Snippets from Aleyi: a collection of flash fiction

Idle Feet (Aldrik, during AFoW)

If she ever asked Aldrik what cued him in, he'd blame her footwear.

He never stared—he had far too much to keep an eye on to be able to give anyone that much of his attention—but he did notice that, for a presumably naïve woman driven by impulse, Tuelzi chose her footwear with a tactician's precision, ever-appropriate depending on if a situation warranted protecting one's feet.

Once he'd noticed that, it was easier to pinpoint more evidence, like how her attire and actions were brilliantly calculated to offend everyone's sensibilities, to encourage them to ignore her—which would make it all the easier for her to hide in plain sight, just by adjusting her attire and mannerisms.

That was all besides the fact that she was far too competent with throwing knives and garrote both to be anywhere near as bumbling or absentminded as she let on.

The woman that his thoughts dwelled on suddenly flipped from lying on her stomach to her back, tossing her head in an utterly unaffected manner, curls bouncing so overtly that he suddenly suspected her hair was naturally straight.

"No think," she said seriously to the newly-Bridged boy beside her, who she then tapped on the nose as she sat up. "React."

And she swiped up the rubber ball and turned about for her own turn in the group game of knucklebones. Solis's lips turned into a sneer for a moment before he froze and forcibly regained control of his temper.

"Good," Aldrik said, since he was the boy's king and his praise would have the most weight.

Solis had survived having his magic stripped without losing any significant amount of sanity, so much as Aldrik could tell, though he sometimes caught Tuelzi glancing at the boy as if she spotted something he didn't.

That reaction from the woman who had to be so much more than she let on made him believe Solis had been left with more than a (entirely understandable) temper problem, but Aldrik hoped that controlling the temper would help the boy control the magic, when it came back.

Internal magic always came back, unfortunately.

Perched on her knees with her bare feet tucked under her, Tuelzi bounced the ball a little in her hand and glanced over the fourth member of their game: William, a servant in the castle who was actually Aldrik's legitimate younger brother—not that anyone beyond a few family members knew that. Presumably. Aldrik was pretty sure Tuelzi had pieced it together, but then spies tended to look for juicy details like that.

The ball's angle was wrong even as it left her hand. It bounced straight into Solis's elbow, then William's forehead, then—

Aldrik caught the ball against his collarbone, before it could bounce back into Tuelzi's nose.

She hadn't even blinked. Was smiling, in fact. "Oops!"

The sight of her deceptively honest but open enjoyment stung his heart. He would never regret having loved, married, and lost Mataine, but he did wish he and Mataine had found a solution to her sister's problem that hadn't involved marrying her, too.

He'd especially been wishing that since meeting Tuelzi, who reminded him of his years-dead Mataine in the only way that mattered, for anyone he took to wife. Even her montai cousin hadn't noticed how strong her magic was.

As Aldrik rolled the ball over his knuckles, he considered both the ball's complicated yet calculated trajectory and Tuelzi's insistence on staying in Salles even as the realm grew increasingly dangerous for foreigners, elves, and elementals—despite the fact that she was all three.

Tuelzi—or whatever her name was, not that he ever expected her to tell him—was as bored as he was.

William glanced at Aldrik, expression saying he caught his brother's fondness and preference for the woman—not that William cared about foreign blood. His own wife's grandfather had been of the Coltaans, from deep in the northern land mass across the ocean.

William did, however, share Aldrik's distaste for their father's infidelity that had resulted in them having so very many illegitimate half-siblings, and he was understandably leery of a king's ability to lose sight of such scruples.

"Ever play count-and-capture?" Aldrik asked. She surely knew the game, from her time as a 'pirate'—he suspected she'd actually been a privateer. But would she dare play a tactician's game against him, with how much that would overtly reveal about her own ability to strategize?

Tuelzi tilted her head, all calculation processing swiftly enough that a person could easily believe it didn't exist. "Count-capture?"

Aldrik restrained his smile and tossed his brother the knucklebones ball, to keep playing with Solis, and offered the half-elf his hand. "Come. I'll teach you."

She accepted, but she used more of her strength than his in getting up.

He would 'teach' her, and then they would both play to lose, so the other person didn't learn enough of them to consider them a threat. Aldrik looked forward to the challenge.