Garima tried to talk with Cosmo as soon as she woke up.The shrine was still asleep. Without any clattering of utensils from the kitchen or the morning bells.
She didn't mind that her focus was on the artifact. She sat on the edge of her bed in the dark with the artifact in both hands.
There was nothing.
The artifact was warm. She pressed her thumb against the centre of it.
Still nothing.
"Cosmo," she said. Quietly. Her voice echoing in the silence.
The artifact buzzed once. As if the connection was attempted but couldn't hold. Like a misscall.
She sat there for a moment. Where was Cosmo when she needed her?
She sighed and set the artifact down, got dressed and went to practice.
---
Ruslan was already in the training hall when she arrived. Which was rare. He would always show up after breakfast.
His arrival was early and he looked drained out with dark circles. She had a private theory that he didn't sleep at all, but today he looked worse.
He looked at her when she entered.
"Did you not sleep?"
"I did."
"Okay."
An hour and minimal words. Just some occasional corrections, single words. Sometimes only a look that meant disapproval. She had learned to read the differences between his expressions.
The flat face meant she was improving. The frown meant she wasn't. The flat face had been appearing more often lately, which should have been encouraging and mostly just meant he had started finding smaller things to correct.
But today she wasn't only doing footwork.
She moved through the Vadivu stances–the ones her grandfather had drilled into her legs. Even before she reached 3rd standard. Horse. Cat. Elephant. Her body remembered better than her mind did, which was its own strange comfort. Then the Chuzhippu–the circular moments, torso and hips and legs learning to work together. Her grandfather had made it look effortless. She did not. But she was making it look less wrong than a week back.
Ruslan watched her finish a sequence. He had a flat face.
"I don't know what you are doing. But it's improving."
She found it encouraging. For the first time since her arrival. It was her own efforts. It was genuinely encouraging and not just exhausting.
When the bells rang and she reached for water.
Ruslan held out a letter instead.
She looked at it. Then at him.
"From the King," he said. Like it was a normal thing to do. Handing someone a royal letter after an hour of footwork drills with his still flat face.
She took it. The seal was the one she recognised — the stylised bird of Solmere pressed into dark wax. Lawrence had shown it to her once.
"You had this the whole time," she said.
"Since yesterday. Night." He set his practice sword on the rack. "I didn't think you should read it before practice. You missed practice yesterday."
She opened her mouth.
"You might be overwhelmed like yesterday," he said before leaving.
She stood in the training hall alone with the letter. She didn't have words for him. She didn't know when she would start liking him. Probably never. The chances were genuinely low.
Who leaves like that?
---
She read once in the hall and once more sitting on the bench in the courtyard. She could hear the priests moving, the clattering in the kitchen. The bells chimed which told everyone to wake up. She folded the letter and went to find Agatha.
The King's letter was not warm. It wasn't cold either— it was precise and business-like. Clearly he understood clarity over misunderstanding. He had three points.
The first: the sword had spoken a word in front of witnesses including a Duke of the realm. He would like to understand the nature of this word and its implications for the shrine and by extension for Solmere.
The second: did the word Anchor have historical precedent in texts? He had begun looking in the text he had access to. He wanted to know if she knew anything further.
The third: he was interested in the matter of visions. Whether there had been more instances. Whether there was anything she felt he should be made aware of.
He was not asking anything she couldn't answer. He was telling her he was paying close attention. There was a difference between those two things and it mattered considerably.
Agatha was in the Archive Hall, which was unusual. At this hour she was normally moving through the shrine assigning the day's duties to priests and priestesses.
She was sitting at the table amidst open scrolls and old history books that meant she had been here since early.
Garima knocked on the open door. Agatha looked up.
"The King wrote," Garima said.
"I know.Ruslan told me" Agatha set her pen down. "Sit."
Garima sat. She put the letter on the table between them.
Agatha read it with a stiff expression. Set it down and exhaled.
"He's asking for the details," Garima said.
"He's asking about you," Agatha said. "The details are the vehicle."
Garima looked at the letter.
"What are you going to tell him?"
"The truth. Parts of it."
"Which parts?"
This was the question which was eating her away. Since yesterday. She couldn't even consult with Cosmo.
"The sword is sentient." Garima said. " He already knows — it spoke in front of Ruslan. There's no version where I tell him it didn't happen."
"And the word?"
"I have theories. I'll tell him I'm investigating." This was true enough. "That holds him for now."
"Not permanently." Agatha said.
"I know." She paused.
She could hear two priests chattering as they passed, their voice fading.
"His third point," Agatha said as they went far enough. "The visions."
Garima looked at the table. "Domnur."
"You know something about it."
"I know —" She stopped, hesitating a little. "I can't choose what I see. I can't ask for a vision and receive one. It doesn't work like that. I don't know when."
"I understand how it works," Agatha said. "Tell me what you saw."
"Fire," Garima said. "Warehouses. No smoke or smell — no normal cause. The food stores gone in one night and nobody could explain how." She paused a little. "And then panic. Because people were already hungry before that. And then suddenly there was nothing at all. And the Duke—" She pressed her fingers together. "He was made to leave. Once he was gone the knights followed and then there's nothing between the people and—"
She stopped.
"And?" Agatha said.
"People die," Garima said. "The commoners. The people who couldn't leave."
Agatha went still.
"There's a man named Ervan," Garima continued. "A knight. He finds something — some clue about the fire. What caused it. People didn't believe him. Because he was the Duke's man. And instead it made things worse."
"What was the cause?," Agatha asked quietly.
"A Devil lord. Ambrakiel" Garima said. "He is fire itself."
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
"When," Agatha said.
"I don't know." Garima said. That was the most terrifying part. It happened somewhere between the Princess Danya incident and the Shrine Annihilation– five months from now approximately. She had almost forgotten about it because in what she knew, no one important had died. Only a couple of unnamed commoners. She had been thinking about political gains just moments ago. About how she could use Domnur. Now she felt nauseous. She hadn't even remembered it when Lawrence told about the political crisis there. Only now it surfaced. And she hadn't written the timeline. "I never know when. I just know it happens."
Agatha picked up her pen. Made a note— about the warehouses. The food stores. Something she could actually write to Lawrence about without mentioning visions at all.
"I'll write to Lawrence tonight," she said.
Garima nodded, her mind still out of it.
"And you will write to the King about the sword. The vision too. But leave out the parts about the knights for now. " Agatha looked at her paper. "We'll discuss the rest when you're ready to discuss it properly." Agatha looked at her over the paper. "Which I think you know means actually properly. Not halfway."
Garima said nothing.
"One more thing," Agatha said. "Your guest."
"Right. I have to think about what to do with her too" Garima sat up slightly, pulling herself back to the present. "She wanted to talk about her salary."
"We settled it." Agatha made a small note. "She's sharp. Knew exactly what she was worth and didn't move from it. I had to come up to her number."
"Was it reasonable?"
"It was precise." Agatha said it amused. "She'd calculated room, board, risk, and what she called life tax."
"Life tax."
"For working for someone who brings cursed artifacts into buildings without telling anyone." Agatha looked at her. "Her words."
Garima pressed two fingers against her forehead. "Fine."
"I thought it was fair," Agatha said, and went back to her notes.
Garima sighed and got up. Agatha looked perfectly comfortable with no intention of getting up. But she was hungry.
So she made her way to the dining hall — thinking about the letter she needed to write, thinking about the knights, thinking about the look on Agatha's face when she told about the Vision, thinking about Domnur and the commoners she had written off as unimportant.— and then she heard Dylan's voice from the courtyard.
She stopped and peeked at him.
He was not alone. They were sitting on the stone bench.
Conrad.
Eavesdropping on a seventeen-year-old's conversation was not something she should do with her morning.
But she stayed.
"—so my grip was wrong?" Conrad was saying.
"Yes," Dylan said. "Your grip is wrong."
Conrad paused. "Oh."
"If you hold it too hard," Dylan said. " You'll drop it. Your hand tightens when it should be loose and loosens when it should be tight. It's backwards."
"How do I fix it?"
"Practice." A pause. Then — "I will teach you as soon as I am cleared."
Silence.
"How are you holding up?," Conrad said.
"Good. Nothing to worry."
"Really?."
"Absolutely."
Another pause. Longer this time.
"You don't blame her," Conrad said. It wasn't quite a question.
Dylan didn't answer immediately. Garima held very still.
"It was my fault to begin with," Dylan said. "I got curious. And the other day she went out with Zihan. And wanted to see what she had."
"So you were jealous?"
"Obviously," Dylan said. "I get jealous easily."
Conrad made a sound that might have been a laugh.
"Come back Thursday," Dylan said. "I will be cleared till then. We'll do the grip."
"Okay."
Conrad left through the far door. He must have come to drop off his mother. Such a filial son.
Garima waited until she was sure he was gone, and then walked around the corner into the courtyard.
Dylan was startled.
"How long," he asked.
"From the grip," she admitted.
He made a face. Embarrassed — more like mildly inconvenienced by her existence. But unashamed of his jealousy.
"He's got potential," Garima said.
"He's got persistence," Dylan said. "Which is better."
She looked at him for a moment. She thought about saying something. About the jealousy. Then she didn't. Dylan would fi
gure it out on his own. She had the urge to ruffle his hair too but she didn't. Because she had a lot to think about. About Domnur and the shrine. Things she can't let happen.
"Breakfast," she said instead.
"Yes," he said, and walked beside her.