“Look, mister,” Bram Milton said.

“I already said, call me Roman,” the man from New Benton said.

“Mister. You’re the right hand of the Warden, you are mister Agnello.”

The man simply shrugged and waited.

“Jo told me she was a sorceress, yes, but nothing else. She’d been scouting those ruins for nearly two years, she knew them well, but me? I know the fields like the pocket of my previous pants, but if she told me wherever it was, I wouldn’t even know enough to recognize.”

“I’m not expecting that. What I’m looking for is what. How. Where it happened… it’s a matter of time. We’ll find what they found. What I want is to understand why. How.”

“All I know is that she got better over time.”

After the man had left, headed toward Ellis’s home where the Adjutant stayed, Bram stayed in his chair, brooding.

He didn’t believe for one second that the man was genuinely sorry. His goons a week ago had insisted on searching everywhere, turning his house all over. He’d apologized for them being “overzealous”, assuring him that he didn’t really think she’d left anything behind. As if.

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Deserters, eh? His daughter hadn’t hesitated to drop all pretenses, and fight hordes of Lepuses for her home, even at the cost of her secret. If she ran, she had her reasons.

The door creaked and he raised his head, wondering if the Warden’s man had decided to come back to pester him, but it was a different figure brought in by his wife.

“George.”

“You knew,” the elder Donnall simply said.

“Of course I did. Jo told me.”

“You knew, and you didn’t say.”

“You wanted to believe so much. What difference would it make?”

“…”

Bram shrugged.

“You still should have been there when they got married. I doubt even if he had really been untouched by that… thing in the ruins, he’d have let Laura go.”

“Did you see how much they put as a bounty? Did you? Fifty. Fifty thousand fuckin’ dollars. Dead.”

Bram sucked in some air. He hadn’t seen the bounties. The men that had come said there were, but.

“That’s… a big amount.”

“Not kidding. That Agnello man, he said Peter killed the captain they’d sent after him. Cut him down, using his cursed Talents.”

“George…”

“If I could tell them how and why, maybe they’d just call for an arrest and a proper judgment if there were mitigating circumstances. He’d get life instead of being hunted.”

“And you believe him, George?”

“No,” the whisper came.

The two men were silent. Then Bram sighed.

“That bounty stuff reminds me. I really need to get to Valetta tomorrow.”

“Uh?”

“Talking with that lawyer about the house. Finding out how to pay the last bits. That money that the merchant owes, it’s been put on hold. The Warden’s men keep saying different things about it.”

“What difference does it make?”

“The house will be there when they come back,” Bram said.

“As if.”

“The man let escape that Jo was now literally firing bolts of fire before she deserted. Do you really think it will stop there?”