Lyla recovered quickly and within moments was sitting up and gingerly exploring the extent of her injuries. The slice to her side had scarred over to nothing more than a thin puckered line. Though the stitches were still in and should have been removed ages ago.

That couldn’t be right. How could she have been asleep for so long? Who would have been caring for her bodily needs? And why would she still be in the same mud-caked and blood-stained clothes?

Yet she wasn’t completely still in her clothes. The bottom half of her tunic had been cut away to make it easier to treat the injury and when she lifted her arms the new “hem” rose indecently high. Some of the hip had been cut out of her trousers, but only enough to see if the blood there had been from further hidden injuries. A fairly professional job all in all if one ignored the fact that she had woken up with someone’s tongue in her mouth.

Okay, that wasn’t quite fair. She should have stopped the poor bloke before his lips touched hers. But, in her defense, her brain had been fairly addled at the time. And…she’d kissed him back. She gazed down at the dried blood crusting her hands as she mulled that thought over.

Lyla’s head jerked toward the door when it opened, grateful that it had interrupted her thoughts. She didn’t have time for illicit kisses and handsome strangers. Outside she could hear someone; two someone’s, at least, discussing something. Probably her, she mused at the cracked open door. One voice was tense and whiney; the other was deep and sweetly jovial. A third interjected a gravelly comment which cut off the two other voices. Hopefully, they were discussing a suitable punishment for whoever had been kissing girls without permission.

“I understand your concerns My Lord, but why is it necessary to keep your identity secret from the girl?” Oh, Gods. The Magistrate was a whiney little shit. “And honestly, all I want to do is speak to her and find out what happened. The message said that the village needed help, but she had obviously been wounded. Did the attack occur before the message had been written or while she was on the road?”

His long skinny nose and greased-back hair gave the impression of a weasel or some other slick and wet rodent. Rengard’s immense dislike of the man had created an irrational desire to run him through. That desire was causing an itch in the palm of his sword hand. Deep calming breaths and controlled rhythmic flexing of the affected fingers were all that kept the Magistrate alive and Rengard Lan from being disinherited.

“I’ve already explained that no one is to know that I am here. I’ve not more than twenty men with me. It was just a reminder to not let it slip.” The Magistrate had a habit of letting things slip when he felt it would be advantageous to his position. He let things slip a lot. It was how he became Magistrate.

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“If I may, My Leige…” The elderly doctor interjected and Rengard nearly sighed with relief. “I understand the delicacy of the situation. I will go and explain to the girl about her injuries and her condition. I will simply tell her that there is a mage with healing powers in the city and that once the spell had been cast one of the warriors on hand at the time,” The old man gestured to the Imperial prince nervously “yourself, volunteered to breathe his own life into her.”

“Thank you.” Tension dropped out of Rengard’s shoulders and the prince’s anxiety was eased a little for the first time since his arrival that someone in this Gods forsaken city actually understood prudence. Pausing before the door, the doctor turned back with a question.

“What should I tell her your name is when she asks?” The old man queried. With a guilty start of surprise, the prince jolted out of himself a bit.

“What makes you think that she’s going to ask what my name is?” The doctor chuckled with the knowing hindsight of experience.

“She’ll want to thank the man who saved her life. Though from the slap she gave you it is likely not to be an enthusiastic thank you.”

“If, she asks,” Rengard offered hesitantly “Tell her my name is Lan. It’s what my men call me.” The doctor shrugged and wandered into the Magistrate’s opulently appointed office and approached the girl on the lounge. In the sumptuous dark wood-paneled hallway Rengard Lan leaned back against the wall and bashed his thick head against it a few times in self-castigation.

“Gods, how could I be so stupid?” She was an Ordered Magic wielder, the perfect complement to his Imperial Chaos blood. The young prince had inadvertently exposed himself to her magic and now the only thought which burned in his mind was to possess her body, heart, and soul. Lan didn’t even know her name.

“Whatever is the matter Sire?” The alarmed Magistrate stepped back from this most unroyal behavior.

“I should have cast the spell and had one of the other men breathe life into her.” He explained miserably. “She’s never going to trust me now. How am I supposed to get her to help me protect her people if she thinks…?” He didn’t finish the sentence and instead continued with a different ending. “…If she doesn’t trust me?” It wasn’t a lie, exactly, but Rengard knew the Magistrate could not be trusted to know the whole truth.

“If it is any help…” The Magistrate volunteered tentatively. “When I first began in this post, none of the outlying villages trusted me. But by working hard for them, and responding quickly to their requests, I was able to earn their trust. While you might not think much of me, these people do. Enough so that they would send a young woman on her own with a Courier’s Case.”

Rengard Lan conceded that the Magistrate had a point. The people here fairly worshipped the Magistrate. There was little respect from outsiders who did not give much consideration to the people of the port city or their administrators. But the citizens this obnoxious fluff-brained administrator looked after? They adored him.

Huffing a non-committal possible agreement with the man just to get him to shut up, Rengard just leaned against the wall once more and brooded.