Chapter 1 - Part VI

"Yes. What are you doing in my cell?", she sat up and turned to lay her back up against the wall.

""How do you do?' as well", he chuckled, clearly pleased with himself for his surprise approach.

"I have no need of your gods, Eirdren. " she whispered, exasperated, "You may take your message elsewhere."

"Gods?!" he expelled the words from his lips, "Oh! This!" The man examined himself, as if realizing for the first time what he was wearing. "Ah, well, that's not really why I am here, as far as you're concerned anyway. Cedric had requested my services, but no, for you I just wanted to talk." For a moment, he straightened up and lost his air of casual banter, "Not that I am neglecting the work of He, the Keeper of Justice!". He offered a sheepish look that was only exemplified by his ludicrous uniform.

"Cedric," he pointed over across the hall, "He told me who you are, about what had happened on the road to Lithen. I know it may seem straightforward, but do you really know why you are here?"

"I killed that Eirdren lord." she proposed. "What is it to you?", Onion prodded the strange man, hoping to coerce as much information as she could out of the fair man. Curiosity persisted in spite of her resignation to fate.

"Hah! Justice for the slain? " his cynicism cut the air like a knife. His words were spit out harshly, "Hardly. You were used as an excuse for some noblewoman to get away with offing her lord-husband, and in doing so, greatly enrich herself and whoever else she was working with in this plot. Poor Cedric over there", he motioned again to the pale man, "he had no idea either."

"Why am I alive at all?"

"You know, I asked Cedric the same thing. It turns out you were unconscious and buried beneath bodies for practically the entire battle with the Imperial Guard. By the time they had found you and realized that one of the corpses on the field was a living woman, the City Enforcers had arrived to the call. You were not very far out of Eirdred you know."

"What does that mean?", Onion shot back, feeling that none of the man's words addressed her question whatsoever. "One group of guards or two, my death would have been an easy task."

"You don't know this country very well, do you?"

Onion nodded her head to indicate that she did not.

"The chief exports here are catty nobles and the chief import is a lexicon dissembled", through his grimace he snorted out a laugh at his own unique description of the land. "Look, all the infighting that goes on between nobles around here, in Lithen to the north, and Sandor to the south, it isn't isolated incidents of who socially offended whom. There are a lot of power grabs, a lot of players for power. None of this, of course, reaches the Empress, for now anyway, but you have to watch your back for just about any other organization.