jaw and wide, deeply blue eyes. The cast of his features may normally have looked a bit proud, but that effect was presently spoiled by a pink tinge of newly-peeled sunburn on his nose which Tilda had to admit was adorable. She tapped Claudja briskly on the shoulder until the Duchess let her go and turned around.
The man bowed fluidly from the waist and arose with a brilliant white smile.
“I am Brother Kendall Heggenauer of Jobe, and it is my honor to serve as adjunct to our temple master, Father Corallo. Your lordship Sir Towsan, the Father will see you now.”
Towsan stepped forward, as did Claudja, and Tilda thought Brother Heggenauer’s smile turned up a bit more at one side as he turned to the striking young Duchess.
“My lady if it is not rude to ask, might I have your name to announce to the Father?”
It took Claudia a moment to speak, but when she did her voice was level.
“Claudja Perforce.”
Heggenauer started to bow again but stopped and looked up at Claudja, then to Towsan, then back.
“Claudja Perforce, of Chengdea?” he said. “The Duchess Claudja of Chengdea?”
Claudja looked genuinely surprised, and very pretty even in her rough garb.
“Your knowledge of a foreign court is most impressive, Brother Heggenauer.”
“I am from Exland,” Heggenauer said, though it was the first time Tilda had heard that statement made where it did not sound like bragging. “The courtly life is a peril of my tribe.”
Claudja tilted her head fetchingly. “Heggenauer. Would that be of the Konigsburg Heggenauers?”
Heggenauer’s brilliant smile became more so.
“ Touche, as you say in Daul, your Grace.”
The two of them grinned at each other like they were at a dinner party somewhere until Towsan cleared his throat. Brother Heggenauer excused himself and turned to lead the way to the temple.
“Brother,” Dugan said before the trio walked off, and Tilda had a moment of mortification that given Dugan’s feelings for the nobility, particularly its knightly members, he was about to say something awful.
“Is there a priest here who oversees those who avail themselves of the Builder’s charity? Maybe someone who could help us find a few fellows?”
Heggenauer looked over Dugan who with his beard, helmet, and cracked leather armor looked like the worst sort of thug. He glanced at Tilda as well and raised an eyebrow as he recognized the style of the half-cloak on her shoulders, which Tilda felt the urge to smooth even as she stood up a bit straighter.
“Sister Paveline,” Heggenauer said. “Though she is with a patient right now.”
“A patient?” Tilda asked, mostly because the opportunity was there.
“Bar fights,” Heggenauer said. “They are the most popular local sport hereabouts.”
Tilda and Claudja both laughed though it had not really been all that funny.
“I shall send her word you are here, if you would care to wait. It should not be long.”
Tilda nodded and Heggenauer led Towsan and Claudja away. The Duchess looked back over her shoulder a final time and she and Tilda raised their eyebrows and nodded at each other, which made both smile.
“The answer is no, by the way,” Dugan said once the others were gone.
“What’s that?”
“If you are wondering whether the Jobians of the Empire have a vow of celibacy.”
Tilda looked at Dugan sideways. “You should have made a pass at him, then.”
Dugan snorted. “I’ll get in line.”
Once Claudja and the others had disappeared into the temple, Tilda leaned against the table and crossed her arms. The sounds of the Camp Town’s streets roiled on beyond the fenced yard.
“It was a good idea to ask here, after John Deskata and the others,” she said. “They are Codians, and likely strapped for cash.”
Dugan put his feet up on the table and leaned back in his chair.
“Sounds like we’ve reached that bridge you want to burn.”
Tilda turned around to look at him.
“I studied every man we passed on the way here, and it struck me. I would not know John Deskata by sight, nor any of his men. And there is no way to know now if they are still outfitted as Legion men.”
“I’d be surprised if they were,” Dugan nodded.
Tilda took in and let out a slow breath.
“I still need your help.”
Dugan smirked. He had taken to wearing the string of beads that was his pass to enter Vod’Adia around his neck on the cord he had moved from his wrist, and he now patted the charm through his shirt.
“You have me for eight days, Tilda. Unless a party of adventurers makes me a better offer.”
Tilda looked at Dugan levelly and told him the decision she had made a few days ago.
“Once we have found them, I want you to leave, Dugan. Just go on your way and leave the rest to me.”
“You on your own?”
“That is all I need,” Tilda said, almost like she believed it.
Dugan ran a thumb over the beaded trinket through his shirt, regarding Tilda with an expression of deep thought. His shoulders shrugged before he nodded, and he said, “As you wish.”
Some ten minutes later Claudja and Towsan came out of the temple, following Brother Heggenauer who was now outfitted for Camp Town’s streets in plate armor and helmet, carrying a large mace and a shield bearing Jobe’s holy symbol. The Duchess waved to Tilda though she looked completely serious now, and determined, and the trio left by the compound’s southern gate.
It was another twenty minutes before Sister Paveline showed up.
*
As the last night before the Opening of Vod’Adia neared its second watch, the celebrations in the streets and inns became more desperately boisterous. Some men fought in taverns as though they wanted to receive crippling wounds. A brawl cleared out the ground floor of a place called the Dead Possum and kept a former Circle Wizard awake in a bunkroom above.
Phinneas Phoarty gave up on sleep and sat on the edge of his bunk, one of the six in this room, which adjoined another. Both had been paid for by the adventuring party which Phin had been a part of for some forty hours.
From the bunk Phin could see out of a window facing south which was really just an irregular square cut in a log wall daubed with mud, no shutters nor of course glass. When the breeze parted the canvas curtains Phin could dimly see across the valley to the towering wall of unnatural fog filling the southern end. The fog looked faintly orange as it reflected the light of the innumerable fires, lamps, and torches burning in Camp Town, giving it a hellish cast. Phin shivered at the thought that the place would be Open in only a few hours, and the dread in his stomach was only worsened by the fact that he had no idea when he would be going in himself. Though he would be going in.
The party of adventurers which Phin had joined was nearly as strange as that with which he had come to Camp Town. They had hired him in expectation of entering the Sable City and they had paid for his license which was then attached to their own; nine strings of beads and tiny totems with one blank length of finger bone, all attached by hooks to a short, carved baton. The leader of the band was named Horayachus. He was a tall, swarthy man with a scarred face who had yet to speak a word in Phin’s hearing. Horayachus had the license, and while the man called the “Sarge” had told Phin it was good for entry into Vod’Adia anytime after the Opening, there was plainly something else supposed to happen first, something for which everyone was waiting.
Phin had not been told what that was, nor much of anything really. He had spent his first days in Camp Town after Nesha-tari’s departure allowed him to think clearly loitering in inns that were operating as hiring halls, where adventurers not yet attached to a full party sized each other up and talked things through. Phin had billed himself as a freelance mage and obliquely implied he had Imperial training, but as the majority of parties in Camp Town were already arranged, his pickings were slim. Most of the groups Phin talked to seemed hopelessly inept and displayed only a tenuous appreciation for the dangers of the Sable City. The people who did seem to know what they were doing gave Phin but short shrift, and after two days he was starting to realize that being choosy was not a real option for him.
That was when the five legionnaires had approached him. Someone had told them Phin might be a Circle Wizard and at first he had thought they were going to arrest him, clap him in irons and ship him back to Souterm.
