Tamsin's first thought, as she began the slow drift back into consciousness, was how glad she was to be sleeping on a soft bed in the warm indoors, instead of on a hard bedroll outside where she was exposed to all the harsh whims of the elements.

Her second thought was, Wait, bed? I thought I was sitting at the desk.

Tamsin opened her eyes.

Sunlight streamed in through the large windows on one side of the room, bright enough that it had to be at least mid-morning, if not closer to noon. The blankets were in a tangled disarray around her, the sign of a restless night, but the pillow next to her looked unslept on, at least as far as Tamsin could tell.

The Duchess, Alesia, her wife, was nowhere to be seen.

Tamsin tried desperately to remember if she had, at some point in the night, gotten up and climbed into bed, still half-asleep and barely aware of what she was doing. That had to be the most likely explanation, didn't it? Tamsin couldn't remember anything, but it wasn't possible that Alesia had actually picked her up and moved her to bed, was it?

There was a chance it had been a servant who had moved her. After all, it was hard to imagine a duchess doing that sort of thing herself. But then again, it was impossible to imagine Alesia calling in a servant to do something like that for her.

Tamsin could feel herself blushing at the thought of Alesia picking her up, carrying her over to the bed, placing her onto the pillow and tucking the blankets around her, all carefully enough to avoid waking her. The amount of effort it must take for someone so strong to act with such gentility...

Tamsin tried to remember if she had noticed anything like that happening, but no. She had slept so deeply that she truly couldn't remember anything, not even her dreams, and she couldn't bear to think about any of this anymore, so she mustered up one large burst of energy to propel herself up and out of the bed so she could figure out what she was supposed to do with herself now.

In the dark of the night, this room had looked grand and intimidating, but in the dusty light of day it looked rather plain and oddly empty. Unlived in, even.

The furniture was expensive and refined, yes, but most of it was more practical than decorative. There were no trinkets, half-finished novels, bits of embroidery, or really anything remotely personal anywhere in the room. Even the contract Tamsin had signed the night before had disappeared from the desk, leaving it bare. The only remaining sign that Alesia, or anyone other than Tamsin for that matter, had ever been in this room was Alesia's wedding dress, still laying in a pile on the floor where Alesia had discarded it.

Tamsin blushed again, and as she turned away to avoid the embarrassing memories her eye was naturally drawn to the Jordaine family tapestry. It was the only truly decorative item in the room, and it was large enough to take up nearly the entirety of one wall. It was hard not to look at it.

The tapestry was far more visible in the daylight, although it still blended into its surroundings oddly, like it was somehow a natural part of the castle itself rather than a truly separate object. And perhaps it was as old as the castle—It was worn and faded with age, especially towards the top, where the whole thing seemed to blend into the rafters. Although lower down, where more recent generations had added their marks, the figures were made of much brighter, bolder threads, not yet quite so changed by the passage of time.

Tamsin took a few tentative steps forward to take a closer look at the most recent of these bright figures, towards the bottom left. Logically, it had to be Alesia's father, the previous Duke Jordaine. He was depicted as a tall and broad-shouldered man, with short red hair that stuck out around his head like a straw halo. He rode a rearing horse and held a long spear in his hand, ready to throw. The figure was too roughly crafted to have much of a nuanced facial expression, but he certainly didn't look friendly.

Tracing her eyes across the generations, Tamsin witnessed a long march of similarly violent-looking Jordaines, various weapons raised towards an unseen enemy, vague faces full of anger and determination. She imagined what Alesia would look like among them, the rough shape of a wild woman with sword raised high—a caricature rather than a person, with eyes of dark black thread...

Unless...

What had Alesia meant by that? She had said she would be added to this tapestry after her death, unless. Unless she succeeded in conquering the empire and deposing her cousin? Tamsin supposed that Alesia would be Empress, then, and perhaps it was beneath an empress to allow herself to be depicted on the ancestral tapestry of a mere ducal house.

Or maybe Alesia just hated the thing and was considering getting rid of it before her death. It would be well within her rights as the head of Jordaine house, although it would be a shame to lose so much history. And it was difficult to imagine this tapestry being removed from its wall, like the stones themselves might try to cling to it to prevent it being taken away.

As Tamsin's eyes moved steadily upward, she was surprised to realize that there were fewer and fewer warriors in the Jordaine family as the generations retreated backwards in time. Midway up the wall there were more and more artists, musicians, gardeners, craftsmen—all professions that would be considered below the dignity of a ducal house today.

Perhaps they weren't professions, but hobbies? Or, as difficult as it was to imagine, was imperial culture just different back then? Did they have their own taboos and expectations, unrelated to what their descendants were beholden to? Were they freer in their lives, more able to do what they wanted, or could they have somehow been even more restricted in ways Tamsin couldn't even fathom?

The higher up Tamsin looked, the harder it was to make out anything specific about the figures at all, and soon Tamsin stopped being able to make any sense of them.

On the very top of the tapestry, still shrouded in shadows even in the full light of day, was the smallest figure yet. Tamsin could barely tell it was meant to be human, even. It held no weapons or tools, and had no notable features that would mark it as an individual. It was hardly more than an outline of a person, standing with arms outstretched in an open gesture towards...

A sort of large, black blob.

Tamsin wished she could think of a better term for it. It was a circle of pure darkness with jagged edges, several times larger than the human figure. Whatever it was, Tamsin was sure it had no ordinary name, and no description she could apply to it would be adequate. It should have looked silly, a simple shape stuck there on top of such a grand tapestry, but the longer Tamsin looked at it, the wider it seemed to grow, if not in reality than at least in the amount of space it took up in her head.

It made her feel the way she sometimes felt looking at the trees in Gwedric, or when she'd met that fox's eyes on her travels. There was a sense of strange divinity there, or perhaps just the sense of something both alive and fundamentally other. The sense of a mind that existed just on the other side of communication.

Was this what had drawn her to look at the tapestry in the first place? This living other, this strange power, this... No, it was no small god, or at least Tamsin didn't think it was. She was filled with the same sense of awe that the little deities inspired in her, but not the same sense of familiarity. If it was a god, or something like a god, it was far older and odder than anything Tamsin had encountered before.

Or, then again, perhaps it was just a strange image that Tamsin had encountered under strange circumstances, created by people whose culture was too different from her own for her to easily understand what their images were trying to convey. Maybe Tamsin was just reading too far into her own feelings of strangeness and alienation and trying to find some sort of outside explanation for them, other than the obvious one.

In all honesty, Tamsin wasn't even entirely certain, not really, that she'd ever actually encountered a small god before. It brought her comfort to imagine she might have met them, to think that there were beings in this world that were both small and powerful in their own private ways, but in the end it all might just be her own imagination.

Still, as she stared at the dark thing at the top of the Jordaine tapestry, Tamsin almost felt that if she kept looking at it too long it would keep growing, larger and larger until it became a hole in the world like the eye of a goddess, a hole that swallowed her up entirely.

And still, Tamsin stared...

There was a knock on the door and the spell, or whatever it was, was broken. Tamsin blinked her eyes several times, taking a moment to remind herself of where and who she was, before calling "Come in!"

Hugo came in, looking as tidy and proper as ever, and gave her a polite smile. "Good morning, your grace."

Tamsin was suddenly glad that ducal forms of address were gender-neutral. Tamsin wasn't sure how she'd feel about being called either "my lord" or "my lady" at this point.

"Thank you," said Tamsin, smiling back as best she could manage. "Where's—" It was one thing to call her Alesia in private, just between the two of them. It was another thing entirely to say it in front of someone else. But she couldn't keep calling her Duchess Jordaine, either, under the circumstances, could she? "—my wife?" she finished, and immediately regretted it.

Hugo, unbothered by Tamsin's awkwardness, replied, "The duchess has work to attend to, but she's sent me to help you prepare for the day and to show you to your new chambers."

"I'm not staying here?" asked Tamsin, confused.

"Not every night," said Hugo. "You and your wife will share a bedchamber periodically, as required to maintain your marriage under imperial law. On a day-to-day basis you will have your own chambers."

"Oh," said Tamsin, feeling both relieved and somehow slightly... disappointed? Tamsin didn't know how to make sense of any of her feelings at the moment. But at least if she was sleeping somewhere else most of the time she'd be less tempted to keep staring at that... thing on the tapestry.

Hugo was giving her an appraising look, and Tamsin stared at him right back, not knowing what was expected of her.

"Would you like me to help you get dressed then?" asked Hugo, politely. "Or did you want to try to establish dominance over your new estate by traipsing around the castle in your underthings in the middle of the day?"

"Oh, right." Tamsin blushed. She wished she could figure out how to stop doing that. "Yes, of course. Help me dress, and then we can go see my new chambers."

Tamsin took a deep breath, once again doing her best to remind herself where and who she was, and why.

I am Lady Tamsin Gwedric. Currently acting as the legal proxy for Duke Roger Jordaine. I am here in the Gray City to honor the contract between House Gwedric and House Jordaine. I am also here to win a bet I made with the Goddess of War—to help Alesia Jordaine conquer the whole of the Viland Empire without bloodshed.

Start with the basics, she told herself. Even if the basics are completely insane, you still have to start somewhere.