"Oh, please don't tell me you don't recognize me, Lalindar," says Kiri. "I haven't had the pleasantest trip tracking you down and that would just be disappointing."

"...What," he says, in Welchin this time, "the fuck."

"Hi."

"Kiri. Can I hug you? Is there some horrible emergency, are you here to tell me the king finally caught up to me and he's going to have me dragged back home in chains, can I hug you anyway?"

"You can hug me, the king has no idea where you are, there is a medium-sized emergency, hug me."

He hugs her. He hugs her hard enough to lift her right off the ground. (Among other changes, he's gotten taller while he's been gone.) Emergencies notwithstanding, he is really happy to see her.

"Eep!" she laughs, hugging back as best she can while so thoroughly hugged.

"The medium-sized emergency is that Nerine and Valdin murdered each other, and neither one has an obvious heir. Guess how I found you."

"You're going to try that whether I think it's a good idea or not, aren't you."

"Yep!"

"Can I convince you to try it in the Marisi River and not in a bathtub?"

"Can you convince me to go back to Welce?" he counters. She said the king doesn't know where he is; therefore the king is still alive, the relevant one, the one he crossed two countries to get away from. He does not think the odds are high that he will be going anywhere near the Marisi River until that is no longer true.

"I managed to find you, but I have no idea where the new Serlast may have gotten to - and Alser's not dead yet but he's in bed more often than he's out of it these days - and when I left, Auney Dochenza had two broken legs from trying to fly - the primacy is in a shambles. Continuing to be missing will not help. Dig a moat around your favorite Lalindar property and drown anyone trying to drag you back to the palace, but please, please show up."

"Nobody but my brothers knew what possessed me to go internationally traveling," pleads Kiri. "No one will expect me to come back with you hiding in my carriage. Start in the Marisi. The Marisi is special to the Lalindars."

"I don't want to touch the Marisi," he says. He does not want a river in Welce to be special to him. If the water in Welce would spare him where Thiyecine water would kill him, all the more reason to try it in Thiyec.

"If you can breathe water at all I expect you to be able to breathe Thiyecine water. I'm worried that until you at least go for a swim in the Marisi, to say nothing of trying to inhale it, you won't have fully functional powers."

"Then I don't want fully functional powers, and if you want a coru prime in Welce, me killing myself is how you're going to get one," he says.

Kiri looks away.

"If you don't drown yourself with your experiment - then what?"

"I can't stay forever. Me being gone doesn't help with the primacy-in-a-shambles issue. I can stick around a couple of days, though, unless Aleko actually starts screaming at your nudist neighbors and runs out our welcome."

"I like it better than Soche-Tas too, but it's not my favorite thing. Aleko is highly uncomfortable."

"For a day or two, yeah. We can stay. Do you have a place to put the horses or should we stash them and the carriage in the inn we passed and walk back?"

"I don't have a good place to put the horses," he says, envisioning them in his garden. Neither the horses nor the garden would be likely to benefit.

"Okay." Kiri goes and confers with Aleko briefly, and then Aleko drives off. She returns to the doorway. "He doesn't want me slipping in the rain so he'll put them away for me. We're hoping the sign outside the inn suggesting that the proprietors are at least aware of the existence of Welchin will let him make the transaction."

"The innkeeper speaks it," he says. "Probably half the reason I still know how. You wanna come in and dry off?" He has many cuddly towels! Originally obtained because he lives very close to a large pond and likes to go swimming; now useful because of the unceasing rain.

"Yes. Please." In she steps.

Loel fetches cuddly towels. They're very cuddly. His hair becomes even more fluffy than usual after he fluffs as much water out of it as he can.

"Things," sighs Kiri, running a hand through damp hair. "Of course."

Hugs. "It might be relevant if you could have left a kid in Soche-Tas, or for that matter here. Especially if you do wind up drowning yourself. Otherwise I don't have to know if you don't want to, er, think about it."

Loel laughs. "Nah." His encounters have not, by and large, been of the kind that produces children.

"Okay."

"So how have you been?"

"I've been all right apart from the aforementioned emergency. The king continues to ignore me in spite of the fact that I'm no longer eight. I have the Ardelay belongings under control. I've demonstrated my proficiency in Soechin by crossing a country full of people who speak only that."

"Yes, I'd imagine. I didn't really need much more than 'how much to stable the horses here' and 'why yes, we're Welchin' and 'your suggestion is inappropriate'."

He winces. He can just imagine what kind of inappropriate suggestions she would have gotten in Soche-Tas.

"Yes, well, if anyone had tried to press the point, I am still the sweela prime."

He giggles.

"I didn't even translate half of it for Aleko."

"Awww." He hugs her.

Hugs.

"I missed you too, but I guess you needed to be gone. Nerine thought Valdin had arranged to have you kidnapped," she adds. "She made enough of a fuss to make it kind of difficult to investigate under the assumption that you'd run away on purpose. I may have helped."

Loel giggles. And hugs her some more. Because she's delightful.

"If you come back, alive and amphibious and everything - there'll probably be a demand for a public explanation."

"That'll be fun," he says dryly. (No it won't.)

"Yes, well. Rampant speculation might be less fun."

"Hard to see how."

"I stopped helping Nerine's rumor when the Serlast house in Chialto was my first and thus far only case of being on the scene in time to thwart arson. It matters to people what the primes are getting up to, and what the royal family are getting up to, and you're both."

"I didn't say the official story had to be the truth. Tell them you were kidnapped if you like, as long as you blame someone who's safely out of the picture and won't suffer for it."

Kiri drops her forehead onto her hand. "Well, that would probably still also be a slight improvement over two primes being completely missing."

"Still seems like it would solve a lot of your problems if I died," he observes.

"I don't want you to die. That would not be a global improvement, it would just make a few things easier to look after while I got busy grieving. I can't stop you from reckless experimentation with pretending to be a fish but I can sure recommend against it."

"The spirit of the Lalindars did not consult me about who ought to succeed Nerine."

He snorts. "Didn't consult me, either."

"I'm aware. It also didn't consult the general population of Welce."

"I don't assign the primacy inheritance quite enough wit to interpret and obey its will on that scale."

"If the Lalindar prime stays missing for an entire generation we can't ratify Isten when the time comes. Will you at least promise that if you don't die in the immediate future you'll come back when the king dies?"

"Of course, that's contingent on the Serlast one turning up, and that one I have no leads on."

It's not, on the greater scale, good that there's another prime missing... but it takes some of the pressure off anyway, because even if he let Kiri drag him home with her they would still lack something crucial.

"I really am sorry about your nice quiet peaceful life in Thiyec."

Kiri sighs.

Hugs? Hugs.

"I was completely planning to rescue you if you started choking. Why won't you let me?"

"Yep," he says. It's a cheering thought, at least for him. Probably not for her.

No, she does not seem cheered.

Aleko reappears from stabling the horses, soaking wet and irritable. "So that's handled. Why couldn't we have gone hunting for a prime who causes interesting cloud formations? Ones that don't rain. That would've been swell. One who settled someplace where people aren't naked all the time and also simultaneously don't want to proposition foreign teenagers, that would've also been swell."

"Sorry," says Loel, grinning. "Hi, Aleko. It's good to see you again. Have a towel."

"I will have a towel." He drops the luggage he's carrying and takes one. "It's been a long time. You seem to have done okay."

By the time he is back, Aleko has divested himself of his less socially-necessary-according-to-Welce items of clothing and is selecting a new set of same out of the bag. He grabs a new towel right out of Loel's hands and applies it.

"If I knew how to make the rain stop, I would," Loel says wryly.

"It always rained more when Nerine was around, but it was hardly constant. Have you tried anything or are you just assuming you can't?"

"I haven't thought of something to try in the first place," he says. "If just idly wishing it would quit worked, it'd be done already. I'll see if I can think of anything tomorrow."

"Mm... you can go upstairs," he says, nodding to Kiri, "and the quietest room in the house is probably this one at night, with all the rain lately. I'll sleep in the kitchen; I do it all the time but I bet you wouldn't be comfortable, and the rain gets loud there when the wind starts throwing it at the door."

Aleko assesses the sleepability of the room they are in.

There doesn't look to be such a thing as a bed present. A couple of comfy-looking stuffed chairs, but no bed. Loel is starting to move furniture, though, clearing a space by one of the interior walls, so maybe a bed or bed-like object will soon be produced.

"So why 'Loel'?" Aleko asks.

"Somebody suggested it when I translated my blessings," he explains. "You name people words in Thiyec, and 'loel' is an old one that used to mean... it's hard to translate, but 'luck' and 'surprise' both more or less work, in different contexts. It's not much in use anymore as a word or a name - hangs around in a couple of old sayings and that's pretty much it - but I like it, it suits me."

"So it's sort of like Patience's name only in Thiyecine and actually a blessing you actually have?"

"Two blessings I actually have, even."

"Yeah. Huh. Okay, not bad."

"Patience is fine too," Kiri ventures to mention. "Not prime yet, but at least it doesn't look like when her grandfather dies it'll worsen the situation by too much. She has no idea why you left, by the way. Bought that it had to have been a kidnapping."

"That you weren't kidnapped, because otherwise this trip makes no sense - Jayce knows that much too, he was the one hunting down boring crap about where it was raining. Not why you weren't kidnapped. I mean, I suppose you weren't kidnapped because nobody kidnapped you but she didn't say why you ran off," says Aleko.

"Do you want me to say?"

"Yeah."

"The king is an injuriously abusive parent, the queens are completely passive," Kiri says. "I've known since I met Loel, which is why he and Isten and recently just Isten visit us so often."

"Wait, so, you just left Isten there?"

"I asked if he wanted to come with me. He said no. Because if we both left, the king would just have more children and then they'd be getting it."

"So instead you just took off alone and left Isten there alone with Kiri looking out for him but she can't be there all the time and can't even read the king and you were gone."

"He told me I could," Loel reiterates. "I could've stayed, if he'd asked me to, but I don't know how long I would've lasted."

"Lasted meaning what?"

He shakes his head. "I'll be fine," he says, although this message is somewhat undermined by the roughness of his voice. "I'd rather handle myself than - be handled."

"Okay."

After a few more seconds, he takes his hands away from his face and goes back to making Aleko's bed.

Shoes on - he doesn't need more clothes than the loose shorts he was sleeping in - Loel opens the kitchen door. It's light enough that with even this small amount of wind, he has to fight with the door a little to prevent it from escaping him and slamming itself either open or shut.

"Where're you going in the middle of the night half-naked in the rain?" inquires Aleko from the kitchen door.

"Out for a swim," he says, smiling crookedly.

"...In the middle of the night."

"Why, what's not to like?"

"I'm going to go see if I can breathe water," he says. "Could be it'll turn out I can't."

"...Why're you doing this now and not back in Welce with Auney Dochenza standing over you to force air down your throat if the answer is 'no this is not a power you have'?"

"It's complicated," he sighs. "I explained it to Kiri but explaining things to Kiri is especially easy. It's something like... I don't want to go back, but it's going to mess up the primacy if I stay. And the way I am now, I'd pretty much rather be dead in Thiyec than alive in Welce, but if I do this and I come out breathing water I can tell it's going to change the way I think about some things. Enough that maybe I could go back without wanting to kill myself. But that's only if it works. If somebody rescues me, it won't make any difference, and I'll still be... somebody who won't make a good coru prime, any which way."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Of course not. Doesn't mean it's not true."

"I think it might actually mean that, if it really doesn't make sense and this isn't just me not understanding you. Kiri knows you're gonna attempt suicide and she's okay with it? Because that's - weird for her, weird for anybody but especially her."

"That's kind of what I meant, is of course it doesn't make sense to you, 'cause you're not me and you can't read my mind," he says. "She isn't happy about it. But I'm pretty sure she knows she can't stop me."

"What am I supposed to do, go back to bed while you see if Lalindars can drown? Aren't you supposed to dunk in the Marisi River first anyway?"

"Dunking in the Marisi River first is one of those things I would rather die than do."

"There's parts of the Marisi that aren't anywhere near the palace. I think it might even run into a place that's technically Berringey, if you go far enough west?"

"I do not care."

"I do not get what you are about."

"I can tell."

"Seriously, dude, if you drown yourself we - what, I guess we go home, keep mum about it forever, find another Lalindar who doesn't have a damn deathwish, sure, but also you will be dead and we get to wonder forever if that had to happen. Kiri will regret finding you, I'll get to listen to her crying in the middle of the night wishing she'd just left you alone at least until your dad was dead or the Serlast prime turned up or something, also did I mention you will be dead?"

"And then you'll come back and we drop you off at the Lalindar estate?"

"I honestly have no idea," he says. "But I might be able to go back, that way. The way I am now... I couldn't. I could not go be the Lalindar prime. It wouldn't end well."

"What are we supposed to do if you die and people think we murdered you?"

"I really don't think anybody's going to think you murdered me," he says. "But if somebody starts a rumour and you really care about sticking around to put it down instead of going back home, try Fiyol - you met him, right? The innkeeper who speaks Welchin. We get along well enough that I'm pretty sure he knows this is exactly the kind of thing I'd just decide to do one day."

"Yeah, I met him," sighs Aleko.

"He's got his head on straight. He'll know it makes more sense that I went out and did it myself."

"And I suppose if I try to wake up Kiri and convince her to stop you, since goodness knows I haven't got a chance, she will tell me that it makes total sense in your head, or that you'd be no good to anybody stopped, or something."

"I don't know what she'll tell you, but I know I showed her what I'm going to do and she isn't stopping me."

Aleko waits.

Aleko runs out as soon as the rain halts.

He will find Loel coming back up the path from the pond, dripping wet and laughing.

"Oh luck and joy you're alive. The rain quit, and I thought -"

He grins and shakes his head. "Nope. I just learned how to breathe water. Well, not breathe it, exactly—" and he breaks off into a giggle.

"Get drunk on it?" suggests Aleko dryly.

Loel cracks up.

"But you're okay?" says Aleko, starting to yawn halfway through the sentence.

"Yeah," he says. "You can go back to sleep."

"We'll see about that," snorts Aleko. "I'll try, anyway." He lurches back into the house, toes off his shoes, and flops into the makeshift bed.

Loel flops into his own bed on the kitchen floor and goes straight to sleep - although first he stands just outside the kitchen door and convinces all the water on his body and in his shoes and shorts to depart these locations in favour of the ground.

Kiri is up early the next morning. She tiptoes down the stairs apprehensively.

There is the kitchen, and there is Loel, curled up in his blanket nest but firmly awake. He smiles when he sees her.

She relaxes when she sees him. And steps closer so if he has anything to "tell" her, he can do it without waking Aleko.

In that case, she is welcome to his memories of the whole event, as clearly as he can remember them for her. Which is pretty damn clear.

Kiri slumps (quietly, quietly) against his kitchen counter.

Aleko wakes up anyway. "Morning," he yawns, "Lalindar's alive, can we go home now?"

"Can I make breakfast first?" inquires Lalindar.

"Yeah, sure, breakfast."

Aleko eats appreciatively, although he mumbles something about weird northerly spices.

"It'll be about a week getting back," says Kiri. "Once we've got you where you're going I need to head back to the palace and cough up whatever the story is - it doesn't even necessarily have to include your identity, if you want to hide particularly thoroughly."

"...I think I'd like that a lot better than the alternative," he says. "I can just be Loel obviously-Lalindar, who you found in Thiyec in the middle of a misplaced rainstorm. No missing princes involved."

She nods. "You're a little recognizable. We found your house in the rainstorm in question with Aleko's sketches five years out of date to show to people. But if you don't keep too many servants, and don't travel, you could probably avoid showing yourself in person for at least a while. I'd offer to be your messenger, but it would look suspicious for one prime to be the only public face of another - the Frothens know me well enough not to count on it being a bid for power, but Auney doesn't, to say nothing of the missing Serlast if they ever turn up."

"Do that many people know what I look like? I wouldn't think so," he says. "As long as I don't come to the palace, which I'm not exactly planning to..." He shrugs.

"If someone describes a distant Lalindar cousin who has been out of the country but speaks native Welchin and has fluffy dark hair, thus and such a skin tone, and these descriptions filter to the palace...? I think there would be more suspicion than you'd like."

"I'm also not planning to keep any servants," he says. "But I guess I see your point. I don't know, though, I can't be the only Lalindar who looks like me. Mother has other relatives."

"There are other Lalindars, but by and large they haven't been out of the country - in an approximately northerly direction - and they aren't your age - and all it would take would be a surprise visit from someone who's met you."

"Mm. I'll build a moat," he jokes.

"I would, in fact, seriously advise that you do. There's plenty of water around the estate, but not an actual moat."

"I would love having a moat."

"Then do. If you don't want to do it yourself with magic - if you want it lined with stones or what have you - I can recommend a contractor." She downs the last bite of her breakfast. "Shall we go collect the horses and the carriage?"

"Sure," he says. "I wanna pack some things, but it shouldn't take long; would it make sense for you guys to get your carriage and come back for me and my things?"

"I got it," says Aleko. "Doesn't have to be a two-person job." He gets up, fixes something that aesthetically offends him about Kiri's hair, and heads out.

Loel packs some things. He's very quick about it - no time spent dithering about what to bring and what to leave.

"Do you want to make arrangements for the house itself? Sell it, give it to somebody, ask someone to keep it from collapsing in case you have a use for a Thiyecine house later?"

"I'll tell Fiyol he can do what he wants with it. He might decide to pay me; if he does, I'll let him."

"Makes sense."

He flashes a grin and bustles off to pack some more clothes.