Guildmaster Bomond groaned as his aide gave the latest report. Leaning back in the folding chair of his makeshift tent office he took a sip of wine from the cup on his collapsible desk. The young man prattled on obliviously.
Eustas was hard working, but short sighted. The fool seemed wholly unaware of the grave nature of the news he imparted, which affected him as much as anyone.
Arson the previous night had spread rapidly through the carts and containers, aided by Lyanna’s careful application of oil to the dry timbers. It had been meant only as a distraction, and indeed no deaths had been reported, but the foolish girl had never spared a thought for the expedition’s supplies.
The situation was grim. The expedition couldn’t enter the inhospitable and desolate mountains until they repaired or replaced the carts that would carry their luggage, and restocked on supplies to fill them.
That meant the three cartwrights they’d brought into the Bloodsucking Forest were each commanding a dozen conscripted assistants, anyone with any experience in carpentry recruited to build and fix the vehicles.
At the same time most of the adventurers and the few foresters present were sent out in logging, hunting and foraging teams. Those with scouting ability were sent ahead to probe the mountain pass through which the expedition meant, eventually, to exit the wretched forest.
Already it was evening of the first day of their recovery, yet the report suggested they would need two more.
Just gathering suitable wood had proved a challenge. Many of the trees they felled yielded soft, unseasoned wood totally useless to the cartwrights. Even the hardwoods were still green, a very different material to work with compared to the dry, seasoned timbers of ordinary carpentry. Or so the cartwrights said, as they bitterly complained.
In the end the Baron had promised the trio a month’s wages for every cart their teams completed. The ignorant commoners were almost giddy at the paltry offer, even picking up the pace, but still there was much to be done.
With most of the adventurers out ranging, returning only intermittently to report on the lay of the land and deliver supplies, the expedition was around a quarter smaller, but the camp felt busier than ever thanks to the carpentry teams.
They were still well protected of course. The Lastborn, the Baron’s soldiers and the mercenaries were the bulk of the warriors present, a formidable force. They had also improved their fortifications, in light of the longer stay. The Lastborn refused to perform manual labor, but the other sellswords of the capital were more than happy to earn a bonus digging ditches around the camp and setting up defenses.
A network of early-warning teams had also been put in place, linked through magic to the Lastborn’s chief warmage. The details of the magic was a secret of course, but it would allow discrete advance warning of any danger. With that in mind the adventuring parties and mercenaries had been deployed further out than usual, a screen of those skilled in detection, concealed in treetop hides, able to send back warning to the camp should any monsters appear.
That was their stated purpose. They doubled as insurance that no more adventurers would try to slip away under the cover of darkness.
It shouldn’t have been an issue, but Lyanna’s foolish actions the night before had made her something of a flight risk.
Yet that was also an opportunity for the Guildmaster; a chance to control one of the top parties in Faron. To make all of their successes his own, in terms of both coin and renown.
Much though it rankled him to admit it, Lyanna might even ascend to diamond rank some day, if she didn’t throw it all away on some stupid, childish stunt like the one the previous evening. If promotion were to come for her, it would come for Bomond too.
He smirked as he drank his wine, his mood elevated by the prospect. The situation also allowed for certain other possibilities, if the girl could be cajoled, perhaps by promises of her eventual, imagined freedom….
Eustas’ rambling voice brought the guildmaster back to the report however. He had moved on to the missing beastfolk adventurer now.
‘Renold’ had escaped the previous night, but Bomond couldn’t have cared less about the man – if anything his disappearance suited the guildmaster. Even if the young fox was a disgrace to his Guild, Bomond still had a duty to advocate for him if he was to maintain his own good reputation – a duty which had already alienated the Lastborn significantly. Had the scheduled execution come to pass it would have been damaging for the expedition too – the mutinous attitudes among many adventurers would surely have intensified.
The escape was the best possible solution. The man must be dead somewhere in the forest by now – or else long gone. Either way, the trackers had lost his trail at the entrance to a goloth nest, which meant he wasn’t Bomond’s problem anymore.
His problem was getting the expedition under way again.
~~~
Exhaustion from many hours of flight, fighting and the fall, compounded with the common weariness of receiving healing magic, should have left Reynard running on empty. Instead adrenaline and anxiety kept him alert despite the pain from his injuries and his empty stomach.
He was the foothills of the Cyclopean Bones, scorched by the noon sun, lost in the middle of an army of thousands – each a naga warrior several times his match. Relaxation was entirely impossible.
If the Naga really meant to attack the expedition then it was only the vague promise of the Vizier, Pyreza, which stood between Lyanna and mortal peril. She would be far from the only innocent casualty.
Meeting the Sultan of Scales in the flesh did nothing to assuage his fears.
The encounter took place at the edge of a clearing in the forest, near the head of the army. A party of especially large, well-armed naga had halted there in the shade of a cluster of large, broad-leafed trees, perhaps to await Pyreza and Qamar bringing fresh, cool water from the river below.
Nearby a former razorfly nest had been leveled to the bare soil by some single, immensely powerful stroke. The corpses of deadly giant insects and their grubs littered the ground in pieces.
When the courtiers rejoined the main party of their liege it was instantly clear to whom they owed allegiance. Flanked by warriors that oozed martial prowess, the Sultan towered over even them, golden scales and ornaments ineffectually dulled by furs, menace naked in his imperious gaze as he looked down upon his subjects.
Wordlessly he seized a cask of water and took a deep but controlled draught. Only once he had placed it down did anyone else drink or speak.
Reynard knew not a word of whatever tongue the Naga favored, but it wasn’t hard to imagine what was being said as the vizier gave his ponderous report.
The adventurer was forgotten as the silver-blue Qamar joined in the discussion, other courtiers soon speaking up too, the meeting growing tense.
The vizier, Pyreza seemed to have a particular issue with something Qamar said, but the androgynous younger naga ignored his elder, speaking directly to the Sultan.
Pyreza raised his voice in a hiss of anger, while others present joined in, until Qamar couldn’t help but snap back with a retort.
The pink-scaled advisor was about to counter when the Sultan raised a hand and spat a single word. Quiet fell over the forest.
The golden sovereign slithered forward, and the fox felt the naga beneath him shudder as the Sultan fixed them both with his gaze.
Reynard was quickly deposited on the ground, propped up on a rock, his captor retreating as his liege loomed over the young vulpine.
Face to face with the towering coils of a monster he could never dream of surviving, Reynard froze.
“You were expelled from the human army which has invaded my domain?” asked the Sultan, in eloquent Hronan.
The voice was thick, heavy and powerful, with a sibilance that made his tail bristle, but it was the eyes that paralyzed him, sucking him in to dark, glittering depths, closing out all else.
“Answer the Sultan,” Qamar spoke quickly, shaking the adventurer by the shoulder.
The pain, both there and in his leg, helped him find his words.
“I-I was!” he stammered. “Uh… yer majestry. But we was only here to hunt!”
Anger boiled just below the surface of the huge reptilian face as it pulled closer, threatening to swallow him whole, mind and body.
“What was your quarry on this hunting expedition?”
“A monster, a m-mimic they called it. S’posed to look like humans, but it’s just a trick. Got gobs of mana and a body what can’t be cut. Spits thunder from the eyes if it looks at you. Oh, an’ it can summon swarms of razorflies and geopods and stuff when it’s mad.”
“How did the humans discover this creature?”
“It was a… friend of mine, her party met it in the forest. Musta been more’n a week ago, ‘cause we got called down from the capital around then.”
The naga courtiers present exchanged meaningful looks, but the messages they conveyed were lost on Reynard. So too were the following questions about harpies – rare monsters found in the mountains to the South – and magical ‘events’ he had never heard of.
“This is auspicious news,” the Sultan proclaimed, “the humans hunt the same prey which the Harpy Queen faced. They shall not find it. The fruits of the forest are not theirs to claim, but ours.”
He eyes found Reynard once more, with the sensation of a blade pressing to the adventurer’s throat.
“Consider yourself lucky, vulpine. Were you of their blood your life would end, here and now. Instead you shall live to see justice done to those who wronged you and invaded Naga lands. This act of war will be the death of them all.”
The vizier at his side nodded, faded scales glinting dully. “Yes, yes, as it should be. Like the great Gods, the Naga are kind to their allies and fearsome to their foes.”
Conversation continued in another tongue, the Sultan’s advisors likely discussing how best to proceed with the attack. Thanks to Reynard they knew everything necessary to ambush the party.
Qamar and Pyreza were bickering once more, but it was impossible to say why. The Sultan looked unimpressed with the pair of them, and opened his scaled lips to demand silence.
“Wait!”
Reynard’s heart pounded as he spoke the word, alien, reptilian faces all turning back to him.
“P-please don’t attack the expedition! You don’t have to do it! They ain’t here to fight you!”
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“This time,” the Sultan answered simply. “Yet they come none the less, as they have for centuries.”
I know they ain’t the best people. A lot of ‘em ain’t even good people… but some of them are. I got friends there, even human ones. They done nothing to you or the Naga and they don’t wanna fight you….”
He trailed off at the stare of the Sultan, a killing glare that froze him in place.
That hostility was mirrored on the other faces around him. Even Qamar had a coldness to their eye as they regarded the beastfolk.
The Sultan raised a hand, huge fingers outstretched towards Reynard.
The huge snake was two lengths of that powerful arm away, yet in a moment Reynard felt a rush and a sudden impact at his throat.
The Sultan squeezed, and the fox gasped and writhed in pain, blunt nails scratching in terror at the hand that engulfed his neck and threatened to snap it with a single twist.
“They have done nothing, you say? You, a beastfolk, would defend the humans and vouch for their innocence?”
The hand loosened just enough for the vulpine to whisper a response.
“Some of them saved my life.”
“And how many of them would have happily watched you die?” answered the Sultan.
Reynard could offer no response to that. Instead he thought of the Lastborn once more, of Arn and of the Baron, of his beating and his condemnation.
Venom and passion mingled in his voice as he went on.
“Were it not for generations of Naga sacrifices they would have stripped this great forest bare centuries ago, leaving only a dead and cursed land. Only our very lifeblood has prevented that, spilt by human blades, just as we have spilt theirs in return. Yet still they come, invading our homes to loot and pillage. They strip the ruins and despoil the bounty of the forest, slaughtering creatures for mere trophies and leaving the carcasses to rot, or dragging them back to feed their cities, while Naga go hungry.”
His fist tightened once more.
“They fell lihyallow trees we have tended for centuries, then slice the throats of the farmers and their livestock alike to spill the blood atop the splintered roots. They burn our homes with our children still inside them, yet they save the textiles; stolen prizes made all the more precious by the assurance that each year fewer will be woven, as they slaughter ever more of our kind.”
“They hunt down our warriors as ‘monsters’ and bring war upon any settlement they deem too ‘threatening’. Whole clans are displaced, adults slaughtered like animals and children orphaned. What were once a hundred unique cultures now number barely a quarter that. Many of those will soon be gone forever, as the last survivors die out, to leave all they built, everything they struggled to create over generations, to turn to dust and tears.”
Abruptly the Sultan released him.
Reynard fell, his injured leg giving out to send his sprawling in the needlegrass, several blades perforating his calf where the armor was missing and drawing blood.
He clutched the doubly injured appendage as he coughed and gasped for air, struggling to find his way back onto the meager safety of the rock several paces behind him.
“We Naga did not always reside here, in the humid, fearsome jungles of the Bloodsucking Forest. Once the lands you call the Hronaram Gulf were shared by many species, ours included. The humans took our homeland from us countless generations ago, but we will never forget. We will never forgive.”
“If you… attack the expedition… Bellwood’s gonna find out, even if you kill everyone,” he whispered, once safely out of the grass.
“Naturally they will, I shall see to it. The head of Baron Faron will make an excellent declaration of Naga sovereignty.”
Reynard gaped at the sheer audacity.
“But… if you do that… the humans’ll unite against you. Even Tiron’s gonna send an army if human cities get attacked by monsters!”
His heart almost stopped as bloodlust slammed into him, followed by thick, heavy essence that roiled all around, the golden naga before him exuding liquid metal essence that burnt like fire with his rage.
“You shall never speak that word again, boy!”
It was all Reynard could do to give a jerking nod of his head.
After a few more moments the pressure subsided. The display of power faded as though it were a mere dream.
“Monsters.”
The Sultan spat the word.
“There was a time, vulpine, when your kind were monsters too. But you chose the path of surrender, of subservience. The beastfolk live by the grace of the humans, a grace which they rescind as they please, on mere whim.”
He turned, looking away to the South, far across the jungle hills, towards the distant plains.
“If humans are united by one commonality it is their treachery; disloyalty is like a sickness to them. They turn on each other near as easily as upon us. If we were to move on the capital, yes, other nations would not ignore that, but they would come not as saviors. They would come as conquerors, to take Bellwood for themselves. But if the fight is over the forest itself there will be no armies sent, from Tiron or elsewhere. Bellwood claims our lands as theirs, and with that claim they seek to monopolize the riches of the Bloodsucking Forest. They refuse to share the claim, so no nation will aid them in defending it.”
Reynard knew better than to try to argue further, yet still, he couldn’t just give up.
Seeing him open his mouth, Qamar, at the Sultan’s side, gave him an imploring look. The adventurer spoke up all the same.
“If that’s right then you don’t gotta risk attacking the expedition at all. With as many soldiers as you got they’d surrender if you gave ‘em a chance. You could send the whole lot back to Faron with a warning.”
The Sultan looked back at Reynard, impassively stern once more.
“I have tolerated enough of your insolence, vulpine. We are not ungrateful for your information, but do not ask us to betray our own kind for your shallow attachment to a few humans. Their expedition will end in blood and terror.”
“What about the beastfolk with them? And Lyanna?! Her party saved me! Your vizzer promised you wouldn’t hurt them!”
The Sultan looked almost impressed, despite his anger.
“You are fearless. Or perhaps fear has made you suicidal. But my word is unbreakable. My vizier has the description of your supposed friends, does he not? My forces will not pursue them, or any beastfolk who flee. Should they attempt to stand and fight, their lives are forfeit. Be grateful. I will hear no further impudence from you, or you shall share the fate of the humans. Take him, Qamar.”
He turned away, collecting the cask of water once more for another drink.
Fuelled by fear and adrenaline both, Reynard was about to speak once more, despite his terror, but Qamar stopped him, a scaled hand stifling his mouth by force.
“Do not,” they whispered. “You are lucky he is in so kindly a mood, but you cannot speak this way to our Sultan. He has ended greater men than you for less.”
With that Reynard was taken from the presence of the courtiers once more.
Qamar saw to it that Reynard was treated well enough – he was given food and further healing – but they also ensured he was well guarded from that moment on. Whether it be to speak once more to the Sultan, or to attempt escape, the pair of naga assigned to him made either option an impossibility.
Reynard couldn’t help but resent the hospitality as a hollow gesture towards a prisoner forced to betray his own allies.
~~~
The expedition camp was raucous with sawing, hammering and shouts from the teams of bearers and lowborn mercenaries conscripted into building new wagons. The adventurers were hard at work too, but they were still out gathering supplies and scouting, every available party dispatched from camp. Every party but Thunderbolt.
There had been questions raised about Marcus during the attack the previous day, then about Lyanna herself after the meeting in which Reynard was condemned to death. They had made no friends among the expedition heads.
In the wake of the fire the Lastborn were quick to point fingers at her party, but the guildmaster had come to their aid. Bomond had vouched that he was with them throughout the incident, and that Marcus, on whom initial suspicion had fallen, had played no part in the crime. Instead the blame had fallen solely upon the vanished Reynard.
Lyanna had yet to tell her brother or Dolm the price at which this collusion came, just as she had yet to tell them what she’d been doing away from her tent during that crucial half-hour.
Marcus was blissfully unaware of the issue entirely, having been asleep.
Dolm suspected of course, especially after her private talk with the guildmaster, but he trusted her, as she’d known he would.
Marcus was less predictable however.
“Does everyone think we’re kids who just made stone rank or something? Why can’t we leave camp? Why are we sitting in a Guild mess tent ‘in reserve’?!” Marcus moaned, pushing his collapsible chair back on two legs from the table. “All the other parties are out there!”
“Other parties are expendable. They need us alive to track the mimic,” Dolm reminded him.
“We’re the least likely to get hurt of any party here. That safety stuff Bomond said is just stupid.”
“Fire’s got people on edge. Can’t be sure that beastfolk won’t be back to try something either.”
“That’s stupid. As if he’d be any threat to us. If they were really worried they got plenty of Lastborn mercs to guard the camp and still have a few left to watch us while we work. This is more like they think we’re gonna take off into the damn forest.”
“What are you saying?” asked Dolm.
“I’m saying it doesn’t add up. If this is all just or paranoia about us getting eaten by goloths in the hills or something that still doesn’t justify keeping us stuck in this hot, sweaty, stupid tent. This is because of that dumb animal’s lies about me!”
Lyanna held her tongue, slowly counting to ten in her mind as her brother was ranting.
When she spoke it was with forced calm. “This isn’t a good place to talk about it, anyone could come in here and hear you. Anyone outside already has.”
“So what if they did?” her brother demanded. “Why shouldn’t we be mad that they won’t let us out of here? I can’t even pee without some aide checking on me. Really, he actually came and found me at the stinking latrine pit!”
“Had worse jobs.” Dolm suggested neutrally. “Don’t mind getting paid to sit on ass. Better than hauling lumber all day in the heat. Just sitting in it got me all sticky.”
“I’d rather be out there doing something,” the younger man retorted. “Anyway, why’s Bomond think he can just order us around all of a sudden? First we can’t leave the camp, now he’s summoning Lyanna like she’d some aide of his.”
Lyanna shifted uncomfortably in her seat at the small table. The dread about her appointment that evening was growing even without Marcus’ help, but she was powerless to do anything. While Bomond knew the secret of her crime he owned her.
“He did vouch for us after the fire,” Lyanna reminded him carefully, wishing he would just shut up. “We should avoid making any more enemies than we already have on this trip.”
“Well what does he want you for though? What kind of guild business starts at sunset?”
“Maybe he just wants another update on where the mimic is. Maybe he wants to talk about how to get us active again. It could be anything.”
“So you don’t have any idea why Bomond’s summoning you and only you all of a sudden?!”
“No Marcus, I don’t! I can’t read his thoughts!” Lyanna snapped back, her own temper flaring despite her best efforts, at his endless prodding and whining.
Marcus started, almost falling off his precariously-balanced seat. His face reddened as he settled the chair back down on the ground, humiliation and anger mixing together as he glared at her. Marcus was not accustomed to his elder sister matching his outbursts.
In the silence afterwards it was Dolm who spoke first.
“Expedition should be ready to go in a couple of days. They can’t keep us in a tent once we’re moving again.”
“They shouldn’t be doing it now either,” the younger man grumbled.
“This is all that fox’s fault,” he muttered darkly, after a moment more of brooding. “None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for that stupid animal. The Baron should have just executed it the first time it got caught stealing. But the Baron let it off, then as thanks it killed a bunch of people and tried to murder the Baron, then burn us all alive too! I hope the goloths ate it like the scouts are saying, otherwise we should be hunting it down like the animal it is!”
“He had a name, Marcus!” Lyanna shouted, hand striking the table harder than she intended. “You wouldn’t be saying this if he was human! What human ever got executed just for being in a noble’s tent?!”
“That’s not-”
She shouted over him. “Whatever he was accused of, he was still a person! He still deserved a chance to defend himself! But no-one even listened to a word he had to say!”
“And you did?!”
“I should have! Reynard didn’t even do anything wrong – he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time – but because he was a beastfolk everyone assumed he must be a thief! And all because of that, everyone decided it must have been his fault there was a rockslide! Then some noble thug tortures him and says he confessed, and everyone just accepts that without ever hearing a word from him! How does that even make sense?! Everyone was ready to execute him based on nothing but Jowe’s word! And now they’re saying he died, all alone in the middle of the forest-”
“Hey, you’re talking like he didn’t just set fire to the camp! Does putting our jobs and lives in danger count as doing nothing wrong too?!” Marcus cut in. “Besides, it was the nobles’ word against his, who are we supposed to believe?!”
“Being a beastfolk doesn’t make you a liar, Marcus!”
“It was his lying mouth that got us in this mess! They don’t trust us because he tried to throw me to the demons to save his own hide! And that was before he stranded us here with half our supplies burned!”
“He never said those things about you, it was just the Lastborn, they’re the ones who were lying,” Lyanna insisted. “Everyone always assumes the nobles are honest and fair until proven otherwise, well I’ve met plenty of nobles now, and I’d trust a beastfolk over them any day!”
Marcus rose, drawing breath for another round of shouting, but Dolm gave him a warning look.
“Marcus, enough,” the older man said calmly.
After a moment’s hesitation the boy slumped back in his seat. He seemed surprised more than outraged, unaccustomed as he was to the taciturn older man giving orders. Perhaps that surprise was why he obeyed.
There was a tense silence afterwards.
Marcus broke it with the thud of his gauntlet on the tabletop as he rose again.
“Even if I can’t go outside, I can at least a walk around camp and get some air. Bomond can’t make us stay in the tent.”
With those words he stalked from the room.
Dolm and Lyanna were left alone.
The silence stretched out entirely too long. Long enough that she was starting to wonder if she should be going after Marcus to apologize. As infuriating as the boy was, he was her brother, and… the situation wasn’t his fault. It was hers.
“Lyanna,” came the Dolm’s voice, startling after the oppressive quiet.
The dark skinned adventurer had sat so still she had almost forgotten he was there.
“Whatever’s going on with Bomond, you know you can trust us.”
Dolm’s words only made her conscience heavier. She trusted the man with her life, but it wasn’t trust that had come between them. For all that she was trying to do right by everyone, how could she, when the interests of her team had meant the sacrifice of an innocent boy, barely on the cusp of adulthood.
Now her choice had put Dolm and Marcus under the power of Bomond, likely to share her fate should he expose her, likely to suffer as his pawns should he keep the secret.
Lies were all she lad left to protect them. Or to protect herself. It was hard to tell which she was doing now.
Lost for what to say, she simply nodded.
Like Marcus, she needed to escape. She rose from her chair.
“Thanks, Dolm. I have to go see Bomond now, but we’ll talk later.”
“Good luck. I’ll be here.”
“Thank you.”
She paused at the doorway, looking over her shoulder at the older adventurer.
“Dolm…. Just in case, don’t take your armor off tonight. Don’t let Marcus either.”
A nod was his only answer.
She turned to go.
Although she’d escaped with the excuse of her meeting, the sun had yet to sink below the horizon. She arrived at the guildmaster’s nearby tent with still some minutes to go before the appointed time.
She spent the time watching the sunset, as though following a celestial dial counting down to her reckoning.
The wait was just long enough for her to really stew in the uncertainty and dread, wondering what Bomond wanted now. From the way he looked at her when they were alone she feared she knew.
She was armed and armored, as she had been all day, despite the heat and discomfort. Perhaps it would help discourage the man.
So she prayed, as in time with the vanishing of the light she stepped across the threshold and into Bomond’s tent.
The interior was empty, dim in the twilight, but the desk held a bottle of wine and two wooden cups, alongside some parchments and a quill.
“Lyanna, you’re early,” came a voice from behind her. “Apologies, I was supervising the elimination of some stray monsters.”
In the doorway there stood the guildmaster, also in full armor, flecks of inhuman blood adhering to his breastplate.
“Take a seat and do have a drink.”
“Drinking is banned while we’re in the forest,” she answered simply, as she sat.
Bomond frowned, and poured two cups anyway.
“I insist.”
There was a hard look on his bald features, like chiseled stone devoid of all feeling.
She took the cup in hand and drained it. She didn’t taste the expensive contents beyond a mild bitterness. The guildmaster drank his less rapidly, making small talk as he did. If he was irritated by her coldness he didn’t show it.
With gracious exaggeration he poured a second cup, and held it out to Lyanna. She let it hang in the air. Enough was enough.
“Why did you call me here?”
“Is it so hard to imagine, girl?” he responded, a leering smile creeping onto his features. “Our relationship need not be adversarial once you properly understand your place. You might come to quite enjoy working under me, you know? You wouldn’t be the first young adventurer who made her career with my tutelage.”
“Like Jalera?”
His features darkened. He set the cup down with a clunk on the table top.
“You are not Jalera, girl, and you will never be diamond-rank while you have an attitude like that.”
“If I can’t earn it with my own work I’d rather stay at gold.”
Bomond gave a quiet sigh.
“I had hoped you’d learnt this lesson already. It seems not. But we’ll have ample time after the expedition is over. Eustas, come!”
The aide entered the tent, nodding his head to his superior and entirely ignoring Lyanna. With him was a second of Bomond’s staffers, a woman whose name Lyanna couldn’t recall.
“These two are here as witnesses, I believe you know Eustas and Katia.”
Lyanna nodded slowly, thrown by the guildmaster’s move.
Bomond looked pleased with that.
“You look surprised, but a contract is worthless unless properly witnessed.”
He slid the parchment on the table top towards her.
“This is an agreement between you and I, a contract for your party, Thunderbolt, to operate under my direction henceforth, as my personal employees. I believe you will find the terms reasonable… given the circumstances. I even had Katia here add a clause to cover care for your mother in the event of your death.”
Panic was her first reaction – Bomond meant to make her his, legally and permanently. With the contract signed he would have no need of any further blackmail. He would have her, and he would have Dolm and Marcus too.
She tried to focus, to keep her head and read the words, but legal terminology and phrasing were had to follow at the best of times.
“Just sign your name at the bottom, there,” Katia suggested helpfully, the middle-aged woman smirking her wide grin.
“There’s nowhere for the other party members to sign?”
“Naturally.” Katia nodded. “In the eyes of the Guild the appointed party leader has the authority to make all decisions regarding their party – within the restrictions of contracts such as this one of course.”
Lyanna looked back at the paper. It was just her name to be signed away.
Even if she escaped the expedition, and escaped Faron, a contract with the Guild would follow her anywhere she went.
“If you prefer, we can speak to the Baron about last night,” Bomond suggested.
Her hand moved though a cloud of fears. In a moment her fate was sealed.