Galukar’s fury was best described through comparison to Shaiagrazni fission blasts, that rare, arcane power only a handful among them had learned to draw forth. To liken it to natural disasters was too small a testament. For one moment Silenos thought he might actually take the Governor’s head off then and there, instead he only leaned forward a few centimetres, whispering his response.

“You can dress it up however you want.” He spat. “You are a butcher, a savage, and a thug. People like you are the reason the world is the way it is, to protect it from the rest of you.”

Baird flinched no more at this threat than he did at any others. Merely replied.

“If you think it’s good to protect people from being made to provide warm housing and filling meals then you need to be killed too.”

Silenos finally cut in, realising that the situation was only growing in danger, not shrivelling.

“This is getting us nowhere.” He declared. “Both of us have bigger issues to attend to than the pair of you and your moronic politics, the Dark Lord will soon be responding to word of the Governors son’s escape, time is limited.”

That had, of course, been the additional reason for breaking Collin Baird out so overtly. By creating such a clear disruption in the Dark Lord’s territory, it applied pressure to his enemies for swift action. Silenos had hoped it would curtail the very bickering and delaying he saw now.

It seemed he had been right.

Galukar’s sword came down, and it did not detach any limbs on its way. The Governor remained as unflappable as ever.

“You got that out of your system?” He asked, tempting fate for seemingly no reason at all. Fortunately, fate appeared to be in a good mood, because King Galukar only remained bitterly silent.

“We rescued your son, and no small number of other prisoners.” Silenos prodded. “I imagine you called us here to discuss a debt owed, yes?”

Baird’s eyes moved back to him, and his face shifted in some imperceptibly slight way that conveyed nothing save that the question had been heard.

“Of course.” He replied.

The boy, Collin, stiffened slightly at his father’s reaction, and Silenos made a note to find out why.

“You have something in mind already?” The Governor asked, expectantly. He was a sharp one, Silenos realised, but then those who began in a gutter and ended in a castle tended to be.

“I wish to make contact with the man known as Silhouette, and have been led to believe that you are capable of arranging that.” He told him. There seemed no reason to lie.

“I am.” The Governor told him, taking a half step back. “But it will take time. More time, given the current threat to my city. I’m afraid your breakout brought a lot of eyes onto this region, which is already rife with pockets of undead and orcish raiders, and I’ve heard tell that General Venka is making his way with enough orcs to choke a dozen rivers and redirect a thirteenth. That takes precedence over everything else I might turn my attention to.”

Silenos hadn’t lied, but he realised, somehow, that the Governor was. A shift to his disposition, a sudden waver to his words. He’d stared down a sword as heavy as his leg without blinking, and it was that steel of nerves that made it so obvious how uncertain he’d become.

He thought of how best to broach the topic. Thought to the guards he’d passed, the general martial quality apparent around them, and the delightful abundance of organic tissue that lay ripe for the crafting. He did not think for long.

“You just lied to me.” Silenos informed the man. “Stop it or I shall kill you.”

The room went silent. It was all very amusing. Galukar and Falls were shocked, Baird instantly hard and weary, his son gaping with stunned, building fury. The guards were quick in closing in once more. It was the Governor’s answering voice that reached Silenos before bared steel.

“I am not lying, as I told you-”

“You must think I’m an idiot, so I will inform you that I am not native to your lands. People in my culture actually work for our positions, you were lying when you spoke of contacting and arranging a meeting with Silhouette, where was your lie and why was it told?”

It was Collin Baird who spoke next, his voice twisted with rage.

“Why don’t you step outside so we can settle the matter of truth without breaking any furniture you woolly twat-”

“COLLIN.” The Governor snapped, affixing his son with a glare that might have hurried soldiers into line, and certainly sufficed at stilling the fury of a teenager. Collin Baird didn’t meet his father’s eye, pacified instantly. The Governor continued in the silence.

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“You’re right.” He confessed. There wasn’t a scrap of regret, embarrassment or uncertainty in the words. Not an apology, not an explanation, just a statement of fact. Silenos was right, he had lied, and that was the end of it.

Something strange and long-absent swelled in Silenos’ chest at that, and he found himself almost gasping at the sensation. This man was doing something more dangerous than lying or manipulating him, more formidable than facing or contradicting him. He was impressing him.

“What was your lie?” Silenos asked him, almost as much out of curiosity to see how he’d explain it as the necessity of learning where he’d been misled.

“I cannot contact Silhouette.” Baird replied. “Because he does not exist. He is a fabrication I invented to lure possible allies into Kaltan and gain audiences and leverage with them in my fight against the Dark Lord.”

Silenos felt his jaw tighten, his eye twitch, his heart almost palpate with the molten fury now scraping past its arterial walls.

“So, to reiterate.” He said, slowly, carefully. Making sure to contain his incendiary emotions. “We are stuck in your city, which is halfway between revolutionary reconstruction and a retaliatory civil war, while the Dark Lord’s most sadistic General amasses an army of superhuman barbarians and marches them across the country to attack it.”

The Governor nodded.

“Then I have no choice but to halt these issues and guarantee an exit.” Silenos sighed, resisting the urge to rub his eyes like some magic-blunt ape.

“You cannot be serious.” Growled Galukar, eyes flitting between them. “This upstart has already betrayed you once, you think he won’t do it again?”

Silenos stifled his irritation.

“Governor, I will let you know now that if you mislead me again I will kill every tenth child in your city. Do you believe me?”

The Governor studied him for a moment, then nodded.

“I do.” He said. Silenos believed that he had been believed.

“Good, then I can trust you not to do something as stupid as push me a second time. Satisfied?”

His last question was addressed at Galukar, who did not look in the least bit satisfied, but neither seemed inclined to cause any issues due to the fact. That was as convenient a reaction as Silenos had learned the man would ever give him. With the issue settled, he turned back to the wider problem.

“In that case I will ask what means you will permit me to go about purging your land of the Dark Lord’s forces.”

The Governor hesitated a moment.

“My son saw you in the body of a great, flying beast.” He replied, slowly. “Saw you transform back into a man before his eyes. I’ve asked around a bit more about Silenos Shaiagrazni, too, and caught a few words of Necromancy along with Fleshcrafting. Are these rumours true?”

There was little to gain from lying, and a great deal to lose, so Silenos made his reluctant compromise with reality and answered truthfully.

“They are.”

The Governor studied him a moment more. It gave time for Silenos to control his boiling temper, to brace himself for what he knew was coming. The idiocy, the superstition. The snivelling, whinging, pathetic protests of an uncomprehending animal daring to complain at losing a game when others refused to follow rules it had invented on the spot.

Magic was not to be sanctioned or condoned, it simply was. The only master a caster needed to obey was the master of possibility. And Silenos’ power was more than possible, whatever the snivelling imbeciles of this world said.

Baird’s lips parted slowly, his eyes retaining their coherence as he spoke.

“Any means.” He said at last, and Silenos took a moment to eye him. Not wanting to let himself believe he’d heard what he had. Baird saved him the trouble by elaborating. “You have my permission to use any means at your disposal. Fleshcrafting, Necromancy. Summon a Demon if you think it necessary, just get these fucking invaders out of my nation.”

Silenos smiled.

Swick had found a marked improvement in his living station, and it had come rather quickly after his offer of cooperation.

Granted, given that his previous living station had been a chained slave doing ten hours of labour each day and shitting in an open hole in the ground, it was not particularly hard to improve. Nor, indeed, did it say much about how things were now that they’d become better. He’d certainly had it worse, though.

For one thing, he had his own chains. Linked to some large weight being carted around on a cargo haul. They were strong steel, all the same, and restricted his movements no less, but they at least meant he could walk around relatively independently. That was an immediate improvement, and not the only one.

The wine had been of particular note. Swick was not a man of particularly refined taste, having burned half his tongue in a fight and lost one quarter of what remained drunkenly kissing a woman he had no business kissing, but the taste was vaguely similar to one of those posh kinds that everyone pretended were better. In more practical terms, he’d been given access to some of the camp followers. Comely sort of women, with thick lips and big eyes, and who assured him they’d spent precious little time being tossed around like dog toys by those orcs who the General had decided deserved rewarding. Swick decided to believe them, more for his own sake than anything else.

But of course, all of these benefits had been nothing more than payment for services rendered. And the General Venka seemed to consider it payment enough for a great deal of services indeed. Swick was not surprised when he was called into the man’s tent for the third day in a row, the General was more often to want him on any given night than not.

A clever man, Venka. And as fond of information as any clever man was. Swick answered his summons. A greedy man, Swick. And as fond of wine and women as any greedy man was.

The General’s tent was as typical for the man’s personality as anything could have been expected to be. Expansive, but not indulgent. Clean, but not pristine. Its space was economically distributed among maps, storage and equipment, with a portable desk used for correspondence via letter and a simple, portable bed tucked away in one corner. That bed was the sole excess to be found in the place, raised from the ground on legs and boasting a mattress rather than the meagre padding of rolls and sleep-sacks. The General apparently appreciated his night’s sleep more than most.

It was the desk that housed him now, though. Still dressed up in a crisply kept uniform, still scratching away with quill and parchment. He didn’t even look up at Swick as he entered.