Chapter 20 - Part 6

“Ois Silva I presume,” Orphan suddenly realized.

Delegado returned his arrow to his quiver, and put the bow onto his shoulder. “Why are you keeping the scar?” the half-orc asked, his voice unsteady and his eyes wet.

“I can’t get rid of it,” she told him. “Not with my shapeshifting, not with Jorasco healing, and not with months of prayer. It’s a little gift from Tzaryan Rrac’s chief torturer. You remember Tzaryan Rrac, don’t you? He’s the ogre magus that you left me to.”

“I thought you were dead,” he said. “I thought you were dead!”

“Because I changed back after I hit the ground?” she asked. “I was almost dead! I saw Tzaryan as he shot that cold at me and I was playing possum. I almost got away with it, but once he had me inside he noticed I was still alive!”

Delegado started to walk towards her, and Orphan stepped out of the way, but Ois put a hand up. From the look in Delegado’s eyes she might as well have stuck a dagger into his heart. “Ois, I thought you were dead,” he said, his voice breaking.

“You should have come back for me,” she said. “He tortured me for weeks, trying to find out who else I was working with. I didn’t give up your name. I prayed to the Silver Flame, and I waited for you, but you never came.”

“I thought you were dead!” Delegado sobbed.

“You should have come back once your bounty was in Sharn,” she told him. “You didn’t escort Marcuiss all the way back to Darguun, Tharashk security did. You don’t know what that did to me when I found out. Sharn was my first stop when I finally got back to the five nations. I found out all about your drunken carousing with the sailor named Meddin. No, you didn’t care about me at all, else you would have at least come back for my body.”

“Why didn’t you tell us who you were when we were travelling here?” Orphan demanded.

“I realized something when I was on the rack, having my ribs poked with needles,” she told the warforged. “I had a lot of time to think. Tzaryan Rrac tortured me, cut me, burned me, then had magic used on me to cure me. He wanted to let me know he was willing to torture me forever if need be.”

Delegado fell to his knees, his splayed fingers grasping the flagstones of the street. The half-orc began to retch. Orphan felt terrible, knowing how it must kill the proud bounty hunter to display such weakness. “We are in a city of evil surrounded by enemies on a mission that may literally have the fate of the world resting on it,” he told the changeling paladin. “This isn’t time for the bard’s tale version of the events.”

“I realized that I was being punished,” Ois said. “Before I was captured, I told Delegado that I would be with him no matter what the heads of my church said. I lost my faith. I was punished. When I found my faith again, in that dark place of pain, I vowed that should I get out, I would never allow my feelings for Delegado to interfere with my mission again. Once I made that vow, a gnoll sacrificed himself for me.”

Delegado got up and wiped his mouth on one sleeve. “A gnoll? In Droaam? This the same race that likes to eat intelligent races because they feel more fear?” His eyes were red, but his righteous anger was back. “That little ignition of yours approves of them?”

“He asked me about my faith, in the dark hours,” she said. “He recognized the evil of the way he was raised. He wanted to join the Silver Flame. He wanted repentance. He helped me get out, and he paid for it with his life. I stole the mithril armor that Shaidan wore. Tzaryan was keeping it as a trophy. Apparently he was more enraged about losing the trophy than losing me. He tried to hire Petran to find it for him, expecting me to flee east from his manor to Vralkek. Instead I fled north, to Dhavin’s Post. I changed to a half-orc, and my knowledge of the language and the customs that you described to me got me a job as a Tharashk day laborer until I could get to some Flame missionaries. Between the way I was saved my a gnoll, a member of a race that people regard as monsters, and the fact that it was the missionary arm of the church that helped me get back to Thrane, I changed orders.”

“Like they would have let you go that easily,” Delegado said. “I don’t believe you.”

“Tzaryan got some things out of me,” she said. “He knew I was a Silver Flame paladin, and that I was an agent of Thranish intelligence. He knew I was working against the Lords of Dust, and that I killed Shaidan because Shaidan was working for them. The ogre magus spread a description of the scar on my cheek far and wide after I escaped. My value as an intelligence officer was extremely limited after that. Shortly thereafter someone captured Xavier Dunnel.” Her face said that she knew exactly who that someone was. “That effectively ended Thrane’s intelligence capabilities in southern Khorvaire. They had to rebuild from the ground up, which couldn’t include using me. They aceded to my request to missionize in the Eldeen Reaches, figuring that it would make things difficult for Aundair. So between your failure to come back for me, and your other successful activities, you left me without any other purpose.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“You were too busy tending to your bounty to check otherwise,” she told him coldy. “Don’t you remember you yelling at me that I was putting my outside affiliations over our relationship? Looks like you put your House’s bounty ahead of our relationship, too.”

“That’s not the same thing!” Delegado snarled. “Tharashk is my family.”

“The Silver Flame is mine,” she responded.

“You came into the Wastes, however,” Orphan interjected. “Why?”

“A prophecy,” she said. “One that came in a dream, then in person. A halfling named Drorin who told me that my words were needed in the Festering Holt, and that on Saint Valtros’ Day I would deliver a terrible blow against a great stronghold of evil. He could tell me nothing else, and he told me nothing about you. My dreams of him continued even after he left, every night, until the day of The Ascension. Then the dreams cut off.”

“I thought you were dead,” he repeated. “I had no other reason to think otherwise. I never went back to Droaam because I couldn’t relive how I had lost you. Do you know what it felt like when I finally realized it was you, that you had been with us the whole time?”

“Do you know how much it hurt to see you?” she asked him. “A gnoll raised in Droaam gave his life for the Silver Flame, but you wouldn’t give it three seconds. Your temper nearly got you arrested and executed, because you can’t differentiate between a faith and some of its more ignorant followers.”

“Okay, you two are done,” Orphan said.

“You don’t know enough to tell me –” Delegado began.

Orphan glared at him. “Did you hear me? This mission is bigger than you two. The discussion is done.”

Delegado’s nostrils flared, but he said nothing, staring at Orphan with anger and pain.

“I can deal with this if he can,” she said. “Let’s continue.”

“Oh no,” Orphan said.

“What?” she asked, puzzled.

“You’re going back up that ladder and over that wall,” Orphan said, handing her a potion. “That’s a potion of feather fall. We bought it because it was there, we basically cleared out everything in Greenheart, but it will get you back outside the wall safely. If you hurry, you can find Thomas before we leave the city.”

“Orphan, what are you doing?” Delegado asked.

“Delegado, you agreed that I was in charge of this mission, is your word worth anything or not?”

“You cannot dismiss me!” she said.

“I can’t trust you either,” he told her. “And I don’t work with people I can’t trust. Get back up that ladder. Now.”

She drew her longsword. “You had better watch –” she began to say, but then Orphan’s arms moved. He slapped the sword out of her hands, and it clanged on the flagstones.

“I said you’re leaving,” Orphan told her bluntly. “You try pulling a blade on me again and I won’t let you take it back. Now pick that up, sheathe it, and get back up that ladder.”

“Orphan,” Delegado said. “She’ll die. She’s not going to catch up with Thomas, he’s on horseback. She’ll get grabbed and she’ll die. I can’t let that happen. If you send her away, I’ll have to go with her, to protect her.” His eyes pleaded with the warforged.

“You don’t have a very good track record protecting me,” she told the half-orc. She carefully picked up her sword, then put it in her sheath. “And I am not leaving in any event. Will you kill me, Orphan? Or knock me out and leave me for the fiends to find? Would Sensei Visha approve of either?”

“Actually, yes I would,” Orphan said. “It would be a wonderful distraction.”

“Orphan!” Delegado said. “Have you lost your mechanical mind?”

“He’s bluffing,” Ois said. “He’s not very good at it, though.”

“I’m not sure that I am,” Orphan said. “Ask yourself if you are hurting or harming this mission. Ask yourself if throwing Delegado off with this emotional pain that you seem to enjoy causing him will help him track down what we need to find.”

“I’m fine!” the half-orc insisted.

“Ask yourself if you really want someone who can freely detect evil presences with you or not,” she retorted.

“I’d prefer someone I can trust,” he said.

“Orphan, let me speak to you privately,” Delegado said.

The warforged looked at Ois, then nodded. He walked across the street with the half-orc. Feather sat over them and gave one soft caw, commiserating with Delegado.

“I don’t want her,” Orphan whispered. “I don’t.”

“Because she caused me pain,” Delegado said softly. “That’s the only reason. Otherwise you really should have her with you.” Orphan tipped his head to one side, realizing that the half-orc was right. “Don’t fight my battles for me, Orphan. She hurt me. She’ll continue to hurt me. But it’s my problem. I can do the job. And we could use her.”

“This is a bad idea,” Orphan told him.

“I have worked with her before. It increases our chances of being successful. By a great margin.”

“She wouldn’t mind seeing you dead, and you want to work with her?” the warforged asked.

“She doesn’t want to see me dead,” Delegado said. “She wants to see me be sick with guilt – which I am. And you want to punish her for hurting me.”

Orphan said nothing. Finally he nodded.

“Don’t,” Delegado told the monk. “She’s been punished more than enough.”

“Fine,” the monk said. He turned and walked back to Ois. “You’re in, but let’s get something straight. I’m in charge here. If you deviate from my orders, then I will knock you out, fiends or no, Delegado’s guilty feelings or no. Is that clear?”

“Very,” she said. “There’s something flying this way, something evil. We should take cover.”

“Follow Delegado, his dragonmark is finding us the path,” Orphan said. “And you keep your little trap-finding wires out and your blade away unless we enter combat.”

She nodded, and Delegado clicked his tongue. Feather landed on Delegado’s shoulder, and they all headed into the guardhouse to get under cover.