

  "Think you're going to enjoy meeting up with your old buddies?" They were halfway to the white tent that had been erected, close enough to begin making out individual faces. "It's not been that long since you were on their side of the fence, even if it feels like it's been years."

  "Trust me, Master, none of those attending this meeting would be considered a friend."

  "Still, though," Sara said, her voice dropping to a more serious tone. "You escaped those people. I wouldn't bme you if you wanted to turn around right now. I can handle things on my own."

  "For once, that may be true. But," Evie patted the paper-filled satchel off her hip, "I would not miss this opportunity for the world."

  Sara snorted. "Got a few scores to settle?"

  "You haven't the slightest idea."

  Sara gnced at her girlfriend through the corner of her eye, and what she saw had her eyebrows raising. The corners of Evie's lips were quivering, fighting to curl upward. Her pupils were narrowed to slits, as they did in a duel, and her cws were fully extended, threatening to catch in her dress.

  Catching her looking, Evie smirked at Sara. "Twenty years of political leverage, Master. Fifteen years of personal grudges." Her cws drummed against the satchel, tip of her tongue running across her canines. "Oh, I'm very ready indeed."