The word 'step-sister' sat in the room.
Anthierin looked at Mera. At the composed face. At the woman who had just delivered the most significant piece of personal information Anthierin had received since arriving in the capital, presented with the flat efficiency of someone who had been carrying it for a long time and had organized it into the most persuasive possible sequence.
The hammer was still in her hand.
"Prove it," Anthierin said.
Mera looked at her. At the skepticism — expected, accounted for, already prepared for. She began.
"Charlotte."
The name landed in the smithing room with the specific weight of something that belonged to Anthierin personally and that Mera should not have known. Anthierin's hand tightened on the hammer. The instinctive response of someone who has just heard something from the wrong mouth that was supposed to live in a specific private place.
"How do you know that name?" Anthierin said. "I don't recall the name of the Baron's wife was my mother's."
"Of course not, you think she would be stupid enough to do that?" said Mera.
Anthierin furrowed her brows, but the grip on her sword loosened.
"Put it away, please," said Mera as she could no longer differentiate the sweat she was profusely sweating from the heat or the moment.
Anthierin pulled back the warm sword, but her eyes lost the edge of that vengeful focus.
The forge crackled.
"The name of my mother is Antoinette," said Mera, "The wife of the Baron of Einjaar, is Antoinette. But think carefully, have you ever seen her face directly? Not a single time, her face was shown to the public; she always wears a veil."
"I..." Anthierin took a step back. Her minds racing, replaying the memories from those traumatic moments to know, and Mera's words were nothing but the truth. The woman was always wearing a veil. Her eyes widened in horror, "Don't tell me..."
"No," Mera shook her head, "She already left me when I was but a child."
Mera continued. The timeline — the Baron's first marriage, the woman he took before the Baronship solidified, before Einjaar became what it became. The marriage had produced a child before it ended. The woman who had left — not only left the Baron, but left the child too, the girl born in Einjaar who had grown up without a mother because the mother had already moved on to the next thing, the higher thing, the thing that served her better than what she had.
And before the Baron — the same woman, earlier, a different man. A blacksmith's household in Bevil. Another child. Left in the same way, for the same reason.
Each piece checked against what she knew — what her father had told her, what she had assembled from the gaps in his telling, what she had stopped asking about because the gaps had stopped looking like gaps and had started looking like deliberate architecture. The architecture of a man protecting his daughter from a specific truth about a specific woman.
Each piece fitted.
Not the fitting of something constructed to fit. The fitting of things that were true — the specific texture of it, and Anthierin, who had spent her life working with materials that revealed their nature under pressure, knew the difference between the two better than most.
"Where is she now?" Anthierin asked.
Mera looked at her.
The composed face held. But something in it — the specific movement of something that has been held for a long time and has found the one question it wasn't fully prepared for.
Mera shook her head.
"She left," she said. "Same as she left your father. Same as she left the Baron." A pause — the flat delivery of someone who has made their peace with a fact and is delivering it as fact rather than as feeling, because feeling it was something she did somewhere private and not here. "She was — perhaps — the symbol of hypergamy. Whatever she had was never the highest thing available. When something higher appeared—" a small gesture, the gesture of someone indicating a direction without indicating a destination, "—she went toward it."
The forge.
The tools on the wall.
The anvil.
Anthierin stood with the hammer in her hand and looked at the woman across the smithing room. At the Baroness of Einjaar who had grown up in a household where a woman had stayed long enough to leave a mark and then left. Who had watched the same thing Anthierin had watched — from a different angle, in a different house, with a different father absorbing the aftermath.
"I'm not going to call you sister," Anthierin said.
Mera looked at her.
"Not yet," Anthierin said. "Maybe not ever. That's not something you decide with evidence." She looked at the forge. At the tools. At the room that was, for the first time in her life, entirely hers. "But I'll look at the records. And if the records say what you say they say—" she looked back at Mera, "—then we start from here."
Mera looked at her for a long moment.
Something in the composed face did something it didn't usually do — not the calculation, not the survival arithmetic, not the cold efficiency of someone managing their position. Something more personal than all of those. The specific expression of someone who asked for less than they needed and received more than they expected and is holding both of those things simultaneously.
"That's all I'm asking," Mera said.
She left.
Anthierin thought about her father. About the questions she had stopped asking. About Flinn — the thief who had said I can tell you anything you want to know about your mother and had used it as leverage and had never delivered because the situation had moved before the delivery, and now the delivery had come from somewhere else entirely.
She thought about a woman who left every household she entered when something higher appeared. Who had left Bevil. Who had left Einjaar. Who was somewhere now that neither of her daughters knew.
She picked up a tool from the wall. Turned it in her hand. Set it back.
She went to find Lexel.
---
In the corridor outside the smithing room, Lulu was already beside him.
"Mera left the smithing room," Lulu said, through the Anti-System.
"I know," Lexel said.
"Anthierin is coming," Lulu said.
"I know," Lexel said.
"You're going to let her tell you in her own time," Lulu said.
"Yes," Lexel said.
"What if she doesn't tell you?" Lulu said.
"Then she doesn't tell me," Lexel said. "It's hers."
Lulu looked at him with the expression of something ancient that had records on how people handled other people's significant information spanning civilizations and was finding this particular approach adequately considered.
"You know what I find interesting?" Lulu asked.
"What," Lexel said.
"She processes quietly," Lulu said. "Measures before she acts. Holds things until she knows what to do with them." A pause. "Sound familiar?"
Lexel said nothing.
"The person you're most like in this party," Lulu said, "is the blacksmith."
"No," Lexel said.
"Yes," Lulu said.
"No," Lexel said.
"Yes," Lulu said, with the serene confidence of something that had been right about most things and intended to be right about this one too.
Anthierin appeared at the end of the corridor.
She walked toward him with the even pace of someone who had processed something and was carrying it rather than dragging it. She looked at him. At the easy expression. At the man who was standing in the corridor as if he had been there for a while and had no particular reason to be there other than that the corridor was where he was.
"Mera came to see me," she said.
"I know," he said.
She looked at him. "You're not going to ask."
"No," he said. "But whatever she told you, the usual animosity in your eyes for her is gone."
"Yeah, well, she is my step-sister."
"HAH?!" Lexel's jaw slacked open, and so did Lulu's. They have expected it to be something grand, a little of threats, a little of goading, a little of whatever it is, but not a revelation of a secret family member.
Anthierin was surprised that Lexel seemed to have been shocked more than hers. She even waved her hands on his eyes, but he blinked none.
"Ugh, I'll get some water, we'll talk about this later."
After Lexel was alone in the corridor, Lulu began to talk.
"D-Did you hear that?"
...
"Oi, are you alright?" Lulu smacked his back.
"I... heard that."
"I never thought that Mera, that woman who poisoned you, is Anthierin's step-sister."
"You think I ever thought of it? This is some fucking revelation," said Lexel through the Anti-System.
"Yeah, best behave accordingly."
"Damn, I almost clap her step-sister," Lexel gulped. "I almost clap her step-sister."
"Really? Are you serious right now?"
"Damn, I need a drink, my throat feels like a desert," said Lexel as he lightly pinched his neck.
"My god! Just wipe the saliva out of your mouths first!"