Return to Canifis

“Yes. But Kara, what will happen to me?” Her voice was pleading. “And Jack? He has done nothing wrong. Please Kara, he’s not even nine years old.”

Kara pursed her lips.

“You committed a robbery, Pia, although it seems as if you lost all you gained when Straven caught you.” Pia frowned and Kara saw her look. “Jack told us everything he knew when we found him, bleeding and exhausted on the road. But as for you I have not yet decided what to do. Now, come on.”

“Wait, Kara. We are alone here, and I trust you, for you had no reason to come to my rescue after I abused your reputation,” she said, and she paused a moment to remember. “Sulla has a plan-it was what Velko is keeping to tell you in exchange for a pardon. He’s extorting money from a noble with documents that only he can understand. He said the noble was the first of many.”

“So Sulla becomes a common thief,” Kara said scornfully. “He was a warlord when I first encountered him, and since then I have reduced him to scraping a living. When I next meet him, Pia, I will do what I should have done six months ago. I shall make him a corpse.”

When they emerged into the daylight they found Jack trying on some new boots. Gar’rth had taken them from one of the corpses, the one with the smallest feet, and Jack smiled, despite the fact that even these were plainly too big.

“I have the names of Velko’s friends, Kara,” Arisha said. “Gar’rth found a scrap of parchment on one of the bodies, and that was enough for me to write them down.”

“Very good,” Kara said. “Then let us start our walk back to Varrock. We should still be in time to enjoy the Midsummer Festival, and at least now we can present King Roald with the gift of justice.”

Never a rope!

The thought echoed through Pia’s mind the nearer they came to Varrock. From the east, the land was pastoral, where dry stone walls divided it into the fiefdoms of influential noblemen.

“It’s a fertile country,” Arisha mused. “But it is quiet. I know my people of the tribes would find life pleasant here.”

Velko laughed derisively from the front of their small group. Of the captives, only he was bound. Pia saw that his subservience had vanished, to be replaced by anger now that his pleas for mercy had been ignored.

“So you are a barbarian?” he asked. “This is the east, woman. Nothing here now except open country all the way to the Salve. That’s why few live here. Even your uncivilized race surely has stories of what goes on across that river.”

“My uncivilized people don’t hang others,” Arisha replied. “The most common punishment for all crimes save murder is for the offender to be ostracised. Perhaps, in the few hours that remain to you, you should dwell on which of our societies is truly the more uncivilised.”

Velko mumbled under his breath. Pia could see that the barbarian’s words had chilled him. And she shared the feeling.

They paused to rest in the shadow of a tall yew tree. Velko began to weep again, shaking his head, as if refusing to believe that he’d been captured.

Perhaps his mind is going.

She took Jack’s hand and moved farther away from the thief. She had seen men hanged before, and knew the sudden burst of strength they could possess when faced with the gallows.

As she sat down, closer to Gar’rth and Kara, she saw that the heroine’s eyes rarely left her prisoner.

“I am unwell, Kara,” she heard Gar’rth say bitterly. “I feel light headed and I cannot smell anything, anything at all! It’s as if I’ve lost my sight.” He lowered his hood to reveal his face, pale and drawn. He breathed deeply, and every time nature made a sound his head would dart toward its source as if in paranoid surprise.

Kara shifted her satchel as she stepped away from him. Her dark eyes found Pia, and held her gaze.

She’s giving me a warning.

“Perhaps you should take Velko on ahead,” Kara suggested to her companion. “We have been tracking Sulla for nearly a month now, and we may be close to locating him. And besides…” Kara lowered her voice, looking at Velko briefly. “I want to separate the prisoners. I want to see if there is anything Pia can add to Velko’s account, to be sure we know everything. Don’t go too far ahead though, not beyond sight.”

Gar’rth nodded and stood. He lifted the bound man to his feet with a slight grunt of effort and led him in the direction of Varrock.

“I have never seen Gar’rth ill before,” Arisha said. “Not since the monastery.”

“He is his own man now, since the exorcism,” Kara replied. Still, her words were spoken with some doubt.

“Please Kara,” Pia said now that Velko was out of earshot. “What will you do with us? I know I committed a fraud. I admit it. But it was that or die. And I have told you everything I know.”

Kara lowered her head doubtfully.

Pia pressed on.

“We are not wicked people, Kara. I have never killed anybody. I have taken care of Jack since we were young, when our parents died. Last year we left Ardougne in Kandarin and since then we found our way here. If we didn’t steal, we would have starved to death!”

Hot tears sprang to her eyes.

“Kara?” Arisha asked as Pia’s vision blurred. She felt Jack’s hand on her shoulder. “What do you propose to do with them?”

A silence fell as Pia cleared the moistness from her eyes. When she could see again she saw Kara looking at her and Jack with a frustrated glare. Quickly, Kara looked to Gar’rth, and then back at them.

“I don’t know,” she admitted finally. “Velko will certainly be handed over to the Varrock guard. By his own admission, he has offended enough to warrant hanging. But you two…” She peered at them for a long moment. “I don’t know. I don’t want to be responsible for hanging children.”

Pia felt her face brighten.

Thank you Kara. Thank you!

“But then, I cannot let you go either. I have given mercy to those who should have been killed, and other lives have suffered because of it. Mercy to the likes of Sulla and Jerrod is a death to others, and each is a burden to my conscience.” She turned to her friend. “You know what they did to that man who found his way to the monastery, Arisha. And what they did to the rest of his party who were less fortunate.”

Arisha frowned and lowered her head.

“The point is, Pia, I don’t know you,” Kara said. “I don’t know what else you have done. Therefore I cannot let you go free. Even if I did that, you would only thieve again. I just don’t know.”

“They are still just children Kara,” Arisha said. “Children in need of a guide. You should think about the futures you can offer them-either death at the end of a rope, or a life under your tutelage.”

Kara looked startled and turned away, her brow creased in puzzlement.

“I saw the look on your face after you killed the men in the barn, Kara,” Arisha continued. “And Gar’rth and I have talked frequently since our journey began. You are changing. You are not so violent as before, since you defeated Sulla. If you had someone to look after, it would benefit you as much as them.”

Pia saw Kara’s face darken.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded, anger in her voice. “I just slew fourteen men!”

“Fourteen men who deserved it. Fourteen men who refused your offer of mercy. You did it, but you didn’t like doing it. And now you can offer these two young thieves the chance of a better life.”

“The laws of Misthalin are not mine to make or withhold, Arisha,” Kara countered. “I cannot dare to claim as such. And nor can you.”

When Arisha spoke again, Pia heard a condescending note in her voice.

“I am reminded of a girl I saw once who rode into my village. She had stolen a horse to get there, all the way from Falador. That certainly would have been a hanging offence if subsequent events hadn’t turned out the way they did.” The barbarian woman looked west, to where Gar’rth walked with his prisoner. “And Gar’rth’s own history is not so different from Pia’s. He stole to survive, and had he found someone without Ebenezer’s humanity he, too, would have been hanged.”

“That was different…” Kara began.