It would’ve been a beautiful day in a lively new town full of sights to be seen if not for Loretta yelling at them.

“The stuff he removes doesn’t just disappear,” she ranted with her hands on her hips and the hem of her dress swooshing between her legs thanks to the rushing winds, which were prone to gust through the stone-paved streets every minute or so. “It goes elsewhere, to someone who probably doesn’t want it and winds up worse for having it.”

Rusk eyed Greil.

Greil ran a hand through the streaks of grey in his hair. He stroked his beard. He didn’t offer any rebuttal. He cleared his throat. He sighed.

“She telling the truth?” asked Rusk.

No answer.

“Classic Greil. He’s wonderful for silence after the pressure of blame.”

The Elva Bow felt heavy on Rusk’s shoulder. One of the Elva Arrows appeared in his quiver automatically, but he wasn’t about to pick a fight with the person who had saved him from that monster fly swarm. He wasn’t about to aim at his travelling companion. A fellow Hero. A friend. His current mentor.

The only mentor he’d really ever had.

But the Elva wanted him to. Rusk could feel it in the weight of the bow, in the extra tautness of the string. In the fluttering of that arrow’s goose feather when there wasn’t any wind after the breeze died down.

“Goes around slaying monsters,” said Loretta. “Except who gets the carcasses? Whatever village he’s already passed through. Who gets the cleanup? The attacks caught with magic and redirected? We do. The people in the towns he’s left behind. Or the ones not on his precious little roster.”

Greil opened his mouth.

“But he wouldn’t tell a companion about that, would he? No. Not anything that would ruin his stupid jokes or mar his reputation.”

Greil shut his mouth.

“You moved a carcass on her?” asked Rusk, affronted.

“It’s not up to me where these things go.”

“No wonder you have bad luck!” Rusk’s temples throbbed with audacious anger. “It’s not Heroes as a whole, it’s you! Your luck! Because you do crap like this!”

“You haven’t heard my end of the story,” said Greil. His eyes flashed with something Rusk didn’t recognize. A mix of warning and desperation. Greil was floundering, but there was something at stake if he couldn’t pull it off, and that’s what Rusk saw in his weathered, bearded frown.

But Rusk didn’t like being lied to. Integrity was high on his list of heroic values. To think his mentor, the person who gave him the map to Sanctuary, the person he’d looked up to on this journey, could be such a worm. And a spineless one to make such excuses.

Rusk missed Mandy. Mandy would never do this. She’d run off, sure. She’d be critical when necessary. She’d even coast on a half-truth for a while if she deemed it important for survival. But she would never do this.

Rusk stood there and seethed, unable to enjoy the pitter-patter of moccasin feet and smell of market food wafting towards them from the town’s central square.

“I bet you he told you those things he moves go to some place that isn’t a place,” said Loretta.

Rusk felt his lips flatten into a grim thinness. His jaw went tight. He stared down Greil. “That’s exactly what he told me.”

“Figures. Well.” Loretta shooed at Greil. “He’s not welcome here. We’ve just cleaned up his mess and we don’t want another. Be gone, you worthless Hero.”

“But what did he save you from?” asked Rusk.

“What?”

“You wouldn’t know he was a Hero unless he saved you from something. Or maybe you saw him save someone else.”

“It doesn’t matter how I know.”

“Loretta.” Greil came one step closer and raised a placating hand. Palm facing outward towards her.

“Don’t you go playing that card with me,” said Loretta. She moved back, waggling her index finger at Greil. “None of that nonsense.”

“There was a monster inside her,” said Greil to Rusk. “I removed it.”

Now that arrow was knocked. Rusk didn’t know if he’d done that or the Elva.

“Sure, but where did it go?” said Loretta.

“That’s what I was wondering,” said Rusk, but he wasn’t wondering. He knew exactly where it had gone. Or the Elva knew. They were one and the same in that breathless moment, and Rusk was drawing back and Greil was raising an arm in defense and then the arrow flew.

It never struck Greil. It never struck anyone because it got swallowed up into Greil’s place that was not a place except really was a place.

It thunked into a tree back at Rusk’s home forest, and would remain there, a mystery to his territory, until it was called forth again. Or until the Elva reclaimed it.

“You would loose an arrow at your superior,” said Greil, offended.

“Superior!” The notion was absurd. It made Rusk fume.

“You’re not anyone’s superior,” griped Loretta. She hadn’t so much as flinched when the arrow flew. She wanted it to hit its target.

“I had a friend once,” said Rusk as he knocked another arrow.

Greil sank into a ready stance. Rusk knew it well after they’d been so long on the road together.

“She was one of the most exceptional people I ever met. Probably will ever meet.” Rusk drew. Aimed.

Loretta scrambled rather gracefully out of the danger zone, pinching the skirt of her dress between her index fingers and thumbs.

“Her name was Mandra Lahk, and one day she had a monster inside her. Out of nowhere.”

Greil paled. He sank lower.

“You wanna tell me how that monster got there?”

Loretta watched from the sidelines. She’d found a rather comfortable perch atop the stone wall of a nearby estate. This was taking place right in front of the mayor’s abode. Not that Rusk or Greil knew that. Well, Greil might’ve. Maybe that’s why he was acting so squirmy.

“Rusk,” said Greil. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Is that a comment from my superior? The supposed superior who doesn’t really save anyone but instead throws all the monsters around, spreading them out of his own path and onto others like a coward?”

Greil had no more to say.

They both knew there was an impasse woven in iron and Elva between them.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” said Greil after an eternity of hesitation. He practically whimpered out the words.

“You’re lucky.” Rusk didn’t loose the arrow. Not yet. “She’s stronger than you’ll ever know. She survived.”

“She what?” Greil’s posture raised ever so slightly but all at once. This was a true shock to him.

Which meant he’d expected whoever got the monster to die.

Rusk clenched his teeth and loosed the arrow.

This time when Greil reached out his hand intending to make the arrow vanish, a glow of light from the Elva prevented it from working. The arrow struck Greil’s shoulder. He fell in grunts and hisses of agony, barely getting enough air in his lungs for a scream.

Loretta smiled approvingly as Rusk approached his mentor and sank down to one knee to meet Greil’s eyes.

“You’re despicable,” said Rusk, and he pulled out the arrow. It took a lot of twisting and yanking, and when Rusk was done he was sure Greil’s arm would never properly heal. Good.

“Are you gonna kill him?” asked Loretta.

Rusk was tempted to, and didn’t have an answer.

“Doesn’t seem worth it to me,” said Loretta.

“When he got the monster out of you,” said Rusk, staring down at Greil who was applying pressure to his wound and getting paler. “Was it a relief?”

“Briefly. But then I figured out where the stuff he stores goes. And after knowing that it wasn’t such a relief anymore. Being alive because someone else is dead can do that to a person.”

Rusk hadn’t asked for all that, but she kept going.

“For the record I’m not ungrateful for being saved. I just wondered if it were worth the cost. Now that I know the other survived I’m kind of mixed up about that front.”

Greil slumped over, breathing heavily.

When Rusk moved to help him, or maybe hurt him even more, Greil vanished in an implosion of buzzing that could only mean he and the flies were one and the same. Or that he’d employed them to cause a scene. But why? What could be the purpose of that? Rusk’s eyes went wide and then narrowed.

Now he’d never know.

He punched the dirt.

Loretta came off her place on the stone wraparound wall to stand over him.

“He said the king had employed him, when I first met him.” She put her hand on Rusk’s shoulder.

He brushed it off with a tired sigh. “What would King Ehrryn want with Heroes from Sanctuary? They aren’t part of the kingdom. Sanctuary’s island is a separate province, one of its own. It’s self-governed.”

“I never knew that.”

“I have a bit of an obsession.” He’d also studied Greil’s map and read all he could on the subject whenever he could. It wasn’t often, but there were always some scraps of scrolls wherever he and Greil had gone.

Now he didn’t know how much of them were reliable.

“My father can accommodate you for the night if you like,” said Loretta. “He’s the mayor.”