She nods pensively.

"...The healers were a good idea. It's an aphorism but, amateurs discuss tactics, professionals study logistics. Of which healing is a big one. I'm also accumulating more questions about this place and all its magic stuff by the hour, but that... Is what it is."

"I shot, like fifteen people. They weren't about to kill me or anything, or even my friends. It was a surprise attack after I decided I couldn't countenance the slavery. Captain on downwards in order of how big a weapon they had, and - and I was rushing, pushing hard and fast and being loud and demanding because that's what you do according to every tactical class I've had, you aggress and don't stop at all, but all that did was make everything into a massive, horrendous melee. I told them to surrender and they'd live, that's - part of the rules, really, or at least it ought to be, I would have plunked them right back on shore - but they were stalling so I pushed more. Thus, chaos and death and former slaves killing the killers and. And - it doesn't feel very nice. I could probably honestly talk for... A while, like this... I don't want to be okay after that, it'd mean I'm a fucking sociopath, but also I do kind of want to be... Okay, after that. Would they give me a medal back home? For taking out slavers and rescuing the slaves? Maybe. Wouldn't want it.  ...What I mean is, if I did that while in contact and without authorization I'd be court-martialed and stripped of my core, but out of contact it's... Showing initiative. They'll go over everything I did with a fine-toothed comb if I ever go home, but I'll probably come out of it fine as long as I'm not blatantly stupid or evil about things, but that's the thing. I'm not a damned officer! I don't know what I'm doing here, or what they'd want me to do, I have no direction but myself and it's terrifying! Does any of that make sense?"

"Yes. It's kind of like it was for us, after Britta - that's the Empress who went through the Gate with, like, everyone important, and they all got killed - the only people who almost kind of knew what they were doing were the civil service, and they were struggling a lot too. Sometimes there isn't anyone to tell you what to do, and it sucks.

I'm sure there's loads of people around who would love to start telling you what to do, but if I was you I wouldn't trust any of them. Everyone has their own personal agenda. It's kind of why I dropped out of Anvil-level politics, once things were getting more... established again, and people were fighting over the positions, rather than just happy that someone wanted to do the job.

You can ramble as much as you like to me, it's not like I'm in a hurry. We're safe here - well, safer than we've been for a while, anyway - and I imagine the dhomiro's about to have a lot of boring arguments, deciding whether we're settling here or moving on, before anything else happens."

"Yeah, no. As far as taking orders from anyone around here without question, anyway." Siiiiiigh. "People have agendas back home too but I'd trust them more to not be secretly awful. And include things like 'not dying to the alien invaders who won't even talk to us'. I-" Grimace. "Actually, I might have some nice distracting questions that aren't thinking about... All that. Like what a Cambion is and why they're important to contracts, and what the Gate is, and how the Senate works - Anvil is the capital of the Empire?"

"Sure," smiles Yasmina. "A Cambion is a kind of lineaged - humans with extras from one of the Realms of magic. Cambion are Autumn, the magic of Autumn is to do with contracts, and connections, and luck and coincidence - so a contract that's signed in Cambion blood is less likely to be broken, and just generally has better outcomes.

The Sentinel Gate is a big magic stone gateway, it's one of the features that makes up Anvil, though it wasn't from there to start with - the Urizen brought it with when they joined the Empire, some huge performance with oxen and rollers and so on.

It responds to conjunctions in the stars to send people to significant locations - you can detect whether it will open to somewhere, at what time and how many people get to go through, with simple magic, and open it with the same kind of thing.

So if someone appears out of nowhere, they probably came through the Gate and your life is about to get more interesting real quick - usually the people through the gate have, like, maybe half an hour to an hour to get back through before it closes and they have a long walk home.

Anvil is kind of the capital, but most of the time it's just some ruins - it's forbidden to build there, and four times a year people from every nation converge on it and put up a big tent city, and that's where politics gets done.

Every territory has a Senator elected by however that nation likes to elect people - here in the Brass Coast we just cut out the bit in the middle and let people buy the position directly with money - and Senate meets during these gatherings to debate stuff and pass motions, which turn into law and commission big building works and stuff..."

"-I need to investigate the gate. A way to go home would be incredible."

"I've... completely lost track of when the next summit is, but I'm sure someone's got a calendar - they're the solstices and equinoxes. I don't think we were planning to send anyone this coming season, and it's been a while since I was there...

Actually, you might want to go see if you can bother the Imperial Prognosticators. I'm sure they haven't factored you into their calculations, and they're more likely to find you a conjunction if they have. I expect they spend most of the year in the Castle of Thorns, which is all the way over in Dawn, but we've already established you've got some considerable personal transport.

Do you want me to rustle you up an Anvil guide, to meet you there, if you want to fly off to inform the Civil Service of your existence? While I'd love to monopolise you down here helping us build things to fight the Grendel, I should probably let you go to Anvil at least once and hear everyone's pitch. And see if the Gate is feeling cooperative, although that makes it very likely that we would just lose you for good."

"...I wanna think about that tomorrow." Sigh. "The way I got here, from my perspective, is trying an advanced impeller technique they were letting anyone who passed control exercises try and failing in new and exciting ways that popped me out above a Navarr steading- I think is the right words? With massive internal damage from the transit."

"Ouch. They patched you up alright? I'm sure we can rustle up a Physick if you think you've anything hanging around from that. And, uh, do you want me to stop talking at you and find you a room to rest in?"

"I've got something for that integrated, and they helped out too. I probably would've made it through as long as someone fed and watered me, but they had something - so, think a thousand thousand thousand extremely tiny cuts on the inside of someone, the body can heal each individual one but they all bleed slightly and you get too weak and poison yourself - but they did some unpoison magic and after that it was just a couple days' bed rest. Much better than I'd been expecting. I think I should proooobably keep chatting a bit longer? Cool off, space out, bleed off the - everything?"

"Sure, we can do that. Anything in particular you want to cover, or shall I just ramble about Autumn magic or reminisce about Anvil?"

"I guess?

I miss my friends. And teachers and family and- The culture, you know. I miss browsing the internet for funny recordings, like the voice earlier. I miss going to Chinese restaurants and ordering sesame orange chicken and egg drop soup. I miss flying slalom races and playing soccer, and it's kind of creepy whenever I fly there's no communication traffic. Nobody to clear my flight path with, nothing on RADAR. Lonely."

"I have no idea what the 'internet' is, but we absolutely both have a small browsing library and we can send someone out for sesame chicken and egg drop soup, those sound like things I would expect to get at a street vendor in this town somewhere. You might need to describe a bit more what kind of sesame chicken you're after, mostly the kind I'm thinking of would be fried with honey, possibly orange blossom honey from somewhere fancy?"

"Fried with sauces at least, maybe honey would work? Wouldn't be the same probably, anyway. Tell me about Anvil? And Autumn magic? 'Cambion' can imply an inherently evil person, where I'm from- Though the language is extremely weird so I wouldn't lean on that at all."

"I think there's some old superstition in it, yes - Cambion, I mean. These days the superstition is actually that it's lucky to have your contact drawn up by a Cambion, and even better in their blood - but, uh, voluntarily given nowadays... 

Autumn is very linked to contacts and transactional relationships, and some people get upset with autumn heralds because they don't care about anything but the word of the deal - and Cambion are traditionally very politically inclined, very stubborn.

There's, uh, a lot about Anvil. It's the place the First Empress met the first national leaders that would make up the Empire. Do you want a history lesson or how it's used now?"

"Nothing about the glorious wars fought to defend it or anything." She shivers. "What's - beautiful about it?"

"It's lovely at night when all the lightstones light up the camps; the Urizen in particular make a great art of stringing multicoloured lights around their encampment. The Imperial Regio is a wonder in its own right, it reacts to the magic that people are casting in it, which is often a great performance in itself - many of our ritual traditions involve singing, dancing, even short plays. There's art everywhere, great tapestries, portraits hung on tent walls, every kind of toy or trinket someone might want to buy.

That's during the festivals, of course - outside them there's a different beauty, the Forge standing after all those years, waiting patiently for the Empire to assemble again... when the grass grows high enough they graze sheep there, sheep investigating the Sentinel Gate are strangely adorable..."

"Old things have a mystique to them, a majesty, even when there's nothing special about them. Even if they were ordinary houses, just that old. The vastness of history... There are ancient tombs in Egypt, built some four thousand five hundred years ago. The great arches and stones and canyons of nature are much older than that, but four thousand years of human life all leading up to the here and now... It seems so vast, and yet so small - that's something like two hundred generations. Hardly forever. Not compared to how slow and old nature is, the course of human evolution. They say we had music before we had language.

...I'm kind of rambling. Thanks for - grounding me, I guess. If you have some more food I won't say no."

"Sure, anything you like or don't like?" She turns round and looks for anyone moving between wagons, and shortly an attentive teenager bounds over to see what they want.

"-Oh hell, you probably eat real animals. No meat, if you have something made from soybeans I could probably use protein anyway."

"We do eat real animals, but not all of us -" she turns to the waiting teen, "can we get some vegan chickpea tagine for the visitor, please? If anyone's doing soy beans then a side of those, too."

He scurries off onto the building.

"Thanks. It's hardly an emergency compared to human - sentient slavery, and I've got even less angles on teaching someone how to do vat-grown meat than desalination, but..."

"Yes, I think most sensible people's position on animal welfare is that they'll worry about it when speaking people's welfare is sorted out. The League tend more towards keeping pets and do a bit of pet rescue and so on, and to be honest our farm animals are generally kept in better conditions than, say, the Druj keep most of their people. And there's the whole horse thing, I guess... we used to have great riding animals called horses, as an Empire, and then they were mistreated sufficiently that there are now none left, and that rather focusses the mind on the wellbeing of the other animals we rely on."

The teenager bustles out of the building again with a big clay dish containing chickpea tagine over couscous, which he proudly presents to Lenora. "Compliments of House Ezmara; if Yasmina thinks your presence is enough payment that's good enough for the rest of us."

"We used to have horses too, they became obsolete but there's still a few around, as basically really big pets," Yaaaaawn.

"Thank you? Smells good. I do have some coin, but... I should probably just eat and sleep at this point. The, uh, combat jitters are going away. Though the memories won't..."

"Yes, get some food in you, and then I'm sure Mateo here will show you to a nice guest room."

The teenager nods and commences leaning on one of the wagon supports. Once it's clear conversation is paused, Yasmina will pull a (printed, if somewhat unevenly) newspaper out of a compartment under the table and start reading it.

The guest room has quite a nice bed, soft silken covers, a jug of water and a cup, a basin and some soap; however, the guest bathroom arrangements appear to be a chamber pot.

Eh. She had worse in that first little village. Steading. It was a Steading. Still kind of tempted to incinerate it or something, but... Eh.

...She's gotten more paranoid over time, though, and lightly barricades the door with whatever's available and separates out her SIGINT unit from the Valkyrie Core before desynchronizing, setting it to wake her the hell up if someone comes into the room, in case of assassins or something. It's an irregular box of metal topped with a foot-wide crystal dodecahedron of some sort making a soft humming noise with a few blinking lights, to any observers.

And then: Sleep.