The palms of Scythese’s hands burned as he sat at the table in the Galier’s little inn, trying unsuccessfully to handle a knife with the layers of bandages constricting his hands. Across the table from him, Anaxian was already tearing into his second roasted bird.

Scythese was forced to give up, leaving his knife on his plate with the untouched bird. Trying to eat only made his torn hands burn all the more painfully. The bandages were thick, probably too thick, and hardly let him use his hands at all, but they covered the worst of the bleeding. Small patches had begun to color during the lecture, the tiny blotches fortelling much worse wounds beneath, but he hadn’t felt them much at the time. The same for his knees. The red of fresh blood had faded to rusty brown long since, but his hands and knees still burned sharply whenever he used them now, as if merely being near Stellaphrena was an anaesthetic.

He was tempted to take off the bandages now, surely his wounds had scabbed over, but something stopped him. He already got enough looks of pity from Anaxian and the others, even from Galier, which irked him to no end.

The pompous oaf acted as if he were one of them, as if he shared their beliefs and concerns, even though they sat, eating and drinking fine foods and expensive wines, in his inn. Scythese didn’t let it show of course, he knew his mission and he meant to fulfill it. He just wished that Anaxian, Tyche, Ana, and Sancte were as uncomfortable with it as he was. He had hoped that the young lord might have seen the error of his ways already. In the lecture, he had seemed to be questioning his privileged upbringing, he had even looked embarrassed when the hypocrisy of his people was brought up. So much for that. He was showing off his wealth by inviting them to his inn, nothing more. He treated them like anyone else, unaware that he had more in the common room than any of them would ever own. He hardly deserved the sympathy that Scythese had been ordered to show him.

Ana had taken to her role faster than the others. Perhaps she was more dedicated or maybe she was a better actress, but she did an admirable job simpering and fawning over the young lord Derran. If Scythese doubted her dedication to the cause even a little, he would have said she was getting lost in the role. But he did not doubt her, not in the slightest. She was more loyal than anyone, except maybe himself, and the gap was not a wide one. She didn’t know the depth of her role, Scythese was sure of that. He hadn’t even been told the truth of the plan until that very morning himself, but she took it seriously. She had even waited for Galier that morning for hours in the rain, hardly protected from the downpour by a pastoral hat. Just one more way the nobility put upon common folk without realizing it. Galier would have thought it only a chance encounter, but no common merchant or worker would have warranted such planning.

The others did their best, but there was a range of ability between them. He saw his own disdain for Galier reflected in Tyche’s arrogant sneer that she hardly even tried to hide and his anxiety in the way Sancte fidgeted with her fingers when she thought the others weren’t looking. All of them, even Anaxian with his face covered in grease and sauce, grinning from ear to ear, were just actors playing their parts. Some not particularly well. He shot a pointed look at Anaxian, who just shrugged and went back to gnawing on the remaining scraps he had before him. For the others, they were just making a new student feel welcome. Perhaps a student of particular interest to their teacher, but still just a student. They didn’t know the gravity of it.

He winced at a particularly painful twinge from his left hand and went back to examining the bandage. The others were performing their roles well. Galier would not notice Scythese’s temporary lapse, and he would make sure that it was temporary.

As he flexed his fingers tentatively, a new pinprick of red began to seep through from the back of his hand, just between his thumb and forefinger. He let out a vexed hiss and quickly hid the hand under the table where nobody could see it, and looked up at the others with what he hoped was a relaxed expression forced onto his face. No one even noticed.

Ana was picking at her food while slipping sly glances at Galier from time to time as he told some story Scythese had no interest in. Anaxian was very clearly not looking at the empty serving platter sat in the middle of the table while he gnawed the last bit of cartilage off what remained of the bird carcasses on his plate.

With a body like his, Anaxian probably needed all the food he ate. It would have been enough for three normal men, but he made it seem like a snack. With a shake of his head, Scythese pushed his plate, with its untouched food, across the table to the larger man. Anaxian grinned widely, his face lighting up like the slightly cold roasted bird was the greatest gift he had ever received. He stacked the plate under his own and tore into the food as if he were starving from spending the day toiling rather than sitting on a bench. Scythese had to stifle a chuckle. Anaxian attacked everything with the carefully reigned viciousness that had been trained into him. It even applied to food. It was what made him such a valuable ally. He might lack the refined training of a noble-born duelist, but he would make up for it in sheer tenacity. Especially if his opponent was holding a tray of food.

Tyche and Sancte each regarded Anaxian with an arched eyebrow, as if they weren’t used to it by now, but he didn’t care. When Anaxian had food in front of him, nothing else mattered, certainly not the judgement of people half his size.

It was easy to forget that they were playing an incredibly dangerous game and courting one of the more powerful new blood lords in the city in that moment. If Scythese ignored Galier, a slightly difficult task given the dramatic manner in which he spoke, it seemed like they were just a group of like minded peers, friends even, eating a meal together. To the others, that was all that it was. Maybe that was why Stellaphrena had elected not to tell them. But to him it was like approaching a sleeping lion unarmed. He was expected to befriend that lion too, even though it might be anathema to everything he believed. He would have balked at the order from anyone else.

He had spent so much energy and sacrificed nearly everything he had to sever his ties to nobility. It had been a process of years and had brought no small amount of danger upon him. A house as important as that of his parents would prefer kinslaying over the shame of its heir giving up his titles. And now he was expected to step back into a role he had dedicated his life to abandoning. Had he not known the immensity of the task, he might have refused. Had he not known what was at stake.

And here he was, his target at hand and evidently walking neatly into the web spun for him, and Scythese was neglecting his duty. He clenched a fist under the table, the shock of pain snapping his attention back to the story that Galier was telling. A new warm touch of blood followed the sting.

Galier was talking about some waif he thought he had rescued from the streets, or something else as insulting. The pampered lord probably thought anyone who didn’t own a manor themselves needed rescuing from their pitiful lives. No doubt what he’d actually done was let some young woman play aristocrat for a day before going back to her normal life. It would look the same to someone whose expensive walls kept out of his view the unsightly common folk.

Scythese could give him a little credit for his concern though. He did seem genuinely worried that this girl might be in danger, but that just showed the depths of his arrogance, that he thought a life on her own terms would be more dangerous than the plush existence he offered. Scythese had to keep from sneering at him like Tyche did. It was not an easy task.

From the story he told, this girl was more than capable of making it on her own. If Galier was to be believed—a strong ‘if’ by Scythese’s estimation—she had been living by the edge of a knife for her whole life. With what little Galier had given her, she would have been able to quickly climb out of the gutter, if that really was where she had started at all.

So why was he so worried? It was rare to see a noble give a care at all for a commoner. Scythese knew firsthand the brutality employed to simply keep them out of sight for well bred eyes. It was no secret that the beggars who congregated in the Monarch’s square were thinned regularly by palace guards. Watching it happen himself from a perch above the market had only served to cement the reality of it in Scythese’s mind. That casual butchery was the sort of thing all nobles were complicit in, even if their hands remained untouched by blood. It was for their sake that it was done. So it was a surprise, and more than a little shocking to hear a man such as Galier, who likely had never before even spoken to a commoner, be so worried over what might have become of one.

What was even stranger than that was how judicious he was with the information he would give. At first he made it seem as if she had run off without a trace, but then, when Anaxian offered to ask some people he knew who worked as city guards—people who Scythese certainly did not approve of—he suddenly had more information. She might have left the city, he said. Something markedly strange. Most people born in the city would leave rarely, if ever. The surrounding lands were sparsely populated compared to Scythese’s homeland across the sea and unless you knew well how to travel, it would be a death sentence.

He hinted at the north gate too, which was even stranger still. To the south there were countless acres of farms, to the east were orchards and still more farms, the kind of production needed to fuel a city the size of Maerin. But to the north? It was nothing but dry fields left behind from decades of logging for the city.

That land was left bare, for the most part. Some few enterprising farmers had made their case to the Monarch and had been granted plots there, but the soil was far worse for growing and the plant life only suitable for the hardiest of grazers. No common Maerinen would have any business there.

The north road was only really used for trade. Those few northern powers so landlocked that ships were not viable sent caravans. But even they were careful. It was a route well known for banditry and other dangers. Without guards, a caravan would not stand a chance. Much less a lone woman.

Then something odd occurred to Scythese. House Derran was not landlocked in his ancestral holding. Derranhall itself was a port town, if he remembered correctly, though not important for trading. But, there was something there, a tenuous connection.

The heir apparent to house Derran as well as his brother, that brute Jormand, had disappeared through that northern gate, or so the rumors went, leaving the unsuspecting lord Galier to take up the reins in their absence.

There was scarcely any evidence to go on, but the potential plots and schemes smothered Scythese’s mind all of a sudden. He had been watching nearby, on assignment for Stellaphrena, when the commotion that many believed to have been the brothers Derran’s escape occurred. Just streets away, he had heard the yelling of guards racing to chase whoever it had been down the road. At the time, Scythese had paid it little attention. His mind had been occupied with watching the people react to the strange circumstances, as was his assignment.

The city had been like an ant’s nest that day. People darting left and right to avoid guards who came barrelling down the streets, heedless of who was in their way, to support their supposedly endangered comrades. At the time, Scythese had had his eyes set on those people who ran in fear of the soldiers supposedly tasked with protecting them, not the one small shape who darted ahead of the armored figures, heading straight for the gates.

He hadn’t gotten a good look at whoever it was, but he remembered a glimpse of pale blond hair, new blood to be certain, and sickly pale skin to match. It fit well with Galier’s description of his missing waif. But did that mean she had been involved in the escape? Had Galier been?

Suddenly the pompous fool that sat at the head of the table seemed much more dangerous than before. What could he be hiding with his friendly, yet distant demeanor? After Ketrim and Jormand Derran disappeared, the new seat had been chosen to succeed the late Martim Derran in a matter of days, if rumors were to be believed.

Sometimes there were downsides to not being a part of high society. There was a time when Scythese would have been kept abreast of all of the gossip in the city, before he had renounced his titles.

Could Galier have been involved with their escape? Or, had he been the cause of their flight. No one knew the circumstances of Martim’s death, or no one who Scythese was familiar with. Was this scrawny, overconfident young lord the mastermind? He had certainly benefited from it more than most. Vaulting into a position with more power than a man such as he could have possibly hoped for…

But then, there were other rumors. Rumors that Martim’s death had been part of a larger plot, along with the deaths of several other prominent new blood nobles. Rumors that pointed the finger to someone with a good deal more power than Galier Caerest had previously had at his disposal. Likely more power than Galier Derran had now.

Regardless of which plot it was, Scythese decided, Galier was involved. Whether that played to his advantage was yet to be seen.

***

Young Scythese of Sapho, who had until that point been almost entirely silent, spoke up, interrupting Galier in the middle of his sentence abruptly. His voice was low and quiet, but intense. Intense enough that Galier instinctively stopped to focus all of his attention on the battered young man.

He looked just as beaten as he had from the start, but his eyes held back bonfires.

“I saw her,” He said, letting each carefully articulated syllable hang in the air with all the refined skill of a trained orator. “Heading for the north gate, like you said.”

Galier was dumbstruck. He must mean Lana, there was no other reasonable cause, but the whole group had assured Galier that they knew nothing that would help. Anaxian had offered to ask some guards that he knew if they had seen her, but otherwise they had yielded him little in the way of helpful leads. Just reassuring platitudes and condolences.

Galier had not expected anything more. In reality, he had only brought Lana up to show to these people that he was better than a careless aristocrat, living far away and removed in an ivory tower. He could not tell whether it had had that effect, they all seemed friendly from the start, well, aside from Tyche who still scowled at him. He was starting to think that might just be the way her face was shaped.

But he forgot all of that when Scythese cut in.

“Are you sure it was her?” He asked immediately, his heart starting to race. He had already resigned himself to the reality that she must be dead or gone forever, but Scythese offered enough hope for him to latch onto with his desperate fingers.

Scythese nodded. “Small, blonde, pale, dressed in commoner’s clothes and sprinting towards the gates with a ghostwind on her heels. And a contingent of city guards…” He ended with a twist of his lips that said just how well he thought of the city guards.

That was the meager description Galier had felt safe giving, but it matched too well to be anyone else. Anyone who knew what was good for them would have stayed out of the way of the guards. That was unless she knew she had to warn someone about a coming pursuit. He allowed himself a relieved smile before questioning Scythese further.

“Did she get away? Did the guards catch her?”

Scythese shook his head slowly. “I couldn’t see the gates, but it looked like she was faster… Can’t say whether she made it before the gates closed.”

His expression was unreadable. He stared down at his bandaged hands and spoke in as practiced a tone as Galier had ever heard in the courts of Maerin. If he had any more information, he wasn’t offering it. And Galier didn’t have any reason to think he would be lying. Scythese had been oddly friendly today, especially as they had no previous relationship to speak of. He was probably just trying to offer what little information he had. And it was enough. A scrap of hope was miles more than he had had before.

If Lana had managed to catch up with Jormand and the others, she even stood a good chance. Jormand and his brother were more than formidable warriors, the soldiers they had taken with them too. Elyas was the toughest opponent Galier himself had ever faced to date, Jormand included. If anyone could keep Lana safe, it would be them.

“I… Thank you.” Galier said, “I had hoped for more, but thank you. It is good to know that she might have a chance.”

The others all looked quite puzzled. There was nothing north of Maerin but long-dead forest and barren fields. Being exiled north of the city was a death sentence to anyone ill prepared for the journey.

“She has friends, to the north of the city. No doubt she was headed there.” He hastily added, hoping it wouldn’t seem too much like the floundering excuse that it was. They all nodded, seeming satisfied.

Scythese smiled in what was probably supposed to be a reassuring way, but with his bloodless lips it looked more like a pained grimace.

After a moment, they continued on, talking about nothing in particular and telling lighthearted stories for some time afterwards, acting as if the momentary pause had simply not occured.

To Galier’s surprise, none of them were from Maerin originally. All had come across the sea at some point or another, the most recent being Anaxian, who had made the journey less than a year prior. He was evasive about what brought him, and Galier didn’t want to pry, but he spoke of fights he’d won and lost more than once in the way a duelist might, not a common soldier. Whatever it was he did, it sounded like he was good at it, the way he presented it.

Ana, Tyche, and the third woman, whose name was Sancte, had all followed Stellaphrena over from Sapho, finding work in the city as maids for noble houses. Old blood families prided themselves on maintaining households in traditional styles. They chose their servants based on beauty more than any sort of skill, so young women were always in demand. The idea made Galier a little uncomfortable and he was glad to see his discomfort reflected in Scythese who audibly growled when they spoke of it.

The three of them had been apprenticed to the Saphiian seers before leaving, though they did not seem to have any reservations about abandoning what Galier gathered to be an esteemed station to take up lives as common servants. The way they spoke of it, their jobs were only a means to an end. The end was always left vague though.

Mainly, they talked about the small things they missed from back home. They each commented on the weather at least once, saying how strange it was here. Across the sea, they said, fall was nearly as mild as summer and in winter it wasn’t much colder, though it did rain. They spoke of thunderstorms with awe, especially Anaxian, who had seen very few. He even flinched from time to time when a particularly loud thunderclap sounded.

They all seemed rather interested in Galier’s past too. Especially Scythese, who was surprised to learn that when on campaign in his youth, Galier had been expected to sleep on a blanket roll on the ground, the same as the people he led. Or that the spoils from raids, an entirely foreign concept to the old blood lord, were divided evenly amongst a crew. Galier had often sacrificed his own share, given that he would have had to give it up to the house he was sworn to anyway.

The practice was entirely alien to everyone at the table. Tyche called it barbaric, and even Ana, who seemed the most friendly of all of them, looked at Galier aghast when he said raiding was a regular part of a sailor’s life during those months when trade became slower and more difficult. Especially for well armed sailors, like the sons and the ward of a powerful lord. Galier himself had more combat experience from raiding than campaigning. It really wasn’t such a strange thing to do as they made it seem.

The rain still came down in sheets when they left and it showed no sign of stopping soon. The accumulated water made the cobblestones seem a plethora of tiny islands, surrounded by the choppy waters of an angry sea.

It was dark already, with the evening sun obscured by voluminous clouds, but Scythese, Ana, and the others departed with cheerful grins on their faces. Even as Saphi pleaded with them to stay until the rain let up a little. But they all had places to be and jobs to attend to and were all gone in short order, regardless of Saphi’s attempts to make them see sense. She stomped and rolled her eyes dramatically as they left and gave Galier a poignant look, as if it were his fault that they were so incredibly irresponsibly.

Galier gave her an innocent grin in return and she shook her head like a put-upon mother as she walked back to her kitchen.

A small and bedraggled crowd had gathered in the Captain’s Cat throughout the day. Few people braved the streets during a storm, especially not the sort that usually frequented the inn, but even fewer left once they remembered what it was like to be warm and dry.

In comparison to his previous company, even the most lowly of the inn’s patrons looked like kings. Everywhere there was silk and embroidery, silver and jewels, and all manner of rich attire. It all clashed together with each member of the crowd trying to be noticeable in a sea of colors. Taken altogether it looked gaudy, even if many of the individuals actually had a degree of taste. Galier noticed a dress he thought looked good here and a jacket there, but looking for too long at the whole group made him wince. Something he had never had trouble with before.

Shaking his head at his own attitude, he made his way over to the bar, only having to sidestep one server who looked at him strangely as he passed. It wasn’t as if a day spent with common people had changed his sensibilities so suddenly. He still thought that his own clothes were a little drab, and they were far nicer than what Scythese had been wearing.

At the bar, he was handed a cup of wine by the bartender, who also regarded him strangely, like how someone would look at an odd lizard found under a rock. Had his makeup been damaged by the rain maybe?

Putting it out of his mind, he let out a contented sigh and leaned back against the bar, looking out over the common room. For once, no performer stood on the little stage. There weren't enough patrons to throw coins, he wagered, even with how much he paid anyone who took to the stage.

A murmur of conversation was slightly dulled by the rain so that he couldn’t make out anything without concentrating. It reduced it all to just noise in a pleasantly ignorable manner. The constant buzz reminded him that the inn was not a waste but it wasn’t as grating as a roomfull of rowdy young nobles could sometimes be. The dreary weather cut the edge off of their antics.

He didn’t recognize any of the patrons, not really. Oh there was a face here and there that he had seen at a banquet or something similar before, but Galier had never had a good memory for names and the faces all melded together after a time. They all wore similar clothes, though of wildly different colors, with minor modifications that they thought made them stand out. A few even made slight alterations to their makeup, but that was even rarer. It made them all look like poor copies of a handful of portraits. Mistakes made here and there, but the same strokes could be seen everywhere.

Galier sighed and set his cup down on the bar. He would have to go through his wardrobe soon and replace some pieces. The others were starting to catch up and once the herd caught up, he would be just another copy. Not an enviable fate.

His peaceful watching was interrupted when one face that certainly did not fit into the crowd appeared right in front of him. Unfashionable blond hair framing a stern face that Galier might have called beautiful if he were a decade or two older. Eliah Ealhold still dressed and acted as if time had not passed in years. Her understated dress and rain cloak were far from fashion forward, but Galier did not even have the time to evaluate their merits.

“We need to talk.” She hissed, stepping up close to Galier and preventing him from standing up straight without bumping into her. Her cold, calculating eyes were narrowed as if she suspected Galier of something, and even though he knew that he had done nothing wrong, he felt his heart leap. A wise man would always step lightly around lady Eliah Ealhold.

She jerked a thumb towards the staircase in the corner of the room and promptly stomped off towards it, expecting Galier to follow. And he did, scurrying after her like a chagrined hound and mentally berating himself for his meek obedience. A wise man obeyed lady Eliah Ealhold, if he valued his skin, even if it rubbed to do so.