[The past:]

        Jowston Hill, he recalled, was always a beautiful view in the early spring.  From where he stood in the lee of the Hilltop Conference Hall, huddled within the thick of the gathering crowd and with his hands thrust deeply into his coat pockets against the chill, he could easily see well out across the Muse valley.  The leaves were budding early this year despite the briskness in the air he noticed; already the gentle slopes of long-distant hills were pocked with green.  He inhaled once, smelt sweat and leather and damp vegetation, and stamped his feet blithely as the excited chatter of the assorted assembly of Muse citizenry swirled about him.  For the moment, most assuredly a temporary one, he was a happy man. Exhausted, but strangely satisfied nevertheless.

        Today, things would be changing for the better.  He was sure of it, desperately wanted to believe it.  War and winter were hell, but both could only last for so long.  The spring thaw was approaching; the mud caking his boots was silent proof of that.  The frost had buried itself far beneath the earth but even it was succumbing to the inevitable melting process; the ground beneath his feet was turbid and soft.  No matter the depths the cold touch of winter had penetrated it still wasn't deep enough to put it beyond the reach of a Jowston spring.

        Nobody remembered the real reasons behind the war, what original incidents had sparked decades of bloody combat.  With the first rumours of peace they had been quickly drowned in a tide of congenial relief.  Seasons of death and hate and pain had vanished from memory as swiftly as a snowflake melts beneath the sun.  He supposed it couldn't be helped.

        Fitcher sighed, his breath a puff of vapour in the cool morning air. Often he had cursed his streak of eternal pessimism in the privacy of his mind, but with distressing frequently it proved itself the voice of common sense.  Of course those who saw their young men marched to a war from which they would never return from should erase recollections of those harsh thirty years.  Human memories were designed to fade over time - it was one of few kindnesses allotted in life.  But it was here that that dark little voice of his chimed in and spoke of the season of war, part of a never-ending cycle of hate that remained unbroken for the simple reason that it was easier to just forget its existence than deal with its source.

        It was a great pity, he reflected sourly, that kindness was often counterproductive.

        'The peace treaty will hold,' he chanted within the recess of his mind. That simple thought had become his private mantra of the past week.  'It will hold, because Lady Anabelle has taken control of the negotiations. This is just a formality; I, of all people, should know that.  It has held.  With just two signatures this whole mess will be over.'

        'Cheer up', the little voice admonished as his hold over his good mood suddenly became uneasy.  'And think happy thoughts.  It's springtime.  The war is over.  The snow is thawing.  And,' it added sardonically, 'if we're lucky nobody will drown when the water starts to rise.'

        Fitcher scrubbed at his eyes with the back of one hand.  They felt as if they were burning; he was certain they were bloodshot for lack of sleep. With the arrival of Princess Jillia Blight of Highland the Muse mayor's staff had been sent into a nearly uninterrupted frenzy of activity. Preparations for her comfort and business necessities demanded immediate attention; here Jess' meticulous attention to order and detail and conduct had proven an invaluable asset.  The duty of managing the delicate negotiations had, of course, been duly delegated to Lady Anabelle herself. A constant procession of messengers, the tunnel rats of administration, had flowed between the Muse and Highland political encampments to ensure both amiable relations and a steady stream of communication passed between them; this responsibility had fallen directly into Fitcher's lap like a burning torch.

        With a dull, sleepy glow of pride he recalled that, however difficult the job had proven, he had actually pulled it off with reasonable success. Managing a network of bitterly griping office workers, pressed into performing an unpalatable courier service, had initially proven a daunting task.  However, an odd mix of cajolery and threat on his behalf had roused them from their desks and sent them trotting out to the streets, titbits of valuable information in hand.  Trimming it into an efficient system, one that didn't involve the messenger being inclined to stopover at the closest tavern for a quick pint before delivering their communiqué, had come much later.

        Fitcher yawned once, winced when his jaw cracked unpleasantly, and gently shouldered aside a pair of women who had drifted into his line of vision. Absorbed in lazy conversation they barely passed him a glance as he squeezed past them, towards the head of the crowd.  The cluster of bodies and clothing was thicker and more concentrated here, but at least he had a partly unobstructed view of the square.  It was still empty - and armed guards with wary eyes made sure it remained that way - but he knew that it was only a matter of minutes before the Royal Party from Highland made its brief appearance.  Wedged between a heavyset housewife and her equally impressive husband, their offspring squalling somewhere around the level of his knees, Fitcher tried to rock back and forth on his toes in impatience.

        Despite being stuck with the role of messenger between the Muse and Highland representative parties, he had seen remarkably little of the Princess Jillia, the Highland emissary.  Most of his dealings had involved her retinue rather than the Princess herself, something that had often chafed him.  She was reputed to be a woman of unusual strength and grace. The fact that the rumours included mention of her remarkable beauty only made his disappointment that much keener.

        He sighed heavily.  Such was his life.

        Evidently a large number of Muses' citizens agreed with his favourable opinions of the Princess; upon arriving at the Hilltop Conference Hall earlier that morning to secure his position outside he'd been heartily surprised at the turnout.  Even with the cold bite of winter still lingering in the air a sizeable number of farmers, merchants, housewives and their children stamped in the muddy sludge outside the front door, all eagerly awaiting either sight of the Princess herself or the promise of a good show.  He had been pleased at the turnout; it made his job that much easier.

        Thought of his duty turned Fitcher's eye out towards the gathering, past the broad back of his immediate neighbour and running across the sea of upturned faces and shoulders.  Impressive, indeed.  Public reaction to the Princess' presence was much more favourable than Jess or Lady Anabelle could have ever predicted.  While Highland was spoken more often with curses than compliments Lady Jillia seemed to be an isolated peculiarity, a flower in a bed of manure.  Even the most hard-bitten soldier would grudgingly speak a few kind words of her better qualities.  Fitcher, more often than not a nameless face in the crowd, had had the chance to observe this on more than one occasion.

        He desperately hoped, for the rest of the morning at least, that this unspoken rule would remain just that.  He wasn't sure how he'd handle a riot, or even if he could.  If anything he had the unpleasant hunch that he'd be among the unfortunate first few trampled.

        A tremor ran through the throng.  Fitcher lifted his head as he felt himself sharply jostled and managed to pry two more inches of forward clearance by digging the toe of his boot into the heel of the merchant in front of him.  When the man turned in the opposite direction to face him, indignant and flushed, he quickly weaselled through the thin opening created and abruptly found himself poised at the very border of the crowd. Inhaling fresh air happily and ignoring the confused exclamations already fading behind him he craned his neck to peer around the edge of his neighbour.

        The guards had certainly smartened their stances in a hurry; Fitcher caught the eye of one of them and was momentarily startled when the man, a tall redhead, grinned broadly back.  Recognising him as a friend he returned the grin and jerked his head once in the direction of the crowd's attention.  The guard nodded, held up three fingers as unobtrusively as possible, and tapped them over the insignia embroidered on the sleeve of his upper arm.

        Fitcher leaned back, suddenly much relieved.  Only three people approaching, that meant Princess Jillia and two attendants.  Hardly enough to excite a mob.

        The crowd fell silent.  Frowning, he leaned out to see what had caught their attention and abruptly found himself stricken dumb as well.

        Lady Jillia was indeed a beautiful as rumour had said.  As she swept past where he was standing he caught a fleeting sight of her face, ivory pale and yet flushed pink in the chill of the air, framed with long black hair. With a swirl of her heavy red cloak she was walking past him, arm in arm with another woman with whom she was chatting animatedly, her smile occasionally flashing out towards the astonished crowd.  Heads followed her passage like sunflowers until, with a shy wave, she and her companions disappeared through the Conference Hall doors.

        Fitcher exhaled loudly; he was surprised to find that he had been holding his breath during the entire brief encounter.  The assembled crowd maintained an awed silence for the space of a minute, then burst out into clumps of excited chatter as exactly what they had seen imprinted itself on the collective mind.  Somewhat detachedly, Fitcher found that he himself wasn't any less surprised by what he had seen than they were.  Nobody had taken the time to inform him of THIS little development in advance.

        The other woman had been Lady Anabelle and the attendent, all but ignored as he solemnly walked in the shadow of the pair, had been Lord Jess.

        Well.  That definitely explained why he had been ordered to mingle among the crowd to gauge its reaction.  Lady Anabelle and Princess Jillia had certainly given them something to react over.  "So," he said aloud, turning to his closest neighbour and putting as much casual inflection into the word as he could manage. "What did you think of that?"  

        [The present:]

        Fitcher woke abruptly as he felt something dig rather sharply into his shoulderblade.  He lifted his head, spat out a pencil - judging from the creases on his cheek he had fallen asleep on his paperwork again - and turned to fix his assailant with the evil eye.

        "Yes?" he managed.

        The man, one Fitcher recognised as belonging to Jess' entourage, grinned back nervously.  "Sorry.  You looked so peaceful sleeping there at your desk that I just had to jab you with something sharp."  He dropped a pencil onto the floor and grinned again.

        Fitcher sighed.  If past experiences were any indication, there was something about his person that invited abuse.  "Does somebody want me?" he asked instead.

        "Good guess," the man remarked cheerfully.  "Lady Anabelle sent me out to fetch you.  No specifics other than that, though; she just said she had a favour she wanted to ask of you."

        "Favour", coming from the lips of Lady Anabelle all too often translated into "chore".  Fitcher sighed again, this time rather heavily and ran the back of one hand across his eyes.  He squinted at the candle on his desk, already burnt down to a smouldering stump of fat and wax, and glanced back up at the man sent to retrieve him.  "What time is it, anyway?"

        The man shrugged.  "Just a little after midnight, I'd put it.  Rather chilly out too."

        A churlish reply popped into Fitcher's mind, something involving rest and the weary, but he prudently refrained from giving it voice.  "That's nice," he said instead, yawning hugely as he staggered out of his chair.  "Did the mayor mention when she wanted to speak with me?"

        The man blinked once slowly.  "Uh, I'm assuming right away, this being Lady Anabelle and all."

        As he pulled down his overcoat from its peg on the back of the door and began to sleepily shoulder his way into it, Fitcher had to admit that the man had a point.  While Lady Anabelle certainly wasn't adverse to letting anyone sit sweating outside her office door until the proper time for their meeting, all too often when she said she wanted to talk to you she meant right away.  The Muse mayor was usually too busy for something as trite as an appointment.

        "Tell her I'll be there in a couple minutes," he said to the other man, and when he nodded and slipped back out of the room Fitcher took the opportunity to hastily stuff a folded piece of paper lying in plain sight on his desk deeply into his pocket.  Luckily the page had been folded or else it might have attracted the attention of the chamberlain's clerk.  And the last thing Fitcher wanted was for Lord Jess to hear any word of his possession of private documents.  Lady Anabelle's irritation was all his nerves could stomach in one day.

        It was indeed quite cold outside; the air was hard and brisk and overhead the stars glittered down like bits of crushed diamond.  The streets were well lit, however, and Fitcher made his way through Muse quite easily thanks to that warm orange light and his own intimate knowledge of the city's layout.  As he tramped up the City Hall steps his mind fought back the lure of sleep and did its best to trudge along an avenue of thought; namely, what favour Anabelle expected of him.  A nasty, nervous little corner of his consciousness, its judgement clouded by fatigue, squealed something about her finding out about his 'liberating' the document from the library that afternoon, but Reason quickly quashed it.  As long as the public didn't see half of what was written on those pages he knew she didn't particularly care what happened to them; the regulations requiring they stayed on the premise were mostly born out of an awareness of the necessity for some sort of order.

        He was hit with a welcoming blast of warm air and light as he opened the City Hall doors.  Squinting, he squeezed inside and let the doors click shut behind him.  Once his eyes had adjusted to the new light levels he saw that it wasn't as brightly lit inside as he had first guessed - someone had put out the candles and plunged the lower foyer into darkness.  Up the stairs and down the hall above, however, he saw that a light or two were left burning; after making his way up to the second floor he wasn't surprised in the least to discover that the muted glow originated from Lady Anabelle's room.  Likewise, as he ambled down the hall towards the mayor's office he wasn't puzzled by the yellow candlelight leaking from the cracks around the door to Jess' chamber - evidently Lady Anabelle wasn't the only one working late.

        Rapping his knuckles softly against her office door, he waited until he heard her answering summon and quickly pushed his way inside her empty office.         Well, not entirely empty - a half-filled decanter of wine stood untouched on the corner of her desk.  Fitcher was suddenly reminded of the memory of his own lunch, and of his non-existent dinner.  As he pulled up a chair in front of her desk Lady Anabelle glanced up from her papers briefly, nodded her approval, and let her gaze drop back to the page she was currently surveying.  Picking it up between her thumb and index figure she settled back in her seat and regarded it as one would a distasteful insect.

        "Sometimes I really wonder what goes through peoples' heads," she said, her voice thinly veiled with disgust.  "You wouldn't believe some of the reports I find on my desk.  Now I learn that young children in and around Muse are disappearing.  No traces, no clues, no leads.  These sorts of things really do put a crimp in my day."

        After a moment of awkward silence she smoothed it back out on the surface of her desk with a rueful sigh and passed Fitcher an impassive look.  "I'll keep this short," she told him.  "Some rather crucial news from the Highland border has crossed my attention and I need you to run an errand for me."

        Despite the fact that he was inwardly howling, Fitcher managed to bend his mouth into what he hoped was a compliant smile.  "Of course, Lady Anabelle."  Pause.  "Does this have to do with the Unicorn Brigade attack?"

        In the space of a second the greater part of her attention was focused on him with the concentration of light through a lens.  "What makes you say that?" she said sharply.

        Later on, if anyone had asked him exactly what had make him speak out as he did, Fitcher would have readily admitted that the demons of fatigue were owed entire credit rather than any amount of confidence or nerve on his behalf.  "I did a bit of thinking about the matter myself this afternoon," he replied, sleepily ignorant of the sudden intensity of her ice-blue gaze.  "About how strange it was that no Jowston troops were involved in the attack.  And then I remembered reading something about control of the Highland army being passed from Agares Blight to his homicidally inclined son, Ruka, and something clicked."

        "Really," she said, the word smouldering like an iron.

        "Yes ma'am," he said, absorbed in drowsy bliss.  "And almost everyone here knows that Ruka Blight has never agreed with the signing of the peace treaty anyway, and that he really hates the City-State, and it struck me that maybe the Unicorn Brigade incident was just some underhanded way of his to rouse public opinion against Jowston."

        There was another moment of silence, one that nearly lulled him back into the clutches of sleep.  Only when Lady Anabelle cleared her throat loudly did he snap back to attention, blinking about himself with muddled confusion until his gaze settled back onto Lady Anabelle's unreadable face.

        "Congratulations," she told him dryly, her elbows on her desk and her chin on her folded hands.  "You just came to the same conclusion that Lord Jess did several hours ago."

        There wasn't really much he could say in response to that, but as realisation dawned that he had been talking aloud of his suspicions he managed to work out a look of honest surprise.  She nodded at his expression and picked a sealed envelope out from the shifting layers of paper on her desk.

        "I need you to deliver this to the border guards on duty at the North Sparrow pass," she said.  "If the peace treaty is indeed in danger of being broken I want all borders to Joswton from Highland sealed immediately.  And when I say sealed I mean locked down entirely - nobody passes.  Lord Jess has already sent out his people to deal with the north-western border crossings; I want you to deal with this one."

        Fitcher started and plucked the enveloped from her hand with some trepidation.  "Me?  Now?"

        "Yes, you, now," she echoed ominously.  Leaning back into her chair, her hands folded over her lap, she eyed her clerk thoughtfully as the seed of an idea took root in her mind.  "Do you know what one of the perks of my position as mayor is, Fitcher?"

        Somehow, he felt that tax exemption wouldn't be a wise answer given the time, place, his exhaustion and the peculiar mood that Lady Anabelle seemed to be in.  He shook his head wordlessly instead and she fixed him with a severe eye.

        "Delegation," she replied promptly.  "I am inclined to advise you to take it into consideration sometime."

***  

        "Forget it.  Not a bloody chance."

        Fitcher sniffed with an air of wounded pride.  From his cross-legged perch on a top bunk, his coat draped across his lap, he not only had a perfect view of the poker game being dealt out below him - not to mention the players' cards - but also most of the rest of the soldiers barracks as well.  Noisy and active throughout the day it fell into a well of stuffy, shadowy silence once the evening rolled around as men either retreated to more agreeable areas of the city or left for late-night shifts.  At the moment the card players, an unfortunate on-duty officer and Fitcher were the barracks only occupants.  Despite this, it still managed to smell unpleasantly of socks.

        "Geez, you haven't even heard the favour yet," he complained.

        The other end of his conversation snorted loudly and shuffled the deck of cards through his scarred hands.  He was a tall man with closely cropped red hair and was broad across the shoulders in a way that suggested muscular soldierness.  He was also a trusted friend, although Fitcher was beginning to hold some fairly serious doubts to the extent of their mutual good favour at the moment.           "Don't need to," the man replied briskly as he dealt out cards to the rest of the poker bevy, all of whom were guards that Fitcher recognised as being acquaintances of sorts.  "Hate to be the one to tell you this lad, but as it stands you're currently right up there on the list of People We Don't Want to Deal With Right Now."

        Fitcher reared back as expressions of astonishment and exasperation warred for mastery over his face.  He seriously doubted that Lady Anabelle had ever faced this much resistance before and wholly believed that he was much too tired to deal with it now.  "What?!  That's ridiculous, Bram, why not?"

        The guard, Bram, gathered up his cards and dealt the smaller man an evil eye.  "Because it's common knowledge that you've been seeing an awful lot of the Highland border lately, so you'll have to pardon us for being suspicious of your intentions and your favours."

        As Fitcher tried to splutter out an indignant objection another guard seated on the bunk below him swivelled around and craned his head back to regard the clerk in amusement.  Twisted about as he was, Fitcher was given a good enough look at the man's cards to recognise a lot of twos and threes.

        "Didn't you just get back from Highland this morning?" the guard asked pointedly.

        "Aren't you going to loose this hand in a really spectacular way?" Fitcher countered sourly, with a meaningful nod towards the man's cards.

        The guard jerked in surprise and shot a look at his hand.  "Why, you little-"

        A bellow of laughter escaped Bram seconds before he clapped a heavy hand over his mouth to stifle it.  In the far corner of the barracks, comfortably seated beneath the watery light of a tallow candle with a book in one hand and a glass in the other, the officer on duty passed the group a dangerous look.  At sight of the glare Bram and several other members of the poker game contented themselves with giggling into their fists instead.           "I guess you'll be sitting this one out," Bram remarked humorously to the victim of Fitcher's observation, who was slapping his cards down on the table in disgust.  "But, to be fair, you didn't exactly answer his question, Fitch."

        Fitcher 'erred' uneasily and scratched his chin.  "Well, yeah, it's true I only got back earlier today, but..." He trailed off and frowned sharply. "Wait, what am I saying?  No, no!  I mean, you're right about the whole morning part, but I was sent nowhere near Highland!"           Bram arched an eyebrow.  "Fine, the border then."

        The clerk opened his mouth to argue, then snapped it shut with a wince. "Well, we were maybe a couple miles within sight of the border, yeah, but we didn't actually-"

        "There you go!" his friend exclaimed, smacking down his cards with unusual zest.  "Three little ladies and two good Jacks; beat that if you can, gentlemen.  And Fitcher, lad, a couple miles is a close as we're paid to go."

        Another man nodded his agreement, his eyes never once leaving his cards. "Highland is considered a wasps nest right now; one good poke is all it takes to rouse the swarm.  Unless we're on border duty we've been ordered to keep as far away as possible."

        Spotting a possible opening Fitcher dove back into the conversation with feverish hope.  "Speaking of border duty-"

        "Anyway," Bram boomed, his voice rolling out well above the clerk's and bringing another frown to the face of his commanding officer in the corner. "We've all just been rotated off-duty for the next three days, and I'll be blessed if I let anyone or anything stand between my spending the time back home with my wife, who the neighbours' tell me has already begun to loudly complain of my absence."  He slapped his heavy hands down onto his thighs, his face split with a massive grin.  "Bloody impatient woman!"

        Fitcher assumed a look of wide-eyed innocence as a rather nasty idea was suddenly sparked and casually remarked, "Yes, speaking of whom, just how well is your wife's business running nowadays?"           The poker group was moderately surprised when, instead of launching into his usual enthusiastic babble when posed the question the big man merely narrowed his eyes in heavy suspicion.  "Why would you ask-"

        He was interrupted when one of the players yawned hugely, spread out his cards with a resigned sigh, glanced back and up at Fitcher and said,  "You never did tell us what your favour is."

        The clerk shrugged.  "It's not that big a deal.  I just need someone to ride out to North Sparrow pass and deliver a message to the guards there that Lady Anabelle is locking down all the borders to Highland."

        The player, an old guard with a scarred face and narrow frame, leaned back to fix the other man with a shrewd gaze.  "Sort of implies that they're expecting trouble, doesn't it?"

        "Nobody gives me the reasons," Fitcher lied warily.  "They just tell me what they want done."

        "You aren't going to actually order one of us to go out on your favour, are you?"  Bram suddenly said, his air that of a man humouring his kid brother as he swept up the discarded cards in one big hand.  "Do you even have that kind of authority?"

        Fitcher grimaced.  He was uncomfortable aware of his own limitations - ordering people about definitely fit within those sweeping boundaries. "No, for both questions."

        He had one last card to play; he threw it down now and fixed Bram with as steady an eye as he could manage.  "How about we exchange favours instead?"

        The big redheaded man frowned slightly, his brow creasing in thought. "What favour?" he asked slowly, although his expression gave evidence that he already knew the answer.

        Fitcher grinned weakly at him and said,  "That big one.  You know I can't keep fooling the Muse Treasury forever, and sooner or later they're going to go through the books with a fine-toothed comb and find out their numbers don't add up."

        One of the eyebrows of Bram's quick-witted neighbour had shot up in surprise.  "He's not talkin' about a loan, is he?"           "Shut up, you," the big man replied absently, crimping the cards in his hands nearly in half.

        "I think I gave you two months to come up with the money, but I could probably afford to give you three instead," Fitcher continued happily. "Maybe even interest-free.  And you have mentioned in the past that your wife's business is returning profits, so-"

        "All right already!"  Bram finally snapped, his expression both vexed and enormously embarrassed.  "Point taken.  I'll head out to North Sparrow tomorrow morning.  You happy now?"

        Fitcher whistled.  "Erm, I actually need you to ride out tonight-" He caught sight of the big man's face and the rest of the sentence died a gruesome death on his tongue.  "But - but! - But, tomorrow morning is good also.  Yes. Quite good."