In the cramped back kitchen of a silent tavern, the three of them stood frozen .

In the center of the kitchen's flagstone floor, upon a careworn wood table, rested a single sputtering candle.

Its lone flickering flame, painted the walls in long dancing shadows.

In one corner of the kitchen, with her back to the wall, stood a panting, terrified woman.

Lacaani - the go-between - who minutes before had seemed so calm - so cool and self assured - now cringed away from them - her eyes flitting back and forth between them. She was suddenly like some scared, rabid animal that didn’t know where it was or how it got there.

Sherlot stood half out of his chair, eyes fixed on Lacaani, examining the woman with wide curious eyes. He seemed in equal part - horrified and fascinated. Elrik could see the wheels turning in Sherlot's head as he observed her, trying to make sense of it.

Elrik stood with his hand on his hilt, his heart beating fast. He was still trying understand the last several minutes. The voice in his head sounded again - urgent and urging.

[Get out of there]

[Get the fuck out of there. Now]

[Rear exit idiot. Move]

“The back door”

Elrik whispered, but his voice still sounded far too loud in his ears, "There are men coming, armed. We need to leave"

[Move faster! Now!]

Sherlot turned, brows furrowing, not fully understanding Elrik's words, "What just happened to that woman Corpor-?"

But Elrik grabbed him by the arm, before he could complete the question. He half shoved the skinny young lord, pushing him towards the back door before himself, "We need to move now, Lord Sherlot. Questions later. We're in danger"

Sherlot met his eyes,

Elrik reached for the woman, to grab her as well, but Lacaani jerked away like a wounded beast, her eyes narrowing, her lips drawing into a feral snarl.

Well.. he'd tried

In a heartbeat, a spate of thoughts raced through his mind. He was tempted to go - to leave her and run, but he knew, somehow, deep in the pit of his stomach - he knew - that she would be dead a minute after they were out that door. He didn't know her - he shouldn't care, really.

But. But she was here because he'd called her here. She was his only lead on Agrisu.

She didn't need to die.

Elrik tried again, gentler this time, reaching out his hand instead of grabbing for her, "We have to leave. Now. Please"

Maybe some of her sanity was returning - maybe she sensed something in his eyes.. Elrik wasn't sure, but Lacaani relented, letting him take her hand and lead her through the door. He didn't have time to question it right now.

Sherlot and Lacaani fell behind Elrik as he went through the door in the back of the kitchen. Behind the door lay a narrow passageway to another door, but that one looked as if it led outside.

As they walked silently along the passage, Elrik heard indistinct sounds at the edge of his hearing.

[Wide area anti surveillance system: Armed men closing in - multiple hostiles]

[Threat measurement system: advisory: immediate rapid covert retreat]

Warnings and assessments buzzed in his mind, but Elrik was already moving.

In quick, quiet steps they reached the end of the passage and Elrik's hand closed over the door knob.

He turned and met eyes with Sherlot, motioning with his hands, his meaning clear

When I open the door - run

Elrik twisted open the door and-

...

Elrik's hand instinctively wrenched his blade from its scabbard - as he saw - as he felt - the sword point fly past his face and into the throat of the woman beside him.

He felt the spray of arterial blood on the side of his face.

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Stupidly, he turned and saw Lacaani, her throat run through, staring helplessly at the blade. For a second it looked like it was Yena, standing there. Dying.

Elrik's eyes went to the blade, turning back, as his gaze traveling up its length, to its hilt, and to the hand that held it.

In the dark of the passage, with only the light of the distant candle, all he saw was an indistinct shadow of an armored soldier coming at him.

His sword had already been moving, as if his hand had instincts of its own. The sword flew up, hilt first, as he drew it from the scabbard. He twisted, bringing the hilt of the sword into a sharp, hard punch into the soldier's temple. The man crumpled and fell - suddenly lifeless.

As the next soldier came at him, Elrik leaned easily out of the way, letting the coming slash pass by him. He turned his blade and braced his stance, letting the other soldier impale himself on the sword, driven onto it by his own momentum. Elrik drew the blade out of the skewered man in a smooth motion, letting her drop to the ground.

Elrik stopped.

The soldier had been a woman - that he'd just skewered with his blade like a cheap kabab. He looked down at her. Wide glassy brown eyes stared back up at him. A trickle of blood wept from the corner of her mouth. She gave a low gurgle, and a bit of blood bubbled at her lips. There was a mole on the right side of the face.

Wha-

For a second, he saw a flash of another dark night, on a riverbank, as he ran another female soldier through.

With a wet crunch, his spear impaled the soldier through the heart. For a second she stood there, staring down at the spear - now through her..

Elrik blinked, his thoughts suddenly frozen.

When he looked up, there was a single shadow standing there. It raised a sword in a mock salute.

Then, without warning it blurred into sudden unnatural movement.

[Incoming head-on attack! dod-]

…

All his life, Sherlot had always seen.

Everyone else around him seemed to look, but no one else seemed to really see.

It had always come easy to him.

No.. it was more as if it was impossibly hard for him to not see - what everyone else somehow missed.

As he passed through life, the little incongruities, the little lies, the little things out of place always stood out to him like shining beacons.

They caught his attention like thorns on a bush catching a cloak as you walked past it. He could never bring himself to simply walk on by.. not without first untangling the whole story.

When he was very young, he was quite enamored with himself. It had felt like a kind of magic - a great truth-seeing eye!

But very soon, as time went on, he understood.. He was not gifted, no, he was crippled.

The whole world was cloaked in lies. Everyone, from the most humble manservant, stealing his master's wine, to the highest lords of the land, with their mistresses and secret plots, everyone wore a fine cloak of lies.

It was a curse to see it all - to look around and see nothing but every secret and lie laid bare. Sherlot was well sick of it.

He'd started to look for cures. Wine in ever increasing doses seemed to dull his senses, at least at fist. Selessi, when the wine failed him.

Then, when he was at his lowest point, when the mages refused him, his father came to him.

Sherlot had always had a strange relationship with his father.

Unlike his brothers, who saw not an inch below the surface - Sherlot could see all that roiled beneath his father's seemingly placid facade..

He could see the quiet pride the Duke had in his youngest son's brilliance, that he never let show. Then slowly the impatience and contempt that came to replace it, when Sherlot seemed incapable of apply that brilliance to anything that the duke thought mattered.

Over time, Sherlot saw how his father came to think of him as naive, like some idiot savant. Able to see the lies, but not understand the why of them.

Sherlot had let him. It seemed easier.

Then his father, the Duke, had found him and asked him to apply his talents to the watch.. It was of course, another scheme, but Sherlot threw himself into it anyway.

When it started, it had seemed quite the adventure.

A genuinely mysterious corporal who seemed to have secrets within secrets.

The disappearance of noblewoman, gone from her locked room. Sweeping into the noble houses, with a Corporal of the city watch in tow. Rifling through her bedchambers to find and track her down. Paying informants in dark alleys. Meeting strange cloaked women in the back kitchens of seedy taverns.

For a moment there, Sherlot felt himself come alive again. His great truth seeing eye, for the first time since he was a boy, felt useful again.

But then.. things had taken a turn - in a direction Sherlot had never quite had a taste for..

Violence.. and blades in the dark.

...

The woman walked by his side, maintaining a careful distance from both him and the corporal, as they walked down the passage.

Strange.

Just minutes before, she had seemed cool, calm. Then suddenly something had happened. Sherlot knew he couldn't quite explain it - but it was as if her mind had twisted somehow - turning her confused and bewildered - and then almost feral.

Now she seemed to have recovered, somewhat, though she was silent and wary.

It reminded him of something. The way she seemed to suddenly lose herself. Sherlot tried not to let his mind wander, but it kept nagging at him.

The corporal seemed to think they were being attacked. Sherlot couldn't tell if he was right - only that that the watchman believed it himself. Sherlot let himself be taken away.

Now the corporal was another mystery.

He could see, the man was wary of him. Wary that Sherlot would give him away, or reveal his secrets.

If it would have done any good - Sherlot would have reassured him. As if he would ruin such a fascinating puzzle before he'd solved it! Besides he'd come to rather have a kind of affection

As they came to the end of the passage, Sherlot could see the Corporal gesture in the dim light. He nodded back.

Then everything went wrong.

Sherlot, in the passageway could barely see how it happened. Only that one moment the three of them waited at the door - and the next he was falling back, covered in blood - lying next to the body of the go-between, Lacaani.

He heard the sounds of a sword fight, just the thuds and shuffles of moving feet - and the dull thunk of blades.

Then he felt more than saw - a school trained blade - in that unnaturally fast movement than only the wind could grant. Like a trick, he appeared when the Corporal had been standing - while the watchman went flying like a flung stone - to hit the far wall and crumple.

Sherlot saw silhouette of the windblade walk towards him, casually swinging the flat of his blade at Sherlot's sku-