AN: I'm not dead yet! I don't want to go on the cart!

: Gets hit over the head and thrown on the cart with all the dead bodies :

This may come back to bite me at a later date, but I promise that I won't torture all two of the people who are actually reading this story with six month long breaks between updates anymore. I feel rather ashamed that I have to add an 'anymore' on to the end of that statement. It's like saying "I won't steal lollipops from babies anymore."

As with pretty much every chapter so far there are a few pop culture, literary, and other references scattered throughout. Props to whoever notices them. Also, observe my horrific attempts at chapter breaks and despair, for they are signs of the end times.

Chapter Five: Skeletons in the Closet

"For the shadows see all and they rarely forget every dream that you've had, every act you regret." – Twist of Fate

The convicts and their jailor trudged into Warren's Fall well after dusk, and the last person Carlos wanted to bother with chose that exact moment to chime in. "Well," said Sarah, "now that that's done, can we get out of this quaint little hole in the ground and on to some place civilized?"

The Major let out a short scoff, though his face remained as cold and humorless as ever. "I would hardly call the nests of vermin that you frequent civilized and no, we're not going anywhere just yet. We won't leave until I receive new orders." He shot a scornful glare in her direction. "Not that someone like you knows anything about actually following orders."

She placed her hands on her hips and met his gaze without any sign of fear or hesitation. Carlos would have found her defiance admirable if it weren't for the fact that he suspected it would get her hurt, or worse.

"Only lemmings follow the orders of others without getting something in return."

"Only fools and the dead think they can last in this world on their own." The crusader's already stern voice dropped into an even more threatening tone as his gaze hardened. "Continue to question me and you will go from being one of the former to one of the latter. We're staying until we're told otherwise."

He turned and stomped off through the front door of the inn without another word.

The four convicts, after a moment's pause, followed the paladin through the doorway. The bar, and indeed most of the ground floor, was practically deserted, with only a handful of patrons eating and drinking in twos and threes. The contrast between the nearly empty bar and the chaos of the previous night was not lost on Carlos, and if the former farmer had to wager a guess it would be that the majority of the patrons were either still nursing their wounds or simply avoiding the inn for a while to avoid picking up wounds of their own.

He looked around the room in time to see The Major disappear up the stairs to the second floor and the rooms therein. Tobias had pulled a disappearing act of his own, and while a part of Carlos wanted to panic at the very idea of the serial killer slipping off into the shadows again, the rest of him did not have the energy for anxiety let alone the will to chase after the older man as he had the night before. Instead, he followed Sarah and Aleera, who were making a beeline for one of the many open tables.

"Why are you so eager to leave?" he idly asked of the alchemist as he pulled up a chair and collapsed into it. "I thought you would enjoy staying in a town chock full of idiots you could swindle out of a few miserable copper pieces."

"Oh, its not the people." Sarah took a seat and glared back at him. "No matter where I go, I never have to look far in search of a moron."

The malice that she aimed in his direction did not last, quickly fading into an odd expression of solemnity as she scanned the faces of each of the other patrons scattered throughout the inn's ground floor.

"It's just that I have a feeling."

After a momentary pause, Aleera leaned forward and asked of her "What feeling?"

"You know," she said with a dismissive wave of a hand as her gaze continued to wander about the room

Silence followed, in which Carlos and Aleera glanced at each other, exchanging perplexed looks and shrugs before turning back to Sarah.

"You don't know." The drug runner sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "How either of you survived up until now is beyond me. The feeling that we're being watched."

Feeling rather disappointed at her response after she had piqued his curiosity, the warrior parroted her dismissive tone of moments ago. "You're being paranoid."

Atop the building across the street from the inn sat a lone figure, veiled by shadows that he wore with the same nonchalance and familiarity that one would wear a favorite hat. The man stared intently through one of the inn's many windows, focusing on a particular group of three as they walked up to and sat down at one of its tables.

He turned to look over his shoulder, his gaze now cast searchingly out into the night. "I know you're there, show yourself."

And the night replied.

"You have exceptional hearing, I did not think that you would be able to detect my approach." Out of the darkness materialized a second figure slightly shorter and wirier than the first. "I must say I am impressed."

"I have no quarrel with you."

"I am well aware of that, it has been an age since the Syndicate sent anyone for me so chances are that is not why you are here." The newcomer paused, as if pondering something, before continuing. "Though I cannot help but wonder, why did the river of hounds sent to hunt me dry up?"

"After you strung the pieces of the fifth up in front of the Wyrd Spire the higher-ups got wise. They realized that you were like a boulder in the middle of the road, if you charge at it and pound your fists against it you'll only hurt yourself. Better to walk around and avoid it altogether. Besides, it actually served as good motivation for our agents to keep their activities out of the spotlight." The first figure chuckled softly. "If they don't, the Mist Hunter will come for them."

The newcomer flashed a maniacal grin that gleamed in the night and bowed deeply. "While I feel honored to have been awarded the same status as the proverbial bogeyman hiding under the bed and just waiting for the chance to butcher any incompetents, I do very much miss the days when my prey sought me out instead of the other way around."

"All good things must come to an end."

"Indeed."

Silence followed and lingered in the darkness for several minutes until the first figure spoke up again.

"As for my business here–"

"I will not interfere."

"Really?"

"Yes." The second figure slowly rose up into the night air, his feet leaving the roof behind. "Do as you will, it is not my concern." The darkness swallowed him up and he vanished from sight.

Alone once more, the shadow turned back toward the inn and the three within. After a moment's pause he pushed off from the roof and dropped down to the ground below. He landed softly like an immense, sinister cat and made his way toward the inn's front door.

"Paranoia is thinking the world is out to get you. I know the world is out to get me, so why don't you take your carelessness and shove it–"

Sarah's voice trailed off and her eyes strayed from Carlos, focusing instead on something over his shoulder and widening appreciably.

"Oh no."

"What?" Carlos turned and looked back over his shoulder, his eyes seeking out what had drawn hers.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when he did.

The man who now stood behind him had been so silent in his approach that he might as well have simply materialized out of thin air. However, aside from the fact that he had spontaneously appeared, the newcomer was remarkable only in that he was completely unremarkable. He had dark hair, was of strictly average height and build, and while he certainly wasn't handsome, he wasn't particularly ugly either.

He was less than merely ordinary, he was downright boring to the point of being completely forgettable.

The man wore a smirk on his face as he regarded Sarah. "Well, well, if it isn't the Old Man's favorite failure. Still selling those pitiful opiates?" He immediately answered his own question with poorly concealed scorn and a snap of his fingers. "Oh wait, of course you're not. You bungled that one too."

In a heartbeat the drug runner managed to regain her usual calm, conceited, and in Carlos' opinion aggravating to no end, attitude. She stood up from where she sat and walked around the table toward the man. "Malakai, I thought I smelled stupidity. Of all the Syndicate's hounds, you're the one they sent after me?" She slowly shook her head. "I'm insulted, I thought they had a higher opinion of me."

The plain looking man merely shrugged, though his unwavering and seemingly unblinking gaze remained on Sarah as the two began circling each other like a pair of wild animals squaring off. "Who would you have preferred? Jericho? The Old Man himself perhaps?" He scoffed at the notion. "They have more important things to do than run around Halcyon looking for your sorry hide."

"Well, I'm glad to see that you still get your kicks from licking the geezer's boot." The drug runner's smile became increasingly mirthless, resembling a sneer more and more as the moments passed. "As they say, the more things change..."

This elicited a chuckle from the man. "And I'm glad to see that no one has cut out that sharp tongue of yours yet, that is a privilege I reserve for myself. After all, your fellow crows won't want it, that would be cannibalism."

"A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours," she immediately snapped back.

"A beast am I?" He placed one of his hands on his chest and flashed a disgustingly insincere expression of shock and offense. "And after all we've been through? You wound me."

Though Sarah's hands remained at her sides, tiny arcs of dazzling blue electricity began dancing between her fingers, making faint snapping and popping noises as they did. "Only if I miss."

The man came to a halt and leaned a bit closer to her, his feigned surprise evaporating and leaving a broad grin in its place. "Considering your track record, I don't think I have much to worry about in that case."

At first Carlos thought that this 'Malakai' wasn't fully aware of the danger he was courting, but as he watched the man's face he saw something that made him think again. In the tiniest, nearly undetectable moment the mediocre man's eyes darted down to look at the miniscule bolts bridging the gaps between Sarah's fingertips before flitting back to glare into her eyes. Had the warrior been standing even a foot further away from the two he doubted he would have been able to seen the glance or the faint upward twitch at the edges of Malakai's grin that followed it.

The man's eyes narrowed and he silently mouthed two words at her.

'Try it.'

As Carlos watched the scene unfold, he shifted slightly so that he could see into Sarah's eyes and saw therein a familiar sight, one he had seen many times before in the gazes of those who had made violence their trade. It was a look that brought to mind an image of whirling gears and machinery hard at work as the person took a moment to turn a critical, calculating eye on their predicament.

She clenched her fists, silencing the electricity that arced about her hands, and replaced her angered sneer with her usual haughty expression.

"And considering I'm not a smudge on Elcmar's boot I don't think I have to worry about you."

Malakai let out an exasperated sigh and shook his head, though once again his eyes never strayed from Sarah's. "Again with the bootlicking! It's not my fault I actually know how to do my job, though I probably should have guessed you would be jealous of that."

"I'd sooner be jealous of a kobold."

His grin returned and one of his hands motioned toward her face. "And I can see why you would be."

This seemed to smash her newly recovered veneer of calm and left only indignation behind. She opened her mouth to shoot back something that would have doubtlessly been less than civil, but Malakai cut her off before she could say anything.

"As delightful as suffering through your incoherent attempts to string together insults can be, small talk is not what I came to this pitiful backwater for."

"I'm not afraid of that senile hack and I'm certainly not afraid of a jumped-up errand boy like you so why don't you put your tail squarely between your legs, where it belongs, and run back to the coot you call master."

He took a step back and held up his hands. "Calm down. Despite what you might think, I didn't come here to hurt you this time around. As horribly clichéd as it sounds I came here to warn you."

"About what?" she asked, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.

"The Old Man had a lot ridding on the opiate shipment that you bungled and you know how he deals with failures. There are three of our hounds here in Warren's Fall, all looking to collect the price on your head."

One of her eyebrows rose at this, though her wariness remained. "Why are you telling me this?"

Malakai smiled again, though this time it was not mocking or smug as his previous ones had been, but rather warm and friendly. "After everything we've been through I felt that you deserved as much."

Sarah was momentarily at a loss for words, something that Carlos had thought he would never live to see. Taken aback by the sincerity in his answer, it took her a few, pregnant seconds to respond and even when she did it was without any of the confidence or edge that her words usually held.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it." Just as suddenly as it had appeared whatever kindness Malakai had mustered vanished. "No, seriously, don't mention it. If Jericho or the Old Man got wind that I was tipping you off like this they'd have my hide."

"And what might this be?"

The three convicts and Malakai's heads turned to face the new voice's owner. The Major had shed the plate armor that normally encased him, though somehow he managed to remain as imposing as before. Tobias stood beside him and the dichotomy between the cheerfully insane old man and the stone-faced paladin nearly made him laugh.

"Nothing," the mediocre man said with an innocent smile. "Absolutely nothing."

"Good. In that case would you kindly go do absolutely nothing somewhere else." From The Major's tone it was obvious that it wasn't a question but a demand.

"Of course, of course." He bowed deeply and backed away, then turned sharply on his heel and vanished out the door in the blink of an eye.

More than a little perplexed by the entire exchange, Aleera turned toward Sarah. "Who was that exactly?"

The wizard smiled as she gazed off in the direction of the door. "That was Malakai, one of the best backstabbers that money can buy."

"But earlier when you two were talking you said–"

"I say a lot of things, most of them aren't true."

The elf glanced off toward the door as well then looked back at her. "He didn't look the part."

"That's why he's one of the best. You can pass him in the street and a split-second later you'll have completely forgotten everything about him, what he looked like, where he was going." Her lips curled upward into a crooked smile. "Hells, most even forget they ever saw him in the first place."

Carlos opened his mouth, about to say that such an idea as being so plain that he was practically invisible was absurd, but then clamped it shut as the realization dawned on him that he could not for the life of him remember what Malakai had looked like. Every detail about the man ran together in his mind like ink until he couldn't pick out from his memory even a single feature that would set him apart from any other man on the street.

Instead he looked over at The Major. "So, I take it you heard most of what he said."

A curt nod was the only response he got.

"And what are you planning to do with the Syndicate in town?"

The question was greeted by a glare that told all present that it was possibly the most idiotic one the paladin had ever heard in his life. "Nothing. I don't give a damn about any of you. So long as they keep it discreet I won't lift a finger to stop them."

Aleera stepped forward to protest almost immediately. "So that's it? You're just going to sit around and do nothing while they try to kill her?"

Sarah, however, did not appear surprised. Disappointed perhaps, resentful most certainly, but not surprised.

The Major's cold, uncaring gaze swiveled down toward the seated elf. "I believe that falls under the category of 'not my problem'. Deal with this yourself or die, it makes no difference to me." With that he turned and walked off toward the stairs leading up to the inn's rooms.

Tobias followed after him and as the two of them disappeared up the stairs the other convicts could hear the older man speak up. "If you do not care what happens to her then why did you stop me from killing her on the way here?"

"I don't care if any of you vermin die, that's what you're here for, I just did that so you would learn your place."

With the two older men gone Sarah sat back down at the table with her fellow convicts, letting out a tired sigh as she did.

In the silence that followed Carlos let his eyes wander about the room. It was late and the few patrons there had been were either filtering out of the inn or up the stairs to the rooms above. He was about to rise from his seat and call it a night when he spied something and though he nearly chalked it up to his eyes playing tricks on him to get back at him for not giving them the rest they were demanding, when his gaze snapped back to it he saw her.

A willowy, though otherwise exceedingly plain, woman who had not been there a moment before now sat at one of the tables near the one of the inn's side doors staring right back at him.

He blinked and the moment his eyes slid open again she was gone again.

After a moment he turned back toward the two women who sat with him, seeking some sort of reassurance that he was not simply seeing things. "Did you–"

"I saw it." Sarah said, still glaring askance at the table where the vanishing woman had sat.

"Who was that?"

"A hound of the Connla Syndicate, a trained killer sent to deal with troublemakers and incompetents." She shook her head. "Though if you wanted to know who exactly, I couldn't say. Most of the hounds are aggravatingly difficult to tell from one another. It took me quite a while to learn to tell Malakai apart from the others."

Aleera turned toward her, an eyebrow raised. "The Connla Syndicate?"

"They're kind of like a demonic cult, a secret society bent on world domination, a crime syndicate, and an army of the most draconian librarians in the realm all rolled into one. They maintain a monopoly on all things arcane in the Kingdom, including the people who wield it." Sarah smirked and let out a short, mirthless chuckle. "My old employers."

Carlos frowned. After working as hired muscle on the streets of Reaverholm for a few years he had become familiar with the name. From what he had gathered they were the biggest fish in the city's criminal pond and the top tier merchants and nobles in that hellhole all kowtowed to them or died sudden and brutal deaths. The inner workings of the group, however, remained just as much a mystery to the former farmer as they were to all the other mundane mercenaries who had, knowingly or not, done their bidding.

"And this Old Man and Jericho that Malakai mentioned," he asked, "how do they fit in?"

"Why must you two keep incessantly asking questions like a permanent magic mouth?" she snapped back at him. Then, after a pause and a long sigh, she answered though sounded clearly annoyed at having to. "Elcmar, or 'Old Man Elcmar' as some of us like to call him behind his back, is the current head of the Syndicate. Jericho is the higher-up in charge of the hounds and Elcmar's number two man."

"And somehow you got on their bad side," he said, not bothering to hide the smile on his face. "What a surprise."

She continued, pretending not to hear him or his scorn. "The Old Man thinks that the best medicine for failing minions is a nice head on a pike and now he wants mine." Her eyes settled on and narrowed at Carlos. "Probably because someone couldn't handle basic guard duty."

"Don't try to blame this on me," he said, shooting her a retaliatory glower. "I'm not the one who brought a Royal Vandian sadist and a horde of Watch flunkies down on me and didn't bother to give the hired help a simple heads-up."

Before Sarah could shoot back Aleera cut in, curious, though more to stop the bickering than anything else. "What happened anyway? I've heard bits and pieces of how you two got here, but never the whole story."

"The Syndicate higher-ups saddled me with the job to whip up and run a shipment of opiates from Reaverholm into Vandia. I brought along some muscle, including Sir Buck-passer here, just in case things went south."

"Something tells me they did."

She nodded. "We were ambushed about a day's ride from Vandia by a Crusader and a gaggle of minions. He," she said jerking her thumb at Carlos, "went toe-to-toe with the Crusader while the other thugs I hired tried to deal with the Watch."

"I may be good," the warrior interjected, "but the Crusaders are in a league of their own." He glared accusingly at the drug runner. "One-on-one I didn't stand a chance."

"Hey, don't look at me," she said, holding up her hands in protest. "I'm not the one who forgot the first rule of fighting those fanatics: Don't."

Carlos did not relent, however. "If you had bothered to help instead of trying, and failing I might add, to turn tail and run we would have had a chance."

"But that would involve running the risk of getting my face cracked open and, as appealing as that sounds, I think I'll pass."

"Remind me," he said through gritted teeth, "why I should help you this time around instead of just leaving you to get some well deserved comeuppance."

"Because you need me alive." She smiled haughtily back at him and stood up from the table. "Unless you'd rather leave it to that maniac Ladimor to watch your backs for the next two years, that is."

For that he had no counter and so all Carlos could do was sit and seethe in silence while Sarah continued to grin down at him.

Seeing him fume, Aleera placed a hand on his shoulder in an effort to calm him and nodded in the drug runner's direction. "She has a point."

"Of course I do." Sarah then turned and left the two behind, vanishing up the stairs to the inn's rooms.

The warrior's eyes narrowed as he watched her leave. "I just wish she wouldn't be so insufferably smug about it."

Aleera opened her mouth to respond, but her words died in her throat. She closed her mouth and simply nodded. After a moment, a painfully awkward silence descended upon the two. To end it, Carlos decided to give voice to something that had been trying to get his attention like a small child tugging at a parent's clothing.

"I've been meaning to ask you something."

"Go ahead."

"What happened to you back at the Bellicosian camp?"

She looked a little startled by the question, as if unsure of exactly why he would ask it or what he meant by it. "What do you mean?"

"Something came over you."

As Carlos pressed onward, he couldn't shake the feeling of anxiety that typically did not rear its head until a battle loomed on the horizon. He tried to ignore the sense of impending danger gnawing at the back of his mind. He was sitting in the mostly-deserted common room of a backwater inn talking to a friend, why would it be acting up now?

"You said 'Not now. Of all times, not now and not you!' and then you suddenly grew cold and distant. What happened?"

Aleera stared blankly back at him for a moment.

She blinked, and the eyes that opened a split second later were nothing like those that had slid shut.

"She will be safer with you gone."

Though he saw her speak the words, his mind could not connect the voice that now spoke to the woman he had first seen weeping in a cell. Every word was as sharp as the keenest of blades, was spoken with inhuman measure and precision, and as each of the syllables rolled off her tongue the temperature in the room seemed to drop markedly.

"What?" Carlos gaped at the sudden shift and was trying to process her words when the elf lunged at him.

For someone as slight as she was Aleera was freakishly strong and the sheer power hidden in her slender frame took him by complete surprise. One of her hands shot to his throat and pushed him back, tipping both him and the chair he was sitting in over. He slammed into the floor, her hand pinning his neck to the floorboards, and his eyes caught the familiar glint of steel as her other drew a long, curved dagger from a sheath on her belt.

The dagger screamed downward toward him, but Carlos managed to wriggle enough in the elf's grip to tilt his head to the side and move his eye out of the path of the descending blade. The dagger opened a shallow gash along the side of his face as it fell, slicing a line into his flesh that ran across his cheek, beginning just below and behind his left eye and taking a tiny section out of his earlobe as it passed.

By the time his mind registered the sound of the knife imbedding itself in the floorboard next to his head the rest of his body was already in motion. His arms, as if they had a will of their own, grabbed Aleera and lifted her up enough that one of his legs was able to rise and, with a sharp kick to the stomach, launch her off of him completely. Seizing his chance, he snatched up the knife, turning and brandishing it at her, as he scrambled to his feet.

"Aleera, what in the Nine Hells are y–"

The words caught in his throat. The face he now beheld was not one that he could think of as an enemy. If anything, the terrified woman was one he would normally have had a hard time raising his voice to let alone wielding a blade against.

She looked hurt, as if she were as shocked by this as he was. The eyes that gazed back at him were alight with fear and desperation, and Carlos could almost feel them silently begging him to say that it was all some terrible misunderstanding, that he wasn't actually holding her at dagger point and that there really was someone in this cruel world who cared for her.

He slowly lowered the knife as the urge to draw her into his arms and whisper gentle words of reassurance in her ears overrode his common sense. As if tugged by invisible strings, he closed what little distance remained between them.

"Gotcha."

Carlos stiffened. Partly from the bone-chillingly sinister tone that Aleera spoke in, partly from the frost that once again clung to her gaze, but mostly from the blade that was now buried in his side.

She gave the second dagger a sharp twist, shredding the tissue that had tightened around it, before yanking it free. He staggered back a few steps clutching the wound. She had stabbed him just under his left arm, bypassing the breastplate he wore and punching a hole clean through one of his lungs. The strength in his legs failed him and he collapsed backward, coughing violently as blood poured into his ruptured lung.

Scooping up and sheathing the first dagger, Aleera advanced toward him, the blade she held dripping fresh blood. His blood.

And then she stopped.

He dragged his eyes away from the blade and glanced at her face. It was a veritable battlefield of emotions, with sorrow, rage, concern and fear all clashing at once on her sharp elven features. She shook her head from side to side, eyes clenched shut and teeth gritted, as if trying to cast something off. Her other hand rose and gripped the side of her forehead, her nails digging in hard enough to draw blood.

"No!" she hissed from between clenched teeth. "Stay out of this, I'm not done yet!"

Carlos barely had a moment to contemplate the bizarre demand before her eyes snapped open again.

The dagger slipped from her grasp as her hold on it loosened and it clattered to the floor, forgotten. The color drained from her face and the hand that had gripped the side of her head slid over her gapping mouth as she stared down with a look of horror on her face.

In an instant she was at his side, a soft green glow emanating from her outstretched hands. "Oh Gods! I'm sorry!" Beneath the divine energy that leapt from her palms, the wound in Carlos' side quickly knitted itself shut. "I­ didn't mean to–"

Her frantic apologies where cut short when one of the warrior's hands rose and struck the side of her head hard enough to send her sprawling across the floorboards.

The wound in his side no longer hindering him, Carlos rose to his feet.

He scooped up the dagger that Aleera had dropped and turned to face her. She looked back up at him with wide, fearful eyes, petrified by the utter lack of humanity on the human's face.

She was not his friend, he told himself. She was the enemy, a threat to be eliminated. She had played him and it had nearly cost him his life, he wasn't about to let her do it a second time. No more pity, no more sympathy, no more compassion. Not for her.

He took a step toward her, blood-coated dagger at the ready.

In an instant the elf scrambled backward, clambering to her feet and bolting from the inn out onto the darkened streets in a panic.

The dumbstruck eyes of the remaining patrons, who had sat and watched the entire scene unfold in bewildered silence, followed her out the door then swung back to stare at him, each looking for an answer that no one, especially not Carlos, possessed. The rhythm that guided his actions faded into the background and as his mind slowly retook control of his body he realized that he was suddenly the center of attention, a role he had never relished.

He tried to meet their gazes with a defiant glare of his own, as if to challenge each and every one of them, though that was made nigh impossible by the number of observers and the simple fact that he had absolutely no idea what in the Nine Hells had just happened. After a moment he relented and let out an aggravated sigh, choosing instead to tromp up the stairs out of the inn's common room.

He flung open the door to the room he had been saddled with and stormed in, mumbling to himself and slamming the door behind him. "A sadistic control freak who thinks a bad childhood justifies all the atrocities he has committed, a murderous psychopath with the most twisted sense of fair play in the realm, an infuriating loudmouth with enemies in all the wrong places, and now this!" He unbuckled his boots, pulled them off, tossed them into a corner of the room and did the same for the breastplate he wore before collapsing onto the bed he had claimed as his own. "Am I the only normal person here?"

"No." Tobias, who sat on the sill of the room's open window sharpening his short sword, answered the rhetorical question without glancing up from his work.

"Well who else do you think is normal? You?" He glared over at the serial killer and let out a short, mocking scoff. "Don't make me laugh, I've scrapped things off my boots that were more human than you."

At that the older man paused and looked up at him, a knowing smile on his face, before chuckling softly. "That is not what I meant."

"Then speak plainly."

"I do." Tobias went back to sharpening the short sword and his gaze followed suite. "It is not my fault that you fail to grasp the meaning of my words."

Carlos chose to ignore the man's words and stared up at the ceiling, thinking back on Aleera's actions since he had met her. At times she had been a frightened child like the one he had seen in the cell when he first laid eyes on her. At other times she had been a cold and ruthless murderer like the one who had butchered the Bellicosians and nearly done the same to him. At yet others she had been calm, compassionate, and entirely in control of her surroundings.

"Gods, I'm surrounded by maniacs," he mumbled absentmindedly as he ran his fingers along the gash in his cheek, which would no doubt soon join the collection of scars he had been slowly accumulating.

Once again Tobias gave an offhand and unwelcome reply. "Wonderful, is it not?"

Only half hearing the question, the warrior's mind pressed onward. The last thing he needed was yet another lunatic out for his blood, and judging by her actions as of late Aleera was as insane as they came.

But it wasn't that simple, now was it? When he managed to turn the tables on her she just stared back at him as if he had betrayed her instead of the other way around, waiting for him to drop his guard. Yes, he thought, she was dangerous, perhaps even more so than The Major or Tobias. At least they didn't have a disarming veneer to hide behind until you slipped up and gave them a golden opportunity to slit your throat.

The more he brooded, the more he loathed both the elf and himself, her for playing him for a fool and himself for falling for her 'damsel in distress' façade hook, line, and sinker just as he had with Sarah.

It made him nauseous to think that he had actually wanted to help her.

But now he knew what he was up against. Now he knew to treat her with the same amount of trust and compassion as the other members of their murderous little band. She certainly deserved much worse for her treachery.

He turned on his side away from the window, snuffed out the candle that lay on the small table next to the bed, and in the dim half-light that shrouded the room tried to get some sleep.

Not ten feet from where the warrior lay, Sarah sat on one of the two beds in the room she and Aleera had claimed as their own, her nose in one of the few books that she had at the time of her capture.

Any normal person would have been startled when an eagle sailed in out of the night through the open window about an hour after the wizard had retired to the room. Sarah, however, could not have been farther from the word had the two been on different planes and thus was intrigued not by the bird's entry but rather its state as it did so.

The landing was clumsy at best and the bird barely managed to remain on its feet as it stumbled forward before shakily coming to a halt. Its body twisted and contorted as it grew from a dejected looking eagle into an equally dejected looking elf. Sarah watched her cross over to sink down onto her own bed, her hair hanging down in front of her face, hiding it from view.

Her curiosity piqued, she closed the book and regarded the druidess. "Are you alright?"

Aleera looked up as if she had only noticed her just then. "What?" Her eyes were tinged red and her cheeks were faintly flushed, leaving no doubt in Sarah's mind that the other woman had been crying.

"You look like you just saw your favorite kitten get run over by an ox cart." The tiniest glimmer of concern flickered across her face. "What's wrong?"

Looking back down at her feet, Aleera managed to mumble "Nothing."

The modicum of compassion that Sarah had mustered vanished. "You'll forgive me if I don't buy that."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Suit yourself," the wizard said with a shrug as she stood up. "If you want to curl up and sob yourself to sleep that's your right." Her eyes narrowed at the elf, looking down on her in both senses of the phrase. "Just do it quietly."

She stood up off her bed and went about the room, first to the door then the window, closing and locking both before muttering something under her breath. Each pulsed with a soft amber glow before dimming again, bringing a faint smile to her face.

Only half caring, Aleera mumbled, her eyes still fixed on her own feet, "You seem rather calm considering there are people out to kill you."

"That's nothing new," she said with an indifferent wave of a hand, "there are always people out to kill me. It comes with the job and you get used to it after a while, usually after the third or fourth time someone tries to slit your throat in your sleep. The trick is to not worry so much and love your life while you still have it."

Aleera let out a mirthless chuckle, trying desperately to tear her mind from recent events and instead focus them on what she saw as irony in Sarah's words. "Says the person who railed against carelessness not long ago."

"There is a big difference between being careful and being serious. The former keeps you alive while the second makes life not worth living. I can be careful without being like Buck-passer or Holier-than-thou."

Again she went about the room, this time extinguishing the candles that lit it. "I wonder who those three are," she mused aloud, smiling and casting her gaze out the window and into the darkness beyond. "Probably Garrick, Evelyn and Tanith if they could get him to stop hiding behind Jericho for once."

Startled by the familiarity with which she spoke the names, Aleera looked over at her again. "Wait, the people who are coming to kill you were your friends?"

Sarah's head whipped around and she merely stared at the other woman in a strange cross between shock and bewilderment for a moment before she burst out laughing. "Friends?" she managed to choke out between guffaws. "Oh no, Gods no." She sighed as she steadied herself and quashed her sudden mirth. "It's a crime syndicate, everyone is trying to kill everyone else and any gesture of friendship is usually just a prelude to attempted murder. After all, you have to be behind someone before you can stab them in the back."

One of Aleera's eyebrows rose at this, though she seemed less than convinced. "Malakai seemed willing to help you, even when he could turn you in for a reward."

The wizard thought on that for a moment, then nodded. "Yes," she said with a sly grin, "though personally I think his 'help' is simply an attempt to curry enough favor to get me back in his bed."

Forgetting her own woes for a merciful moment, Aleera regarded her with newfound curiosity. "Is there no one you actually trust?"

Sarah's smile evaporated, her mood swiftly turning dour as she pondered the question. She turned to gaze down at the last candle that vainly struggled to beat back the darkness that threatened to smother the room and lifted the small metal dish on which it rested up off the table. The melted wax that had collected in it shifted as she did and the tendril of flame flickered, as if protesting. She did nothing but stare at the burning wick, for which she could not help but feel a strange sense of kinship, in silence. Her hand slowly rose from her side and cupped the flame as one would the cheek of a loved one.

"No, and that is why I am still alive."

She blew out the candle.

Long after the last of the lights in the inn had been snuffed out, a pair of shadows that stood atop the building across the street were joined by a third, one that bore ill tidings.

"What do you mean she knows?" one of the figures, a man with an unpleasantly gruff tone, asked.

"I mean someone must have tipped her off that we are here." The newcomer, a woman by her voice and build, motioned in the direction of the inn. "When I went in to scope the target it was obvious that she was already on the lookout for us."

"We should return and inform Jericho," the third, a man with a smoother, more serpentine voice, interjected. "If she still has contacts in the Syndicate we could be walking into a trap."

"No," the first said. "We go ahead as planned, it doesn't matter if she knows we're coming or not."

"You mean you go ahead as planned," shot back the third. "It's your plan, not mine, and I don't take orders from you, Garrick."

"Well aren't you clever?" He turned toward the newcomer. "I guess that means we only have to split the reward two ways. Let's go."

Dropping down off the roof of the building on which they stood and leaving their comrade behind, the two swiftly and silently crossed over to the inn and scaled the side of the building with ease and speed better befitting a spider than a human. They came to a halt outside a window on the second floor and knelt before it. The act should have sent them both tumbling to the ground below, yet the shadowy man and woman remained adhered to the wall as if they were nailed there.

The woman slid a pair of goggles down over her eyes and gazed through the window into the room beyond. She raised one of her hands and made a number of gestures with it, motions and signs who's meaning was unintelligible to most but as plain as day to the man who knelt on the wall next to her.

'Standard setup. Arcane locks on the window and door. Overlapping alarms inside, one silent one audible.'

The man nodded and removed from a pouch on his belt a silvery metal tube and tapped it against the side of the inn. A soft click came from the window as the mundane lock flipped opened and the soft aura surrounding it that the lenses revealed faded from sight. Returning the tube to its home, he slowly eased the window open and plucked a slender from wand from yet another pouch. With a gentle flick of the wrist, the aura that pervaded the room weakened and after another vanished completely.

The two slipped into the darkened room, each drawing a flame-charred dagger as they neared the bed where their target lay.