While my pupil was busy making his debut, a good deal of more delicate work abounded. Replacing the original Lucius von Solhart was an operation of the most fragility, like trying to tie a net with spider silk. Should anyone ever claim that a complicated plan went off without a hitch, they are lying. Adjustments must always be made. For our case that evening, Aisha Canta offered both the greatest risk and the greatest boon.

Beside Leomund in the night, she looked like an absconding princess with her unruly knight. When the two of them encountered a pair of Cynizia, she played the part. “Just what do you think you men are doing? Is that not my brother’s vendetta you’re pledged to?”

There wasn’t a single Giordanan in the whole city who hadn’t at least heard of Aisha, especially with the conflagration her brother had caused. The two Cynizia were drunk, but were no exceptions. “Canta-ima,” the taller of the two said. He was a sinewy man, of a farming sort. It left his frame strong, but without the explosive speed a true warrior needs. The difference in stature between him and Leomund was enough to make him bow his head and wring his hands. “You shouldn’t be out like this. Surely you’ve seen the fighting? The Medini family can take you in and give you safety. I’d say go to your brother, but that would be to the thick of violence.”

Aisha folded her arms and threw her hair back. “My brother is not my father. He doesn’t own me, nor my actions. Especially after swearing a vendetta. Until that is resolved, he is no brother of mine.”

The man cringed. “But Canta-ima, if anything were to happen to you, men would take their own lives out of grief.”

She turned up her nose at him. “I fail to see how that would concern me; I’d be dead. Now are you to tell me you have nothing better to do here but harass me?”

The shorter man answered, “The Vassish camp has been broken and routed. We’re looking for escapees. Some of them are noble. They can be ransomed. The rest will make fine slaves.”

Leomund had barely been following the conversation, Giordanan was not his strongest language and his dialect would have pegged him for a brute. What he could follow was a man’s character. His propensity to violence.

The shorter man was no farmer, but more akin to the muscle that unscrupulous merchants kept around. He had a forward curving sword at his hip, a facsimile of an executioner’s axe. Leomund was also aware of the dagger within their sleeve. The rogue had it hidden well, but not so well as to trick Leomund.

“Canta-ima,” the rogue said. He clasped his hands as he spoke. “Who is this man you are with? He is neither Giordanan, nor Vassish.”

Leomund grinned. He had teeth like a troll, and the scattered lights of Puerto Faro colored them in dreadful hues. “I’m from the north,” he said.

Aisha sighed and gestured to the warrior. “He’s a man more enchanted by my singing than by a vendetta. Is it wrong for me to court protection in a time like this?”

The Cynizia glowered and sized Leomund up anew. “Canta-ima,” the tall one said. He squared his shoulders. “Should you need protection, I would give my life for you!” With his declaration, he put his hand on his crude sword. His was more an heirloom, crafted from heavy brass. Of course, it could run a man through just the same as the finest Vassish blade.

“I’m sure you would,” she said. And she knew that such an offer had hooks in it; obligations of honor and expectations. “I am fine with this man. Being with you people would only invite Vassish retribution against me. Go. Go find your slaves.”

The rogue’s face hadn’t flinched; itself a warning sign that Leomund made note of. “So you intend to put your life in a foreigner’s hands?”

“That’s what she said,” my knight said. He leaned in close, bringing his chin within arms reach of the rogue and stared into the man’s eyes.

Aisha closed her eyes, her irritation getting to her. “What I do is no business of yours. Now get out of my way before-”

The rogue stabbed forward with the dagger. A steel snake bite pointed at Leomund’s throat.

Leomund pulled back with superhuman speed. His hand that had been at his hip suddenly gripped his sword and cleaved. Blood arced across the sky and the rogue’s hand flew high. His grin never faltered.

Two screams filled the road; the maimed rogue, and Aisha’s shock. She staggered backwards, bumping into Leomund’s outstretched arm. He grabbed her up by the back, giving her the illusion of strength as she watched the Cynizia fall to his knees. He wept and screamed, clutching his stump.

“Get lost,” Leomund ordered, pointing his bloody blade at the taller man.

The tall man took the message and abandoned his friend. He put his heels to it and vanished in the way only cowards can. The rogue took longer, the pain grappling with the shock. He couldn’t think of fighting more, for Leomund had taken from him his sword arm. His lingering may well have saved his life however, because a man came charging to him, with a bulging leather bag under one arm. “Doctor! Doctor!” he cried, and out from the shadows emerged the Vassish doctor Aisha had met earlier; Sammy.

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“Get back!” the rogue shouted, near delirious with pain.

Aisha regained herself. “He’s a doctor! Shut up, you idiot!”

The young man sighed and produced from his pocket the ancient symbol of apothecaries; two serpents entwined. Even a Giordanan criminal knew what that meant, and he dropped to his knees. I have always found that to be most curious, for there is nothing preventing the counterfeiting of apothecary badges, and yet I don’t know of a single instance of it. Perhaps in the coming years I will try to determine the cultural protection it has. Regardless, the Giordanan rogue surrendered himself to the doctor.

“Hold him down. He’s going to thrash,” Sammy said, in Vassish, while the rogue drank his fill of liquor.

Leomund groaned. “Boy, I’m the one who maimed him. Why should I?”

“Because!” the doctor snapped. “Had you meant to kill him, his head would be on the floor. Since you didn’t intend for that, you should see to it that he doesn’t die of gangrene!”

I’d be lying to you if I said Leomund cared in the slightest what became of the rogue, but he had given his word to my pupil in regard to the girl, and her glare was clear enough. He sheathed his sword and pinned the rogue down with a bit of leather jammed between his teeth.

“Prepare yourself!” Sammy said, and held up his surgeon’s knife in one hand, and a bone saw in the other. “This is going to hurt.”

I have already mentioned that Aisha had little medical knowledge, even as the standards of Giordana go. When Sammy flayed the flesh off the rogue and pared it back to saw off a hand’s span of bone, she was subjected to the most tortured of screams she had ever heard. The squirting blood doused the doctor in dark, arterial spray and made Aisha’s chest seize within her. Her heart palpitated, her breathing faltered, and she fell to the ground unconscious before Sammy even got to stitching the wound closed.

This was much to Leomund’s pleasure. The moment he cleaned his hands off, to not soil her dress, he tossed her over his shoulder. He carried her on through the shadows and alleys of Puerto Faro, dogged only by the Vassish doctor, who was the first to admit about the dark path, “Well, if I don’t see them, I’m not particularly obligated to help them, now am I?”

It was the burning pepper-leaf candles of my dining table that roused her eventually. Thankfully, she wasn’t so delicate that she expected to wake up on a feather mattress. While it was a stinging and bitter scent to keep the flies away, it wasn’t the only smell. Another local merchant family, the Kahina Family, worked well with me, and understood the importance of privacy. As such, they had procured a restaurant overlooking the harbor and put out all the lights of the first floor, lest the glorified rioters think to plunge inside. The chefs worked in the dark, save for their sheltered cook flames. We were given a warmly illuminated balcony facing south to the sea.

The feast Leomund and I shared--don’t mistake me, there was enough for Aisha had she so chosen--covered the entire table with succulent treats and bottles of wine. Centered between us all sat a great pot of stewed vegetables and mud-axe; a delicacy not for the light of heart. A mud-axe is a soft, four-limbed shellfish that many people mistake to be some form of aquatic vermin. In truth, it has more in common with cephalopods than anything mammalian, but people can’t see past the human-like eyes. The dish was considered heretical in Vassermark at the time, and I wanted to enjoy it before returning.

I was biting through one of their heads when the lady Canta regained herself.

She shouted and leapt to her feet.

“Sit down,” Leomund ordered, filling his mouth with garlic slathered bread.

She looked around the room once more, recognizing Leomund and Sammy, but not myself, but she accustomed herself to the context quick enough. She did not adjust herself well to my appearance; but, that is something I am used to. “You’re with that boy, then?”

I licked the juices from my lips and smiled at her. “Tolzi has told me what has transpired this evening. Yes, he is my most precious accomplice.”

She clutched the edge of the tablecloth and stared back at me. “He is not Lucius von Solhart; you have slain my brother’s enemy and hidden it from him.”

To answer that, I had to put a stop to my feasting and entwine my fingers together. “Your brother’s vendetta is against all of Vassermark. It is a blood debt that cannot be paid. So, as the one here who knows him best, Aisha Canta, will your brother give up his honor, or his life?”

She sank in her seat and stared at her hands. She couldn’t answer me because the truth hurt too much to escape her lips. The doctor boy comforted her as best he could, merely putting a hand to her shoulder. He was seated beside her, and had only deigned to accept a glass of wine from the same amphora I had drank from. Strengthened some, she defiantly said, “It’s the Vassish who are at fault though.”

“Perhaps they are, but your brother will never get justice, merely blood.”

“So what are you then?”

I smiled. “Looters who have come here to steal political power.”

Sammy cleared his throat and asked, “Are you going to kill us then? Now that we know your secret?”

Leomund lifted up his meat knife and pointed it at the doctor. “Is that an invite?”

I held up a hand. “The only person who needs to die is Medorosa, and he needs to die at Lucius’ hand. Everything else is trifling. If you intend to interfere with this, then yes, we will kill you.”

Aisha asked, “What are you trying to do? By… stealing power like this; stealing an identity.”

I plucked another shell from the pot and cracked it open. The mud-axe inside still thrashed with vestiges of life. The squirming thing leapt from my hands and onto the table, scattering our utensils. Aisha and the doctor gasped and jerked away, but I simply snatched it back up. The thing struggled within my grasp, straining its ill-formed body against my fingers. So I held it up in the light of the sconce. “You couldn’t possibly imagine the scope of what we are looking to achieve,” I said, and I squeezed the mud-axe’s head with my thumb until it popped off and fell back into the stew.

“Now choose,” I told them. “A certain friend of mine will be arriving shortly and will bind you to your word. Do you wish to conspire with us? Or will you leave and never again show your face in the tides of history?”

Leomund’s knife showed them the third option.

Aisha pressed her lips and met my gaze. She could see the fates laid out as well as I could, and she said, “I have already put my lot in with your Lucius. So take me with you to Vassermark.”