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“Hare?” Trysta says. “Hare!” She jumps up and embraces him, her chains clattering. She seems in as fine a condition as he could expect, dirty and thin, but not emaciated or obviously wounded.

She wears a simple shift of roughspun that reaches to mid thigh. Her feet are bare. Her hair has grown back a little on her shaven scalp.

She smells of sweat and worse.

She turns to Xan. “You will protect him?”

“Him?” Xan says. “Why would you care what happens to this priest?”

“Damon needs him,” Trysta says. She clasps one of Jemel’s hands, leaning close. “He comes for you,” she says in Artemian.

“I know. I am going to him. I am leaving the Rose Palace,” Jemel says as he drops Trysta’s grimy hand so he can sort through the keys and start to unfasten Trysta’s chains.

“You know where he is?”

“Not exactly. I was told to go to a safehouse to wait for him. I understand he fled the city, but he returns. For Lukas and for you.”

“Lukas,” Trysta stretches as the chains fall away. “We must free Lukas too.”

Jemel frowns. “Lukas has his own path. He is not in the dungeons.”

“They took him,” Trysta says. “I do not know how long ago. I would have feared him dead, but I believe Atticul plans to execute us together at his ascension.”

“He does,” Jemel says, ushering Trysta and Xan out of the cell and into the passageway, “but Lukas was the one who sent me a message telling me to flee the palace and find Damon.”

“We must find him,” Trysta says urgently.

“No, sister,” Xan says. “You must go.”

Jemel nods. “Go to the safehouse in the city. There is a pot shop in Ragspit called The Happy Swineherd. There are rooms above it where you will be safe. The Mortingales are there. Their leader is a woman called Inga. It is where Lukas bid me go.”

Xan looks at Jemel, expression strange. “You work with the Mortingales? You know Inga?”

Jemel shakes his head. “I know nothing of her. But we can find safety there. I hope.”

Trysta looks torn. “And that is where Damon will be? This is what Damon commands?”

Jemel is sure Trysta would do exactly as bid if she was told the command came from Damon. But he can only tell her what he knows. “It is where I was charged to go to await him, that is all I know. But I was told Lukas had been in touch with his brothers. So he is in the palace somewhere. And alive.” Only now he wonders exactly how that had been done.

But Trysta nods. “If Damon wants us to meet him there. I will go there.” She clearly does not want to leave Lukas, but accepts this order like a soldier.

Xan takes her hand. “Sister, go. Please. You are in danger here.”

Any response Trysta might have made to this, whether agreement or not, is cut off by a sound. Footsteps. Someone coming. Jemel freezes. Ice in his belly. They have been here too long. They have lost the advantage Xan won them with his sword.

Could Xan do what he did to the last group of guards again? Surely not. This time they will not have surprise on their side.

Xan steps forward, putting his body between Jemel and Trysta and the direction of the footsteps. He draws his bloody sword.

“I’ll hold them,” Xan says, glancing backwards. “Get her out.”

“No,” says Trysta, stepping past Jemel. “No, let me help. We fight together.”

Xan turns and takes her hand. “Sister, please. You are unarmed and too weakened. Flee now, I beg you.”

Trysta says something else, a curse in Plumian Jemel does not understand, followed by an insistence she must fight too.

While they are arguing, Jemel pushes past Xan and walks towards the sounds of booted feet. He turns the corner at the end of the passageway and is faced with three armed palace guards.