"You can’t be serious!” Gilbert whispered, his eyes full of doubt. “We can’t stay here!”

“Why not?” Cobra replied, in the corner with Gilbert, away from prying eyes, and from seen ears.

“You know exactly why not!”

“You know exactly why we have to.”

“We can’t, Cobra.”

“We can, and we will, Gilbert.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Gilbert inhaled deeply. “He’s crazy, he’s insane! I thought he was queer for his love of his children, but this… this is too much. Goblins, Cobra, goblins! He thinks those goblins are his children! What of the demon? My soul isn’t going to be damned because of some half elf, a damn half elf who barely acknowledges the demon boy that he pretends is his child.”

“We were already travelling with demons this entire way,” Cobra replied, his voice calm and clear. “What’s the matter now?”

“I thought they were Iyrmen.”

“Did you?”

Gilbert fell eerily silent, his cheeks filling with heat.

“What do you want me to do, Gilbert? We’ve come all this way, we’ve troubled them so much, you think we can leave now?”

“I don’t want to work for anyone who will threaten us if we walk away.”

“He won’t threaten us. He’ll let us walk away, and once the Marquise hears about it, we’re all done for.”

“She won’t look for us, we’re nobodies.”

“We know she wants Alex. You might be willing to give him up, but she won’t let us.”

“I don’t want to give up Alex!” Gilbert snapped back.

“You don’t?” Cobra’s doubtful voice cut into Gilbert.

“How can you say that? What are you talking about? He’s my brother too!” Gilbert’s cheeks flushed a deep red, and he stood a little straighter.

“I’m talking about how you want to give up Alex to the Marquise because you don’t want to walk around near some goblins, Gilbert!”

“It’s not like that!” Gilbert sharply inhaled a breath, feeling it cut through to his heart. “We can leave Alex here, and we can go.”

“You want to abandon Alex in a place you don’t want to stay?”

“I don’t mean that, I meant in the Iyr. They’ll want a Sorcerer like Alex, and he’ll be taken care of good here.”

“Where do you think those goblin kids were staying at? You don’t want to be around the goblin children, but you’ll leave Alex here around them?”

“He wouldn’t have to stay around them.”

“Who do you think will keep an eye on Alex, and who do you think is doting on our siblings, and those goblin kids! Do you even see the way that old man, the one we’ve been hearing about all this time, the way he looks at the two? Adam said he wasn’t the old man’s grandson, but from what I can see, I think Adam’s more like the Mad Dog’s grandson than Jurot.”

“Hey, keep it down!” Gilbert whispered, fear creeping within his voice. “You know how the Iyrmen are about that sort of talk.”

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“If you want to leave, you can leave, but this is the best place for us. Alex, me, everyone else. If you don’t want to be taught to read and write, to fight, to earn a decent living, that’s on you. I’m going to stay here and I’m going to work to make sure ou- my younger siblings grow up well.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Gilbert replied, his cheeks flushing red. “It’s just…”

“Go ahead and ask Shannon and Julia, Viper and Python too. They’ll tell you the same thing I’m saying.”

“It’s always been me against you all, you never listen to me!”

“That’s because you don’t think before you speak. You don’t think we’ve been wondering about these thoughts like you? Obviously! I know he’s crazy, Gilbert! He fights nobles to protect us, and not just any nobles, but the Marquise! The fucking Marquise, Gilbert! Do you know what a Marquise is?” Cobra whispered angrily, her face turning red, before she quickly calmed herself.

“They’re under the Duchess,” Gilbert replied awkwardly, noting the tone in her voice.

“They’re almost on equal footing,” Cobra stated. “That kind of ranking only makes sense when you’re a noble, but we’re not nobles. We’re lowborn, commonfolk, filthy, dirty, no good peasants. A Marquise might as well be the Queen to us, there isn’t much difference. A Marquise is tasked with protection of the city. Did you forget how many soldiers she sent after us? The damn Marshal of the East came for us! The only reason we survived was because of the Fireballs from the mages, from Adam and the other noble devilkin.”

“She’s Aswadian.”

“You’re focused on the wrong thing,” Cobra said, poking his shoulder. “Think, Gilbert, think! What kind of Priest can cast Fireball? They say he’s a Priest, a Brother of Death, but I’ve never heard of any Brother of Death cast Fireball. That’s for the Priests of Aswadasad. He’s not pretending to be a Priest, either, not when he was in the Order of Life’s Rose.”

Gilbert pulled back slightly, feeling the sting of her poke against his shoulder, and the sting of her words against his heart. He had never seen Cobra so animated before, nor had he ever seen her speak like this.

“Even Dunes can’t cast Fireball, he follows our Lady Arya cause he’s from Black Mountain! Black Mountain, Gilbert! Fucking Black Mountain, and he’s chosen to stay here with Adam. Why do you think that is?”

“He wants fame and fortune?”

“He’s staying here even though he and his companions already have a great life in Black Mountain, but he wants to stay here so he can take a high position in this business, not just for himself! This business full of crazy bastards! They’ve got the Enchanter, they’ve got the damn-, think of all the Iyrmen we’re surrounded by. Even if half of the stories they’ve told us are true, that’s already more than any of us could have dreamed of.”

Gilbert couldn’t refuse that, not when he thought about the pedigree of all these Iyrmen.

“The grandchildren of the Mad Dog, the grandchild of the previous Elder Wrath, whose like the Marquise of the Iyr, and that woman, Naqokan, half her ancestors ended up as the Chief of the Iyr, and you’re too busy thinking of some goblin children?”

“That’s exactly my point, Cobra! They’re all outstanding people with outstanding families! Who are we? We can’t do anything like that!”

“What about Nobby? They picked him up off the road and in a couple of years he ended up beating all those outstanding Iyrmen with outstanding families.”

“Nobby’s different. He’s not like you or me, Cobra! Look at the size of him! No! That’s not right.” Gilbert’s eyes began to gleam as they grew wet. “You and Nobby, you’re the same. You both, you’re talented, but I ain’t like that, Cobra. I got nothing. Even before, I couldn’t do nothing. All I got was that the boys needed me around, but now…”

“What are you talking about?”

“They’ve got Nobby, they’ve got Fred. Not even Max looks at me no more.”

“It’s not like that, Bert.”

“It is like that, Cobra. You wouldn’t know, because whenever we’re in trouble, we’re always looking to you.”

“Bert, this is what I mean. Sometimes you think too little, sometimes you think too much, but you’re not thinking about the right thing.”

“You’d never understand.”

Cobra inhaled deeply. She could see Gilbert was on edge, and that her previous words had been too much. “The kids are still young, Bert. I know… I think I know how you feel, but… I can’t say that I know all of how you feel, not after…”

Gilbert remained silent.

“Stay, Bert. The kids still need you. You might not think so, but they will. We talked with the farmers and porters. They’re all Experts, proper Experts, not like me. Kitool, she said that I’m pretty close, I just need more training. They weren’t always like that though, they say Adam helped more than anything. Two, three years, and you’ll be an Expert too.”

“There’s no way.”

“There’s a lot of things you can say that about, but is this really that impossible? You didn’t see what Adam did to Viper and Python. What you saw was what he did to the Seventh Hope. You saw the way Jurot fought the Marshal, you saw how he fought the Grand Commander. These guys, they’re all monsters, but a few years ago, three or four years ago, they were weaker than me.”

“That can’t be right,” Gilbert replied, his eyes full of doubt.

“That’s what they told me. Whether you believe it or not…” Cobra shrugged. “I’m telling you what I’ve heard and saw, not that you need it. You’ve got a chance to do something here. The farmers and their families, they’re still not situated here. We are. They haven’t signed the contracts yet, just like us. We’ll be some of the first people in the business. Even if I’m not a proper Expert, I just need to work harder than the others. The farmers and porters, they don’t seem like they want to grow much stronger, but we could. Experts first, then Masters, then more.”

“You should speak with the Ray,” Gilbert replied. ‘You’re crazy too, Cobra…’

“You should speak with Adam.”

“…”