Swampbelly leaned back in his chair and sighed, contented.

“I love a fire on a rainy night. Especially when it gets to monsoon like this.”

His guests found no such comfort in it. Clarke and Alouella and Gwen huddled around the fire, stripped down to skivvies and waiting for their clothes to dry hanging next to the fire. Mrs. Swampbelly cooked and worked around them, offering what comfort she could in the form of stew.

Alouella seemed especially drawn into herself, mindlessly picking at the bowl in her lap, slapping the spoon into it. They'd told her what had happened, where Wade was and why. They'd expected anger from her, maybe some yelling but she'd taken in the news, her eyes falling into her lap as conflicting emotions tore at her brain and the things she believed.

Clarke had taken to writing in his book, the only part of their equipment he still had. Everything on the wagon was likely lost. Gwen busied herself filling her mouth.

“Pardon me...Mr. Swampbelly?”

Alouella spoke and he nodded at her.

“Yes?”

“I need to know. What makes the lizardfolk hate elves so much? Someone tried to tell us but we didn't know it would be this bad and...maybe if we'd known what we were coming into we'd have been better prepared.”

Clarke cocked an ear, quietly turning to a blank page.

Swampbelly scratched his chin.

“What, bards don't talk about it? Or have the elves just forgotten it?”

He seemed a little snappy but when Alouella just stared attentively he sighed and sat back.

“Well...I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sneer at you. Even if I'm a little more tolerant than most it's just what we've been told all our lives. Those that don't ever leave our homelands like Shortsight back there absorb it and absorb it until it's all they can believe.”

Valerie handed him a pipe, topped up with tobacco. He took a puff, inhaling history and blowing it out to begin.

“I won't tell you the long version. But for hundreds and hundreds of years the elves had a nice little city on the coast. Humans and dwarves too but it was mostly elves and, as we all know, a whole mess of elves take to magic like a giswird takes to fish. Which ain't that bad, all alone. But wizards get weird the more they learn, the more it gets into their heads and it gets into the elves heads more than any other.”

Gwen raised her hand.

“What's a giswird?”

“Those big birds you see the guards riding, now hush.”

He took another puff and Clarke thought briefly about whether to include Gwen's question. He left it in and quietly pondered if Whaler's Wharf was the same city he meant. Likely but he'd ask later.

“Now magic can be used for a lot of things and one of those things it can be used for is experimentation. You know those kinds of spells that make you stronger, faster, let you fly, spells that affect you? I imagine the elves around here thought it would be a lot safer to use the spells on the 'stupid' lizard people since there were so many of us and, hey, we're not people right? So it's okay to tear our societies apart and-”

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He calmed himself, took another puff of his pipe. That settled his nerves for him to continue.

“Because that's what they did. Kidnapped big groups of us, experimented on us, turned us into monsters sometimes, the way we hear it. There used to be some of these monstrous changed lizard people running around here as little as ten years ago. Some say there still are, closer to the city, near the ruins of that kingdom that was destroyed in a flash of light about twenty years ago.”

Swampbelly seemed surprised, the pipe dropping from his mouth and caught in his claws. Clarke looked where he stared and Alouella shook, tears in her eyes. Gwen was the first to speak, little flecks of soup firing from her mouth.

“What's wrong?”

Alouella wiped her eyes.

“It's just so horrible. Why would anyone DO that? Wizards know magic is risky but we accept those risks, we don't push them off onto others. It's disgusting!”

Swampbelly shook his head.

“You're a good kid then cause it went on for years. There wasn't much we could do except hide out here and try to avoid being caught while our numbers dwindled. That was when they'd start taking our hatchlings during their hatching ceremony. It's always been tradition to let hatchlings find their way from the laying grounds to the city on their own. It meant we got the strongest or luckiest or most clever ones but for a long time, even in the safest places, slavers have been snatching them up.”

“And Wade...he was one of them.”

Clarke nodded.

“That's what he said. Though to be fair he did seem really shaken up about it. I don't think it was where he wanted his life to go.”

Alouella took a deep breath, cleared her emotions from her face and wiped her eyes.

“I'm sorry about all of that Mr. Swampbelly.”

“No, it wasn't you-”

“But it was my very recent people. Once this adventure is over I'll do my best to improve relations with lizardfolk. You deserve better than what you got and I don't want elves to be hurt for what a few elves did. And I'll make Wade make up for what he did too.”

Clarke closed his book.

“We'll have to save him first. Can you tell us where they hold prisoners?”

“I can.”

Everyone startled at the sound of Wormwood appearing in their midst, casually leaning against the wall with a bowl of soup in hand.

“I feel a little overdressed.”

“Where did you come from?”

Gwen yelled, hand clutching her chest where her heart pounded on ribs.

“I've been here a little while. Long enough to hear about elves. Terrible thing that. Luckily it came to an abrupt end twenty years ago with the destruction of the city.”

“That's right. It was such a stroke of luck that we made it into a yearly celebration.”

“Tsk, tsk, celebrating the destruction of a whole city. That's awfully...savage of you.”

Swampbelly gripped the arms of his chair and bared his teeth at Wormwood.

“You wouldn't know anything about-”

“Or maybe I would because I remember when you monsters tried to hunt us down when we fled the city. Not just elves...you took it out on everyone that night-”

Alouella had risen by this point and crossed the room to clap him across the jaw. The sharp sound silenced every other sound except the fire. Wormwood smiled and rubbed his face.

“It seems I let my manners escape momentarily. Shall we get back to rescue plans then?”

He bowed slightly at Swampbelly who settled back down.

“Water under the giswird, as they say.”

There was something nasty back behind his smile, some tenseness of his jaw that saw that water stagnating instead of passing but there were other matters at hand to attend to.

“Wade is being held in the jail over on the west side of this pit. The guards were having a ball taunting him when I left. The jails weren't exactly built for humans as there's about a shin heights worth of water on the floor.”

Ideas floated through the combined minds of jail breaks and sneaky prisoner theft until Swampbelly spoke up.

“He could try fighting for his freedom.”

“How would that work?”

Clarke asked.

“It's a society founded on strength of arm. Of course beating someone up would prove innocence of a crime.”

Wormwood sneered as he spoke but Swampbelly nodded.

“That's basically it. You can fight for your innocence but who and how you fight is determined by the crime. For something like what they're accusing your Wade friend of, it'd be to the death and likely against a number of guards. It's basically a death sentence for more extreme crimes, the difference being it hurts more than just being executed.”

“That's crazy.”

Alouella said.

“Perfect for Wade though. How do we get him to challenge for it?”

“Someone will have to tell him to challenge for it, make it known. So we gotta have someone tell him.”

Eyes turned to Wormwood who already knew the way and was still half wet. He stopped mid sip from his soup bowl and rolled his eyes.