“What are you doing still walking?”

The man cornering my pupil at the mouth of the alley was none other than the gambler from within the tavern, whom’s gold was in my student’s pocket. The man didn’t wait for an answer, he barely thought it over as he looked between him and Aisha. He came to the conclusion he wanted to and bared his teeth with a grin.

My pupil squeezed the grip of his sword, but didn’t raise it. “Why don’t you forget you ever saw us? It’d be better for you.”

The Giordanan man had in his head that he was rescuing the sister of Medorosa Canta, and slugged my pupil in the mouth. It was a slow, but brutal thing. It split his cheeks against his teeth and knocked blood across the sandy street. Obviously, my pupil could have blocked it had he so chosen.

Aisha half gasped and half shrieked. That only egged the man on, and out came a steel braced cane. Evidently he wasn’t able to afford a sword of his own, I suspect that speaks to his general skill at gambling. My pupil didn’t go down from the punch, nor from getting his temple split open by the cane.

He just grinned as hot blood poured down his face. “Thanks, now I look the part,” he said, and cut the man down. The fight only took a moment, average men don’t last long; but, when it was done, my pupil nearly collapsed into Aisha’s embrace.

“This is insanity,” she said, pulling him tight against her and pulling his arm across her shoulders.

“Your brother brought it, not me. I’m telling you to get out of the damn city the moment you can.”

“What? Do you expect me to go running off on my own? With streets like this?”

“Fine, fine I’ll get you somewhere safe, but… before I lose consciousness,” he said with a gesture towards the garrison.

“Open up! Help! He needs medical attention!” Aisha cried out. She had my student’s arm around her shoulders and had to drag him limp to the garrison. She had to drag him over to the Vassish men, as the only firm muscle on his body was his grip on his blade.

A few half-armored men scurried out of the palisade gate and grabbed hold of my student. In that moment, the entire ruse hinged on the shock greeting of those guards and what they would think of seeing a Vassish man they didn’t immediately know, and a Giordanan girl with him. The slightest layer of scrutiny and fear might have exposed him.

But, the Vassish protected their own.

The garrison had taken over Puerto Faro’s main courtyard and a few boarding houses adjacent. With the wooden walls thrown up, it sat like an island in a swamp of violence. “Give him here, give him here,” one of the guards said as he hoisted the bloody man up. “By the light of god(1), what’s happening out there? He’s the tenth to come in like this!”

The other gave my student a more careful examination, wiping some of the blood from his face. Of course, neither guard recognized him, but he was Vassish, armed with a military blade, and dying in his arms. The guard didn’t ask any questions, just mumbled, “Must be one of the voluntaries.”

“You his woman?” the first asked as they started dragging him to the infirmary. Aisha blushed and stammered long enough that they assumed she was, and let her follow inside. Letting people make their own assumptions can be the best way to sell a lie. They set him down on a cot, right between one man howling into a gag, clutching a severed arm, and another man sweating so profusely his sheet would need to get wringed out like laundry. The guards couldn’t stay, not with their commander howling at everyone to rally to him.

To rally and put down the riot by killing the Medini family.

The infirmary doctor spared him a glance. With laudenum in one hand, and the other holding a funnel down a soldier’s throat, he gave a groan at yet another arrival. He was a slim man whose spectacles and gentle features gave him a scholarly air. Had he not been covered in blood with his long hair tied back like a butcher, he would have been the delight of any women’s circle. “Is he actively dying?”

My student gave Aisha a nod as she sat down next to him. “No, I think. He’s bleeding but it’s slowed down.”

“That probably means he is almost out of blood then,” the doctor said as he pulled a strip of bandages out and started winding them around his patient’s head.

“No no, they’re just closing up!” she blurted out quickly. “I think he’ll be alright.”

“What? Wounds don’t just close up. What is he, a sand snake?” the doctor demanded. He dunked his hands into a bucket of bloody water, wiped them off with a rag and ran over. “You there, can you hear me?” The doctor grabbed my student’s face, prying one eye open. For all the acting skills he had been taught before I picked him up as a boy, he never mastered how to dilate his pupils on command, which the doctor instantly noticed.

“Just stitch me up, will you?” he asked, using the soft exhale of his breath to understate himself. “Some food would be nice, to replace the blood, you know?”

“Do I look like a chef to you?” the doctor asked, running a wet cloth over the wounds.

My pupil grinned. “Might be a butcher.”

“Only on Sunsday,” the doctor said, sharing the grin with my pupil. “The name’s Samson, but everyone calls me Sammy. What’s this?” he asked, jabbing a finger against the stigmata on my student’s chest.

“Dunno, it just manifested. Might be why I’m not dead,” my student lied. Of course, under the strictest scrutiny, the edges of this lie might have eventually crumbled, but timing is never perfect and a selection of truths to create a lie is better than wholecloth fabrication. For, the man he would be impersonating was still there in the garrison at the time.

“Well you’d be the luckiest man in the city if that’s true. Hey, you,” the doctor said as he looked up at Aisha. “Gruel and beer are in the back corner. Get him some, will you? I have to seal these cuts.”

Aisha took the chance to separate herself, and lingered at the back of the tent. The commotion could be heard there; the soldiers of Vassermark gathering like ants to a fallen piece of bread. There were no lines, there was no order, there was a confused mass of auxiliaries that barely had their armor and weapons on properly. Standing in the center, turning around as if bewildered, stood the commander of the garrison; Lucius von Solhart. He didn’t shout out orders for silence, or to count heads, not even to form ranks and march down the street or bunker down. He shouted, “The Medini Family! They’re behind this plot! They took that Medorosa snake in and now they shall pay for this bloodshed!”

The men of the garrison threw up their arms and roared. They had been conscripted from their lands and fiefs, stuffed onto boats and sailed halfway across the sea. They were rogues in a foreign land and had been the ones to sow the seeds of hatred through Puerto Faro. When threatened, they doubled down. Confused and armed men can only hold one thing in their mind; who to put their steel into, and their commander had just given them a target.

“Do you need any pain relief?” the doctor asked, his voice cool and calm.

“Just the beer. You can forget about me. I’m sure everyone else in here needs your attention more. Except maybe him,” my student said, with a side eyed look at the sweaty man next to him.

“He’s got dysentery, he’s actually the most likely to die of all I’d say. But, you shall have your wish,” the doctor said as he tied off the last stitch.

Aisha marched back over holding a bowl of gruel in one hand and a tankard in the other. Both hands trembled. “Why are they attacking the Medini’s? They didn’t do anything wrong. They’re good people.”

No one wanted to answer that question. Everyone else save the doctor had an excuse to remain silent, so he pressed his lips together and turned to her. “We Vassish have a bit of a maxim. It is better to do something than nothing. Sometimes it leads to swift justice and relief, other times an innocent is victimized. We’ll know tomorrow which it was.”

My pupil could see the writing on the wall and quickly reached out to grab the food before she dashed it across the floor. “Miss Medini hasn’t done anything wrong! She didn’t agree to the vendetta! He’s just going there because of his gambling debts!”

The doctor rose quickly, taking hold of his lapels and setting his back to the garrison. “I think you should consider your words more wisely,” he said, and a few of the less injured men glared at her.

My student pulled her down by the sleeve and made her kneel next to his cot. “You came with me because the Cynizia scared you, right?” he hissed. “Medorosa set demons loose in the city and you begged me to take you along. So keep your mouth shut. You don’t have the power to do anything here. Understand?”

She did understand, and kept her mouth shut and her head bowed as my student filled his stomach. The commander had stormed off into the night by the time my pupil finished. The moment the doctor stepped away from the infirmary, the two of them slipped out the back. She didn’t ask where he was headed, but refused to leave his side. Word had gotten through the walls of the garrison, and the leftover soldiers whispered about the Cynizia. The oldest and least fit stood guard on the ground, men who clutched spears with boney hands and watched the night with wide stares.

The true veterans of the army also lingered within the walls of the garrison, for their leader had contravened Lucius’ orders. With a cold inspection of the nighttime garrison, one of them declared, “He’s going to get himself killed.” The second nicest boarding house that the army had taken over was home to the Voluntaries, men on leave from the main host and taking rest in the backline for a few weeks. They didn’t associate with the auxiliaries below, and didn’t bother to keep their voices down.

“I’d rather camp with the cannibals than follow that filcher,” said another who sat down on the railing and surveyed the fires that sprouted like spring buds.

“You’d volunteer to camp with them if it meant courting that chieftess,” the first said, getting a roar of laughter from the other voluntaries.

My student slipped past them, moving from shadow to shadow until he entered the commander’s quarters; a small storefront with a bedroom above. “At least the lieutenants are trying,” he whispered. When everyone had marshalled to the walls, no one had remained to guard the quarters. Guarding Solhart’s belongings wouldn’t matter if they were overrun.

Aisha asked, “What are you doing?”

“Stealing,” he answered, and passed through the looted store room and up the stairs.

Just as he prepared to drive his boot through the door, Aisha stopped him. “My father used to own this building, while we still thought you Vassish were honorable,” she said, and produced the key from above the door frame.

“Honor is subjective,” my student answered as he accepted the key and opened the door. The personal quarters of Lucius von Solhart were a mess, with empty wine bottles strewn about the floor, hundreds of letters piled up atop the writing desk, and a stench of over-used pepper-leaf. My pupil ignored all of that and went straight for the trunk.

“What are you stealing anyways? You’re risking execution to steal from a debtor you know. He doesn’t have any money,” Aisha asked.

What he pulled out of the trunk was Lucius’s helmet. Not the shoddy one he had stolen off a gate guard’s head, but an exquisite cavalry helm with a brush of green bristles arcing from brow backwards and a shining steel half mask in front. “I’m not after his money. I’m after his name. From now on, you can call me Lucius, Lucius von Solhart. I don’t think the original will mind; he’s not going to survive the night.”

I actually confirmed this line specifically, and it seems that yes a Vassish guard swore to the sun god, rather than the water goddess. Not impossible but it was improbable. The converts had been emboldened by King Arandall’s marriage to a wife from the central kingdoms, but social discrimination was still common at the time.