Teryn fought to keep herself from giving Bronn the satisfaction of surprising her. He turned his wicked face toward Shia as she left the building behind Teryn.

“And who is this lovely young assistant? Another cursed fifth member of the notorious Bumbling Boar Band?”

“It's Black Boar Band.” Shia said, her chin thrust out slightly. “Let me guess, you’re the local bully?”

Bronn chuckled as he raised his hand and flicked two fingers down. White powder poured from the roof above them onto the two women. Shia gasped in shock and Teryn felt her abilities dampen completely. The crackle and energy of magic died inside her as the powder flooded around her.

“Talcin powder. Gotta be sure you weren’t going to launch one of your famous icicles right into my eyes,” she heard Bronn drawl from beyond the smokescreen of dust. Shia’s hand groped out and latched on to Teryns robe and she came over to her, coughing.

“Take them away.” Bronn commanded. Rough hands seized both the women and tied their arms behind their backs. Burlap sacks were slipped over their heads and Teryn was lifted from the ground. She kicked at her kidnapper to no avail. Shia struggled and called out somewhere near her as the man who lifted her started walking.

After only a few jarring steps she was unceremoniously dumped, like one might dump a sack of rice, onto a hard wooden surface. She felt another body land beside her and a small “oof” sounded. There was the crack of a whip and the surface below them started to rock a little as it lurched forward.

“Teryn,” came Shia’s wheezing voice. “Teryn, what's happening?”

“I’m sorry, young one,” she answered, her voice loud in the bag around her head. “It seems we have been taken by Bronn, likely to be thrown in the dungeons.”

“What about the others, where are they?”

“Probably already in a dungeon or on their way to one as well.”

“What do we do?” Shia asked. Teryn found a small bit of satisfaction that the young woman's voice was not desperate. There was an edge of fear to it, but she seemed mostly in control of herself. That was more than could be said for several of the supposed professionals she had worked for before, many far beyond Shia’s years and experience.

“For now, we wait. There is only one dungeon in town, likely we will find the rest of our group there. Once together, we can figure out what to do next.”

The two women sat in silence for a long while, the only sound the chittering of the Moa’s pulling the cart and the grinding of the wheels over the cobblestones. Teryn tried to orient herself, listening for anything that could place her in the city. At one point she thought she heard a slight gurgle of water, putting her near the river, but the combination of thick sack and slow moving river that split the town did not give her confidence.

The cart came to a sudden stop,throwing Teryn from her sitting position onto the wooden floor. Shia’s body followed immediately after, landing across Teryn’s bound legs. Curses sounded from the front of the wagon.

“Out the way ya fookin’ greenskin!”

“I’ll take care of her,” another muffled voice sounded from what Teryn figured was the front of their wagon. The wagon rocked slightly as someone got off. Shuffling as best as she could with bound hands and feet, she resumed a sitting position.

“Shia,” she said, pausing for a moment when the girl did not answer. “Shia, are you all right?”

“Yeah,” came the girl's reply, her voice tired. “Yeah, I'm ok. Just reevaluating some of my life choices at the moment.” Teryn felt her shuffle around and try to get up into a seated position.

“I think I hit my head with that sudden jerking. Can you tell what happened?”

“There seems to be someone blocking our pathway. The driver shouted at them and another person disembarked to confront whoever is blocking our path. It is likely not a human, though.”

“What makes you say that?” Shia asked.

“A derogatory term was used by the driver to refer to the person in the road.”

“You two quiet down back there or I’ll have Ged wallop you when he's done with the greenskin,” the driver called back to them.

“And there it is again,” Teryn muttered.

A shout sounded from someone nearby and the clash of metal rang out.

“Fookin hell,” the driver said as he disembarked, shaking the wagon around again. “This wagon is under the protection of Sir Bronn of the-”

His voice was cut off suddenly, replaced by a grunt and soft thud. Teryn sat stone still, straining to hear exactly what was happening through the thick sack on her head. Silence followed the soft thudding noise. The cart began to rock slightly as boots and bodies scraped the wood, boarding their wagon. With another jolt, much less severe this time, the cart started to move again.

Biting her lip, Teryn decided to take a gamble. “Since I am at the utter mercy of whoever has taken this cart, and it is likely preferable, or at least similar to, my previous captors, can I ask who has taken me?”

“A friend,” said an unknown voice, feminine but with a rougher quality than most Teryn had heard.

A hand brushed against her neck and Teryn winced slightly. The hand deftly untied the knots holding the sack to her and pulled it over her head. A wave of cool night air flowed over her and filled her nostrils. She took a lungful of air and opened her eyes. A pale green face was looking her over, a line of black hair running down the middle of her head in a short mohawk and a wide grin showing two small tusks jutting from her lower jaw. She was wearing blackened leathers, formed to fit her snugly and studded with small metal beads.

“You will excuse me if I can not recall who you are. Have we ever met?” Teryn asked as their rescuer shifted over toward Shia.

She swiftly untied the knots holding Shia as she answered Teryn, “Not directly, no. Though I’m certain we have seen each other. In fact, if my memory and hearing serves me, you were the one who had Devin go back and ask for my name.” She glanced up to Teryn after pulling the sack from Shia and gave her a small wink.

“The clerk from the Hub? What? How? What in the world is going on here?” Teryn asked. She could not help her mouth from dropping a little but did not care at this time. Decorum and propriety be damned. How in the world was a clerk here and saving them, or at least potentially saving them?

“Dahlia’s the name,” the orc extended her hand. Teryn reached out and shook it. “And covert operations on behalf of my patrons is my game.”

“Patrons?” Shia asked, shaking her head then running her fingers through the short, tangled mess of hair the sack left. “Who do you serve?”

“That, I cannot disclose, unfortunately. Suffice to say, I can let you know we are on the same side as you. My patrons have watched your band with some interest, especially over the past couple days. You are the only ones who seem able to defy Bronn's purge of smaller groups.”

“Luck, likely,” Teryn glanced toward the front and saw a man driving the cart, a hood over his head and blocking her from seeing anything other than slumped shoulders and blackened leather.

“Don’t discredit yourselves so quickly. You all have some real talent. Plus, you seem to have this unnatural luck for stumbling across things and escaping, save for one member,” Dahlia coughed slightly into her hand and spared a glance at Shia. “Luckily you seem to have broken that curse.”

“Knock on wood,” Shia said as she knocked on the side of the wagon.

Teryn gave her a quizzical look and Dahlia asked, “What? Why would we knock on wood?”

“Well, because you said I haven't died yet. So we knock on wood. We want that to stay true.” Shia said, looking between the two women, slightly bewildered.

“Well of course we want it to stay that way, but why do we have to knock on wood?” Dahlia said.

“I find myself a bit curious about this too. Please explain why we would knock on some wood. Can it be any wood? Does a tree count, or does it need to be refined into workable wood?” What if it is painted, does that still work?” Teryn caught herself before she launched into even more questions, seeing that Shia still looked utterly dumbfounded at their responses.

“You just, knock on wood? Don't you have any superstitions or similar things you do? Like, you say something we don't want to come true, so we knock on wood to prevent it from becoming true by speaking what shouldn’t have been spoken,” Shia turned to Teryn now, “And I don’t know the answers to your questions. You’d have to see a superstitologist or something for that.”

“A superstitologist?” Teryn’s eyebrows waggled in amusement. She reached up and brushed them behind her ears, grinning at the young woman.

“Well of course we have superstitions, but ours makes sense.” Dahlia said.

“Like what?” Shia challenged her, brows now knitted together.

“Well, when a little one falls down, we make them apologize to whatever they fell on. That way they learn better than striking out without thinking and learn a respect for the things around them.”

Several seconds of silence followed Dahlia’s statement.

“That's the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Shia finally said.

Dahlia shrugged, “It makes more sense than knocking on wood when someone says something. What's the wood going to do? Grab the words? Come save you later?”

“It isn’t the wood, it's the action of the knocking! It's a ritual of a superstition,” she said exasperatedly. Dahlia opened her mouth to argue back before Teryn cut them both off.

“As much as I am loving this discussion of the semantics of superstition and its applications across cultures, I think we should focus on the subject at hand.” She focused on Dahlia. “Where are we going now?”

“I have a base of operations nearby. We can hide you there for now and figure out how we can get to Devin and the others,” Dahlia said, still eyeing Shia.

Teryn looked around at her surroundings. Clean buildings, most several stories tall, were all around her. They travelled down a cobblestone road wide enough for two carriages or wagons with room to stand on either side. Gas lamps burned with a soft orange hue, lighting the way for them. Only a few people beyond the occasional guard and pack of Bronn’s thugs strolled the streets.

“Are we on the north side of the river?” Teryn asked.

“Correct,” Dahlia answered. “I keep my operations on the rich side. No one seems to think a clandestine operation would ever set up shop here. The rich look down on the poor and fail to see the problems and corruption within their own society.”

“Or they partake in it,” Teryn said softly. Dahlia nodded in agreement.

“Why aren't they doing anything to us?” Shia asked, peering out over the edge of the wagon they were in.

“Who?” Teryn asked, looking over her own edge again. The well kept streets rolled by slowly as she glanced around.

“Bronn’s people. He had us arrested, why aren't they stopping us or anything?”

“Likely, they do not know about it.” Teryn said. “What he did to us and our group was illegal and wrong, even if he has gained martial law abilities. He probably kept it quiet, with only trusted thugs participating and the rest being kept out of the circle. The less people know about something, the less likely it is to leak or be spilled.”

“Also, Devin was the main target, you all were collateral pickups just to make things tidy,” Dahlia added. Teryn and Shia both slumped back down into the wagon. Teryn watched as Dahlia leaned over to the driver and whispered into his ear. He gave a quick nod, at least that's as much as she could tell with his hood, and the wagon made a sharp turn to the left. They rolled into an alleyway that was, unlike the ones on the south side of the river that were often strewn with trash and the occasional body, near immaculate. Even the cobblestones and mortar between them was clean.

The wagon rolled down the alley without any room to spare. Teryn could reach out and brush the buildings with her hands if she was inclined to do so. They came to a small intersection and the wagon rolled through, stopping so the end faced the different pathways.

“This is where we hop out,” Dahlia said, jumping lithely over the edge of the cart and sliding along the alley wall. As Teryn stood up, Dahlia dropped the rear panel of the cart, offering them an easier exit. Teryn gave her a small nod as she scooted off the edge of the wagon. Even though the magic nullifying powder had been mostly washed off in the dowsing she received, she still felt exhausted to her core. It would be a couple of days until she could use magic at full strength. Damn whoever had invented that stuff.

Shia hopped off the cart from the back and landed with a small grunt. She grabbed her bow from the cart and slung it over her shoulder. “Where to now?” she asked Dahlia. The half-orc gave them a quick wave and walked off down the southern alleyway. They only walked a few steps before she stopped.

“Welcome to the headquarters of the Orcin Reconnaissance Crew,” she said with a grand gesture toward a blank wall of brick.

Shia glanced at Teryn who gave her a small shrug back.

“Seems a bit contrived, doesn't it? Orcin Reconnaissance Crew? All to get an acronym that spells out ORC?” Shia asked.

Dahlia frowned, “A happy coincidence I assure you. Now, if you’re done being ungrateful to the person who saved your skins, follow me inside.”

“How? There is a solid wall here.”

Dahlia turned to the wall and walked into it. As she neared the bricks, a shimmering folded the air around her and she was gone. Shia started with a small gasp.

“Absolutely fascinating,” Teryn said breathlessly, leaning toward the wall. “That is some high level illusion magic on display before us.”

Before she could think of the magic involved Dahlia’s head popped out of the wall with another shimmer and a look of annoyance on her face.

“Are you two coming in or what?”

Teryn took a few steps forward into the wall. As she neared she winced slightly, preparing to run into solid stone. Instead she found the air shimmering around her with purple and blue stars on a field of black. After a second, she was inside.