"I can't stay. Every moment I remain here, lives are in danger. The lives of my guildmates are far more important to me than the illusion of safety that Sanctuary brings."

He watched the emotions play across her face by the light of the moon. "Where would you go?"

"South," she said without hesitation. "Following the refugees."

"Bad idea." He shook his head in disapproval. "After you cross the river, you're penned in on two sides by the Heia Mountains and the Bay of Lost Souls. A party on horseback could run you down."

Air hissed between her lips. "You have a better suggestion? Run toward Pharesia, perhaps?"

"Doubtful that the elven capital would be the safest place to hide from an order of elvish assassins. I was thinking we could get one of the wizards-"

"I don't want to involve anyone from Sanctuary in this," Vara said with a shake of her head. "Wherever they took me, I think Alaric would send well-intentioned search parties to bring me back."

"Fine," Cyrus said. "Then the best bet is to go north through the villages in the plains until you run into a wizard or druid who will teleport for a fee-they do those kind of jobs all the time for travelers who can pay."

"And where should I go?" Vara's voice carried no hint of sarcasm, and her blue eyes glittered, deadly earnest.

"North," Cyrus said. "Either to Fertiss, the dwarven capital-there are enough outsiders there that non-dwarves are a common sight-or the Gnomish Dominions-Huern is a city built for them to trade with non-gnomes. Otherwise the Northlands or the Riverlands of the Confederation. They don't get many elven visitors but if you wore a cloak with a hood you could pass for human easily enough-"

"Marvelous."

"-if you'd speak with more humility. We don't have a class system in the Confederation, so rather than be labeled 'noble' you'd be known as a 'prissy wench'."

"'Prissy wench'?" Her nostrils flared. "I am not-"

"We need to leave now and ride at least until tomorrow morning to get us out of range of Alaric's good intentions."

She paused, eyeing him with suspicion. "We?"

He took a slow, deep breath before answering. "I can't let you go alone."

Vara looked around, her eyes cast to the curtain wall that surrounded Sanctuary. "I don't have a great deal of time; certainly not enough for you to pack or lay in provisions-"

"My horse is saddled and provisioned," he said. "I've left a note for Alaric and the Council in my room. Thad is in charge of the detachment manning the gate tonight; at my command, he'll let us pass through."

She looked at him, staring a great hole through him. "You knew I would be leaving."

"I suspected that you'd see what I see," he replied.

"And that is?

"Sanctuary is so large, and our security so porous, that it would take a long time to tighten it up enough to protect you-time we don't have, at the rate of two assassination attempts per day. But if we were to get away for a while," he said, leaning in toward her, "it would give Alaric and the Council time to weed out the assassins that have slipped in."

"How long do you expect that will take?"

"I don't know." He sighed. "I don't know that it can even be done. I just know that, right now, it's not safe for you here."

"I don't think it would be wise to take you away from Sanctuary at this critical juncture," she said. "You could stay, help them to get things under control and then find me when you know it's safe for me to return."

"No." His voice was quiet but emphatic as he stepped in closer and placed his hand upon her arm. "I know your pride recoils at the thought of me protecting you, but put it aside. These assassins are deadly, and they have no desire to best you in a fair fight; they will strike you down when you least expect it."

"I see." Her eyes flickered and her arms remained crossed. "If you come with me, what's to stop them from striking you down? I am leaving to remove myself from the responsibility of seeing others harmed for my sake. I cannot see how bringing you along will accomplish that."

"Because you need help, Vara." His gauntlet clanked against the metal of the bracer that protected her wrist. "Your whole life you've fought alone and you've come to a point where you need someone you can trust-at the very least someone to watch out for you while you sleep. Unless you plan to not sleep at all?" He looked at her with a questioning glare. "Even without the Hand of Fear, there are countless dangers on the road-bandits, highwaymen-"

"Packs of goblins. Yes, very well," she said with a shake of her head. "Do not dare slow me down or I shall leave you behind."

"I won't go any slower than you," he said. He led her to the stables, passing by the guards with a simple nod of his head. He mounted Windrider, his preferred horse, while Vara put a saddle and her bags on a black stallion that she herself owned. With murmured affections, she led her horse out of the stables and swung herself into the saddle. Cyrus, for his part, managed to keep up.

"Hail, Thad," Cyrus called into the darkness when they reached the gate. The wall that surrounded Sanctuary was massive, stretching forty feet into the air.

A helmeted head popped into view over the parapet and fired off a crisp salute. "Hail, General. How goes it?"

Cyrus tugged on Windrider's reins, bringing the horse to a halt. "Not bad. I need you to open the gate for me, just as we discussed."

The warrior atop the wall was clad in a red-painted armor that in the washed out light of the moon appeared to be more of a mauve. "All right." Thad's earnest face stared down at Cyrus, visible in the pale white glow from above. "Best of luck, General. See you...whenever I see you."

"Take care, Thad." Cyrus fired off a rough salute of his own as the portcullis began to rise.

"And he won't betray us by telling Alaric?" Vara's whisper was lost in the sound of the chains dragging the gates and portcullis open; the cowl of her traveling cloak was pulled over her head, casting all but her nose and mouth into impenetrable shadow. "Or anyone else?"

"He won't until tomorrow morning, when Alaric comes to him. I trust Thad," Cyrus replied, spurring Windrider through the gates as they opened, Vara a few paces behind him. "So the question is, do you trust me? Because if not, this is going to be a lot more difficult."

Vara brought her horse alongside Cyrus and they cantered along. "I trust you," she said at last, her face still shrouded by the darkness of the cowl. "But from this point, we trust no one else." She spurred her horse to a gallop, riding north, Cyrus behind her.

Chapter 7.

They rode through the day, taking breaks only when the horses grew weary. Vara said little, leading them north along the road. They passed caravans, almost all made up of humans, most wretched, bedraggled and begging for food. Although she apologized as she passed, she did not stop.

Cyrus followed in her wake, repeating the same message over and over. "Keep going, a day's travel south. Sanctuary is not far from a fork in the road; they'll give you food and help you however they can."

By sundown, Cyrus could feel the pain that came from sitting on a horse all day, and the fatigue of being awake for two days also wore on him. Windrider whinnied, moving at a walk. "I think we're going to have to bed down for the night."

Vara gave no indication she had heard him. He urged Windrider alongside her. Her features were frozen in place, her eyelids shut, and she bobbed with the motion of the horse. "Vara," he said, and reached over to nudge her.

With a start she jerked awake, surprise in her eyes. Her gauntlets gripped the reins and she pulled back in a sudden, violent motion.

He held his arms up, openhanded. "You fell asleep. I think it's time to stop for the night."

She stared back, her wall of glacial reserve melting under the strain of fatigue. "Perhaps you're right. But not here." She pointed off the road toward a copse of trees a few hundred yards away. "Over there, out of sight. And no fire." Without waiting for him to respond she urged her horse off the road in the direction she'd indicated.

Cyrus followed, and caught her as she began to dismount. He cringed as he lifted himself off the saddle, feeling the sticky, painful prickle of skin peeling from his body. Vara busied herself unpacking her saddle bag and a bedroll from the side of the horse then spreading it on the ground. She pulled a small loaf of bread from the bag and began to nibble on it as she sat and stared into the trees.

"You seem to be the most tired," Cyrus said, breaking the silence. "I'll take first watch and wake you after midnight."

"All right." Her voice was hollow and far away. She turned to him. "The second assassin-you questioned him?"

A cool unrelated to the air caused Cyrus to shiver. "Yes."

"What did he say?"

"Not a thing," Cyrus replied. "Fortin offered to torture him but Alaric refused." He did not tell her the other thing he had noted from the interrogation; that the elf had the most soulless eyes Cyrus had ever seen.

"Probably for the best."

"Terian threatened to transform him into a female with his axe, and he still wouldn't talk-"

Vara blinked. "Did he?" She ran a hand across her bedroll, smoothing it. "He would do it, too."

"He started to. Alaric had Fortin pull him from the room." Cyrus frowned as he started to sit down but winced as the pain of his saddle soreness halted him.

A quiet murmuring filled the air around him and Cyrus looked to see Vara with her head bowed, muttered words on her lips. Faint light radiated from the tips of her fingers as she pointed a hand toward him. A soothing feeling coursed over his aching body as the raw spots his skin had developed in the last hour healed, leaving behind only a ghost of the pain he had been experiencing. "Thank you," he said.

"Forgive me for not doing it sooner; I forget that you lack the ability to heal yourself."

"Biggest drawback to being possessed of no magical talent," Cyrus remarked, a rueful smile on his lips. "If you get impaled, you can't save yourself."

"Yes, well, do try and avoid that-as a paladin, my abilities are somewhat limited compared to a healer and I doubt I'd be able to save you from a wound so grievous as that." She yawned. "In addition, I have no desire to clean up the significant mess that would leave on my boots."

Cyrus chuckled. "Yes, I imagine that with me bleeding from a gaping hole in the chest, your biggest concern would be keeping the shine on your boots." He stared at her feet, covered in the same metal plating as the rest of her body, a healthy sheen obvious even with the dust of travel still on them.

"Quite so," she said with only a trace of irony, lying back onto her bedroll. "I can't recall the last time I slept in my armor. Still, under the circumstances, I suppose it's the wisest course."

"I used to sleep in my armor all the time," Cyrus said. "Before I joined Sanctuary, the guild I led adventured in far off places and we were...uh...well, broke, so we didn't have the money to stay in local inns. We spent a lot of nights under the stars."

"The stars." Vara's eyes sprung open. "I've grown so accustomed to spending my nights in the halls of Sanctuary, I've forgotten what it's like to sleep under the stars."

"Did you do it a lot as a child?"

Her eyes looked into the darkening sky as though she expected them to already be out. "No. I was raised in Termina and my mother and father rarely ventured outside the city."

"I suppose that made them difficult to see." Cyrus stared up at the last rays of sunlight springing over the horizon. The sloping hills of the Plains of Perdamun made way for trees every so often, with farms and homesteads spread out over miles and miles of empty space. "I was raised in Reikonos and because of all the torches and fires I didn't see a sky full of stars until I was seven, with the Society of Arms on a wilderness survival course."

"How old were you when you went to the Society?" Her voice was fading, the sleep beginning to turn it lyrical.

"Six." He watched her as she stared into the darkening sky. "You must have had a similar experience, since you went to...uh..." He racked his brain, trying to remember the name of the League that trained paladins.

Her quiet words filled the distance between them. "The Holy Brethren. And no, I did not begin my training with them until I was fourteen; before that I had a steady stream of League-Certified private tutors, the best that were available in the Elven Kingdom." She stated it matter-of-factly, though Cyrus still caught a hint of pretension.

"Hm." Cyrus pondered her upbringing. "We had a few people that joined the Society late, but they were all from families like yours; those that could afford to pay tutors to train their kids so they didn't have to live in the barracks with us 'uncivilized' commoners, the orphans that were there from childhood." He chuckled. "You probably didn't have many of those in the Holy Brethren."

She sniffed and turned toward him with irritated intensity. "What are you implying? Magical talent is hardly restricted to those who are well to do."

"No, no!" He backpedaled. "I meant that because you don't need magical talent, anyone can be trained to be a warrior, so they scoop orphans and truants off the streets of Reikonos and put them in the barracks at the Society or with the rangers at the Wanderers' Brotherhood."

"Ah." She shifted in her bedroll, returning to her back to stare up once more. "My experience was quite a bit different than yours." She paused. "What was it like, growing up in the Society?"

He thought about it before answering. "Tough. From day one, you learn that life as a warrior is about strength, and the whole Society reflects that. You start training with real weapons at eight or so and there are a lot of training accidents-"

"That's barbaric." Vara rolled toward him, a look of disgust plastered on her face.

Cyrus shrugged. "They kept a healer in the Society. Few of the injuries were permanent or maiming. Only the occasional death, followed by a resurrection spell. Maybe five to ten a year. Very few permanent deaths."

Vara's grimace had become an openmouthed stare of horror. "That's appalling. You were mere children!"

"Well, none of the deaths were of the young children; most of them were from the family fights with the older-"

"Family fights?" Outrage dripped from her words.

Cyrus nodded. "When you join the Society, there's a ritual in which you're assigned a blood family. There are two defined blood families in the Society-the Able Axes and the Swift Swords."

"An alliterative nightmare. What's the difference between the two?"

He shrugged. "Nothing, really. It's a way of creating competition and an esprit de corps. You're trained to trust in circles-the blood family is the highest circle; then the Society; then the world. You eat together, you bunk together and you fight together. You learn to trust the person beside you in battle and you think in black and white terms about the enemies you kill."

"A narrow worldview." Her fingers clutched her bedroll, her knuckles white. "No part of you finds it despicable to treat children in such a way?" Her voice softened. "You don't...perhaps wish for a different childhood?"

Another thought drifted through Cyrus's mind, and though he tried to push it away it lingered; the remembrance of a home, the feeling of his mother's arms around him-maybe more wishful thought than tangible memory. He brought back another thought, a confined room, angry faces surrounding him; like demons at the time, but just children upon reflection. A memory of blood and pain.

"It doesn't matter," he answered, flint infusing his tone. "I didn't have one." He looked at her, glowing blue eyes still visible and shining in the last light of sundown. "What about you? What was your childhood like? You know, before you went to the Brethren."

"It feels as though it were a lifetime ago," Vara said. "I have spent over half my life now away from home-first in the Brethren, then several years with Amarath's Raiders before I joined Sanctuary."

"Isabelle-your sister, I mean-said you don't go home much." Cyrus looked at Vara, who was still. "Why not?" After a pause, he spoke again. "Vara?"

She let out a sharp exhalation of breath. "Let me see if I can answer your question whilst dancing around a delicate subject. As you know, I am the shelas'akur and there are certain...expectations others have of me, expectations I have no desire to live up to. My mother is the foremost among those who feel I should be doing more to fulfill my supposed responsibilities. I prefer not to argue with her, and thus I avoid going home as much as I can get away with."

Cyrus pondered her words until she turned and cast a glance at him. "Tell me what you're thinking, right now."

He froze. "I was wondering how strong-willed your mother would have to be to make you, one of the most stubborn and irascible people I've ever met, want to avoid her."

A light scoffing laugh filled the air in the clearing, almost as if Vara's chuckle were coming from the trees around them. "Yes, well, that attribute did come from somewhere, and I assure you it was not from my father, who is as mild a man as you can imagine. I do miss my father. He was-is-exceptionally kind. What about your parents?"

"Dead," Cyrus replied with leaden words. "Father died in the war with the trolls; Mother...I don't know, sometime after that. I don't remember how, just being dropped off at the Society sometime afterward."

"I'm sorry." Her voice quivered with an empathetic note.

Is that because she's been thinking of her own father or is it because she's letting her guard down? "It was a long time ago."

She cleared her throat. "I should get some sleep since I'll need to relieve you on watch in a few hours."