flexibility

[calescent]

They leave Thiyec, cross Soche-Tas, and re-enter Welce.

Kiri sends a letter Jayce's way as soon as they stop in a Welchin town. It's brief - we found the Lalindar prime, we'll drop him off and my next stop is the palace so please forward my correspondence there.

The Lalindar house, on inspection, appears to be completely empty. There's a note from the butler on the dining room table stating - in appropriately formal language - that no one was paying them and so they have left, but he, the cook, the gardeners, and the maids may be contacted at the following addresses respectively if the new prime, when located, wishes to re-employ their services. Unlike the Ardelay house at the time of Elytte's death, this house as of Nerine's death contains no extended family. There's nothing to do but for Loel to move in. Kiri draws him a little map of the route between the estate and the nearest town, where he will probably want to buy groceries, and she and Aleko leave to let him plan his moat.

They're at the palace the following day.

Comments

[calendarofcrime]

It is at this point that they reach the stable Sarelle has been heading for since they left the library. She conducts a transaction in Malinquan and comes away with a two-horse carriage, which she wordlessly volunteers to drive.

Onward to Narena.

[calescent]

Narena ho.

Kiri and Aleko sit in the back and do their not-talking-aloud-except-for-occasional-giggle-cascades thing.

[calendarofcrime]

With one stop at a roadside inn along the way, they arrive in Narena. Sarelle locates another inn and stops at it.

"Would you rather accompany me on my search, or stay here until I return to deliver news of the prime?"

[calescent]

"I think we'll come along," says Kiri, after a brief and silent conference.

[liakoura]

"Especially if you narrate while you're looking, that'll be interesting."

[calendarofcrime]

"Narrate what, exactly?"

[liakoura]

"How you're deciding where to look. Especially if it's with magic, I barely know how anybody works except for Kiri."

[calescent]

"I tell you what I pick up about the others."

[liakoura]

"Yeah, but if I have clarifying questions you usually can't answer them about anybody except you, and I can't get demos from anybody except you most of the time. Maybe Patience will, when it's her, if it's her, she knows me."

[calendarofcrime]

"Hmm," she says. "I have never had much success explaining what I do in detail, even before magic was involved."

[liakoura]

"Does magic make it harder or easier?"

[calendarofcrime]

"Easier to do. Harder to explain."

[liakoura]

"Well, I follow Kiri okay when she talks about hers as long as I don't go down too far into details."

[calendarofcrime]

"Hmm. We shall see."

She walks a short distance away from the carriage, to stand in a more open area, and closes her eyes and goes very still except for deep regular breaths.

[liakoura]

The twins wait a little ways away.

[calendarofcrime]

After a few minutes, she opens her eyes and comes back.

"I now understand how the winds behave in this town," she says, "and where to walk so that I might catch a trace of the breath of an elementally blessed person if one has been here recently, without having to comb every street. I will make arrangements for the carriage and then begin."

[calescent]

"I think you've got better range than I do. Although admittedly I've never tried sensing distant heat while completely surrounded with fire, so you have the advantage of me there."

[calendarofcrime]

Sarelle smiles.

She makes arrangements for the carriage, and comes back, and begins leading the twins along what is presumably her planned route.

[calescent]

They follow, taking in the scenery as long as they aren't responsible for deriving clues from it.

[liakoura]

"So what exactly is the thing you do that you did before you became prime?" inquires Aleko. "Which from context somehow has something to do with finding missing Serlasts?"

[calendarofcrime]

She considers this question for a few steps.

Then she says, "I find things out."

[liakoura]

"...What kinda things? How?"

[calendarofcrime]

"A wide variety, and mainly by finding out other things and then applying that knowledge. Like what I did to find out that there were missing Serlasts in Malinqua. Or how I knew that I was prime almost immediately, without doing anything strictly magical - it changed the way my senses fit together, and I was an elay Dochenza who could suddenly taste the wind and there was nothing else it could have been."

[liakoura]

"It has a taste?"

[calendarofcrime]

"Not exactly. But that is what it felt like at first. The way I would describe it now, I think..."

She ponders phrasings for a few more steps.

"...Looking through a telescope makes distant things seem close enough to touch, with all attendant detail. Breathing as prime does something very similar. I know what the wind has touched, and often when and where, almost as though I had seen it or touched it myself."