The Moral Equation

[Camulous Smithson]

Camulous was well across the bridge over the Ofriyu Mar before he was sure the sounds of Lucian's cries were cleansed from his ears - overtaken by the light sound of the rain hitting water and voices of the busy street.

People were crowded near the bridge, an unofficial barrier that demarcated the edge of where decent people would travel under normal circumstances. There was nothing beyond the bridge but the woods, Shim, and a vast empty field of vagabonds and nightmares. Even the townspeople of shim were regarded as a little odd.

Someone had seen the Captain and a battlemage ride across earlier, followed soon after by smoke rising above the trees in the woods. Even now in the darkened sky, with rain to temper the flames, a black smudge hung overhead in testament to Ryxa's work.

People of all kinds - merchants, farmers, laborers, beggars, rich and poor, even a pair of guardsmen who helped to rough the crowd into getting out of the captains way were there. They muttered to each other as they parted to clear a path for the captain. All were curious about what he was doing in the woods and why he had an injured woman on his shoulder. None of them were going to get any answers, and so they had to satisfy themselves with rumors.

She's a witch. She stole from the market. He killed her. They're lovers. A battlemage was with him. She's part of the mages' guild. She had another man with her....

As he approached the crowd he slowed his horse's pace and brough Lanya down off his shoulder as carefully as he could while riding so that he could support her properly with both arms. The bouncing of the horse's canter was bound to aggravate her injuries and he worried for her life.

Managing to get her in front of him with both arms, one supporting her at the knees and the other behind her back, he took the reigns again and sped up past the people. Their looks didn't bother him, flooding him with a mixture of pride for his work and shame for what he often had to do. Some of them would inevitably accuse him of killing her. The papers were less than flattering towards him as of late.

The only ones in the crowd the captain made eye contact with were his men to whom he said nothing but gave a hint of a nod. They understood. It meant that things were under control and that the issue was closed.

He took a deep breath as the bulk of the gawkers vanished behind him, leaving only the odd curious onlooker staggered ahead.

Moryldar would want him to take her directly to Justice hall, but he gave no strict orders not to make stops on the way. He was free to take her to a healer and see that she lived before handing her over, and the guard headquarters had some of the best life savers in Marn.

[Lanya Caliope]

Awareness dotted her eyelids, bit by bit, as the captain moved through the town. Before he'd reached the bridge, she'd been too deeply unconscious to be aware of her body's movement. But each jolt of the horse's footsteps brought stars to her internal landscape, and the ache in both her knee and the ill-tended stab wound in her back begged for attention.

Even so, these remained ignored until the captain shifted her from his shoulder to his arms, which put more physical pressure on her back, and caused her injured knee to bend as far as the bandages Lucian has previously applied would allow. The weight of her own calf was enough to draw a wince even to her unconscious lips, and as the horse continued forward, each plod left her closer to consciousness than before.

The sounds registered even before the pain as she breached awareness and tried to situate herself. Nothing was familiar any longer, but she had basic expectations for her location. And what she heard was quite far removed from the quiet rustling of leaves in the trees. Instead, she heard the bustle of an actual town, complete with the murmurings of the people as they passed. The clink of the horse's and the guard's armor. The rustle of the horse's tack, and the steady tock, tock, tock of its hooves against the ground.

She felt sunlight on her face, and sighed for its minimal warmth. True, she had a blanket of sorts, but beneath it she was still soaked to the core, wet and miserable. It had rained all night, from what little she could currently remember. Most unpleasant.

The pain was there, but so close to unconsciousness, she could choose to ignore it. The ache in her leg and back, the bend of her neck and the weight of her entire body - all seemed farther away than normal. She was delighted by this. Perhaps she'd made it to heaven.

Her eyes opened, then, and the world stood upside-down. She smiled faintly at the sight; it was so comical and gentle, a town full of happy, healthy people going about their business or gawking at her and the guard. She would have waved, but her arm felt too heavy to bother. Everything just seemed so beautiful and perfect. Surely this was heaven.

She lifted her head, with no small effort, and the movement drew yet another wince as she focused her attention on the guard who held her. It was the same one as before, right before she'd died and come to this place - and maybe that's how it was, in heaven. The person who'd killed you took you to the gates and guided you, even carried you if need be. She only wished she could have walked herself.

She remembered exactly two things about this particular man: that he was a guard, and that she'd thought he might kill her. Now, faced with the evidence, she wanted to be sure before she got her hopes riled up. She stared hazily at him, close enough to unconsciousness that she could just drop her head back into the cushion of silence, and with the film of shock across her eyes. He was right to worry for her life.

"Did you kill me?"

The question lacked any tinge of fear; instead, it held a hopeful, upbeat note to it. Which said more about her state of being than any of her physical predicaments.

[Camulous Smithson]

The captains eyes were pulled down from the path ahead when he heard her voice, if only just. Determination creased his features and held at bay any hint of the relief his spirit may have felt upon discovering that she was still alive. Delirium and shock were normal in the face of death. He was no healer, but he had much experience with the effects of injury and her consciousness told him there was time yet. The injuries he saw would not take her life suddenly.

Her words made no sense but her eyes said everything, glazed over and lost in some other world. Some world where she was dead. Was she blaming him for that?

He only knew one way to deal with her. It was the way he dealt with his men and everyone else in his life. Stark and brutal honesty.

"You're not dead." He replied, his voice like a hammer against her fragile whisper. His eyes looked ahead again and any emotional contact with her was broken. "And you're not going to die."

The captain was not placating her. She wasn't going to die. Not yet anyway. Things wouldn't be quite so easy.

[Lanya Caliope]

"Oh."

She turned her head slowly, to look forward, but the images beyond the horse were becoming blurry once more. Already the spots were swarming around her vision, closing in inch by precious inch. If she'd been more aware, she might've been annoyed or perhaps heartened by the guard's words. As it was, she felt a keen disappointment. If this wasn't heaven, then it was reality. And her reality, for the past few years, had been filled with pain and loss. She wasn't looking forward to remembering all of this again, but her eyelids slid shut without her consent. She tilted her head back, to nestle against the guard's armor - for although his metal armor was cold by definition, it was least relieved her neck from the perpetual bobbing sag of her skull.

"Damn."

She wasn't even sure if she spoke this last word, before the blackness became complete and she was gone again. Now it seemed that she slipped closer to a sleeping state than the flat unconsciousness of before. Or at least, she would look more peaceful. A delirious dream awaited her return, where a kind but soft-spoken wood elf guided her through the trees, to a small clearing where her own Flame had built a nest, and had chicks with a female robin. And they all circled her, swirling up into the sun in a fluttery display of life.

Another faint smile appeared on her lips as the dream lifted whatever spirit she had left.

[Camulous Smithson]

Damn.

The witch rested her head against his armor and drifted unconscious once more. Camulous gave a heavy, long-winded sigh and refused to look down at her again. He didn't want to see her. It would only make her seem more human and more innocent.

And she was innocent. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew, or at least strongly suspected that she didn't deserve all this. How could someone who wanted only to run away and, failing that, to die, be a threat to the city? She couldn't be. She wasn't. She was no more guilty than the battlemages for having magical abilities. He only hoped that the judges would agree.

Her infractions were minor after all. They usually didn't kill for that. Usually.

They also didn't usually send Camulous and Ryxa out to get a common criminal. There were bigger issues involved... Politics. The captain hated politics.

The headquarters rose into view, its large stone walls and towers lifting up over the other buildings. It was the most comforting thing he'd seen in a while and it made him feel like he had some control over things. It was his home through and through and at least in there he gave the orders. At least, when Oslun wasn't around.

One of the two guardsmen standing beside the front entrance jogged up to meet the captain as he approached. He helped guide the horse closer and then raised his hands in offering to take the woman off the captain's hands.

"Take her inside... To Seven." He said as he passed the witch down to his man who, at a foot larger than Camulous, had no trouble carrying her at all.

"Sir." The man nodded, and took her inside at a quick pace.

Camulous remained on his horse and watched her be carried off. He rested a hand on his saddle and suddenly felt weary. It was good to have her here, but things were far from over. He wondered how Ryxa was doing...


Inside the headquarters the guard carried Lanya through the antechamber and up a short flight of stars to the set of rooms that made up the various offices and barraks. The air was warm and candle lit, smelled of old wood, musky tapestries and incense that somehow masked the sweat of the men who lived and worked there. Every wall was adorned with trophies, murals, weapons and other symbols of the prosperity and strength of the guard.

He took her down the hall to a large room filled with beds and lit with the brighter, more stable glow of electric lights. The walls were barren, gray stone and only a pair of small slit windows on the far end broke the monotony. Some of the beds had men in them, lying still or looking over to see who was entering. One lone man dressed in blue robes walked between them. He had long white hair and old features. The faint coppery smell of blood wafted around the place that was their long term care hospital.

Seventri noticed the guardsman and his presumed new patient.

"Oh my." He said in dismay upon seeing her condition. He rarely saw women in the guard headquarters, and definitely not so badly injured. "Here here, over here."

He shuffled over to them and directed the guard to lay her down in one of the empty beds. The sheets were thin and coarse, but the bed was soft and warm.

[Lanya Caliope]

Being jostled from one man's arms to another's brought the woman out of her restful state, but she was still dazed and in shock, and let her head fall back once more. She couldn't process her surroundings with nearly as much clarity or speed as usual, and she didn't seem to care. In the other's arms now, she waited until she felt that she was inside of a building to open her eyes and inspect her surroundings. She was clueless and lost, unsure of herself, and still mere steps away from sleep. But as the guard moved further within the building, her brain processed the first pieces of information, and she realized that the man now holding her was different from before.

She wasn't dead - the constant ache in her knee attested to that, and the previous guard's assurance still rested heavily on her shoulders. She wanted so much for this to all be over, to end. She prayed that when she closed her eyes, she would never open them again, and go back to the happy dream from whence she'd emerged.

She closed her eyes a moment, counted to ten at a slow and methodical pace, using the guard's steps to measure out the seconds. And then her eyes opened again, and she found herself in somewhat different surroundings, but still moving steadily along through...

Guards. There were more guards here. Which meant this must be some sort of prison...fear finally awakened within the sedate woman, and she swallowed hard as she was led further into this area full of unfamiliar and potentially unfriendly men. She huddled deeper into the guard's arms, pulling herself as close to his body as she could, but she was still weak and slow. By the time she'd completed this maneuver, they'd entered the sickroom - which she only registered as a place smelling faintly of blood - and the guard was ordered to lay her onto a bed.

At full speed, she would have already sensed that this was a sick room and that these men were friendly, and wanted to help. But at this moment, with her current limitations, she could only fathom that she was trapped in a large building full of guards, maybe a prison, and this room smelled of blood.

Full-on panic shuddered through her as she was laid down onto the soft bed. With more strength and less shock to impede her, she might have struggled or tried to scratch both the guard and the medic standing nearby. As it was, once prone upon the bed, she opened her eyes wide, and they filled with naked terror as she looked about this room where she remained surrounded, weak and helpless and completely at the mercy of whatever they planned to do.

That did it. With a gasp and whimper of pain, she began the slow and steady process of trying to push herself onto her elbows and up. She had no goal nor plan; she just wanted to be moving, to not feel so damned helpless in the midst of all these males.

"I can...get up..."

The words were slurred and unclear, and the move itself was a painful struggle. Once up on her elbows, she had to stop and sway as her head swam and stars once again dotted her vision. Wanting to avoid yet another dead faint in such an exposed location, she sank back down onto the bed and breathed hard, concentrating on the sensation of air moving in and out of her body to keep the stars at bay. Though she was still in mild shock and far from fully awake, the instinct to survive had reawakened as she struggled and found herself completely disabled. The fear remained, even more potent now that she knew they could do whatever they wanted, and she could do nothing to stop them. As tears once again traced down the worn tracts in her face, her voice cracked back to life and speech slurred out.

"Please...don't...hurt me..."

[Camulous Smithson]

The guardsman looked down at the pathetic little example of a woman he had brought in for Seventri to patch up and smirked at her. She was cowering at the mere sight of him, and it made him feel strong, superior, powerful. She was a criminal until proven otherwise, and it didn't matter that she looked as though she'd been raped and put through the gauntlet. She was sad and pathetic to him, and he was a brute.

"Thank you, Mister Idonir!" The old man said abruptly the second he saw what was going on between the guardsman and the girl. The guardsman looked at Seven, took the hint, and backed away with a shake of his head.

Seventri was different. He was much smaller than the guardsmen were, had an almost frail and gentle appearance to him that went beyond what his age was responsible for.

When he placed his hand on Lanya's shoulder to keep her from trying to get out of the bed, his very touch was the antipode of the guardsman's destructive ability. It was a grandmother's touch, not forceful but reassuring. A calmness emanated from his fingertips, through her shoulder and into her whole body, urging her to relax and taking away the worst of the pain, the frantic, shock driven fear of more.

"Calm yourself, girl. This is a hospital and nobody's going to hurt you."

He looked at her with faded blue eyes that said he was telling the truth. He could not bring himself to smile, because he knew, as all others, why she was brought to him and not to the temple. The best he could do was try, and it was a sad reflection of what he knew.

"Lay back and let me look at you..."

[Lanya Caliope]

As the guard moved away, Lanya followed him with her eyes, ignoring the kindly stranger until his hand contacted her shoulder and she could ignore him no longer. The immediate sense of draining pain and loss of the panicked state left her reeling and dizzy for a moment as she suddenly regained the abilities to reason, comprehend, and deduce.

She realized that she couldn't move. Her limbs weighed far more than she was capable of lifting, more than she would be able to lift for perhaps days to come. And now that the sheen of terror had washed away, she understood that perhaps this didn't have to mean she was about to be hurt...again.

A hospital. She'd been taken to a hospital by the guard who was supposed to be arresting her. She'd never been inside of a prison, but she'd told enough tales and listened to enough whispered conversations to know that healing was standard procedure, even if one were to be executed. Can't have someone stumbling their way to the gallows, after all.

The man's lack of smile did not bother her; she couldn't imagine the sort of things he must see on a daily basis, and she doubted she was the worst case he'd ever seen. Still, his worn eyes spoke of his sympathy for her. Which indicated that something terrible indeed might be happening to her in the near future.

How much worse could it get?

She was no fool, but she was delirious with a rising fever. Sitting out in the wet and cold with a few open wounds had left her with a growing fever, and with fever came delirium. Now staring up into the calm eyes of this grandfatherly man, fear swelled within her, but even more powerful came the driving need to control at least some point in her destiny. She could feel the heat of the other men as they turned their biased eyes on her; she was already a criminal in this room, what harm could it do to be difficult?

Her sense of survival had died with her panic, as she was farther from the base instincts which had driven her during the time she spent nestled within a dreamscape of nightmares and glorious visions. She wasn't suicidal; she would never kill herself. But she was ready to allow her body to die. Things would never be better, she could sense this knowledge down to her marrow. The only good thing that had happened to her in months was locked outside with a mad woman intent on destroying him, and Flame...Flame was living now. She'd been so happy to see him alive and free, that she'd forgotten that now, as a living bird, he might also give in to his natural instincts and fly away to where the robins go. She might never see her little bird again. The thought would've brought tears, but she felt a distinct emptiness where her emotions normally lay. She didn't even care to check; she accepted their loss just as she accepted her fate. She didn't want to die by their code. She wanted her body to at least die of its own accord. She knew that if let be, she would be dead within a few day's time, maybe a week at most. She was dehydrated, hadn't eaten, bled out and feverish. It was just a matter of waiting it out and letting her organs shut down, one by one. By the time the fever reached its peak, she wouldn't even remember her family or friends any longer. All she would feel was the internal heat cooking her from the inside out.

"I don't want to be healed."

She stared straight into the man. She thought maybe she could see through him, if she stared long enough. Her voice was quiet and laced with the pain of illness.

"Just let me die...please."

It never hurt to be polite.

[Camulous Smithson]

The old healer had seen and heard many things in his days, from grieving women to dying children to endless innocents awaiting their inevitable execution. The state was cruel, it enacted blind justice without mercy on a regular basis. Such was life in Thar Shaddin, and her miserable physical and mental conditions were nothing new. He blocked it out, preferred not to think about things around her, and seemed quite honestly unphased by it all save for the same hint of sympathy in his blue eyes.

"I didn't ask you if you wanted to be healed. You're here now so you might as well relax and stop being so tragic."

He tried to get her to lay back in the bed again, looking back into her gaze insistently and pushing on her shoulder.

"And if you don't let me do my job, I'm going to have to get one of these guards to help. Idonir was kind enough to bring you here rather than toss you in a cell, so maybe you could show some gratitude and cooperate?"

It must have been Camulous' orders or Idonir would have explained where he'd gotten her from. The captain was sent to arrest someone on a 'special errand' for Justice Hall only an hour earlier. Perhaps this woman was the result.

[Lanya Caliope]

Although his voice didn't snap, Lanya had been raised in a disciplinary environment laced with sarcasm, and so his comment actually had a better effect on her than any direct order could have. She sighed and relaxed herself in submission to his examination. It was useless to argue with a healer as to whether one should be healed in the first place.

But her mind continued ticking away through the feverish thoughts and delusions. She wouldn't be able to give in for now; this healer would fight to make her body turn its own natural trends into healing elements rather than the impending death it was steadily marching toward now. But still, he would heal her, and then she would be tried...as a witch.

Lanya had seen only one witch hunt before, but she was a bard filled to the brim with stories of trials and injustices wrought upon women throughout the ages. Just the accusation was enough to kill, and it made her blood chill with fear. The previous guard had thought she was a witch, hadn't he? That meant that the order to capture and bring in a witch had come from someone higher up, perhaps the captain of these men, or worse, someone with even more power who controlled the guards. A general of sorts.

She shifted slightly, but her discomfort was purely internal and would not soon leave. She was trapped in this building with these men and their accusing or even hateful stares. They all thought she had some sort of abilities, the power to do magic. How they'd laugh once they realized that all they'd netted was a plain human with an uncanny knack for attracting those with magical abilities.

That, and a wooden bird that used to sing.

She wondered where the guitar Greenfyre was. It was sure to find her; it always did, and had become an inevitable part of her everyday life. The past day, where she'd managed to live without its presence, had at least carried the relief that maybe she'd escaped its clutches for once. She'd dared to get her hopes up. Silly thing to do. Stupid, in fact.

As she chastised herself for her own limitations of spirit, she began to examine her surroundings. The healer had mentioned a prison, but this place seemed much too clean for such a location. Or perhaps she was just in the cleanest section of the building. She was too tired to ask. And worse, she didn't even care.

The good thing about a healer's place is that there are hundreds of ways to kill oneself nearby. Lanya was not the suicidal sort, and she was grateful that she wasn't basking in the cold dark cells she was certain these men could toss her into. She was just tired of having her destiny chosen for her. And the healer's quiet sympathy convinced her that she was just being healed so that she could strand straight while they burned her at the stake.

She'd at least like to die on her own terms. But she would be quiet and complacent for now, and let this man help her. Struggling would only lead to restraints.

[Camulous Smithson]

Seventri wasted no time when she finally cooperated and laid back on the bed. He immediately looked her over to make a quick assessment of what the worst of her injuries might be and decide on the best order to tackle them. He well understood the need to prioritize, and his technique for doing so was that of a practiced professional.

Her delirium, the circumstances of her arrival, and the makeshift bandage on her knee suggested that her injuries were old. She was dirty and wet, and illness and infection were probably her worst enemies at the time. Fortunately they were also the easiest things for Seventri to cure. Living with elves had so many advantages.

He couldn't see much blood on her body but there was no way to be sure without taking off her clothes, which he decided might not be the best thing to do before giving her a sedative of some kind, and so he placed his hands on her stomach first and watched for a reaction.

"Does your body hurt, or is it only your knee?"

[Lanya Caliope]

She stared at the ceiling above her while the healer examined bits and pieces of what he could see. She knew that at some point she'd need to strip, if only to be put into clean clothes. Her current wardrobe had lasted for three days without end, and was torn, ragged and bloodied. It would have to go.

She hoped he didn't make her strip in front of all these men. She wasn't sure she could handle such a thing.

She absorbed herself in the difficult task of following the specks of light floating around her eyes. The healer's question took a moment to register, and in another second she snapped to attention and met his gaze with no small effort of will. She felt that she could fall asleep, now that she knew he would not hurt her. The bed was the most comfortable thing she'd even been near for weeks, and the warmth within the room was causing her own wet clothes to dry slowly, creating a sort of humid layer which coated her entire body. It was cozy, and she wanted to just lie still and let sleep take her. She spoke, and once again her voice slurred through her exhaustion and pain. She tried her best to enunciate, for the healer's benefit.

"Body's just sore, got tackled in the street. Knee's the worst. Stabbed in the back..."

Among her assorted injuries, she didn't even feel the cut in her palm any longer, and didn't think to list such a minor inconvenience. She was close to passing out again, but was fighting to remain awake - for the healer's sake.

[Camulous Smithson]

"Stabbed in the back?"

No wonder she was delirious. She was laying on her back and he had no way of immediately knowing how bad the injury was, but it was most definitely going to get infected if it wasn't already. Lucky for her it didn't puncture a lung or she might already be dead.

He had to see it first. Even if her knee hurt more and looked worse, a knife wound in the back was far more dangerous and likely to kill her. The only decision he had to make was in figuring out how to get the obviously traumatized young woman out of her clothes so that he could see it.

"Wait here and just relax. I will be back shortly, alright?"

The simple solution was to sedate her and do what was necessary. He preferred to have her awake so she could give feedback and help him assess her situation, and she might not like the idea of having been put to sleep without her consent later... But she didn't have to know, and it was for her own good.

He put a hand on her arm to reassure her that he was going to return, and then walked to the back of the infirmary to get what he needed. Seventri had no assistants. There were no nurses to help him out. When real battles broke out and the wounded needed massive emergency care, it was the battlemages who provided field medics. Their skills made his paltry healing talents look useless, but the guards needed a non-magical way to treat day to day injuries. The pay was meager by comparison, but he didn't do it for the pay...

He returned to Lanya's bedside with a tray covered in bandages, a pair of cups - one with red and the other with yellow liquid, a jar of some green translucent substance, and some knives and tools that looked rather sharp. He set the tray down on a table beside her head and took the half-full cup of orange liquid in hand.

"I hope you like whiskey because I need you to drink this."

Without giving her a chance to refuse, he held it out in front of her and brought it close to her chin.

"All of it, and quickly."

[Lanya Caliope]

"Mmm."

It was the best she could muster in assent, when the healer touched her arm and then vanished from her view. She didn't try to rise or otherwise move, just watched the others in the room move about, or lie in their beds and quietly watch her.

She hadn't been on stage in over a year to perform, and was quiet by nature. She could feel a blush starting from her toes and working its way up her body, and looked away from the other patients to stare at the ceiling instead. She'd had to work hard to overcome her stage fright, and now it seemed that she was so out of practice that it had re-emerged.

She hoped the healer would return soon. And sure enough, here he came. She was too addled to notice that he was doing everything for himself, or find it odd that a healer worked alone, without even a midwife for an assistant. She did find it odd that he seemed to have brought several painful-looking devices. She wondered if maybe he wasn't supposed to heal her first...

He held out a cup and tucked it close to her chin. She reflexively lifted her head enough to take a small gulp of the stuff - and a gulp was quite enough. She hadn't processed his words quickly enough, and the whiskey burned its way down her throat and made her cough. Her eyes watered, and for once it wasn't actual tears, but it was embarrassing nonetheless. Some hardened criminal she'd turned out to be.

Pride aside, she looked at the remaining liquor and then at the healer and shook her head. If he insisted she would oblige, but she could still taste the bitter burn along her tongue and in the back of her throat. She didn't fancy drinking any more.

[Camulous Smithson]

Seventri chuckled when he saw her reaction to a little bit of whiskey. He was accustomed to the kind of men and women who could drink a whole bottle of the stuff without coughing, and here this girl could barely take a single shot. He used whiskey as a catalyst and an every useful, all purpose pain killer, disinfectant and all around wonder drink. It was a purely human creation and humans all too often disregarded the wonders that they created in favor of more exotic fascinations. The dwarven stuff could kill a man and were far from comforting, and the elven wines were no better than grape juice. A traditionalist at heart, Seventri relied on it frequently.

She shook her head at the prospect of another gulp and he decided it was good enough, shaking his head and putting the half drunk cup aside.

"I would think a girl in your shape could handle a little drink. Can't imagine what you might have done to end up here."

He picked up the second cup, one filled with thick red liquid, and held it out before her again.

"No matter. This is much easier to drink, but you must drink it all, alright? No sipping, all of it in one go or it won't work right."

The liquid smelled like grassy herbs, tasted like bitter roots, and had the consistency and appearance of blood. It was one of Seventri's own concoctions and a modification of a well known anesthetic. Already strong enough to numb her entire body and put her muscles into a completely relaxed state, he added a combination of common weeds he was familiar with that made people lapse into unconsciousness within seconds. The alcohol made it stronger, and a full glass could put out a bear.

***

Outside Camulous paced and waited. He needed to pass the time, a rare event for him. It was better not to watch Seventri take care of the witch. It would bring about all kinds of feelings of guilt and doubt when he needed to remain dedicated and single minded. For the good of the city, for the good of his people, his honor and his career he had to take her in to the judges as soon as she was well enough to survive the trip. It was none of his business why Moryldar wanted her, or why he sent Camulous instead of another guardsman or battlemage. All it meant was that she was important and that Moryldar had faith in his abilities.

Back and forth he paced, hands clasped behind his back and head bowed, occasionally kicking a rock across the ground which left a trail of brown dust to be carried off in the wind. It would likely be another hour or two before he could convince Seven to let him take her away and there was nothing to be done in the meanwhile.

The pair of men guarding the entrance to the headquarters watched him in awkward silence, unsure of whether they should ask if there was a problem or remain silent. They glanced at each other briefly, and each one knew that something was obviously wrong. If he was waiting for someone, he would wait inside.