Clad in new clothes, crafted by the skilled hands of Charel, Crissa sat near the door to their tiny room, watching people walking up and down the busy streets. She rarely saw the morning crowd of folk, and was fascinated by the sheer numbers of them. "What do they do so early in the day?" she asked. Normally, she would be fixing breakfast for Wenn, Marrat, and herself at this hour, not walking the streets.
"They go to market," said Kennet, sitting up on the bed and eyeing his tailored tunic with a critical look. "Most of the peasants like to get their selling and buying done before lunch."
"Peasants?" asked Crissa, giving him a wide smile. "Are we so far above them, then?"
"No," replied Kennet, his voice muffled by the tunic as he slipped it on, "I'm a peasant, too."
She giggled at him and averted her eyes as he climbed out of bed and pulled the pants on. Normally, she would never have done that, but he seemed to need her to look away, she could feel his embarrassment radiating from him like heat. "I've already seen you naked, as we tended your wounds, you know?" she asked.
"It's not the same," he grunted, pulling the belt tight. "I'm whole and hearty, now. You may be the same person who saw me, but I'm not the same person you saw."
She turned, sensing he was now safe. "Too bad, he was rather attractive and I had half a mind to comfort him more closely," she teased.
"You would have probably been disappointed," he said. "I'm not an experienced lover."
Crissa's eyes grew distant. "There are experienced folk who are poor lovers and there are skilled novices," she said. "More important is your desire for the person you're with."
Peris came walking up the cobbled street, grinning and holding a small wicker basket with a cloth covering it. "Breakfast," she said with a pleased expression.
She was now clad in a somewhat more modest short summer dress of bright blue, rather than the elven outfit from the night before. Charel had been generous with clothes, giving each two full sets, all very well made and quite fashionable.
"Just because we are on the run doesn't mean we need to look like vagrants," said Peris as she unloaded the burlap sack earlier that morning. "At least that's what Charel said." She had looked at Crissa. "You must have impressed him mightily to be given such on your name alone."
Crissa had blushed deep red and whispered to Peris, "I wore less than my name last time Charel saw me."
News was upon the streets of a daring raid into the asylum and the disappearance of one of the prosecution's witnesses in the wee hours of the night. Guards killed and poor inmates, delusional fools, as well, dispatched in their very cells by the hoodlums. Most just shook their heads and lamented the waning of the elder days when wizards and their ilk had to keep their arts secretive.
Crissa's own disappearance was also noted, and some thought she had been kidnaped by the same evildoers. However, there were some who thought she might well be the one who had put others up to the raid, which was, by noon, said to have contained no fewer than ten well-armed men.
"All this fuss over me?" asked Kennet, still looking rather pale from the initial delivery of gossip. "I should turn myself in immediately."
"You'll do no such thing," hissed Crissa, standing from her perch on the little dresser near the door. "They'll kill you this time, rather than muck about with you and risk losing you again."
Kennet blinked at her, and the sudden burst of anger he palpably sensed come from her. "Kill me?" he asked.
"Have you already forgotten the gentle treatment at the asylum?" said Crissa. "Did you think it therapeutic to beat you daily?"
"They were trying to make me see the truth," he explained, reasonably.
"They were trying to force your mind to manufacture a new truth, out of terror," she said, walking right up to the young man, who was two or three inches shorter than her. "They very nearly succeeded. Luckily, Thenaldis told us what you told her, or their false truth would already be taking root in your mind again."
His eyes grew wistful and Kennet smiled. "Do you think I'll see her again?" he asked. "Thenaldis, that is."
"Yes," said Crissa, almost too quickly. "I'm sure you will." She knew, before the trial, she would have to bolster his courage, and Thenaldis would serve that purpose nicely.
Peris smiled as she unpacked the breakfast, some bread rolls and butter, as well as dried beef and cheap wine. "Thenaldis said she needed to check up on you, to make sure your healing took," she said over her shoulder.
"I wish I could remember her features better," said Kennet. "She's almost like a dream now."
"Most elven conversations are like that," said Crissa, nodding. She had no idea of what she spoke, having never met an elf herself.
"What do we do this day, then?" asked Kennet.
"Find a better hiding place," said Crissa and Peris, almost in unison.
"Well, if the rumors be true, we only need still fear those 'eye' people," said Peris. "Except Kennet, of course. So far as anyone knows, we're still not guilty of anything."
"That would change quickly if Kennet is found in our company," said Crissa.
"Speaking of that," said Peris, "how will he testify the real truth, if he's with us?"
"He's going to turn himself in at the last minute before the trial, directly to the courthouse," said Crissa.
"I am?" asked Kennet.
"Yes," she said. "That way you can testify and they won't have time to kill you, beforehand."
"Beforehand?" asked Kennet. "But plenty of time to do so afterward."
"Afterward, there will be no one free to kill you, they'll all be in prison, or dangling from the gibbet, themselves."
---
Terena, now wearing the guise of a young merchant's daughter, in a long sheer gown walked the streets, and used her wiles to ask questions of many, regarding an old friend of hers from Morrovale.
By noon, she had found out that Crissa had disappeared, not seen since yesterday, much to Marrat's chagrin. She forced herself into seedier quarters of the town, visiting shady dives that one could find, if one knew where to look. There, her looks alone would not win her information, but she had a currency that few in such places would refuse.
"Yeah, I saw her," said the dumpy innkeeper of a truly ramshackle establishment. "But I don't rightly know where she might have been going, my memory has been slipping of late, so distracted by pretty women and all."
For the third time that morning, she performed a favor for someone to parse some tidbit of near useless information from them. The first two would never be demanding such a price of a woman for mere knowledge again, assuming they recovered enough of their wits to speak at all. This man, however, repaid her efforts with something of use.
"They stayed here last night, but I only had dealings with the brown-haired girl," he said as she sipped the sour wine he provided her. It was stale and somewhat vinegary, but erased the taste of his seed. "However, she slipped off almost immediately, and I went to look and see what was about. When I peered into her room, there were two people out cold on the bed, a tall blond woman and a smallish, curly-haired man."
"You knew they were unconscious and not sleeping?" asked Terena, looking toward him and wondering if he would demand more payment before coming to the end of his tale.
"Well, I was just minding my own safety, and my business'," he said, as if explaining himself to her was necessary. But I crept in and tried to wake them."
She decided he more likely wanted to take a peek at the blond, but surely that was Crissa. "Was your business' safety resolved by looking at the tall one's body?" she asked, giving him a sidelong glance.
He blushed a bit, but kept talking. "She was tall, all right," he said. "Tallest girl I've ever seen, or one of them. Both of them had taken a pretty good thumping, though, and the boy's breath was rattly."
"Then what happened?" she asked.
"The little brown-haired girl came back with a older gentleman in tow," he said. He went into the room and spent a long while in there, then she and he left again. I went back but heard someone moving about inside and didn't go in."
She looked at him fully. "So quickly?" she said. "You said they were hurt badly and unconscious."
"Yes," said the fat inkeeper. "They were up and gone the next morn, this morning, just an hour or two ago."
"May I see their room?" she asked. "I assume you've not cleaned it yet." She figured he only cleaned them when absolutely needed. She saw a flash in the inkeeper's eyes as she asked this and sighed inwardly. "We could always inspect the bed while we are there," she added, pouring syrup and honey into her voice.
He walked her down to the room and opened the door. The bed was disheveled, but would have been anyway, soon afterward. Despite his prodigious belly and rather soft look, he was a rather aggressive lover and made good use of his tumble with her. And she made even more use of him.
Terena sighed as the sleeping inkeeper dozed beside her and she rose from the bed. "Not bad," she said with a lascivious smile. There was a glow of health about her and she radiated energy. If anything, the innkeep looked five years older than he had.
Using a half empty pitcher of water and a corner of the coverlet, she cleaned herself up and then dressed. She examined the room, and soon found a elven-style skirt under the bed. She lifted it and examined it. "It looks like something the whore would wear," she said. Her own promiscuity, in the name of the One and the service of a Templar, was another matter, and not the same as simply bedding men.
There was blood on the sheets, as well, where someone had lain. They looked to be the result of many small wounds, and the pillow on the other side of the bed had blood upon it. "You two were hurt badly," she said. "That man must have been a healer."
