“The Bloody Fl—wait what?” Virian's mouth hung open.

They were headed straight for the largest, most dangerous criminal headquarters in the worst part of the city? With an injured woman?

“It’s where the healer is,” Sergeant Rose said.

Virian cocked his head at her. “The very best healer in all of Atrican is holed up with a gang of thieves and murderers?”

But then he thought back to who Ivy really was. Maybe it wasn’t so hard to believe after all. The sergeant said nothing.

“How do you even know this?”

“You should get used to me knowing things,” she said.

“Okay, but how?”

Sergeant Rose let out a long breath of air.

“It’s your fault.” Huh? Luckily she went on without prompting, “You and Ivy. Together you forced me to be someone I don't like. I hate myself for it, but I know.”

“For instance, in this city of one million, two-hundred and fifty six thousand, seven-hundred and twenty one people, I know four will be murdered tonight. I could likely stop them all if I tried. But I won’t. I shouldn’t even know they are planned. Yet I do, and I will do nothing. Do you understand?”

“No, not at all,” Virian said, staring at the—definitely-a-witch—beautiful woman.

“Of course you don't.” She laughed. “You have no idea what it's like, and neither does Ivy."

"So," he started, unsure how to broach the topic, "are you going to tell me, then?" She must have even the tiniest bit of trust in him if she was willing to sit with him like this.

"You believe your suspicions are on the mark, do you? You know what? I don’t care anymore. Because I’ll tell you what happens from here on. If you even have the smallest of an inkling of betraying us, of turning in me or Ivy, I will know. If you so much as begin to form a thought that might resemble a lie, I will know. If you think you can get away with hurting her in any way, you cannot. I. will. know.”

Virian sat frozen in his seat, more confident than ever now that he had gotten mixed up with not one, but two witches. And more than that, he was pretty sure he had deduced her power. Or, not so much deduced, as she had given it away. Was she listening to his thoughts now? Oh god. Did she know everything or just what he was currently thinking? No, it had to be more than that.

He stopped to rub his temples, trying to clear his mind and failing. It was too much. The power of such an ability was almost limitless.

“It seems now you get it,” Sergeant Rose said, “so now let me tell you the consequences if you form an idea in that thick skull of yours that I don’t like. I will send Ivy into your room at night when you’re sleeping, and she’ll cut your throat. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

Virian blinked, interrupting his minute-long wide-eyed stare. For the first time since finding out about Ivy’s return and who she was, he found himself actually worried. No, scared. He was pretty sure Ivy liked him at least a little bit and wouldn’t kill him for no reason, but if she had cause? He thought back to the way she had casually ended the life of the intruder in his room without a thought.

Virian recalled watching his mother tend to her garden. Her herbs and flowers were known through the kingdom as the very best, and there had been a reason for that. Her witch power allowed her some level of control over plant life. Compared to invading his mind and whatever it was Ivy did that allowed her to be an unstoppable assassin, it seemed harmless. It started to dawn on him why the church took such a hard stance on witches. That kind of power in the wrong hands…

No, no, no. What had he just thought? Had sergeant Rose heard everything? Had she been listening to someone else instead? Could she listen to multiple people? Hello? Can you hear this?

The sergeant only smiled. Oh, damn. He eyed the sword belted at her hip and wondered if she might just kill him right now. If he reached for his own…no. She would know that beforehand too. Already did.

“You didn’t even bring your sword with you,” she said, “not that it would matter, as you have already realized. Maybe not as dumb as you look.”

Oh, right. They had left in a rush and he had not belted any weapons to himself. Virian averted his eyes from her own, looking down at the floor and trying to think of nothing. He hummed songs in his head, and then out loud until the carriage lurched to a halt.

“Grab her,” she said, and he did.

He followed her out with Ivy in his arms onto a dark, muddy road. Directly ahead stood a large, tavern-like building, its facade covered by a massive stained standard. Several men milled about the ground floor entrance, and he was pretty sure he spied at least two more on the roof looking down at Sergeant Rose and him.

The sergeant planted her feet and spoke out, “Any who value their safety, do not stand in my way.”

The men laughed, and one approached.

“Hey,” he said, “ain’t you the stuck up bitch that come ‘round here before?”

“Yeah,” another said, “I think you’re right. Bowers did send her packin’.”

“I’ll do a bit more than that,” the first said, grinning.

He tapped the club he was wielding against his bared shoulder, continuing to walk towards them.

“Don’t mess ‘er up too much,” another thug said, “she’s a pretty thing.”

Sergeant Rose suddenly burst into motion, striding forward to meet the man. He readied his club and swung it down once she was within range, eliciting a wince from Virian. He figured as the palace’s sword master who trained the guard, she’d be able to handle a single thug, but she hadn’t even drawn her weapon, and he was a pretty large thug.

As he watched, though, nothing really happened. The thug had…missed. No, not quite. The sergeant had made the tiniest adjustment in her advance just enough so that his swing hit air. It had been such a subtle movement, that Virian had barely caught it, and he was sure the thug had no idea what had happened.

And then, almost as an afterthought, her wrist flicked to her belt. There was a brief glimmer of her steel before her weapon was returned to its home and she kept on walking. Actually she had never stopped walking. The man hadn’t slowed her down in the slightest.

As for the thug? A deep gash now ran from the inside of his wrist down the length of his arm to his elbow. His hand went limp and blood gushed from the wound. The clatter of the club falling to the street was followed shortly behind by his wailing cries, but Sergeant Rose did not spare him a second glance. Virian wasn’t sure she had given him a first glace. She just kept on heading to the double doors of the criminal stronghold without another care in the world. At one point, she jerked her head sideways, and he heard the clatter of a crossbow bolt skid along the pavers of the road.

No one else dared to place themselves in her path. He supposed he should follow her, but Virian was fairly confident that he could not dodge crossbow fire.

She turned, looked at him with cold eyes and said, “Come. They are in shock for perhaps ten more seconds. It is safe. For now.”

Right. He moved along the same path that she had taken, her single victim moved aside by his friends.

“Uh, I’m with her,” he said as he passed them.

Thankfully, no one barred him, but they were definitely staring as he passed. Not at him, but at Ivy. Virian tried his best to ignore it all and hurried after Sergeant Rose, who threw open the doors to the compound. Dozens more men and women awaited them inside. The entrance opened up into a great hall with a bar off to one side. The inhabitants were seated at tables placed around the open space, eating, drinking, and gambling.

None of the criminals directly challenged them this time, but everyone was watching them. Sergeant Rose paid them no mind, making a beeline toward one of the full tables. As he followed her, once again Virian realized everyone was watching him, not the sergeant.

“Is that the Dragonfly?” he heard someone say as he passed.

“What happened?” another asked.

Virian almost ran into Sergeant Rose when she stopped, hovering over one of the eight chairs around a full table of drunk criminals.

“Caseem Yarmoth,” the sergeant said, and below her, the tanned, portly, sweaty man flinched. “Come with me.”

Of the others at the table, he was the only one without a mug of alcohol before him, though it did look like he had been participating in the gambling. At the sergeant’s words, his head swiveled along the circumference of the table, silently looking for help. Most had no reaction to his plea, a couple shrugged.

“Your patient is in need of care,” Sergeant Rose said, and he finally turned to face her. Seeing his face, now, Virian understood the reason for the sweat. What had they done to the poor man? Not that he had been hurt, or showed any signs of abuse on his countenance, but it was his demeanor. The way his eyes shifted from the sergeant to Virian himself, and then back to his table mates. Virian understood now that it was not help from the others at the table he had been looking for, but permission.

“Go,” a woman at the table said, and neither the nervous Caseem nor Sergeant Rose needed any other prompting.

Caseem bolted out of his chair, with the sergeant on his heels, leaving Virian to once again follow in her footsteps, almost forgotten. For a moment, he enjoyed the novelty of being ignored, so different to the norm of servants waiting on his every word. But it quickly began to wear on him, and he felt it not unlike a meeting with the noble council. He was...insignificant. The particular sketchy situation didn't make it any better. At least he was never in mortal danger with the nobles. Strolling through the headquarters of the Bloody Flag made him sweat, as much as the healer.

They turned from the great hall and went down a corridor, eventually ending at a closed door. Caseem worked it open, disappearing inside. Sergeant Rose and Virian followed silently.

“Put her down here,” Caseem said.

There was a thin raised bed covered in fresh white sheets in the center of the room. Caseem had gone off to one side of the small square room, fiddling with a box of metal instruments. With no reason to disobey, Virian did as the healer asked, and placed Ivy atop the bed, earning a weak groan from her lips.

“Out of the way,” Caseem said, now right up beside Virian with a pair of sheers in one hand.

Virian sidestepped the healer just in time for the sheers to come down, cutting away the bottom half of Ivy’s tunic. Dried and wet blood covered the area beneath.

“Her stitches have reopened,” Caseem said.

Just about as Virian was going to ask how bad it was, he heard footsteps behind him and wheeled on the newcomer. The older man who entered was cleaner than the rest he had seen save for Caseem, and well dressed in a suit that a noble might wear. What little graying hair he had left ringed just above his ears, with wispy eyebrows that completed the circle all the way around. His hooked nose, broken a few too many times beyond repair sat above a pair of thin, almost white lips. He stood half a head shorter than Virian with a much thinner frame.

All in all, he appeared rather unremarkable. For just a second, he thought maybe the Bloody Prince himself had made an appearance, but this couldn’t be him. All the stories made him out to be some kind of monster that stood nine feet tall and could crush a man’s skull with his bare hands. Still, though, this man must have some level of authority.

“How is she?” the man asked.

Before Caseem could answer, Sergeant Rose stepped forward.

“Release the healer’s family,” she said.

The new man eyed her with a curious gaze and scoffed.

“And why would I do that?”

The sergeant grinned.

“You have a granddaughter,” she said. That was it, but the new man paled. He blinked a few times, straightened his coat jacket and then took a deep breath.

“So you say,” he said.

“No. I know. You thought your family could escape this life by moving them out of the docks? Not even your boss knows about them. Tell me, how would you console your daughter as she buries her own?”

With every word she said, the man’s face shifted more and more from white to cherry red. Virian didn’t know what to think. If the Bloody Flag was holding Caseem’s family hostage, then perhaps they deserved the sergeant’s threat. But would she really go through with such a thing? These last few weeks had been insane.

“You,” the man said through gritted teeth, “you will not leave here—”

“Do as the woman asked,” a deep baritone voice said from beyond the doorway. Sergeant Rose smiled wide.

The first man stepped aside, revealing a titan of a human. There was no questioning his identity. Though of a similar age perhaps as the first, that was where the similarities ended. Not quite nine feet tall as the rumors told, Virian could understand the exaggeration. His massive frame only added to the illusion. It was hard to believe he and Ivy could be the same species. With no hair at all atop his head, a salt and pepper beard that covered the lower half of his face and the exposed creases around his eyes were all that showed his age. His body looked as solid as an oak tree.

“But-” the first man said.

“Go, Marris,” the Bloody Prince said, looking down on his subordinate, “close the door on your way out.”

“Yes, of course, your highness.”

Your highness, huh? Interesting.

After the man left, the Bloody Prince surveyed the room with a single glance.

“So what’s going on here?”