The Riftlings had destroyed my skiff. I figured it wasn’t a lot to pay for the victory I had just won, but I was still deeply annoyed as I looked at the wreckage of it, torn into and ripped apart with claws and teeth. I stared at it for a moment, my leg already protesting the idea of walking back to the Highcity, but I didn’t have much of a choice.

Sighing, I took a moment to finally examine the injury. The bolt had seared through several inches of flesh, but it was hard to see what damage had been caused by the original bolt at this point, due to the entire area being rotted black and purple. Temporarily pouring Rift energy into an open wound to force one’s body to function was just about the worst thing a person could do to an injury, really. Not that that fact had ever stopped me from doing it when circumstances demanded. It was going to cost me though; a healing job that probably should have been done in a night was going to take closer to a week, longer if I kept trying to make it work normally.

I didn’t have much choice other than to walk back, but I decided to make the sacrifice of allowing the trip to take longer to avoid making the rot worse. The next few days weren’t going to be particularly fun. I used the shredded rags from a spare shirt I had had in the skiff to make a makeshift bandage and wrap it around the injury, mostly to keep prying eyes from noticing how it looked, and then started heading off, part of me wishing I hadn’t bothered to bring my rifle at all. It wasn’t like I had used it, and now I was going to have to carry it back.

I thought about stopping at one of the villages, resting there for a few days, giving my leg a little more time to heal, but I was worried about what else would go wrong while I was away from Ildanach, anxiety pushing me forwards. Besides, there wasn’t actually a place to stop that wasn’t at least slightly out of my way. Ild-Iyer was closest, and if what I’d heard from Ava had been correct, there wouldn’t be much for me there anyway.

Before I headed off properly, I got down on my knees, avoiding how most of my body protested that particular action, and thanked the Lady Death.

I’m the one who saved you, the demon in my mind pointed out, perhaps a bit surly, as I stood after the brief prayer.

Thank you, too.

He snorted, but seemed appeased.

How’s the caravan coming? I asked Teris as I started walking, limping really, across the plains.

Nearly across the border. I should be back in time for your arrival at the Highcity.

I hummed. The only sound became the uneven thudding of my boots. It took me about two minutes of that to reach out to Teris again. So. You see anything interesting lately?

He was bemused by the question, I could tell, but he didn’t dismiss it. Did you know that pigeons can read signs?

I blinked a few times as I continued walking. You’re serious?

Neither of us can lie.

I conceded that point and then thought about it a little bit more. How do you know that?

I asked one.

So, all birds speak the same language?

No, of course not. I just know pigeon.

I honestly couldn’t tell if he were screwing with me or not, so I decided to let it go. You got anything else interesting for me?

I’m not a random fact generator, you know.

I was looking for something more along the lines of a story?

I already told you that I don’t remember much of anything interesting, Teris pointed out.

Oh, come on. Humor me?

I could feel him rolling his eyes at me, but then he grew quiet, thinking. I remember a story of a place far, far from here, where dragons lived in the sky, and water poured from the heavens, flowing down to the ground below. I remember a story of a great king, an emperor, blessed of the dragon-gods, who sacrificed himself to unite the warring clans. Yet though he burned in the fire, he walked away unharmed and instituted his rule for a hundred years of peace. He stopped. Or something like that.

Sounds like an interesting story. Did you read it somewhere?

I suppose I must have. It doesn’t sound very much like a tale that could actually occur.

Well, thank you for the story.

I’ll see you back at the Highcity, Teris told me in a clear goodbye, and I let him get back to his chatting with pigeons, or whatever he was doing.

I decided I wouldn’t push myself to walk too fast, but I wasn’t going to stop for the night. I would just spend it staring at the stars anyway, so I figured I may as well continue making progress. It took me about three days to make it back to the city. On the fifth dawn since my departure, I could see the gates, but I took a detour into the forest rather than heading right for them, heading into the forest for the location of the temple, looking for Priest.

I didn’t find him. Part of me wanted to believe perhaps he had left, gone to Berd, taken shelter, done any of the things I had tried to get him to do to save his life. I knew he hadn’t, though. I looked around for a grave, but there was nothing. Had they buried him in the slums, then, after his execution? I needed to find it, wherever it was, to speak the rites over his body. I prayed he had been given a swift death.

I limped my way back to the main gate around mid-morning, close to noon, and watched the guards scramble to let me in as they saw me coming, shock written all over their faces. The normal satisfaction I felt at such things was no where to be found, though. Not today.

I stopped dead just a few feet inside of the gate, eyes glued to a large wooden cross, raised high and tall above the city walls and implanted in the ground here in the outskirts. On it, arms spread, naked and rotting, was Priest’s corpse.

My breathing grew unsteady, vision swarming with red. Maskless, humiliated, hanging for all to see– he had done nothing to deserve this. He was a good man.

The pain in my leg forgotten, I ran up to the sentry towers overlooking the gate and grabbed the first soldier I saw by the collar, the man looking at me with wide, terrified eyes.

“Your eyes–” he stammered.

Distantly, I realized they were probably glowing purple. “Get. Him. Down,” I growled, pointing at the cross with my other hand.

“The Highlord ordered,” the man began again.

“The Highlord isn’t the one about to kill you,” I hissed, dropping one of my many concealed knives into my hand to punctuate the threat. “Get. Him. Down.”

A small collection of people were staring at us now but keeping well away from me.

The man I had in my grasp was shaking. “Y-yes, sir.”

I let him go unceremoniously and started heading further into the city, the knife still in my hand.

“Leon!”

I didn’t turn.

“Leon, I’m so glad you’re back, but I need to–”

A hand landed on my right shoulder, and I spun around, right arm raising to dislodge the grip before I put my left forearm to the man’s neck and slammed him backwards into a nearby house, civilians around me gasping and quickly moving away. The knife was in my right hand, and I raised it to his throat.

“Don’t make me put my knee somewhere unfortunate, man.”

The casual response finally broke through the haze of rage, and I looked at the face of the person talking to me before letting him go. “Hector.”

“You saw the cross, I assume,” he said with a grimace, rubbing the back of his head.

“I’m going to kill Rufais.” It wasn’t a threat so much as a statement of fact.

“What I’m about to tell you isn’t going to make you any less mad, but I need you to take a breath and think about it reasonably,” Hector said.

“What else did he do?” my voice was flat, emotionless, but my hands were trembling. Part of me wished I had another army in front of me that I could slaughter.

“He revoked the deal you made with your team. They’re in jail. All of them.”

There was dead silence for a moment.

“You up for some regicide with me, then?” I said, the tightness in my voice undermining my attempt at casual.

“Say we manage to get through all his guards, manage to kill him. Then what? do you think no one will have the common sense to go take revenge? Besides, he’s not the one who technically took them into custody.”

“What?” I asked icily.

“Dahl did. But that’s not even why I stopped you. You’re under arrest too.”

“I just came back from–”

“I know,” Hector said quickly. “But are you really going to kill the soldiers you fought next to? Are you going to kill Garret? my men? Because you’re going to have to if you plan to fight this with your blades.”

I growled in frustration and pointlessly slammed my fist into one of the nearby stone walls. Something cracked, and it wasn’t the wall. The pain made it easier to think, though, and I took a deep breath.

“So, what do you suggest?”

“You’re going to be arrested,” Hector said flatly, holding up his hands when I glared at him. “There’s no getting around it, unless you’re going to slaughter Ildanach’s army next. You’ll go to jail. With any luck, you can meet up with your team there. Either way, I’ll talk to Ennis, I’ll talk to Jesne–”

“Jesne?” I repeated blankly. “Sryes? The Crusader?”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Hector nodded. “She showed up the day after you left, said you’d mentioned some things before you left and she wanted to know more. We had a long talk, and she’s the one who told me that your team had been taken. They weren’t real noisy about it. She’s an ally.”

“Or she’s a spy.”

“You’re disinclined to believe anything good right now, which is understandable but unhelpful, so I’m going to ignore that,” Hector told me flatly, and I rolled my eyes even though he had a point. “I’ll talk to Ennis and Jesne. If we can make negotiations work, we’ll do that. If not, we’ll be in to break you out in a week at the most. I need you to trust me.”

I looked at him rather sharply. “I hate it when you use that against me,” I said after a short beat, sighing deeply.

“Consider this a replacement for that free hit you promised me,” Hector said wryly, and then abruptly pulled me into a hug. “I’m glad you’re back.”

I took a deep breath and then clapped him on the back. “Yeah. I was happier about it ten minutes ago.”

“Understandable. It looks like you’re still under the radar, so if you want to–”

“Captain Wolfe! Stand back. Chazer, you’re under arrest.”

“What, did he strip my rank too?” I asked Hector somewhat rhetorically, looking over at the dozen or so soldiers in the street with General Chirone at their front, smiling smugly.

“No, actually. He’s still a Captain, Chirone.”

The smile slipped from Chirone’s face to be replaced with a nasty scowl. “And I’m still a General, Wolfe!” he snapped. “You’re lucky I’m not arresting you for aiding and abetting! Unless that hug was your way of disarming him,” he mocked.

“Actually,” I said, painting a smile on my face, refusing to let him get to me, “he was in the process of arresting me.” I unclipped my back sheath, and, under the carefully watchful eyes of the soldiers, I slowly took it off and handed it to Hector, suddenly feeling deeply, terribly exposed. The rifle went to him too, and then, slowly, my coat. I didn’t want to risk it being damaged or lost, but I had to repeat that to myself almost like a mantra as I handed it over, resisting the urge to hunch my shoulders up under the sudden feeling of exposure.

Hector accepted them with a knowing look. At least I knew he’d take care of them.

Chirone made an irritated noise and then gestured for a couple of his men to take me into custody.

They hesitated briefly and then grabbed my arms and pulled my hands behind my back, tying them there with some coarse rope.

I tensed, every muscle and bone in my body wanting to resist, to struggle and break free, to run. But my team was here. And Hector had asked me to trust him. I didn’t break eye contact with him as the guards steered me away and over to the larger regiment of troops.

“See you on the other side,” Hector promised me.

“You better,” I muttered faintly as the troops around me started marching along a path I knew very well– a path to the Peacekeeper Station, where I had worked with these men and many others for the last year and a half. I was in the midst of them again, this time with no weapons and without the use of my hands.

I forced myself not to think about it, not to think about the shame, not to think about the way Priest’s body had been desecrated, the way I felt naked without my swords and coat. I forced the rage to stay buried, to keep my head held high and a light look on my face even as I was escorted through the city, flanked by men I once would have considered comrades in arms.

Chirone called a halt outside of the station and walked up to me, a light of revenge in his eyes. “You know, that mask of yours is a sign of heresy. Illegal within the walls of the Ildanach. Seeing as how you’re a criminal now, I hardly see why you should be permitted to continue flaunting our laws while in our jail. Besides, that’s real gold, isn’t it? Bet it’ll fetch a pretty price to the right buyer.”

I met Chirone’s eyes, rage winning the fight over sense for the second time today, making my body shake with it. “If you lay a single finger on it,” I promised him, quiet and honest, “I will kill you where you stand.”

“With what? You’re bound–”

“The combined armies of Aeron and Tirnaog said something similar. ‘With what armies,’ they asked me. Their corpses stain the fields of Aldras now. Touch it, and your life is forfeit.”

Chirone hesitated, the fear flashing in his eyes. But that was why he was a General– so he could order other men to do the things he feared to do. “Take his mask,” he ordered one of the men standing to my right.

I turned my gaze to him. “I imagine you signed up because the city’s worth dying for to you, cause you have family here or something you love. Is he worth dying for to you?” I gestured with my head to Chirone.

The soldier swallowed, looked at the general, whose face was slowly turning redder. “His eyes are glowing, sir. What kind of man–”

I really needed to get a handle on that, I thought vaguely, though without the slightest attempt to do so immediately. I didn’t really want to kill any of these kids, but I would. I would in a heartbeat.

“Just take his bloody mask!” Chirone spat.

“What’s going on out here?”

I didn’t exhale in relief, mostly because it would indicate weakness to the moron in front of me, but I felt it regardless as General Garret Anders rounded the corner of the Peacekeeper station and advanced on us.

“Sir!” the soldier next to me immediately saluted, and I could see the relief plain enough in his eyes.

“Anders,” Chirone greeted gruffly. “It’s none of your concern.”

“It is considering I’ve been waiting since I heard you took him hostage,” Garret rebounded. “His cell is prepared. Where are his weapons and things?”

“He gave them to Wolfe,” Chirone said through partially gritted teeth, clearly hating the intervention but not exactly able to do anything about it. Petty revenge and his desire to sell my personal property wasn’t the kind of thing that held up unless he was only speaking to his subordinates.

“Then what’s taking so long?” Garret demanded, walking over and taking my arm, starting to personally escort me down to the dungeons.

Chirone let him, barking orders to his men to fall back into rank and follow behind as he stormed after us a few feet behind.

“I’m sorry about this, Leon,” Garret said to me quietly as we descended. “I’m going to assume you’re not stupid enough to be here without a plan, and I’m glad about that, but I can’t help. I’m sorry.”

“Wasn’t going to ask or mention it, General,” I responded quietly as he led me down a dark stairs under a heavy wooden trap door in the ground, behind and to the left of the Peacekeeper station. I tried to ignore the way that the walls immediately felt as though they were closing in on me, the way the air instantly gained a stale dampness to it that made me feel like I was suffocating.

Tiana was in the first room at the bottom of the steps, holding the log book in her hands and looking quite determinedly at it, rather than at us.

Garret stopped in front of her, me with him, allowing Chirone to catch up to us, though he appeared to have left his retinue outside after apparently remembering the narrowness of the staircase.

Keeper Ialdi took a short breath. “Prisoner name?” she asked the traditional question. I noticed her hand shaking as she readied to write in the book.

“Elyon Kazere, Captain,” Garret said in his normal gruff voice, though his grip tightened slightly on my arm as he spoke.

They both knew it was wrong. It wasn’t a comforting thought; instead, it sickened me. They knew it was wrong, but they weren’t doing anything, wouldn’t help me if I asked, wouldn’t endanger or implicate themselves in any of it. And if Rufais ordered me to be hung, they would go along with it. What good was knowing right from wrong if we didn’t do what we knew was right?

Tiana shakily wrote my name in the book before announcing, “Cell thirty-four.”

“I would like credit for his booking, Keeper,” Chirone said as he came up behind us. “I know, of course, that Anders wouldn’t attempt to steal my arrest, and probably already informed you, but I was the one who brought him in–”

“Yes, that’s fine,” Garret said, clearly irritated.

I don’t know why I spoke up. Maybe I just had an incessant need to be an unrelenting pest. Or maybe I just wanted to take a final jab at all of them. “The guidelines say that the person who spoke my name for the log is officially the one who completed the arrest,” I said, planting my feet and preventing Garret from towing me into the cell block. “Garret Anders gets the arrest. After all, we would all just hate for anything not to be by the book, wouldn’t we? I mean, imagine if we behaved in opposition to the edicts that had been handed down based on what we knew to be true and right. Why, we might even find ourselves releasing the man who has saved every single one of your lives countless times rather than following the orders of a madman. And that simply wouldn’t do.”

Not a one of them met my eyes.

Garret’s grasp briefly lessened on my arm.

And then he reestablished his grip and finished taking me through the door.

The cell block consisted of straight rows of little cubes stacked next to each other, connected to both one another and the hallway with steel bars. There were ten on the left hand side while only nine on the right, an empty space where the tenth would have been serving as a turn in the hallway that would lead to the next row, currently out of sight. I’d always avoided this place; I hated the underground, the darkness, the cold stone walls and their suffocating nature. I was pretty sure I had technically logged zero arrests during my time as Captain, always getting Hector to bring them to the prisons proper, but I’d still had to come down here on occasion. Before, I’d always been free to leave.

The dungeon was mostly empty, with the two cells nearest to the exit holding a few drunkards who had been arrested for disorderly conduct or maybe some scuffling. We walked all the way down to the end of the first row of cells and then even around the corner to go down the next. About halfway through, he opened one of the cells on our left, the furthest row we’d seen from the door, and drew a knife to cut my ropes once I was behind the door.

“I’m sorry about this,” Garret told me as he severed the scratchy ropes, letting them fall to the ground at our feet.

“Sorry doesn’t mean much if you still do it,” I pointed out coldly.

Garret’s eyes flashed with a bit of defiant anger this time. “I have a daughter here, Elyon,” he snapped. “I have her future to think of! Her wellbeing. Not everything is about you.”

I tilted my head at him slightly, asking the next question genuinely. “Do you think I didn’t know that? Her name is Amanda. Sometimes she brings you baked goods when she knows you’re going to be stuck in meetings all day, leftovers that she makes for her job with the Chantry’s outreach program in the slums. And I’m sure she’ll be far safer in a city ruled by a madman who can’t tell his friends from his enemies, with one of the only people who– for reasons that are honestly beyond me at this point– seems to have the actual wellbeing of the city at heart behind bars. Much better for her, I’m sure.”

Garret clenched his jaw and slammed the door shut. “A madman who will have her killed if he perceives me as a traitor,” he hissed.

“I’m sure the people working for Akuma thought much the same. Now most of the West is under his thumb, and it’s a guarantee that anyone who speaks out dies. These things definitely don’t have a history of escalating.”

“You don’t have family here! You speak out, you flaunt your power, what do you have to lose?” Garret slammed his hand against the cell bars. “I am sorry, Leon, but I will not trade my daughter’s life for your freedom. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” Without giving me much of a chance to respond again, he stormed away.

What did I have to lose? I nearly started laughing, picking up the rope that had fallen at my feet, which he definitely hadn’t been supposed to leave in here with me, and absently toying with it. “Everything except my life,” I said quietly into the darkness, and then I did breathe a short, mirthless laugh.

“You know, talking to yourself and laughing ominously in the darkness isn’t a great look.”

I, admittedly, nearly jumped out of my skin, whirling to peer into the darkness of the cell on my left at the wry female voice emanating from it. “I honestly didn’t realize anyone was back here with me. I’m Leon.”

Movement in the darkness as my eyes adjusted helped me to make out the slim form of a dark-skinned woman with brown eyes and long black hair, wearing all black desert garb typical of several places in the West as she walked over to the bars that separated our cells. “Didn’t expect to see another Westerner out here,” she said instead of giving me her name in return. “You really have such a boring name, or did you just tame it down for all these insufferable Northerners?”

I breathed a laugh at that, almost immediately liking the woman. “It’s Elyon Kazere. I didn’t expect to see another Westerner down here either.”

“The accent didn’t tip you off?” she noted wryly. “Mine’s a lot stronger than yours.”

“I’ve been here for a while. Mind if I ask what brought you to these lovely accommodations?”

“Got involved in something over my head,” she said vaguely. “Paid the somewhat predictable price.”

“You’re not terribly forthcoming, are you?” I drawled.

“Why should I be? We’re strangers who met in a dungeon. And from your little speech there, you feel like the idealistic type.”

I very nearly burst out laughing; it was a close call. “I think you mispronounced “manipulative”.”

She paused, apparently taken back by the answer, and then let out a short chuckle. “Regardless, this doesn’t seem like the best of places to make new friends.”

“Really? I’ve made most of my friends in prisons of some kind or another.”

“I feel like that’s a reflection on your character judgment skills more than anything else.”

“Can’t argue there; I am notoriously awful at that. Still, I have a pretty good feeling about you.”

“That cannot say anything good about me,” she said, but she was smiling.

“Or maybe I’m finally turning things around. Either way, what harm can it really do for you to give someone on death row your name? We’re going to be our only conversation partners for a bit, after all.”

“I like the solitude.”

“Is that why you spoke up the second we were alone?” I challenged.

She narrowed her eyes at me slightly before she smiled again and finally conceded. “My name is Raesh Erendi.”

And that was when I realized that Hector was an absolute genius.