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Sarelle and the Ardelay twins go to their inn. They are greeted there the following day by Ekador apparently-Serlast, who says he'll be another two days settling up his affairs and then they can all go to Welce.
Ekador packs quite lightly for someone who's leaving the country on short notice and otherwise bears negligible personality resemblance to Loel. The carriage isn't particularly crowded as they make their way back to the port to find a boat leading back to Welce.
"There are three stops to make," Kiri tells him as they drive. "Although we'll land close to Chialto, I don't think that should be the first place we go. You'll have a much smoother go of taking over as uncontested prime if you can demonstrate at least minor magical power on demand - I don't think fielding questions of your legitimacy is anyone's idea of a good time and it would be better to have more than Sarelle's word to lean on. It doesn't help that anyone but her will mistake you for sweela. The Serlast estate is a couple of days by carriage from Chialto, there's a forest on the property, it's supposed to be special to the Serlasts, and going and having a walk around it might give you an idea of how to perform some minor visible magic."
"Might not. Loel figured out how to do magic without jumping into the Marisi River," shrugs Aleko.
"It might not. But it's worth a try if you don't have an epiphany before we get there," says Kiri. "Anyway, some of your cousins are living at the Serlast estate - off the top of my head, one of Valdin's children, his younger sister, and one of his grandsons, but I don't know how you're related to the family so I don't know who they are to you. You can kick them out if you want, but I recommend getting to know them and soliciting their help with the family business, and you have plenty of room to continue to board them. The Chialto house of the Serlasts was empty last I heard, but I'd be willing to bet you can re-hire Valdin's old servants if you want them, and you're entitled to maintain your own suite at the palace, too. You can divide your time between these places more or less however you please, although if you neglect the palace then the royal family may start issuing pointed invitations, and you might want to become acquainted with Prince Isten in particular, as he is heir to the throne and it's his succession you're necessary to ratify later."
"Isten's eleven," Aleko adds. "Coru, quiet."
"Questions?" Kiri inquires. "Do you want me to write any of that down, possibly in chart format?"
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calescent
calescent
"Loel Lalindar was missing abroad, like you. I collected information about weather patterns until I found a town in Thiyec that was suffering from unprecedented amounts of rain, and from there it wasn't too hard to find him. He was convinced to come back but hasn't evinced an interest in lurking around the palace even for an initial visit; I think he plans to stay at the country estate for the foreseeable future. The other Lalindars will probably be disposed to be very solicitous of you, at least to begin with, since it was Nerine Lalindar who killed your predecessor and no one wants a long and miserable feud between two of the Five Families."
calescent
"In a sense, yes. Nerine and Valdin despised each other from well before I met either one of them but managed not to involve their relatives before they finally murdered each other in her kierten."
calescent
"Not that they ever thought about in coherent detail while I was listening. It was always 'that bastard sniped at me over dinner', 'I hate his stupid face', 'you can't trust her, little Kiribel', that sort of thing, they didn't lay out the history of the dislike for me thoughtfully or verbally."
calescent
"No indeed, he bled to death and ruined some of her furniture and she died of bone-powdering and wrecked some nearby plumbing and then there was a hasty exchange of conciliatory gifts and that has thankfully been that."
calescent
"So those are the movers and shakers of Welce. I hope you like it there."
liakoura
"It's definitely nicer than Soche-Tas, but I didn't see enough of Malinqua to compare."
calescent
"On two occasions I had to threaten people with fire to convince them that Aleko and I were in fact not prostitutes of any kind."
calescent
"I didn't spend long enough there to have a dissertation on the subject, but there's a culture of - fetishization of youth. We were not the youngest people around to be solicited for our services while we traveled through Soche-Tas. The country has things to recommend it," she hastens to add. "The food is good, when we managed to make ourselves understood to inkeepers and so on the service economy was impressive - I'm just glad that I had the fire to threaten with."
pyrophyte
"You mentioned that Loel understood his power without needing the Marisi River," he says. "Which seemed to imply that most coru primes are not so fortunate. And there is a Serlast forest where I might or might not find help with mine. But you set your bed on fire without any outside assistance whatsoever. Is there some known reason for these differences...? How did Loel get acquainted with his magic?"
calescent
"Some magic comes without any help. I was able to track him via weeks of rain, but he wasn't able to do anything conscious until he decided to see if inhaling the pond in his backyard would work just as well as diving into the Marisi. It did, but I can't say that it would have for any Lalindar prime, because these things are idiosyncratic. Ardelays and Dochenzas don't have any specific locations, but the Lalindars have the Marisi River, the Frothens have a particular meadow, and you have your forest. I suspect that if I hadn't been asleep when my great-aunt died, I would have had to enshroud myself in fire on purpose in order to find my magic fully accessible, but I think sleep-igniting my bed did the trick, thankfully. I'm not sure if Dochenzas tend to have awakening moments at all."
pyrophyte
"Inhaling... the pond. The entire thing?" he inquires. "Or only part of it?"
calescent
"Only part of it. The pond was still there when we left."
calescent
"And for the property values of the friend he left the house to on his way out. But if you haven't noticed any magic at all yet, my first guess is that you need the Serlast forest. My second guess, if that doesn't do anything, is that Sarelle was mistaken, though."
pyrophyte
"I wouldn't say I haven't noticed any magic," he says. "Just that I'm not yet sure whether the things I've noticed are magic or not."