Lora of Two Worlds

Lora von Odenheim at last lay flat on her own bed. The Long Gallery was quiet again.

But she knew this quiet wasn’t the quiet of before. In the dark, hidden bodyguards. In the outer room, Carl copying the scriptures. Petra had moved her bedding to sleep beside the couch.

The Odenheims were giving her their utmost protection.

In her old life she’d been a night owl, futures and gold meant watching the overseas markets, and the time difference had made her burn her nights away.

Now, no electricity, no internet, but she could have the sleep that a modern financial drone only dreamed of.

She rolled over, fished the medallion out from under her pillow, turned it in her fingers, and let the day run through her head like a film.

She closed her eyes and began her self-hypnosis: Goodnight, eyes. Goodnight, nose. Goodnight, mouth. Goodnight, shoulders... Each named part went slack in turn. She hadn’t gotten to her toes yet, she was already deeply asleep.

Felix, vaulting back over the peach tree, hadn’t gone to his own room. He and Roland went together into a small courtyard near the tree.

”You’re still up? I saw your lamp, I came over.”

Felix and Roland climbed onto the daybed. A young man in a white shirt at the low table didn’t lift his head, his eyes still on the map before him.

Roland followed his gaze, to the Mount Jensburg range, three hundred li southwest of Lohenheim, marked on the map.

”What? Thinking of going out? The Moorside Hills are close, a day there and back.”

”The Moorside Hills are too small to hide anyone. I can.”

The white-shirted youth, his nails trimmed neat, his fingers long and strong, the knuckles clean, tapped the map at ”Mount Jensburg.” Then he put the map down and didn’t pursue the topic.

He picked up the pot and poured each of them a cup of citron-water. Unhurried, he said:

”And besides, the moment I leave the Princess’s mansion, someone’s watching me. You think I can get anywhere in a wheelchair?”

Dried citron had to be brought close to the nose before you could smell it, but steeped in water, the scent came up at once.

Leon, the prince, slept badly. The physician had given him citron water. Luckily, the southern tributes always included fresh citron, sliced, dried, good for all four seasons.

He passed a cup to Roland and asked: ”Who was it? Dare to break into the Count’s house at night.”

”Don’t know. He nearly strangled my little sister. In the panic, the house killed him. From his kit and his martial arts, not army.”

Felix, abstracted, frowned and murmured:

”Green bodice, white skirt... the killer wore green and white. So it’s still one of those girls. Or, someone put on the same dress to frame them? No, no, how could the killer have known she’d lose her memory?”

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Green bodice, white skirt?

So the one I saved, was her.

”Could it be that Lora was wearing green and white herself, so her subconscious supplied the color, and it wasn’t really so? Felix, don’t ignore the other suspects. Especially Simon Salt. His suspicion is large.”

”Simon Salt, that stupid? Kill someone on his own boat? Two young ladies went into the water from his boat today, I watched his face. That wasn’t playacting.”

”Hey, don’t compare my little sister to your lovesick cousin. Lora hasn’t got that many calculations. She was pushed.”

”What ’lovesick’, that’s an ugly word. I never promised her anything...”

Back and forth they went. Leon couldn’t get a word in.

First, he’d only jumped in to save a drowning girl. He hadn’t seen the push. Second, he’d only arrived in Lohenheim the day before. He didn’t really know anyone here.

In truth, even in Augustburg, Leon knew few people.

If Felix and Roland hadn’t been his fellow students at the palace school for several years, he wouldn’t have known them at all.

In his former life, he’d died in the ”Dewfall Purge” four years from now. These two friends had died before him.

He’d been in Augustburg then. He hadn’t believed a single word of the court dispatches.

In this life, he’d been reborn into his own body at the very moment he was being framed for rebellion. The King, to placate Valentin Voss, had stripped him of his princely title and reduced him to Baron of Chao. As the price for his life, he’d been given leave to depart Augustburg.

He’d come to Lohenheim to find out why his friends had died, and to change their fate, and his own.

In his former life, the Odenheims, father and five sons, had all died in battle. He remembered the house had had five sons, no mention of a daughter. Had Lora died in today’s drowning, in the other life?

It was his arrival that had changed it.

If so, then so be it.

Watching the two friends earnestly analyze the killer’s motives, Leon’s heart stirred. He never wanted to go back to Augustburg. The Princes’ Quarter mansion, that cage, had been his nightmare.

A few good friends. A few cups of good wine. A free life, wouldn’t that be enough?

”So, after all that, we’re back where we started. Nothing.” Roland summed up, disappointed.

Felix rapped his own forehead with a knuckle:

”Tomorrow I’ll have the search widened, see if anyone in the neighborhood saw something. Gareth goes to the ironmongers. When he’s back, tell me what he found. Ah, to hell with it. If we don’t find him, I’ll resign and come live with you, Leon.”

Leon laughed: ”What’s this about resigning? My aunt, she’d never let you carry on.”

Roland haw-hawed, and told Leon, with relish, how Felix had sworn in front of his parents that he’d catch the killer.

”So you care that much about the Odenheim girl? You never mentioned her before.” Leon raised an eyebrow.

”Nothing like that. She’s a perfectly innocent kid, don’t ruin her reputation.” Felix hastened to defend himself:

”I just think Auntie’s right. A sheriff who can’t protect his people, what’s the point? Might as well go home.”

”That lovesick cousin of the Dowager Lady’s, she threw herself into poison for you. You’d better keep away from my sister, or one day you’ll be persecuted for no reason.”

Roland said it half in jest.

Daphne’s lack of an alibi hadn’t gone away because of her grand gesture. She’d only shifted the quarrel from politics, slandering the Count and the Lord Regent, onto a ”love” quarrel. Salacious gossip always drew a crowd; the political slander got forgotten.

Even Leon, in his heart, applauded Daphne’s decisiveness. If a woman like that really turned vicious, what man could match her? But it also showed, her feeling for Felix was only so deep:

She could fight for him, and she could use him.

He remembered: in his former life, Daphne had married Felix. He’d never heard Felix say whether the marriage was a happy one. But Felix’s entanglement in the Ambrose-Crown Prince struggle had begun with her.

He nodded slightly to Roland:

”Right. Daphne’s still a suspect. You’d best look into her. Even if she didn’t do this, a woman that overbearing, if you actually married her, your house would know no peace.”

”Hey, what’s got into you two? When did I say I’d marry her? Two madmen! Oh, Roland, when I came over just now, one of the peach branches cracked under my foot. Have it sawn off tomorrow. Don’t let someone else step on it and fall.”

”Besides you and me, who else walks that tree? In a year or two the whole tree will be dead and we’ll saw it all down. Why add to its pain now?”

”You’re not the tree, how do you know the tree’s pain?”

”You’re not me, how do you know I don’t know the tree’s pain?”

Leon shook his head, laughing. These two, from boys to men, in public, sober, mature, dependable. In private, they’d argue a feather off a chicken.

They were both still alive, and noisy. How good.