A Perverted Path to Victory

Evie Brown

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She stared at the man who had caught her wife’s fancy. That’s all he was to her, and it was why she had failed to consider that he might become involved in the Empire’s politicking. A skilled spearman for his age, true, but nothing beyond that. The only thing exceptional about him was his association to Sara, and so she’d assumed that her absence would isolate him well enough from the politics. Perhaps she hadn’t even assumed that much; she’d barely given him a thought over the past few days, so distracted was she by Sara’s upcoming departure.

“My… apology?” She croaked. “What do you mean? I’ve been screaming at you. In a rage. What apology have I offered, and for what wrong?”

“I…” he swallowed. “Evie, I do not know. You say Sara has isolated me from scheming, and I suppose that is true, because there I know very little of what transpired in that tent. Why are you so furious with yourself? Simply because you allowed me to… to be brought in and so I may give a report? Where is the fault in that?”

Evie’s broken knuckle cracked as she brought her hands up, trying to pin her hair back into some semblance of order. She did her best not to let her braids fall, and for exactly this reason. Without Sara’s supernaturally deft fingers, it took hours to weave so much hair into its dense braids.

“It is not what you were asked to do that was so maddening,” Evie said. She began to separate her hair into strands, struggling to keep them between her fingers without looking. “It is that she asked you to do it. You hold an important title, Mui Thom. Liaison to a foreign Chosen. If you desired it, your barest hints at Sara’s actions could be exchanged for bribes that would earn you a lifetime of luxury.”

“Sara tells me nothing of her plans,” he insisted. “Nothing that you could not discover by simply listening to what she says to others, at least.”

“Accurate,” Evie agreed. She winced as her fingers found a tangle. “But none of them believe Sara is simply being honest. She tells the nobility that she hates nobility, after all. Straight to their faces. No one would do that and mean it, they reason.”

“But she-”

“It doesn’t matter,” Evie interrupted. She finally got the knot untangled, moving to the next. “They will always be convinced that your position, and yes, your physical romance with her, indicates that she trusts you above others. And if given an opportunity, they will do anything to have that information. By no fault of your own, you are a victim in waiting. If the chance arose, Sara’s allies in the Empire would seduce and cajole you. Her enemies would kidnap and torture you. All to extract information you do not have. Not only did Sara want you to be immune to this, she wanted you to never need to consider it.”

Mui’s fingers curled in frustration and held there for a moment. Then they loosened. He didn’t have an objection.

“I,” Evie said, giving one harsh, sharp tug on her hair, “have tasked myself with protecting my family from such political difficulties. To do so, I also protect my family’s allies and assets, such as Ketch, Tinvel, Chona, and others you have not met, as well as the Powdered Lead and the soldiers which compose it. Thus far, I have done well.”

Mui took a breath. “That seems a terribly exhausting way to live one’s life.”

Evie’s fingers stilled for a moment, resting in her hair. A tremble ran through them. She steeled herself.

“But you, Mui Thom, are not family, you are not an ally, and you are not a mercenary, but you are close to Sara. That was the purpose of Mayaran summoning you to the meeting. It signals to all the others, all those scheming officers, Warriors, and nobility, that you are accessible. That you are a piece on the board. I should have seen this coming, and I should have avoided it. Even if Mayaran’s plot was not obvious, I should have had contingencies in place. At the very least, I should have warned you that Sara’s absence would mark you as a target, so that you would be more aware. Had I done that, you might have come to me to discuss the letter, thinking it unusual I had not mentioned it personally. But I did not, and so we arrived here.”

Evie’s twisting fingers reached her scalp, out of hair to untangle. She moved her attentions to the opposite side.

“Do you know why I never thought of you, Mui?”

“Yes.”

Evie blinked. The question had been rhetorical; of course he wouldn’t know. For a moment, Mui’s expression was severe. His yellow eyes deeply lidded under the starlight, his muzzle calm. Then he sniffed, whiskers twitching, and he lost the confidence that had so briefly possessed him.

He chuckled slightly. “How many times have I heard it said that nobles have no friends, only allies and enemies? Your phrasing is different, but I think it’s plain to see that I am not family, ally, or asset. I never expected you to concern yourself with me.”

“That… is true,” Evie said at length. “And it is what frustrates me so. Even moreso, now that you’ve figured it out with barely a light prod from me.” Evie resisted the urge to snarl as her fingers found the largest snag yet. A small branch had fallen into her hair, tangling an unholy amount of strands about itself. “What are you to Sara? What is she to you? I’ve no idea, because Sara has refused to define it. You clearly aren’t being brought into our marriage—”

“Gods, no.”

“—and despite the fact that she regularly takes you into her bed, you are not skilled enough for this to be some mercantile transaction as is the case with Vesta or Ketch. Your word describes it best, then. You are her friend.”

The stick and its tangles were proving too much for her. Evie dropped her hands from her hair, leaving the job half-finished as she turned to Mui.

“I have no idea how to act around a friend. All others, I can calculate. I would give all for my family, of course. Allies, there is a give and take, each side expecting something from the other in return for similar treatment at a later time. Assets, they are to be collected and cared for, their loyalty cultivated, so that they may produce the best yield when it is time for them to be of use. There are obligations expected from each of them, but you are just a friend.” Evie’s tail twitched, a quiet, self-deprecating laugh bubbling up. She waved a hand in front of her face as if stirring the air. “I suspect you won’t find it hard to believe, Mui, that I’ve never had a friend. Not even one by proxy. I’ve no idea what to do with you.”

Mui turned around. Looked at the trail of devastation Evie had cut through the jungle. And then looked back to her.

“You think I do?”

Perhaps Evie should have laughed. It seemed an incredibly laughable situation, and that statement would have made an excellent way to conclude a theater play’s scene. But this wasn’t a theater play, and it certainly wasn’t a situation that she would have found herself in without Sara’s involvement. Before meeting her wife, Evie had never concerned herself with these issues. Empathy, self-doubt, bias, all concepts for which she had a word, but were vanishingly unimportant things, limited to the dusty ruminations of philosophers contemplating the nature of mankind. Sara had changed that, of course. She had made Evie far more aware of her own behavior in a thousand little different ways, causing her to inspect herself in a thousand different mirrors. That increased emphasis on reflection had been for the better in most cases, allowing Evie to resolve flaws in her thinking she never would have been aware of, but it also created situations like this. Where Evie could recognize a flaw, but hadn’t been provided the tools to fix it.

She could not, no matter how much she tried, bring herself to honestly, truly care about the lives of people like Sergeant Mui Thom.

Mui’s involvement with Sara was an enigma. Neither of them understood it; Mui seemed either unwilling or unable to accept the fact that Sara had plainly and simply stated the reason for her interest in him, while Evie could not will herself to be moved by the thought of him living, dying, or suffering. She knew she should, and so she acted accordingly at most times, but that’s all it was. An act. Hurlish, Tahn, Sara, they were people. Mui was an acquaintance, a tool, a charcoal-scribbled face limply nailed to the spear that she actually wanted at her wife’s side.

“I think…” Evie said, speaking her thoughts aloud as they came to her, “that I want… to care about you.”

Mui gave her a look.

“Not as a romantic partner,” she explained. “You can bed me whenever you’d like, Sara’s favor earned you that, but I think we both know there better than to imagine some romantic spark between us. No, when I asked you earlier how you managed to care about others, I meant just that. How do you bring yourself to care? You offered me a canteen. What does it matter to you if my throat is parched? You concerned yourself with the girl in that village, the one abducted by that demon. You risked punishment, execution even, by compelling Sara to search for her, and you did it without hesitation.”

She spread her palms. “You are a just, ethical man. That is what Sara finds so attractive about you, and it’s what she feared to compromise by telling you of her abilities. I disagreed with her plan, asserted the independence she so often encourages of me, and informed you of her abilities. That has been a disaster. Yet when I leave you alone, ignore you, it is also a disaster.” She took a deep breath through her nose. “I lack your sense of morality, Mui. That is something that is becoming an increasingly difficult problem for me. Thinking back, I now suspect that her lack of empathy is why my mother’s political plots never flowered as finely as her mercantile efforts.” She looked him in the eye. “If there is anything you might believe from me, Mui, it is this. I do not want to repeat my mother’s mistakes.”

By now, Mui’s exhaustion seemed nearing her own. He had taken his spear off his back and planted it at his side, both hands wrapped around the wood to help support his weight.

Evie didn’t know why. She wasn’t Sara. She wasn’t even Mui. His tired expression had to have a reason, but she didn’t know what it was. Her first guess was the fatigue inherent to dealing with what Sara called ‘emotional labor,’ but she wasn’t sure. She never could be, because she did not know how to think like him, how to be like him. She supposed that if she really did one day develop true empathy, not the fitful spurts she occasionally suffered from, she would be able to tell. On this night, she simply waited for his response.

“You want me to teach you… how to care about people?”

Evie nodded. “A ridiculous request, I know.”

“I can’t do that. This is…” He pushed himself up slightly, looking plaintively to the skies as he muttered a prayer. “Gods give me strength. That isn’t something that can be taught. You ask how I know it? I ask you how you can’t know it. It is… it’s an emotion, Evie, it’s something you feel. There’s no skill to it, no trick to be learned, no clever way to arrange your stance or hold your weapon. This is ludicrous. I don’t know what you want from me.”

“Neither do I,” she replied frankly. “I certainly care for my wives and my child. I even feel something similar for those closest to them, those who they themselves care deeply about. But everyone around me seems to be speaking a foreign language as they describe similar emotions being held for people they’ve never met before.”

“That can’t be true,” he said. “You do feel something for others. You’re no demon. If you were walking along the road and found someone with a broken leg, would you leave them there to be eaten by the buzzards?”

Evie considered it for a moment.

“No,” she decided. “I would carry them along with me to the next village along my path and drop them off there.”

“See? You-”

“You, Mui Thom,” she butted in, “would give them a healing potion. You would give them your last healing potion, in fact. If they were complaining about the pain caused by your gait jostling their wound, you would stop and construct a litter to drag along the ground. And do you know why I would have helped that person? Hm? Because I am a public figure, and I know I am not the only person who travels along roads. They would likely be saved by another passerby a short time later, and then the tale would spread: the Chosen’s wife refused to aid the injured. A terrible look for Sara.”

Mui stared at her, unamused. “Fine, then. You have justifications for it.” He lifted himself higher, no longer resting on his spear. “I’ve known soldiers who would answer the question like you. Those who were too jaded by battle and its brutality to accept that they still cared for their fellow souls.” Mui lifted his spear and put his back to Evie, walking toward the camp. “But ask yourself this, Evie!” He called. “If you found an injured man in a cave, where you knew no one would find his bones until long after you were both dead, would you help him?”

Evie opened her mouth, the obvious answer on the tip of her tongue. Of course she wouldn’t. There would be no point. There was risk to her, there would be no reward she could ever care about, and whatever reputation she earned by saving the fellow would be forgotten in a matter of weeks. The only mercy she might spare the man was her blade through the eye, and that was only if he was being insistent enough in his pleading to become an irritant. She wouldn’t save him, and she considered those who would, though possibly possessing some admirable traits, to be foolish.

Yet the moment she started to say it, the words turned to ash on her tongue.

Evie’s ears twitched flat.

I wouldn’t, of course. Why would I ever?

Even in the privacy of her mind, she found the notion stained by the bitterness of a lie. Her gut twisted slightly.

Would I?

She watched Mui leave. He hadn’t said anything. She’d never really resolved her difficulties with him, or Mayaran, or even established a path going forward. He had questions she’d left unanswered, a multitude of them, and despite what he had said, she’d never actually apologized for her outburst’s affect on him.

Evie turned to her right, staring into the trees.

A man alone in a cavern, hidden from the world. His life in my hands, his fate known to me alone.

I would not save him.

That slight, hidden clench in her stomach. Small, but noticeable.

Mui was getting further away.

She turned to the right, taking a few steps and pausing.

A different phrasing. A wild man in an abandoned village, fallen down a well. His echoing cries will never reach another’s ears unless I lift him up.

I would not save him.

The sensation came once more.

Mui was nearing the edge of the jungle, about to turn and walk out of sight. She turned and walked back to her original spot.

A woman in the mountains, hidden beneath the rubble of a landslide. When her throat is too parched to cry aloud, not even the rats will know of her death.

I… would lift the stones.

No clench, no twist of uncertainty. Mui’s words echoed in her head.

You are not a demon.

She had seen a demon. Twice, now. They had been unthinking, uncaring creations, nothing more than a process of mechanical cause-and-effect designed to further their creator’s goals in the world.

That wasn’t what she was, but on her twentieth birthday, it had been close. Now, three years later, what had changed? She had goals she wished to achieve and methods by which to achieve them. That her goals had shifted now to include Sara, Hurlish, and their son, only made sense. Everyone wished to protect their family and progeny; that was the basis of society. Lords married duchesses, duchesses married Knights, and peasants sought the hand of a Knight. All did so in the hopes of furthering themselves and their family in the world. It was the natural order of things, and she was no different.

Evie paced back to the left. Mui was long out of sight. She reached a hand up to begin untangling her hair, but winced at the pain in her knuckle. Keeping her hair pinned up with her bad hand, she used the good one to quickly drink a healing potion.

A man is found in an abandoned dungeon. He claims he is innocent of his crimes, and there is no record for them. Do I leave him to starve?

No.

No, I do not.

Why?

Evie continued to pace.

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Aurora Vesta

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Though it required no small effort on Vesta’s part, the meeting of otherworldly Father and Daughter did progress to useful matters. And once forced to focus on the topic at hand, their discussions rapidly broke a number of hotly-debated stalemates between prominent members of Tulian’s industries.

Vesta barely had time to take notes for herself, so quick was the progress made. Despite Professor Brown being by far the more knowledgeable of the pair, his memory was not flawless, and Sara had a grand host of practical experiences to draw upon. The topic would be explained, either by Professor Brown or Vesta, the involved arguments would be laid out, and Sara would get to work alongside her father.

Frequently, it took only a few sentences for the two to come to a joint conclusion. On the matter of industrial “production lines” and how they would be managed, Professor Brown had long insisted they should involve much rotation of staff positions to avoid mental exhaustion, standing firm against the opinions of Tulian’s actual laborers. Sara had brushed his view aside. She’d successfully explained to her father the specifics of Classes and Levels in a way Vesta never had, bombarding her father with offhanded references to novels and ‘films’ Vesta could not fathom, after which the Professor had happily relented.

Just like that, a debate which had raged for months was resolved. Tulian’s assembly lines would allow their employees to stay in a given position for as long as they pleased. Sara was convinced the nature of Levels and Skills would offset all disadvantages of the mind-numbing monotony Professor Brown feared would degrade their employee’s performance, and explained it to the un-Leveled man in a way he could truly understand.

Most issues were resolved similarly. Professor Brown had for months been insisting that more effort be expended to develop magically-aided welding techniques, but when Sara then stated that rivets, though lacking certain advantages, could create a near-identical product, her father instantly bowed to her expertise. Conversely, Sara’s forbidding of the Tulian dockyards from creating trade ships incapable of true oceanic voyages? That was casually batted aside by her father, who rattled off a list of foreign places and names which relied heavily on international trade conducted by purely shallow-water trade. As Sara acquiesced, Vesta marked out two sentences in her journal, knowing that her pen had likely just dictated how the next decade would be spent for thousands of workers.

The list went on. Though a tedious topic to most, Vesta’s background as the head of a mercantile family kept her nearly as invested as the two participants, who jeered, laughed, and sarcastically insulted one another over the specifics of things no one else in the world had yet formed opinions on. The phillip’s head screw was discarded in favor of the square robertson, a temperature system predicated on the boiling and freezing point of water was re-affirmed, the ban on purchasing partial ownership in businesses was further clarified, a system of classifying concrete mixtures was not so much reinvented as it was recalled from rote memory, the practice of measuring gun barrels by gauge was angrily cursed to live on only in the annals of history, Sara fought off her father’s demand to limit the hunting and fishing practices now sustaining Tulian’s overly urban population, the governmental monopoly on creation of aeroplanes was mournfully maintained, and on and on and on it went.

Her wrist was aching before long. They were on the warpath. Vesta barely had time to label the topic of discussion before they’d reached their conclusions and were moving merrily on. The level of information they pulled from one another with a casual reference to some otherwordly place or concept was at first impressive, then awe-inspiring, before finally becoming infuriating.

Vesta could not believe she’d ever allowed these two to be separated. Though the seeds of the ideas they so casually batted back and forth would take years to bear fruit, it was clear that Vesta’s months spent agonizing over difficult decisions had been extraordinarily wasteful. To them, there was nothing revolutionary about the tasks they were undertaking. Every industrial question plaguing Tulian had already been asked, answered, and recorded for posterity. The only thing they struggled with was recalling those answers, and even then they did so with a shocking ease.

She shouldn’t have been surprised. Though there were still things they didn’t share with her, she had gleaned enough from context clues alone to know that they had, in their earlier lives, possessed an entire world’s worth of information. Not by accessing to some grand library or excellent teams of advisors, no, they had owned it. Personally. And by some unfathomable arcane manner, every piece of it had been ready and willing to be revealed, the requisite pages presenting itself upon their request. Not only was their home some 600-odd years of technological improvement beyond Sporatos, they made repeated references to perusing the product of those centuries in mere seconds. Inquisitive by nature, both Sara and her father had used these mythical tools to satisfy every moment of curiosity they had ever experienced. Each of them alone possessed a wealth of knowledge that could have rivaled ancient archmages. Together, they were nothing less than a terror.

Do the gods truly understand what they have done? Vesta thought, astounded enough to commit the small blasphemy. She didn’t truly think the gods were ignorant of what was coming, of course, but it was so difficult to comprehend for her. Her efforts to understand their view were further complicated as she was forced to watch the horribly casual handling of their treasure. The secrets now contained within her little journal were enough to guide at least the next century of economic development, an advantage that greater women than her had fought and died for, yet Sara and her father hadn’t even asked Oddry, a common maid, to leave the room! Looking behind, Vesta saw that the door to the lecture hall was open. Anyone in the hall could stand and listen if they so chose!

If she’d been escorting anyone other than Sara Brown, Champion of Amarat, Vesta would have gone to close the door herself. She might have ordered the entire University emptied out, in fact, the halls swept for spies and the room enchanted for privacy. But she knew better than to second-guess Sara’s decisions. Sara, without a doubt, had considered a thousand more angles to this conversation than Vesta could ever dream of. The fact that students might overhear was one of them, Vesta was certain.

As the list of useful topics was knocked further and further down, Vesta finally stepped back from her role as a conversational referee. A mere minute passed before the discussion began to stray from its course, and another minute further was all it took before it had abandoned the trail entirely.

“I bet I’m breaking fifty miles an hour in my armor these days,” Sara said, puffing herself up proudly. “Even faster when I’m out of it. Not as fast as Evie, though.”

“Fifty miles an hour?” Her father looked doubtful. “That’s twice as fast as Usain Bolt, honey. I know you’re fast now, but are you really that fast? Faster than a horse?”

“I’m way faster than some horses,” Sara stated confidently. “Not a Knight’s horse or anything crazy like that, but I’ve definitely run faster than Trot can.”

Trot: one of Tulian’s twenty precious surviving horses. His deafness had made him perfect for Sara, who often rode into battle heralded by blaring music of her own creation. Vesta had been monitoring the breeding efforts of that invaluable resource for some time…

She looked down at her notebook. Are they precious at all? If all these predictions come to pass, is our lack of steeds really such a problem? A world without horses. I cannot imagine it.

“Why would a knight’s horse be faster?” Professor Brown asked, yet again latching onto a detail that Vesta would have taken for granted. “Didn’t you say they had armor for their horses? That means they’d be slower, surely.”

“Oh, sure, they’ve got armor, but those Sporaton horses are fuckin’ bonkers, Dad. They blow Evie out of the water, too.”

“So faster than, what, fifty miles an hour? Sixty?”

“More than that, I bet. They’re faster than me like a regular horse is faster than you.”

“How? Is it some special breed? Magic or something?”

“They’re Knight’s horses, Dad. They get buffed by their rider’s Levels.”

Professor Brown blinked slowly. “Wait. You’re telling me animals can get Levels, too?”

Oh gods, Vesta sighed. Please don’t let them get stuck in that religious quagmire. Beastmasters and their Classes had been the source of many a religious schism throughout history. The common logic of it went thus: Levels could not enhance another person, so Level-enhanced companion animals must have their own Classes. If they had Classes, they had souls, and if companion animals had souls, all animals had a soul. That had widespread implications, to say the least. It was a question that had prompted the founding of entire monastic orders, and if given to these two to chew upon, it would likely occupy an unacceptable amount of their time.

Sara made a face. “Ehh… I don’t think so?” She shrugged. “Some people say they can, mostly Daylagon worshippers, but the only animals that really act like they have Levels are the ones that are paired up with a human’s Class. Like…” She tapped her chin. “Okay, y’know the Night’s Eye? The ones that trained Evie? Well they’ve got this crazy-ass dog she grew up with. She swears up and down that this dog can run down horses and bite straight through steel armor. I don’t think you’re gonna get any breed that can do that without Levels. Especially because the dog’s, like, forty years old.”

“Forty?”

“Apparently animals that are involved with someone’s Class don’t age normally. Like, they still do, but human-style? So they can live as long as their owner, no dog years or anything like that.”

Though seeing how happy the two were to finally talk in person was rather heartwarming, (and she was admittedly curious as to whatever ‘dog years’ were), Vesta knew that Sara had better things to be doing. She tapped her pen against the hard cover of her notebook, garnering their attention.

“I believe that Admiral Whistling Ash has been given ample time to prepare for your arrival,” Vesta said, gathering up her dress as she stood. “We should begin making our way there.”

The devastation on Professor Brown’s face nearly made Vesta relent on the spot. He pouted and looked at his wrist, asking if it had really been so long. Sara seemed similarly disappointed. Her own children, thanks to their tyrannical father and Vesta’s eagerness to keep them out of his reach, did not have the relationship with their mother that Sara did with her father. She had always regretted that, but had believed it was necessary. They’d been frequently sent away to receive the best education possible, and each of her boys had become intelligent young men as a result. She was proud of them. She’d thought she’d done well. But seeing the way David and Sara clung to one another so tightly had Vesta questioning her wisdom. Her boys were… aloof. At best. She’d been formally married to Oddry for months now, but she doubted that her wife could recognize their children on sight, so rarely had they visited.

Not something to be concerned with at the moment, Vesta sternly told herself. Perhaps she would ask Sara about it later, but not when there was work to be done.

Is that not the attitude that led to your children’s detachment in the first place?

She silenced the thought. The stakes were too high. Later.

Always later with you, isn’t it?

“Well?” Vesta said, nodding to Sara. “Unless there’s some other matter to be resolved, let us be away.”

Sara let out a long-suffering sigh, rolling her eyes like a dramatic child, but begrudgingly grabbed her sidesword and buckled it back onto her belt.

“I did want to talk to Garen while I was here, too,” she said.

“You’ll be present in the city for two days,” Vesta assured her. “There will be time for such discussions. After you attend to the entire reason you made the trip in the first place.”

“Ugh.” She went over to her father and took him in a hug, wrapping the shorter man up in her long arms. He hugged her back, giving her a peck on the cheek. “Where’s Garen going to be this afternoon?”

“He’s got lectures until six,” her father replied, breaking the hug. He frowned. “That last one is one of our more advanced courses, though. I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t interrupt that one. Those kids are promising.”

Sara snorted. “Sure, I’ll try. No promises.”

“Be safe, Sara.”

“I will be,” she assured him, giving him a firm pat on the shoulder. “And I’ll be back over sometime tonight to try and see if we can do some magic practice together. If Garen’s with you, I’ll make sure to knock.”

Professor Brown, his focus already turning back to the papers on his lectern, waved her away.

“See you then, honey.”

“Love you, Dad.”

“Love you, too.”

Vesta’s heart seemed as cold and brittle as ice. As she walked up the lecture hall’s steps beside Sara, Oddry swept up beside her, slipping her arm into Vesta’s and leaning her head on her shoulder.

“Careful, ma’am,” she murmured. An unassuming phrase Oddry had used when their relationship was still secret, reminding Vesta that she was acting too fond of a common maid in a public setting. It was a warning that Vesta hadn’t heard in a long time.

She tilted her head to the side, fondly rubbing her cheek against the top of Oddry’s head.

“Sometimes I worry you’re too good for me, dear.”

“Hm? Only sometimes?”

They stepped from the lecture hall, turning down a hallway. Vesta hid her smirk and reached down to give Oddry’s backside a swat, making the younger woman jump.

“Don’t let those cooking skills go to your head now,” she warned breathily.

“Hey!” Sara barked, still looking straight ahead. “No getting horny right after I just got done talking with my dad. You gotta give me, like, five minutes or something.”

“Five minutes?” Vesta grinned. “Oddry, that’s an important figure. Make a note of it, if you would.”

“I’ve already committed it to memory.”

Though she saw only Sara’s long black hair, Vesta could practically feel the woman rolling her eyes.

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