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Without the weight of her sword at her hip, Hella was off-balance, ill-at-ease. It had been three weeks since she had fallen through the world, into Aubade, and the unaccustomed stillness of the place made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. In Samothes' kingdom, there was no war and no winter, nowhere to go and nothing that needed doing. Every morning, the sun rose as it should, and every night, it set again to make way for the moon and all the stars.
Ever restless, Hella filled her idle hours with wandering. She rose before dawn most mornings and set off alone, her empty scabbard dangling uselessly from her belt. The scabbard was in the way when she walked the empty streets, it was in the way when she clambered over fences, it was in the way when she strode across fields rippling with grain. Over the course of those three weeks, Hella walked Aubade end-to-end, trying and failing to outpace her anxiety. Her palm itched for her sword, her brain itched for the familiar uncertainty of Hieron. She was homesick, but more than that, she was afraid. For months and months, she had been just holding on, and now she had nothing left to hold on to.
One evening, she returned to the city at dusk, having spent the day at a quarry a few miles out of town. The grit and stone and the rhythm of work songs reminded her of her girlhood in Ordenna, of shabby boarding houses in mining towns and the grungy inns in between. She had half a mind to ask the foreman for work and put herself to use swinging hammers or hauling rocks. It was backbreaking labor, but anything would be better that than nothing, better than the aching restlessness of empty days.
When she came in, Adaire was waiting for her by the door. Hella sat to unlace her boots, and the other woman set herself in front of her, hands planted on her hips. Hella noticed without noticing that Adaire was wearing a new dress: wine-colored wool with a border of embroidered peonies along the hem. She had begun to dress better since their arrival in Aubade, taking full advantage of Samothes' inexplicable eagerness to accommodate them. Her new cape was lined with silk, and the rings on her fingers had the flash of real gemstones. She looked good, Hella decided. Probably better than good.
"You can't avoid her forever," said Adaire, smoothing her skirts as she spoke. The motion drew attention to her rings, her bracelets, the pearl buttons at her cuffs.
"I can try," Hella muttered, unlacing her boots and trying to pretend that she wasn’t watching the other woman so closely.
Adaire sighed. “We’ve been talking, her and I," she said. “She’s fine. She’s not whatever you’ve made her out to be.”
Hella glowered at her, something like jealousy sparking in her gut. "She was in my head for two years, Adaire," she said, crossly. "I know exactly what she is."
"She was in your head because you put her there,” said Adaire. Her tone was mild, but her words concealed a reprimand in the same way that her sleeves concealed knives. “And anyway, she isn’t there any more, so what's your problem?"
Hella said nothing, because there was nothing to say. She threw her boots into the cabinet, stuffed her bare feet into thin house slippers, and walked past Adaire, into the main hall of Samothes' manor. They hadn't seem much of the builder-god-king in the last week; He was either avoiding them or avoiding Lem, it was impossible to say.
Their small group--Hella, Adaire, Adelaide, Hadrian, and Lem--had been permitted rooms on the second floor, a suite of sparsely-appointed bedrooms with a shared lounge and adjoining washroom. The furnishings were simple and old-fashioned: overstuffed leather chairs, geometrically patterned rugs, a walnut bureau with heavy brass fixtures. The white-washed walls were unadorned, but the posts and lintels had been carved into lupine forms--sleek-coated wolves stalked the perimeters of the rooms, a curiously feral motif for such civilized quarters.
The windows and shutters had been thrown open by a careless hand, and the balmy summer breeze danced in the curtains and rustled the pages of Lem’s books. Adelaide was perched in the windowsill like a cat, watching the lights come on in the city below. Her posture was regal, but her clothing was plain: sturdy trousers and a light-colored cotton blouse which matched the ribbon holding her braids back from her face. She looked good, Hella thought despairingly. Probably better than good.
It wasn't fair. Adelaide didn't live in her head anymore, but Hella still couldn't stop thinking about her.
“There’s dust in your hair,” she said mildly. “Perhaps you should bathe.”
Hella answered with a glare. “Perhaps you should mind your own business.”
“Be nice,” said Adaire, and Hella could practically hear her eyes rolling. “Hella, you stink, you should go take a bath. I left some lavender soap on the bureau, it’s from Ducarte’s — ”
Hella closed the door on her words, ending her sales pitch mid-sentence. She stomped flat-footed across the room, gathering up a fresh set of clothes and a bar of soap from the dish on the dresser. In the washroom, she ran the water as hot as she could stand it and scrubbed under her arms and between her legs, ridding herself of the day’s sweat and grime. Twenty minutes later, she emerged from the bath with pruned fingers and damp hair piled on top of her head. The scent of lavender clung to her skin, perfuming the drowsy evening air.
She found Adelaide and Adaire in the worn leather chairs, facing one another and flanking the cold hearth. There was a circular game board set up on the table between them, pawns arranged in a starting position. Adelaide glanced up as she entered, her storm-grey eyes lingering for a moment on Hella’s open collar. She exchanged a look with Adaire, and their lips twitched up in matching grins. Hella felt herself flushing, felt that same spark of — Jealousy? Longing? — in her belly.
“What are you doing?” she asked, trying to use the bluntness of her words to dull the other women’s pointed smiles. “Is that a game?”
Adaire moved to make room for Hella, gesturing vaguely at the ottoman next to the fireplace. Hella sat, and found herself sitting lower than the other two, the top of her head level with their chins. Flustered, she said nothing and instead leaned forward, pretending to study the board as Adelaide began to explain the rules of the game.
Instead, she watched the movement of her hands across the board. Her wrists and fingers were bare, and the absence of her usual jewelry made obvious the strength of her hands. Her rectangular palms were deeply lined, and each of her fingers was slender and perfectly-formed. Dazedly, Hella thought that Adelaide could have done anything with those hands. Steer a ship, command an army, draw an oath of fealty from unwilling lips —
“So you’re just trying to capture each other’s pawns?” Hella interrupted, trying to stymie the course of her thoughts. “Like checkers?”
“It’s much more strategic,” said Adaire. “Each piece can only move in certain ways, and they can only capture one other type of piece. The monarch takes the knight, the knight takes the bandit, and the bandit takes the monarch.”
Hella nodded, brow furrowed. “So it’s like chess?”
“It’s not like chess.” Adaire rolled her eyes. “It makes more sense while you’re playing, let me —” She shifted the board to make room for a third set of pawns, and as the other woman set the pieces in front of her, Hella realized that each was unique, cast in the likeness of its namesake. The armored knight carried a spear and shield, the monarch wore a tiered crown, and the bandit stood in a half-crouch, their face obscured by a hooded cloak.
Over the next hour, Hella slowly grasped the mechanics of the game. The monarch moved freely, dogged by the loyal knight, and the bandit could only move if nearby spaces were unoccupied. She lost the first game badly, but fought the second to a draw. By the third game, she had begun to get a sense of the underlying strategy, but still lost when Adaire and Adelaide conspired to separate her knight and monarch, leaving her vulnerable to capture by Adelaide’s bandit.
Hella scowled at the board. “I still don’t understand. “You said that bandits couldn’t move diagonally.”
“Only if they’re within three spaces of their knight,” she said, untroubled, setting Hella’s captured monarch aside. “Their movement is unrestricted in enemy territory.”
“But that’s how the monarch moves—”
“It isn’t complicated. The bandit essentially becomes a monarch outside of their own keep, and the monarch moves like a knight unless another player’s bandit is in their territory, then they can only make half-moves until they win back the crown piece,” said Adaire.
“But it doesn’t make sense ,” said Hella, frustration mounting “Why? Why bother at all, if moving across the board changes everything?”
Adelaide laughed. “Why do anything?” she said, “those are the rules, and the game doesn’t work if you don’t follow them.”
“The context changes the game,” said Adaire. “That’s just how it’s played.”
“I don’t want it to change,” said Hella. “I want it to be simple, I want it to be the way it was.”
“But you were still losing, even before the rules changed,” said Adelaide. “You can’t just react to what’s happening, and you don’t win by sitting around and hoping that nothing changes. You win by going out and taking charge.”
Adaire interrupted before Hella could say something snappish in response. “You don’t have to argue,” she said, tiredly. “You can win by working together, if you capture the empty keeps and distribute all the crown pieces evenly.”
Adelaide scoffed. “Nobody plays like that,” she said. “There’s no way to know the other players will keep up their side of the bargain.” She was looking at Hella as she spoke, her lip curled in a sneer.
Hella sank down in her seat. “I’m sorry, ” she said. “I didn’t mean to pull you in. I didn’t think we’d all be stuck here together.”
“You didn’t think at all,” said Adelaide, icily. “I ended death! I saved everyone, and you ruined everything!”
“You didn’t save anyone!” Hella shouted. “You just made them all the way you thought they should be!”
Adelaide drew backwards as though struck. “I just wanted to help,” she said. “You don’t understand.”
“I just wanted to keep my friends safe,” said Hella, “ you don’t understand.”
“ None of us wanted this,” snapped Adaire. Her color was high and her hair had begun to slip from its bejeweled net, falling in wisps around her face. “We’re all stuck here, and if I have to spend the rest of my life listening to the two of you arguing, I’m going to lose my mind. Bad stuff happened. Get over it.”
Startled into silence, Hella and Adelaide exchanged a look. They had spent the better part of two years arguing, Hella grinding her teeth while Adelaide’s laughter echoing inside her head. When they fell into Aubade, they had lost everything: their possessions, their place in the world, all their friends and family and connections outside of one another. Left with nothing, their arguments had seemed like something, and they had held onto that connection without question.
But the rules had changed in Aubade. There was no reason to continue as they had.
“I’m sorry,” said Hella again, meaning it this time. “I shouldn’t have yelled.”
Adelaide regarded her cautiously, and then her grey eyes flicked to Adaire. Hella didn’t know what message she found there, but she inclined her head, eyes downcast. “It’s alright,” she said, and there was something sincere in the shape of her words, an unfamiliar, unguarded honesty. “I realize that I have not been—not been behaving well, either.”
They held one another’s gaze for a moment and then looked away, embarrassed.
Adaire cleared her throat. “Do you want to start over?” she said, gesturing at the board between them. “We could play again.”
“I think I’d like that,” said Adelaide, looking at Hella through her lashes, almost shy. “What about you, Hella?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Hella nodded. “Sure.”
“See?” said Adaire, smiling broadly, lit from within by an I-told-you-so glow, “it’s not so hard.”
Adelaide moved to reset the board, her movements fluid and casual. There was elegance in everything she did, a studied grace more deliberate than accidental. Hella hadn’t noticed before; she’d been trying not to notice. She decided, quietly, that Adaire had been right: Adelaide was not that bad.
Probably better than ‘not that bad.’