The Paladin, Ensharia, tore her arm from Swick’s grip, and he readied himself for the worst. From what he’d seen she wasn’t quite as strong as him, and nowhere near as fast, but her armour was a damn sight heavier. If things got violent, she’d have slim but greater than zero odds of beating him. Better to just translocate away if she looked to be on the verge of doing something stupid.

She didn’t, though.

Instead of charging over to start splitting open heads and tearing off limbs, the woman turned, then started her march away from the atrocity unfolding just twenty feet ahead. Her strides were almost reluctant, as if she were wrestling herself just to make them. Swick recognised the disposition of a woman at war with herself, but though the conflict was clear, he didn’t see any doubt. Given the same choice, she’d make the same decision. She knew she’d have to.

He followed after her, taking only a moment for his shock to finish running through his system. Swick found his mood brightening somewhat as they avoided what could easily have been a very annoying problem.

The Paladin had surprised Swick by turning away from the old woman as her lashes came down, and that surprise had been quite a pleasant one.

In all honesty, he’d not had his own skin on the line. If she’d insisted on fighting the guards, he had no doubt she could have handled two, between them both- or perhaps even by herself- they likely could have killed however many hundred more were dotted around the rest of the settlement, even at once. And at worst, if there had been some nasty surprise awaiting them like a particularly strong undead or three, he could have simply translocated away.

One particularly loud cry actually made Swick jump, and he found himself glancing back at the old woman’s punishment, wincing before it. A screamer, that one. With lungs like those she’d probably make it to eighty before going toes-up. Shame about the flogging.

Surprisingly, the Paladin proved quite skilled at navigating the town, though not quite so much as Swick. He supposed her lot were probably taught all about different customs and regional cultures, on account of their job being wandering around them cudgelling brains out of things. Still, she must’ve had most of her life eaten up fighting the Dark Lord rather than policing the world, and nothing beat experience in Swick’s view.

They focused on simple foods, light and filling. This region, apparently, was one that either grew or- more likely- imported rice, which was excellent for weight-efficiency in their travel rations. Water was harder to come by, but not impossible. Apparently this town was one that had learned to ration its drinking water out, because buying the stuff privately was damned expensive. By the time they’d finished with it, Swick’s reserves of coin had been reduced to under half.

While the water-merchant headed back to retrieve the product, Swick was left standing beside the Paladin. The two of them had the company only of one another, and silence. He eyed her while it stretched on.

She was not crying, nor had she been. That didn’t surprise him as much. Swick had been around more than a few times in his life, and he’d seen enough to be more than sceptical of women as the emotionally fragile whiners plenty of other men tended to know them as. More to the point, this one was tough, and more than just the way most Paladins seemed to be.

But that didn’t mean her sadness, and the wrathful bitterness feeding off of it, didn’t strike him like a hammer to the chest.

Swick tried to just ignore it, but the seconds dragged by, and the merchant kept on doing whatever the hell she’d been wasting so much of their time doing in the back. Eventually something had to give in, and it was Swick’s nerves.

God, he needed a drink. He couldn’t deal with people while he was sober.

“What we saw back there.” He began, choosing his words carefully. “You, uh, you did the right thing in walking away from it, you know. World doesn’t have a lot of heroes, but it’s got plenty of dead idiots who tried to be one. There was nothing you could’ve done except make this mission more dangerous for the rest of us. It’s just the way of things.”

She turned, and the look in her eyes made ice seem warm.

“Is that why you didn’t so much as shed a tear over your dead comrades?” She snapped. “Because it’s just the way of things?”

Swick felt a jab of irritation at her retort, and had to resist firing back one of his own. The headache was pricking his thoughts, brain slathered in acidic pain by its dehydrated, alcohol-deprived state. It was all he could do not to tell her to shut up and nap right then and there.

“They knew what they’d be getting in for when they signed up for their jobs.” He explained, trying to make the mudwalker understand. “It’d be an insult to mourn them when they died in something they got themselves involved with of their own volitions, and I’d be insulted if I found out they mourned for me were our fates reversed.”

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“You’re serious?” She asked, not seeming to even believe him. Shock had to be an improvement over derision, at least.

“Deadly.” Swick growled. “We’re pirates. Sky pirates, at that. We have our code, just as you Paladins do. Treat a man like he’s soft and you’re insulting him, take a look behind you and you’re insulting everything in front.”

“Unbelievable.” The Paladin stared. “That you’d even compare such a barbaric code to the tenets of my order. What, do you honour your men by drinking? I saw you guzzling away from that canteen the other day, it’s like you were kissing it, and you’ve been blinking fifty times a minute since it ran out. Is the boozing part of your code?”

“No.” He replied, feeling a stab as her words touched something more sensitive than he’d expected. “The boozing is just fun.”

At last the merchant returned, and not a moment too soon. Had she left Swick alone with the Paladin for much longer, he half suspected she’d have started taking that mace to him, or trying. Purging the world of criminal scum like him was among their horribly lengthy set of vows, if he remembered right.

“Much obliged, darling.” Swick grinned, as she handed his coins over the counter. “Much obliged. Tell me, uh, if it’s not too much trouble I mean, my companion here and I could use a bit of directional advice, not quite used to navigating a landscape as black and deathy as this one, you understand.”

She smiled back, apparently swallowing every word easily enough.

“Oh, of course, sir, of course, what would you like to know? I’m not as well travelled as some of the merchants here, the older ones mostly, but I’ve ventured out beyond the walls more than a few times.”

Swick maintained his grin, and did his best to hide the strain that threatened to imbue it as he moved on to the real reason for his asking her.

“How exactly, if we were so inclined, would we cross the border and exit the Dark Lord’s territory?”

The change was instantaneous, and pronounced. Within the span of a single heartbeat Swick saw the woman’s face fall, friendliness withering and dying like a rose under desert heat, openness disappearing as whatever cracks he’d managed to widen in her guard were rapidly pulled shut. She was a wall of steel before he spoke again, but not yet fully sealed, not yet impossible to reach. He’d have to move her quickly, before she clamped up completely.

“You understand we’re just looking to move on.” He noted, hurriedly, “Tell us what we need to hear- as, I assure you, plenty more merchants will- and you’ll never have to hear from us again, eh? Just one trader to another.”

She shifted slightly, but still didn’t meet his eye.

“It is forbidden to leave the Dark Lord’s lands.” She whispered. “All of His Majesty’s subjects are required to aid the Great Work, any who leave without His permission are deserters, and desertion is a crime that carries the penalty of death.”

He might have expected as much. Swick had travelled enough that this was far from his first time in the Dark Lord’s territory; borders in general didn’t mean much to a sky captain after all. He’d met plenty of people with similar levels of fearful loyalty, and all of them much closer to the border and more recently conquered. This far into the Dark Lord’s land, with well over a decade of history under his rule, there were people over the adult’s age of sixteen that wouldn’t have ever known anything else.

This one didn’t look as young as that, though. By Swick’s guess, he had a chance to sway her.

“Lots of things are forbidden by the Dark Lord.” He noted. “There’s a big difference between what he can announce, and what he can effectively police, eh?” Swick affixed his most winning smile. “Come on, help us out, please? You might be our only chance to actually find a path back home, to our families.”

She hesitated, an agonised look washing over her face at his words. Swick could see how torn the woman was, and it filled him with an adrenal shot of anticipation. A torn barterer was halfway to a convinced one.

Just as her gaze stiffened, and she looked to be on the verge of refusing, the Paladin’s hand came down on hers, and the woman was absorbed in a stare so heartfelt and honest that even Swick almost blurted out everything he knew about their route back home.

“We know we’re asking a lot, that this would be a betrayal, but it would mean the world to us.” She whispered, squeezing the woman’s hand gently for emphasis. “We’d be in your debt- I’d be in your debt- forever, and…You might well be saving our lives. Can you do it for us, please?”

Good lord, Swick had seen quite a few strumpets in his day, but none had ever managed to make their eyes inflate quite like this Paladin did. It was remarkable, almost wasteful, really, that she’d chosen to use her talents on smashing undead heads open with a cudgel.

And it revealed rather quickly why his own persuasive methods hadn’t worked. By the sudden flush across the merchant’s face, and the swift movements of her tongue lolling over both lips, her interests swung in another direction entirely to any man, even one as handsome as Swick the Swift.

“I don’t know anything concrete.” The merchant whispered, looking rather more at the Paladin than Jolly Old Swick, “But I’ve heard rumours about the city Kaltan. You’ve heard of it?”

Swick saw incomprehension in the Paladin, and figured that was about right. Mostly they learned about nations, not cities. Far more efficient when they were being educated on a thousand other matters to travel around doling out justice that mostly wasn’t city-dependent anyway. Sky pirates like him, however, tended to get a more nuanced and detailed view of the world.

“I’ve heard of it.” Swick volunteered. “The rebel’s city, right? Overthrew their nobility and started lopping off heads a few years ago. Twenty or so, I think.”

She nodded.

“That’s right, well a great deal fewer years before now, they fell under the Dark Lord’s dominion. But there’ve been whispers that there’s a man within their walls offering safe passage from the Dark Lord’s territory. They call him Silhouette.”

“Silhouette.” Swick echoed, whilst the Paladin busied herself with thanking the shopkeeper. He moved the word around in his mouth as they left. Silhouette.

Yes, it did sound quite like the sort of name he’d come up with while drunk.