Arc 6: Chapter 15: The Hostage
I hadn’t been idle the day before the tournament started. The first thing I’d done was have my meeting with Vander Braeve. Afterwards, I’d paid a visit to the Backroad and convinced the Keeper to facilitate a deal between me and Ostanes. The inn’s enigmatic master agreed to help me with little fuss, after I’d told him what happened to Catrin.
I wasn’t sure it would work, but something had bothered me ever since my last visit to the inn. The other women seemed fond of Catrin, even protective of her. She was liked there, trusted even, and I’d needed help. Even the Keeper’s unsettling bodyguard listened with something very near sympathy in her wolf’s eyes, leaving me to wonder how much of what he’d said during our previous audience was just for show.
No one else would care about Catrin’s fate, save perhaps those other outcasts. If I wanted to save her, and stop this war, I needed to make compromises. Even if it meant compromising myself to those I’d considered enemies.
Regardless, we’d worked out a contract with the Keeper as mediator. Those two meetings done, I’d strategized with my lance. While I helped distract Calerus with war play and tried to forestall disaster on the arena island, they waited for the hours to creep closer to the grand feast which would close out the tourney’s second day. When the opportunity presented itself and her brother couldn’t intervene, they’d taken the Princess of Talsyn into custody. The chaos of the evacuation proved to be an unexpected boon in that regard.
They’d brought her here, to this place, while her brother remained with the other lords and Vander carried out the other part of this scheme. The man definitely didn’t like or trust me, but I felt he was fully willing to act in defense of the realm. Getting him to cooperate with my plan took some doing, and I fully suspected he’d make me pay for it one day.
But for the time being we had a mutual goal, at least where it concerned the Vykes.
The sea writhed beneath the cliffside tower. The sky growled and barked, the structure’s thick stone walls not fully muffling the storm. For a long minute, no one said anything. Hyperia inspected the room, taking in the group arrayed around her, the ritual circle, and me in my tourney armor. I doubted they’d let her see her prison before my arrival.
“So it was you under there all that time, executioner.” A flinty smile quirked the young tyrant’s modest lips before she glanced at the ritual circle. “How exciting. I’m not sure exactly what you have in mind here, but I admit to some… curiosity.”
She tested her bonds, rolled her shoulders, and raised her eyebrows suggestively.
Emma regarded the Vyke with a baleful expression. “Does she have to speak? Can’t we gag her?”
Hyperia’s gaze shot to my squire. “Ah! You must be the Shrike. You’re a bit skinnier than I anticipated. Wasn’t your ancestor supposed to be among our land’s great beauties? Perhaps the blood has thinned.”