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“Ryon?” Comes a weak voice.

Ryon’s pulse thrums.

Baltisse startles and straightens. They look down and see the dark-eyed stare of Esra looking back. “Ask me how much I’d have wagered that I’d wake up between Baltisse’s tits.”

Something unravels in his chest. He has to place both hands to the dirt for balance. He breathes once. Twice. “How much?”

“Not a dime,” he intones, his voice coarse and cracked.

Esra,he thinks. And then to Baltisse.Thank you.

“Thankher,” the mage replies aloud.

Ryon looks to Dawsyn, who is staring at her palms as though their lines have been redrawn.

Ryon stares too, his mouth hanging open.

“Did I at least save the old man?” Esra croaks.

Salem has already crawled to his side, and he comes closer now. “I told yeh them holes in the ground would be useful, now, didn’t I?”

“Just my fucking luck,” Esra splutters, a cough wracking him. “He lives.”

“Aye,” says Salem, a sad smile stretching the width of his wide face. “Yer a bleedin’ hero, now, Esra.”

Ryon thinks Esra’s broken voice might be the most resounding thing he has ever heard. “I’ll have to remedy that,” his friend says.

As Esra fades back into unconsciousness, Ryon meets Dawsyn’s eyes. Eyes that flash with uncertainty, with fear, hands still alight with a magic neither of them know.

While Tasheem and Rivdan scout the immediate area, Baltisse and Dawsyn continue to hover over Esra.

Salem has stumbled away from the others, seemingly needing to collect himself. Ryon leaves the rest of the group to loom uselessly over in a cluster, not knowing what to do next. He instead goes toward Salem, where he sits slumped on the ground alone. Ryon suspects it is not ailment that grounds him. It is something else entirely. He watches the plumes of smoke churn in the breeze.

“What happened, Salem?” Ryon asks when it is clear Salem will not send Ryon away again to leave him to his solitude.

Salem’s eyes follow the swirls and whorls of smoke as he speaks. His voice is distant. Detached. “Shoulda known they would come,” he says. “Couldn’t bring meself to leave, though. Had to stand me ground like a fuckin’ hero. Ha!” he huffs weakly. “What a lotta good it did.”

Ryon grimaces. “You said the Queen’s guards came?”

“Aye. Whole contingent of ’em. In the dead o’ night, mind yeh. Tried to torch us while we slept.” Salem looks over to Esra’s sleeping form across the way. “Threw their torches through the windows an’ stood there a while, watchin’ it all burn.” The man’s colour rises with the words, great red splotches climbing his neck. “I were a fool, Ry. I tried to save it from goin’ up in flames. It were no use o’ course. Last thing I remember, Esra was draggin’ me into the cellar. Everythin’ collapsin’… blockin’ the doors. The smoke… it was suffocatin’.” Salem swallows thickly, and he looks again to the languid smoke rising to join the clouds. “I knew they’d come eventually, what after stickin’ me nose out the way I did at Dawsyn’s hangin’.”

Ryon flinches.

“Didn’t think they’d come an’ reap it all though,” he spits. “Gutless…godless–”

This is the precise moment that Ruby, adorned from head to toe in Terrsaw regalia, steps into view, heedlessly placing herself between Salem and Ryon.

“Ryon,” she interjects. “We cannot remain here long, have you any suggestions on w–”

But whatever she means to say is cut short by a grunt of outrage.

Salem stands abruptly, his eyes locked on the captain’s. His face resembles something pustular – red and shiny and prone to bursting. “You!” he accuses. “Yeh…youare here? Now?”

Ruby takes measure of his aggressive stance, the violence laced in his tone, and she squares herself to him. “Salem,” she says slowly, carefully, as though not to provoke him.

“Yeh came to me inn, askin’ us to trust yeh,” he says. “An’ then yeh order yer guard to burn it to theground?”

Ruby’s shakes her head avidly. “What? No, sir. No, of course I didn’t.”