Kaldalis’s first instinct was to blurt out something unkind. All the thoughts he’d forced down the last time he was here rose, unbidden, to the forefront of his mind.

Instead of saying something cruel that he would come to regret, he took a deep breath as he turned towards Garyung.

“Yes?” he said, not trusting himself to say anything more glib than that. “What’s up?”

“I need your help,” Garyung said.

Kaldalis was unsurprised by this revelation, and let that show on his face for his response.

“This is… It’s different this time,” Garyung continued, shifting uncomfortably. “I need to talk to you. Privately.” He looked around. “This isn’t something we can discuss here.”

“Alright,” Kaldalis said with a sigh, gesturing for Garyung to lead the way.

His terse response obviously had Garyung anxious. The Bhogad’s body language was tense and uncertain, just like it had been before the first time they’d talked about his executive dysfunction. He wasn’t yet a stuttering mess, but Kaldalis guessed it wouldn’t be that far off.

Garyung led him to the Cotanaku’s council building. The council wasn’t convened, so the only person there was Sardol, who barely looked up from his desk as they went past his office at the head of the stairs. Garyung himself had an office next to the main council chamber, and led Kaldalis there.

The room was a small stone affair, with a large glass window that looked out over the town. Kaldalis could see the front gate was visible from the chair behind the large desk that dominated the room. The office was otherwise not heavily decorated, save for a side table littered with a few scattered documents. There were two other chairs in the room, less finely-crafted than the Bhogad-sized one behind the desk, but nothing else. No shelves, no paintings, no desk ornaments. Just stacks of paper and a handful of scattered ledgers.

Garyung found his seat behind the desk, and gestured to a chair on the other side. Kaldalis took a seat and immediately crossed his arms.

He felt like an impatient parent, but it seemed to be working. Garyung began immediately.

“I need your help with a decision,” the Bhogad said. He leaned forward and peered out the door, confirming that no one was coming. “The council is pressuring me on this and I need to come to a decision quickly. I just… I don’t know what to do.”

“What’s the problem?” Kaldalis asked. He gestured out through the window at the town below. “You’ve been doing well enough so far without me.”

“This isn’t like that,” Garyung said. His words were speeding up with obvious anxiety. “This is bigger. Well. Smaller. Well.” He was starting to lose it. He was still making words, but they weren’t making sense.

“Slow down,” Kaldalis said. Despite his irritation with the man, Kaldalis couldn’t just let him flounder. “Think first, then speak.”

Garyung took a deep breath and gave a grateful nod. He stopped speaking and furrowed his brow, taking a long moment to think.

“Onirioago is a problem,” Garyung said at last. The words were delivered evenly now that he’d laid the sentence out for himself before presenting it to Kaldalis. “According to Gavinkim, now that we’re an independent nation, she’s a foreign prisoner. We need to decide what to do with her and we need to make that decision very soon.”

Kaldalis felt his blood run cold. His conscious mind tried to direct his attention to the political implications. It was possible that Demriv’s resemblance to her might imply a blood relation, but he had to consider that it may have just been lazy NPC generation.

If Gavinkim was still pushing for execution, it could be met with a declaration of war from her home nation no matter how well Kaldalis did with the diplomats.

But his rational thoughts were fading to the background as claws of fear inched up the back of his neck, remembering her lips on his only minutes before they twisted into a sneer and hurled threats of subjugation at him.

“The Zarans haven’t made any demands regarding her imprisonment,” Garyung said, working through his words despite the no doubt obvious disquiet on Kaldalis’s face. “I think we might be allowed to handle her as we see fit, but that could change once their town is done. According to Ikzoz, it will give them closer contact with Baimer, and if someone there decides they want her released into their custody, we may be forced to capitulate.” He took a deep breath and grimaced. “Gavinkim has made it very clear that it doesn’t matter what anyone else says, if that order comes down, he will do what he believes must be done. I need you to tell me what to do with her because otherwise I’m going to completely lose it.”

Gavinkim, the councilmember who represented the security interests of Cotanaku, had made it exceptionally clear when Onirioago was taken into custody that he would strike her down in a heartbeat if there was a chance she might weasel her way out of imprisonment, even through legal channels. It wasn’t clear exactly why Gavinkim had such an intense concern with her crime, but considering it involved drug-induced slavery, Kaldalis didn’t blame him.

While Kaldalis shared Gavinkim’s desire to stop Onirioago from getting loose, he himself couldn’t stomach the idea of being responsible for her death. Abusing the power he had over Garyung to get what he wanted felt gross enough, but abusing that power to literally end a life?

He knew she was a different case, but he imagined Onirioago’s name being inscribed on the wall beneath Haldir’s.

A life lost forever, with his conscience always reminding him that he was her murderer, no matter how indirectly.

“I can’t,” Kaldalis said at last, when he realized that Garyung had just been staring at him in silence for nearly a full minute. “I can’t make that decision for you.”

“Dude, not cool! I can’t make the decision at all!” Garyung cried, throwing his huge hands up in the air. “This isn’t just the meaningless choice of what upgrade to get today instead of tomorrow. This is a person’s life, and beyond that, political poison.”

“That doesn’t change that I can’t tell you what to do,” Kaldalis said, trying very hard not to raise his voice. “Even if I felt comfortable making this choice, you put me on the project of getting Panbu in order. If you want to talk about Panbu, that’s literally my job right now. It was your choice to make that my job. If you wanted me doing another job, you should have listened to me and had me here with you this entire time instead.”

“Oh, great.” Garyung made no effort to keep his cool. “Now you’re gonna throw that back in my face. Yeah, get it all out. Classic Garyung, the quintessential fuckup.”

“What do you want me to say?” Kaldalis snarled through gritted teeth. He slammed his hands on the top of Garyung’s desk and leaned down over it. “I got shit to do! Shit you gave me to do! You made me live with your decision, so don’t fucking tell me that you shouldn’t have to.”

“And your job is nearly done,” Garyung snapped, leaning towards Kaldalis, matching his aggressive stance. “Panbu is going to be a town before the end of the week, and once that’s finished you’re going to be back here. If Panbu’s upgrade wasn’t relevant to this decision, I’d be waiting until then, but it might be out of our hands at that point.”

“You can’t brag about doing fine yesterday and then demand my help today,” Kaldalis said, lowering and evening out his voice. He needed to stop escalating the situation without backing down. “If you can’t do this job, you need to learn or abdicate. We can’t do a half-measure where I’m your crutch forever.”

“This isn’t-” Garyung started, but his words were starting to disintegrate as he sputtered, his anxiety making him lose track of himself mid-sentence.

“I know,” Kaldalis said, forcing himself to calm down and return to his seat. “I know. That’s not what you meant, but that doesn’t change that it’s what you said. Calm down. Take a breath. Having a shouting match about this isn’t helping anything.”

Garyung scowled, but quieted, inhaling audibly through the small black nose on the end of his snout.

The silence stretched between them for a moment.

“I have work to do,” Kaldalis said at last. “Unfortunately, that’s going to involve getting a lot done in very little time, so I can’t spend all my time here.”

“This isn’t over,” Garyung said, though he gave a dismissive gesture. “We’re going to have this conversation again when Panbu is a town, and I’ll have my thoughts in order for it.”

Kaldalis stood to leave. “You can have everything you want in order, but that isn’t going to get you what you’re asking for. I’ll give you whatever help I can, but I’m not going to make decisions for you. That’s not changing.”

Before Garyung could demand he stay, Kaldalis left the room quickly. He almost expected Garyung to yell a final barb at him, but the Bhogad remained silent.

As soon as he was out of the council building, he tried to force himself to think about what he’d just done.

For one thing, he’d thrown away his chance to have a say in what happened to Onirioago. If everything Garyung had said was true, any decision would have to be made about her before Panbu was a town, at which point it could only play out in the worst way without any intervention being possible.

And if Kaldalis wanted Garyung to take him seriously, he would need to hold to his word and not return until Panbu was a town.

He’d trapped himself in a catch-22. It was high school english all over again. And CliffsNotes wasn’t going to be able to bail him out this time.

Kaldalis made his way down to the pier to wait for the next boat back to Panbu. He hoped there would be quests waiting for him back in the other camp, and that they would be enough to take his mind off of Onirioago.