“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Arancha asked, not for the first time. Ishtal had lost count of how many times they’d been over this.

“It’ll be fine,” she reiterated, mostly patiently. “All I’ll be doing is walking to Seigarren Herria, handing out the mail, picking ours up from Guardian Kemen, and walking back. I won’t even be gone the whole day. And I’ve only done this, what, dozens of times before?” The mail runs between villages were one of the first guardian duties Father had delegated to them, once they were old enough to cover the distances involved. To begin with, they’d always gone together, but now that they were grown up, they made the trips on their own and split the list of destinations between them.

“Yes, but—” Arancha glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “This isn’t one of the ones you usually do. They won’t be…prepared. For your, well, you know.”

Ishtal glared. “You don’t have to sound like that. I’m not a flood or a windstorm. I don’t need safety precautions.”

Arancha didn’t say anything, just twitched the end of her tail. And all right, it was just possible that the reason there hadn’t been an incident of Ishtal walking off with anything valuable or important in years was that their neighbors, and the people in other villages she visited often, had learned to keep her away from shiny odds and ends—but she didn’t know that. Maybe she’d just grown out of the proclivity. Arancha had no reason to give her that suspicious look. 

“I’m a grown woman,” she continued. “I think I can exercise some self-control and keep my fingers from wandering for an hour or two. It probably won’t even be a problem; they don’t know me as well, so they’ll be less likely to invite me to linger or come inside. I’ll be in and out before any trouble could even start.”

“Ishtal,” Arancha cut in. “I don’t think you understand. It’s not you I’m worried about, it’s Berezi.”

“Oh.” Ishtal’s defensiveness dropped slightly. “Right. Her. I wasn’t thinking about that.”

“Why do you think I insisted on putting Seigarren Herria on my list?” Arancha said dryly. “You know what, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll go after all.”

“What? No way, you’re not feeling well, you need to rest—”

“I meant I’ll go when I’m feeling better. The mail can wait a day or two, it’s fine. If Father asks, I’ll explain and he’ll understand.”

Ishtal sighed. “That’s not fair to everybody else, though. We only swap mail with the Seigarrens every other week. They’ve been waiting.” She squared her shoulders. “Look, I’ll just go. In and out, no lingering, it won’t be a problem. You’ll see.”

Arancha looked like she wanted to argue, but then sneezed violently. “All right, all right, you win. I don’t know why I bothered trying.”

“You’re always trying,” Ishtal teased. “You can’t help it, it’s in your nature.”

“Very funny, pailazo. You’d better get going if you’re going.”

Ishtal smirked, then scooped up the mail sack and slung it across her back. “I won’t be long. Don’t start supper without me.”

With that, she turned and padded down the well-worn path that connected the loose ring of wooden houses that made up their village, turning aside within a few moments to the less-traveled track leading out of the clearing and into the woods to the east.

The forests in between the villages were incredibly quiet, even to an Onena’s sharp hearing. Occasionally there would be the rustle of some small creature scurrying in the distance, or a bird call, or the faint crack and thud of a falling branch, but for the most part, there was only the almost inaudible sound of Ishtal’s feet on the packed dirt of the path. She’d always enjoyed it, the chance to get away from people she might offend or mistakes she might make for a little while, and enjoy the sharp, sweet scent of the blue-green trees, and think her thoughts. 

At the moment, she was thinking about Berezi, and what the other woman would probably term their “rivalry”, although Ishtal wasn’t sure it deserved the name. From her understanding, both people had to be actively involved for something to be a rivalry, and she hadn’t really done much of anything.

A few years ago, when she’d come of age, Kemen had just taken over the guardian position in Seigarren Herria after his parents passed from illness. He’d come around asking to marry her, something that had taken Ishtal quite by surprise: they had seen a fair amount of each other growing up, since they lived relatively nearby and were training for the same calling, but she’d mostly thought of him as an acquaintance. It hadn’t much mattered; Father had nipped the whole thing in the bud, pointing out that Ishtal’s future role precluded her from moving to another village, no matter how much Kemen argued that Arancha could serve as guardian of Bosgarren Herria quite well on her own.

In the ensuing years, he’d either completely moved on from her or was doing a very good impression of it, and had married his neighbor Berezi who, unlike Ishtal, actually wanted him and had for a long time. Practically everyone else had forgotten about the whole affair—except Berezi herself, who had taken her runner-up position personally. When Ishtal had come with the rest of her family and a few other important Bosgarrens to offer congratulations after the wedding, Berezi had caught her with a piece of flatware tucked absentmindedly in her pocket, and had raised a hue and cry worthy of a grisly murder. Father had managed to smooth things over, just barely, but Ishtal had known regardless that she was on thin ice. 

Ever since, she’d kept her hands tucked in her pockets as much as possible in other people’s houses, and around anything remotely glinting or with small interesting pieces. People who knew her had gone from careful to downright religious about putting their valuables away when they were expecting her. And it had helped: in that time, her incidents of absentminded petty theft had gone from sporadic to essentially nonexistent. 

Ishtal knew better than to really think, deep down, that the problem was gone for good, that there wasn’t going to be a slip-up someday. She just really hoped today wouldn’t be that day.

Seigarren Herria wasn’t much different from her own village, at a glance. The clearing was shaped a little differently, and the livestock pens weren’t in quite the same places, and the ring of the houses and outbuildings and the meeting hall was just slightly off-kilter by comparison. But everything else was much the same as in any other village she’d visited: the goats and sheep and fowl complaining, the off-white of the buildings, the adults working in their gardens or cleaning fish or doing laundry, the children helping or, more often, playing around. A couple of little boys ran by her as she passed between two houses, chasing each other and laughing. 

People began to spot her almost at once, and gather around. That was another thing all villages had in common: everybody knew everybody else, and strangers didn’t go unnoticed for long. Even if they didn’t recognize her the way they probably would Arancha, it was easy to tell what she was, from her leather armor and the sword and knife at her belt. Only guardians had such things, and usually, guardians were the only kind of women who wore trousers. Not to mention that everybody would recognize the mail bag on her back.

Ishtal took up a position in front of the meeting hall, set the sack on the ground in front of her, and waited as people milled around her, chattering. Most of them probably weren’t expecting anything, but practically the whole village turned out for occasions like this anyway. The average Onena would leave the village where they were born a maximum of once or twice in their lifetime, so anything remotely new was prized and exciting.

There wasn’t all that much mail to hand out: someone had sent her cousin a package of random household necessities, the Bosgarren school-age children had been assigned to write letters to their Seigarren age-mates, and there was the usual handful of trade-letters, reporting on how much wool was expected that year and when the corn would be ready for the annual inter-village swapping of goods. It was the work of a few minutes to call out recipients’ names and hand things over, answering questions about this or that bit of gossip all the while, and then she was left with an empty sack and a slowly dispersing crowd. A novelty she might be, but everyone still had daily tasks to get back to.

She glanced around, trying to see where Kemen was keeping himself. Usually, in places she was supposed to get back from the same day that she went, the village’s guardian or head would be waiting to hand her the outgoing mail right away, so as to make sure she could get home before dark. That wasn’t as much of a concern on this trip, but it was still strange for him to not be around.

Although there was someone approaching her, Ishtal realized—and a moment later, registered that it was Berezi. The past few years since they’d met had been kind to the other woman. Her brown-and-white fur was glossy and well-groomed, and her sky-blue dress was so well-made that she’d probably paid someone for it, not being much of a seamstress herself if memory served. She was wearing several rings and a bracelet, and small silver crescent-shaped studs in her ears.

 Ishtal braced herself for some kind of cutting greeting, but instead, Berezi’s face took on a delighted smile as she spotted her.

“Ishtal!” she called out. “What a surprise! I haven’t seen you in ages; it’s usually Arancha who makes the trip over.”

Ishtal refrained from mentioning just what had happened the last time they saw each other, in the interest of being politic, and instead said, “Yes, she had a cold and I came in her place. I was just looking for whoever had the outgoing mail, do you know where it would be?”

Berezi clapped her hands together. “Wouldn’t you know it, my Kemen got called away to Hogeigarren Herria last week. Someone passed away there who had relatives here, and he had to escort the whole family all that way, and he won’t be back till later today. But I’ve got all the mail at our house. Why don’t you come along and come in for a bit? You must be tired from walking all that way, and you can get a bite to eat before you start back.”

It had to be a trap. Even if it wasn’t, it was a very bad idea. Ishtal gripped the empty mail sack tighter and shoved her free hand deeper into her pocket and shrugged in what she hoped was a carefree fashion. “Oh, you really shouldn’t trouble yourself. I brought my own food and I’m used to walking a lot further. I can just take the mail and get on my way.”

“Oh, no, I insist.” Berezi reached out and caught her by the elbow, starting to tug her along. “I forgot Kemen wasn’t back and made twice as much as I should have for lunch, so you’ll be doing me a favor and making sure it doesn’t go to waste.”

For a moment, Ishtal considered arguing further, or even making a break for it. But her job wasn’t done until she’d collected the mail for Bosgarren Herria, and she couldn’t imagine having to admit to Father that she’d run away and left her duty half-complete just because she was afraid of…what? An invitation to lunch? A woman who had never touched a weapon in her life, when Ishtal had been training almost since she could walk? And clearly, the only way she was going to get what she needed was to do as Berezi said.

So, reluctantly, she nodded. “All right. I can’t stay long, though.”

“Of course.” Berezi smiled in a way that Ishtal assured herself wasn’t triumphant. “Come along, then.”

 Ishtal let herself be led towards the house on the left of the village meeting hall. That was always the spot that guardians and their families occupied in every village, but even without that, she would have known whose house it was. Guardians and village heads received a stipend of coin and goods for their service, and Berezi had made full use of both the money and the lack of need to work. The space around the house had been turned into an ornamental garden, rather than a useful one, and the furniture and wall hangings visible through the windows had, like the dress, been made by someone with professional skill rather than someone in the household.

Not that there was anything wrong with that, Ishtal mused as they went inside and she tried to find somewhere she dared to sit in her travel-dusty clothes. It was just that she was used to Father’s way, which was very spartan and practical and used their extra time for training and their extra resources to procure good weapons and maintain the ones passed down in their line.

“Just come through to the kitchen to wash up, and then sit anywhere,” Berezi chirped. “Near the table would be best. I’ll be right back with the food.”

Ishtal set the empty mail sack down by the door and went to do as she was told, keeping her hands clenched in fists at her side. She didn’t see anything likely to prove a temptation lying around nearby, but then again she was trying very hard to not look. Lacking any other recourse, she focused very hard on the way the end of her long black tail was twitching, just in her peripheral vision. If she concentrated on that and kept her hands in tight fists, she couldn’t possibly get into any mischief, even by accident.