A thought occurred to him while he concentrated on not falling asleep on his feet. They'd left bedrolls and a few candles in the abandoned shack, dilapidated but still, mostly, roofed. It had become clear that staying on the move was likely the only reason they'd evaded their enemy, especially when a large group had tracked them within a few hours of their appearing publicly in one place.

There was a great deal of night left to go, and Ulric wasn't going to be getting any sleep any time soon so he mentally drank a tall glass of man the hell up.

The pair had only just finished depositing their "catch" from the evening in the floor. The Leor woman Ulric had effectively stun-gunned in the face was awake and, minor burns in the shape of his hand aside, doing as well as could be expected with her legs and arms tied behind her. The Elf, an Aktinian, or Coastal Elf with brands across his chest that indicated he had been imprisoned and exiled from Orlethrem for piracy, was doing less well. Both legs ended at the knee and he was in shock. Taipan wasn't inclined to baby prisoners but they needed both to compare notes or they'd have greater difficulty finding falsehoods in narrative. These two were possibly the only direct source for a name to their enemy.

It was with some grumbling that Taipan helped him better cauterize the stumps and disinfect them with some his medkit supplies. Next some water and dissolved bread would help the wounded elf regain some fluid volume and Ulric regretted that they didn't have any of the intravenous bags he'd been able to use while helping Bald'rt. That was an oversight and he'd have to see if they could find something equivalent. Neither of them had taken the kinds of wounds that would make those necessary but you never knew. There had been an awful lot of sharp bullshit pointed at them that day.

It was a little over an hour, but the Aktinian stabilized, no doubt thanks to a fairly high constitution and greater natural capacity to resist wounds than in the creatures of his prior world. Both the prisoners were now secured, naked, to a set of chairs. The Leor was snarling and growling some kind of profanity around her gag. The Aktinian merely maintained a terrified silence.

Taipan nudged him as he examined their captives, "You need not stare Ulric, you have seen plenty of flesh that betters this one's."

Turning, Ulric put an arm around his wife's shoulders and hugged her closely, "But you see, it is the creed of men that the best pair of breasts are always the next ones he may yet see." He said, as seriously as he could.

Frowning, his Elven partner examined the tied prisoners for a moment before asking, as if forced, "You are telling those exaggerations that are not quite lies for humor again, aren't you?"

Ulric nodded ruffling his partner's short, soft, hair lightly, "I am, yes. But I have known some men for whom my joke is a reality. I am not one such. Yours are my favorited boobs Taipan, the altars of mine worship."

He made to touch those holy relics and was slapped away with his wife stepping away. He saw the smile in the tilt of her ears, even if he couldn't see it on her masked face, before she turned to straighten her clothes though.

"It is well that I am more tolerant of your nonsense than my mother is of my father's, Glade Chief. Fortunately, I have a sense of humor." Said his Shadow with false primness.

It was true, after a fashion. Taipan did, in fact, have a sense of humor, far more so than her dam. That said humor mostly involved mockery or the setting of traps that might bait a vulnerable, bumbling, oaf of a human into a particularly embarrassing or awkward situation for her sick enjoyment was beside the point.

Ulric merely demurred to her mercy, there were bigger fish to fry than needling his companion. He decided to put the ball in her court now, having no idea what to do with their prisoners; this part of the night was all her plan.

"What now?"

Taipan readied some balls of softened wax, on a crate next to the rough timber chairs, themselves looking to be some sort of torture device. What kind of sadist doesn't sand down chairs?

"Now, I am going to deafen one and ask the other some questions. Then I will reverse this order and ask the same questions, and then, when their answers do not match, I will take something from both of them. Then we will repeat this until I run out of things to take that do not kill them." His Shadow answered, as matter of fact about it as a mid-season baseball announcer noting the strike count.

First came the Aktinian, the Leor's tall, tufted ears stuffed with wax. She jerked and strained against her bonds powerfully until Taipan calmly explained that she could answer questions just fine without her tail.

Evidently, the former pirate had some idea about the Iriel'en marching orders because he had no illusions as to how this would proceed.

"At what time were you given orders to begin pursuit of a Human and an accompanying Iriel'en?" Taipan asked.

The pirate stayed silent and his Shadow nodded as if that was an answer by itself.

"When you received your orders were you alone or do your teams remain in close association under a legitimate front?"

Nothing. Nod.

"What is the name of the one who passed your orders, or, if you know it not, describe their features as completely as you can."

Nothing. Nod.

"Very good. Let us see how your partner answers, then we will see how many pieces the two of you lose."

Ulric realized then that the Leor couldn't see her partner's face, couldn't see that he had given no answers at all, and thus, Taipan's behavior made sense. The pair wouldn't know if their partner had talked and thus couldn't even be guaranteed that staying silent was in their own interests, nor could they watch to read each other's lips to match statements, even if they could see what questions their interrogator was asking. That revealed that Taipan either had been trained to extract information from captives, which the Iriel'en did not tend to take, or she had prior experience. Either way, Ulric found a tremendous discomfort with this situation.

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Removing the wax from the Leor, Taipan deafened the Aktinian.

She had barely even begun to speak her first question when the Leor broke down, weeping, and saying all that she knew or suspected. When the Aktinian saw Taipan's expression and the follow up questions he knew the game was over before it began, and that his silence was a lost cause and also gave what he had.

And, just like that, Ulric learned that the slow, methodical pace of his Shadow's actions had been primarily designed to crack the composure of the two of them, to allow their own minds to break their courage. She got her information without drawing a single wound.

The killing of these people in battle did not bother Ulric so very much, outside the vague regret that any of it was necessary, that people were not so far different from those of his old world. They had invited their own ends when they chose violence. Torture was a line he was pretty sure he couldn't cross though, it made him feel…unclean. Likewise for executing prisoners.

When Taipan went to go cutting throats he put a hand over hers, and shook his head, "No."

Surprisingly, the Iriel'en woman deferred immediately, replacing the knife in its sheath. It was entirely possible that she liked this no better than he. Probable even, Taipan could be vicious, but was not, to his observation, inclined to cruelty. Of course, given that this was her people's lives on the line, not to mention their own, Ulric had no doubt that his older, more steeped in conflict partner would not hesitate to do as she thought necessary. Even if she hated the doing.

Ulric loomed over the pair, knowing that he was choosing to take a risk over simply killing a pair of criminal bastards who would have murdered him without question. Even so, he couldn't find the hardness in him to commit murder of two bound prisoners. Better that they try him again in battle where he could slay them without stain to his soul.

"Here is what will happen now: the pair of you will be left tied to these chairs and the city guards notified that smugglers have been captured. If you know what's good for you, you will admit to these crimes and be delivered unto whatever justice that Trachn'ir's people have for such. Else, I will have to find you again and, this time, allow my comrade to finish her work. Are we understood?"

The pair nodded.

Ulric drew his knife and leaned over the Leor, cutting a lock of fur from the tuft of her ear, a scrape of her tongue, and a small droplet of blood from a prick in her shoulder, placing these in one of Taipan's little belt vials. He did the same for the Aktinian pirate. Now, his Shadow should be able to get a trace on these two, perhaps not as fully as she would have without certain…intimate fluids, but good enough to track them effectively.

Evidently, both of them understood this, because they wore naked fear on their faces when they looked at Taipan's cloaked visage.

Outside of slaughter, this was more or less the best he could arrange to soothe his own conscience. They left the prisoners bound, deafened, blindfolded, and gagged. It took a good few minutes to find a guardhouse to leave a note regarding their captive's dispositions.

Under the falling moon's silver glow, hefting their belongings and in the cart, along with the Wicker corpse, now fully in the grasp of rigor mortis, they resumed the night's work. Ulric decided on a change of plan, a necessity of the night's events. First, they would fire the Wicker headquarters, and then their ships. They were simply much closer and the reverse order would have the pair of them traversing a great majority of the breadth of Trachn'ir twice in a single night. He was far too exhausted by his skill's backlash to do so in a reasonable time.

"You did not oppose my decision not to end the prisoners. Why?" Ulric asked, as he pulled determinedly, trying to ignore the ache of tired body.

"Because you knew what you were doing and why and I would not oppose my Honor when he follows his heart's desire. I have no love for killing a captured enemy, but I will do it if I deem it the best course for my people's safety. Still, I am glad that you chose a different path. You are soft sometimes Ulric, but I do not hate that about you. Only, it will be a little sad when Varda's harshness culls this from you." Answered Taipan, with a note of sadness in the music of her voice.

Ulric nodded as he pressed forward down cobbled streets steadily. Yeah, he thought, if I'm lucky enough to live long enough to be as hard bitten as the Iriel'en it'll probably be because I've had enough friends, family, and lovers, killed like animals. That would mostly do away with any concern for a slaver's life, even if they happened to be a bound prisoner at the time.

In his old life Ulric had only ever lost two critical people, his sister and a very dear friend. All the others had had almost no impact on him emotionally. Those two though had put him in some pretty dark places and when a man who does not connect easily loses connections it makes all the others both more important and more fragile. Fear turns to anger, anger turns to hate, as a wise puppet once said.

However, these were problems for Future Ulric. Present Ulric only got to be Future Ulric if he didn't get himself killed to death in the meantime. There had been kind of a lot of dudes trying to make that happen recently too so, you know, head in the game old chap.

The game now, was to cause whoever it was on top of this shit heap so much pain and aggravation that they did something overt and drastic. Ulric was pretty sure that leaving a couple of dozen of their mooks dead in the street, the house of their lackey on fire, and their slave haulers burning in the docks was going to prompt that very response. When they did, they better have good dental hygiene because Ulric was almost certain Taipan was going to be making other forms of identification unreliable. She had a hate so deep for slavers that his was a candle to her torch.

That was an appropriate metaphor since they'd arrived at their destination and Taipan was, even now, preparing some torches to set fire to the House. The security of Trachn'ir could use some work. In the week they'd been roaming the streets causing trouble there'd been so few guards patrolling Ulric had no doubts that there existed a lively organized crime ecosystem between small and large gangs. They might not be so active in the Winter, with the decreased traffic, but they would be there; where there was a flow of goods and money there would be those who profited on "alternative means" of generating those things. Taipan admitted as much when Ulric vocalized his hypothesis.

Iriel was a bit of an outlier in this, the deep woods elves were simply too insular and too draconian to allow the existence of crime. Crime was harder to commit when the only marks were your family and friends and the less tolerated for that. Besides, troublemakers tended to find themselves challenged to public duels and killed for their troubles under the boughs of the Heartwoods. Suffer not the fool nor the soft went the way of the Iriel'en.

Ulric got ready to make a hard push with the cart, now lighter for the body of the minor nobility sprawling in the street alongside their message. Blood, for those of you not in the know, likes to coagulate pretty soon after death. It also does not like to drain without…massaging…absent a heartbeat. Let us simply say that it was a fairly macabre event to obtain the "ink" for their message. Delivered it was though, "Slaver" written in the formal runic language of the Deep Wood on the cobblestones in front of the building Taipan indicated was the ancestral home of House Wicker's main trunk, the movers and shakers of whose house had included no fewer than two Celestin willing to trade in the flesh of their kin. Copies of the original letters, traced by Taipan's careful hand, had been scattered around the neighborhood. Breaking glass announced that his Shadow had completed her task, she raced around the corner of the street and Ulric leaned into the cart's handles heavily, legs churning to bring them up to speed. The acrid odor of smoke and flickering orange glow announced that the flames were spreading. Taipan assured him that she'd made enough racket to wake the dead inside, there should be no loss of life, other than those already taken this night. Ulric appreciated her commitment to prevention of maybe innocent lives.

Pumping, aching, both calves burning, Ulric tore through the streets with the cart making an awful clatter across the stones. Ulric would never be so glad to abandon his burden. Soon enough, a short stop by their inn, accessed again by climbing the exterior, allowed them to dump off their haul through the window. From there, much lightened, they made their stealthy way to the long wooden and stone piers of the Trachn'ir dockyard.

Currently, Human and Elf waited under the cover of a tarp covering salted fish barrels. Ulric was seriously glad for the brief rest, he had not completely recovered from the after effects of [Surge] even though his core was regenerating mana at a good clip, maybe a little over a fifth of its capacity returned over the two hours since their fight. When he'd inquired as to Taipan's condition she merely told him she was "ready to fulfill my purpose" whatever the hells that was supposed to mean. They'd beat the raise of alarm from their little message and were counting on that distraction to ease this next part. Ulric was going to be severely disappointed if they weren't able to set these body-snatcher boats on fire.

And there! Bells began to ring, shouts began to echo through streets, and it was a matter of a few minutes before fire brigades rounded up every able body to prevent the spread of flame from the former home of House Wicker to the surrounding timbers of their neighbors. That left the docks emptied. It took Ulric only a few moments of fiddling with the tar meant to help patch gaps in planks and a miniscule arc of mana between his fingers to turn each of the six boats they suspected of being part of the operation into very skillfully made bonfires. If they'd missed their guesses, then Ulric would be incredibly apologetic but his gut said they were on the money.