Six

            As the guards marched off with Tusit, Thistlepouch, and a captured thug, the gnome caught sight of Ens out of the corner of his eye -- but when he turned for a better look, he was gone.  Tusit poked Thistlepouch.

            “I think I just saw Ens!” he whispered urgently.

            “Who?” asked the kita, not especially caring.

            “Ens.  Big, ugly guard guy, curious about the map?”

            “Oh.”  It failed to arouse any interest.

            A bit of a march later brought them into the front gate of the keep.  The five guards posted were much more armed and unaccepting of people wandering past than the two previous .  .  .  but the gnome and the kita, eight guards surrounding them, went through without any questions asked.  Two guards escorted them to the main barracks as several more hauled the thug to the main keep. The guardsmaster came over and frowned at them.  “What’re you doing back here?”

            Tusit blinked.  “Oh, um.  .  .  word hadn’t gotten back to you?  We were attacked on our way back to the ship.”

            The guardsmaster looked surprised. “You were with.  .  .  you.  .  .  you’re the witnesses?”

            “Yes.”

            “Well, don’t we get around!”

            “Hey, don’t look at us!” Tusit protested, a little on the defensive side.  “We’re the victims here!”

            The guardsmaster eyed him.  “Right.  Well, we’ll take you to a room in the keep.”

            “Would it be possible to have a brief word with the duke?”

            “You’ll have many words with Duke Nordforto once we arrive,” the guardsmaster assured him.

            “Oh, I’m sure.  .  .  .  but I would like to speak to him alone.”

            “You will have the opportunity to speak with the duke.  Excuse the imposition, but I must insist you remove your weapons.”

            “Oh, of course!” Tusit handed over his dartalerro happily, plus a couple daggers.

            “We’ll take good care of them,” the guardsmaster assured him, collecting them and the staff plus four daggers the kita turned over.  He passed them on to one of the guards.  “Now, please follow me.”  He sent them off, two guards escorting them into the keep.

            “Goodness!  Things are much more.  .  .  .  serious.  .  .  .  around here since we left.  Has word of our incident already spread?”
            “We’re at high alert,” a guard replied.

            “Any other reason besides the unfortunate -”

            “I don’t know why.”

            Tusit noticed the guard’s white-knuckled death-grip on his sword at the same time as Thistlepouch.  “There’s something going on around here that we don’t know about, isn’t there,” the gnome observed.

            “I really don’t know.”

            Tusit, more on edge than before, kept silent as their escort led them into a small room with a table and four chairs -- two on each side.  The guards motioned them to sit down; they did so.  The guards took up post behind them.

            “Now, you said you needed to speak to the duke quickly,” the guardsmaster said.  “May I ask about what?”

            “It’s about a matter that I discussed with him previously,” Tusit hedged.

            “I need to know what it’s about,” he insisted.

            Tusit took a moment to deliberate.  “What I need to speak to him about now or what I spoke to him about previously?”

            “What you need to speak to him about now.”

            “Um.  .  .  I do believe that if you just let the duke know -”

            “I need to know what it is.”  He glanced around, leaned forward so his nose was inches from Tusit’s, and lowered his voice.  “Look.  I don’t know what I’m telling you this.  These guards don’t know this, but Duke Nordforto’s son was killed.  If you know of anything that would be useful-”

            “I don’t know anything about the duke’s son.  I only know of a bit of information regarding our incident.  And the duke already knows -- I had already informed him I just need to insert a couple words in addition.  .  .”

            “I will tell him of your request.”

            “Just mention the previous conversation that we had and he’ll understand.”

            “If I may point out,” the guardsmaster reminded, “I don’t know whether he will remember that conversation at this point.  .  .”

            “I will understand if he doesn’t.”

            “Someone will be here to interview you shortly.”  The guardsmaster turned and walked out, closing the door behind him.

            Thistlepouch sighed.  She didn’t understand a bit of this, and couldn’t even muster enough curiosity to find out.  She stared blankly, miserable, at the far wall, and couldn’t get that last image of Doorling out of her head.  She’d seen death before, but those orcs and goblins had seemed like monsters out of a child’s story.  Monsters were for vanquishing.  But Doorling.  .  .  he had talked to her.  He’d been really nice.  He’d fallen in love with Mica, and though the kita doubted Mica felt the same, Doorling would never get a chance to tell her himself.  Because he was dead, dead, dead, and she hadn’t been able to save him.  The kita didn’t even know how long it was before Mica burst in.  Thistlepouch looked up.  Their eyes met.

            Mica stopped dead at that haunted look that had no place in a kita’s eyes.  Especially not this kita.

            “Is she okay?” she asked Tusit.  She turned to Thistlepouch.  “Are you hurt?  Are you injured?”

            “I don’t think she’s.  .  .  .  hurt.  .  .” Tusit hedged.

            “I kicked him.  .  .  hurt my foot a little I guess but I’m okay,” she said, subdued.

            Mica looked at her as if her question wasn’t quite answered yet, but Tusit pulled her aside to confer with her.  Thistlepouch thought she caught her own name, Ens’s name, and quite a number of things too low to catch it.  She sighed, not really caring anyhow.  It would probably be more of all that stuff she didn’t quite understand.  She went back to staring at the wall.  The guardsmaster and the Duke came back in and asked a bunch of questions -- she let Tusit answer most of them.  In fact, it wasn’t till the duke stood that Thistlepouch ventured a question of her own.

            “Your son.  .  .  how old was he?”

            The duke looked a little startled at the question, and saddened by the reminder.  “Eleven summers.”

            Thistlepouch rummaged with one hand through her pouch till she found what she was after.  She proffered some arrowheads she’d discovered in her pouch shortly after leaving the boier/fletcher’s.  “Little boys like to play with stuff like this?”

            “Bows and arrows?  Yes.  .  .  .  yes, he liked archery.”

            Thistlepouch pressed them into the Duke’s large hand.  “Here.  For his memory-jar.”

            The duke gazed at her for a moment,  puzzled, then nodded.  “They will be placed on his pyre.”  Another pause, then, “Thank you.”

            Thistlepouch nodded mutely, squirmed back onto her seat.

            Mica left to question the prisoner, Tusit left for the library, but even books didn’t appeal.  Thistlepouch allowed a guard to lead her to a large-by-kita-standards chamber.  The furnishings were sparse -- a bed, a wardrobe, a washstand with mirror and bowl and pitcher, a desk, and a chair -- but elegant.  Thistlepouch pulled the chair over to the washstand and cleaned herself up a little, and to her mild delight found a hairbrush next to the basin.  She plopped down to unbraid her tresses and give them a long-overdue brushing.  She quietly worked on them until they glowed in the dim candlelight, then stood up and tossed her head a few times to settle everything in its place.  Without bothering to braid it up, she clambered onto the bed and curled up, fell into an almost immediate doze.

            Half an hour later she started awake, panting, from nightmares of squeaky hamburgers -- all the more disturbing because she had absolutely no idea what a hamburger was, much less why it would squeak.  She slid out of bed and padded out of her room, went to knock on Tusit’s door.

            After a moment or two the gnome opened the portal.  “Yeees?”  A pause.  “There’s something different.  .  .  no, wait, don’t tell me.  .  .  you changed your hair.”

            Thistlepouch couldn’t help but smile a little; she supposed Tusit had never seen her with her hair down, brushing her ankles, before.  “Mind if I come in and sit with you?  I wouldn’t be any trouble.  I could just sit in a corner.  .  .  .”

            “Don’t you have a guard that’ll be missing you in your room?  Like mine would surely be missing me,” he added with an artificial grin.

            The guard gave no reaction.

            “My guard didn’t especially seem to care much, and maybe he can get some sleep if we’re both in the same room,” Thistlepouch suggested.  Tusit motioned her in, closed the door behind her.  “Do you have an extra book?”  Tusit pointed to a stack on the table, she grabbed the first one -- instructions on the summoning and binding of otherworld creatures.  She checked the next -- a discussion on warfare and methods of deception.  It looked vastly more readable -- in fact, she was pretty sure she’d already started this one.  She sat in a corner, making sure her hair was well out of the way first. 

            Tusit dragged a chair over, expecting questions, and pointed out words she didn’t understand in between taking notes of his own.  After some time a knock sounded on the door.

            “You can get that,” he told the guard, looking up.

            Mica poked her head in.

            “No, really!  Anytime!”

            “Hello?” Mica tried.

            “Is he always this bad?” asked the guard.

            “He’s just warming up,” Mica assured him as she walked in and shut the door.  “Maybe you can bribe someone to take your place.”

            “I’m planning on it,” the guard deadpanned.

            “How was the adventure?” Tusit asked.

            “Oh, lots of fun.  .  .  Orlog broke down a lot of doors.  Didn’t find Ens, though.”

            “Do you need any.  .  .” he gestured to his medicaments.

            “I don’t, but Orlog kinda got bruised up a bit.  .  .  you go give it to him if you’re so anxious.  Go on, I’m not your slave.”

            “No!  He’s your pet!  Fine.  He can suffer.”

            Mica scowled at him.  “Well, just for that I’m not going to show you what I found.”  She rustled some papers to emphasize her point.

            Thistlepouch looked up, slightly interested.

            Mica, encouraged, gave her a conspiratorial smile.  “You wanna see what I found?”

            “Sure.”

            “‘Kay, come over here.”  She led her off a bit.  “They’re ledgers from the building that we went to.  .  .  lists of materials, business transactions.  .  .  Perhaps we can get a feel for what ratface was more into.  .  .  .  his other ventures.  We captured two people.  .  .  I plan on visiting them in the morning.  I laid my hands on the man that attacked you, and all of a sudden I had access to all his mind -”

            “Ugah!” Thistlepouch exclaimed, wrinkling up her nose.  Then, morose, “I suppose it was the one that killed Doorling.”

            “Actually, it wasn’t.  In fact, they didn’t really wanna kill Doorling, it’s just that they didn’t expect him to be there.  They were very interested in you.”

            Thistlepouch looked at her, perplexed.  “I don’t understand!”

            “Well ratface, alias Ens.  .  .  you remember Ens?”

            “Big ugly guy with the runs?”

            “Yeah.  Well, he was the one that commissioned these guys, I imagine because he thought you knew where the pirate hideout was, though I know you don’t.  .  .  .”

            Thistlepouch sighed.  “Tusit told me not to say anything but I didn’t think it’d matter that much.”

            “Well,” Mica said gently, “sometimes when we’re in strange places we don’t know what might matter and what might not.  So generally I let Tusit do the talking.  .  .  .  although nowadays he’s just annoying people.  .  .  so, um, do you have any bandaging skill or anything?  First aid?”

            Thistlepouch considered.  “Well, I’m not like Tusit, but I can do some minor stuff.  .  .  hold on a second.”  She did a quick search of her pouches and turned up a small jar.  “Here’s some of that pain numbing stuff.”

            “Oh, can we use this on Orlog?”

            Thistlepouch shrugged.  “I’m sure Tusit wouldn’t mind.”  She handed it over, then padded back over to her spot and resumed her book.  After a couple more hours she found herself stifling yawns -- it had been a long day, and more than once she caught herself drifting off.  .  .  .  then there was a vague impression of someone gently removing the book from her hands, and picking her up, motion, a cloud of softness, covers pulled up to her chin and the hair smoothed back from her face.  .  .  .

            She didn’t remember much after that.

Disclaimer: No squeaky hamburgers were harmed

during the creation of this chapter.

However, a freezer pizza and some rice krispie bars

gave their lives.