Recognizing belatedly that she'd been addressed, she blinked and focused on Davro's face, trying not to gawk at the solitary eye, the towering horn, or the protruding lower tusks. 'I, ah, actually know surprisingly few details of my father's life,' she admitted. 'I didn't even know who he really was until a few years ago, and my mother still thinks me ignorant.' Or she did before I ran off with Kaleb and my uncle. 'But no, I'm not happy at all with what I do know. Corvis Rebaine was not a good man.'
'Again with the understatement,' Davro rumbled, accompanied by another bestial chuckle. 'So what is this, then? Are you out on a great crusade of justice, to make right your father's wrongs?' The disdain was palpable, thick enough to paint with.
Kaleb frowned. 'I'm not certain that her motivations are germane to-'
'No,' Mellorin interrupted. 'That is, if I can make up for some of what he did, I'll certainly take the opportunity. But it's not why I'm here. I want,' she elaborated without waiting to be asked, 'to find out how he could do what he did… why he abandoned his family to pick up where he left off after so many years.'
'He wanted to protect you from Audriss,' Davro protested, even as his expression twisted in what could only be stunned disbelief that he was defending the man.
'Originally, maybe. But he didn't stop there.'
'Of course he didn't.' The ogre shook his head. 'I should have known. You can't believe anything that bastard says. If he told me the sun would rise tomorrow, I'd stock up on torches.'
'Right. I want to ask him why.'
'I see.' The ogre chewed the inside of his lip. Then, 'And if you pull the other one, my horn lights up like a firefly.'
'What-?' Mellorin sounded almost shocked, and Jassion was scowling darkly, but Kaleb's lips curled into a shallow, knowing smile.
'The thing about your father,' Davro said, 'is that he had a motive for everything, be it ulterior or just-uh, 'terior,' I suppose. And I don't believe for a second that your apple, however cute and tiny, fell that far from his ugly, ornery tree. Curiosity can make a person do a lot of things, but give up the only life they know? Uh-uh. You don't have a question, Little Rebaine, you have a goal.'
And for the first time in Kaleb's experience, he saw the girl's expression twist-not in fury, not in sorrow, but in hatred. 'My father,' she repeated, 'was not a good man. He was a monster. Those lives he didn't destroy…' A single tear threatened to spill from her eye, then evaporated in the searing heat of her emotion. '… he turned into lies. And he never paid for any of it.'
'He lost his family,' Kaleb pointed out. 'He lost you.'
'Another crime, Kaleb. Not a punishment.'
'All of which is utterly immaterial,' Jassion growled, unable to swallow his rising impatience-and, just perhaps, taken aback by the fervor of his niece's hate. Mellorin leaned back, breathing heavily, and allowed the interruption to go unchallenged. 'We need your help finding him. Nothing else matters.'
'I have no loyalty to Rebaine,' Davro said thoughtfully. 'And precious little affection for him.'
'Then-'
'But I also don't need trouble from the likes of him again, and he knows where I live. I like my solitude; you might've picked up on that. I'm not convinced it's in my best interests to get involved.'
'Is that so?' The baron took a single pugnacious step. 'Then perhaps, ogre, you might consider what sorts of attention we can call down on your valley! You'd never be left alone again, if you-'
'No!' Kaleb shot to his feet, grasping Jassion's shoulders and spinning him around. 'You might try not talking for a change, old boy. You clearly need the practice.'
'What the hell do you think you're-'
'How do you think Rebaine got his help in the first place, you idiot?' he hissed, casting a glance at Davro's rapidly reddening face. Then, to the ogre, 'My apologies, Davro. My companion spoke without thinking. We would not, of course, attempt to force your cooperation.'
Jassion glowered, but said nothing.
Davro himself nodded in Kaleb's direction, though his lone eye never left Jassion. 'Apology accepted.'
'Good.' Kaleb stepped in front of Jassion, a clear signal that it was he, not the baron, with whom Davro would continue to deal. 'We've no intention of interfering with your life here, or of bringing trouble-be it Rebaine or anyone else-down on your head. Please, just tell us anything that might help us in our hunt. We'll bother you no more, and you just might acquire some small measure of that justice you earlier mocked.'
Inhuman shoulders rose and fell in a heavy shrug. 'I'm really not sure what I can tell you. I've neither seen nor heard word of Rebaine since I left Mecepheum six years ago. He's obviously not with his family, so I have no sodding idea where he might've gone.'
'That's it?' The words practically quivered as they escaped Jassion's tightly clenched teeth.
A second shrug. 'Seems so.' A pause. 'Maybe if you've access to a sorcerer. After the war, Rebaine cast…' Broad lips quirked into a scowl around the two protruding tusks. 'We haven't met, have we?' he asked Kaleb abruptly.
'I think I'd remember. Why?'
'I don't know. Something vaguely familiar about you-but then, all you two-eyed little dwarfs look the same to me.'
'Maybe,' Kaleb said, 'but I can assure you, we've never met. You were saying?'
But it was no good. Whatever the ogre had seen in Kaleb-or imagined he'd seen-was apparently too much. 'No, I don't think so,' Davro told him, rising from his stool to tower above them. 'I think it's time for you to go.'
'Damn you,' Jassion began hotly, 'there's no way-!'
'I think there is.' Somehow, without the twitch of a single muscle, the ogre's hand drew their attention to the massive blade at his side. 'Go away. You want answers? Go ask Seilloah, the witch, if Theaghl-gohlatch doesn't eat you-and if she doesn't, for that matter. I still have cows to milk.'
Without another word, Kaleb offered a shallow bow, and led both a puzzled Mellorin and a sputtering Jassion through the cavernous doorway. 'All this way!' Minutes and some few hundred yards later, the baron remained furious enough to chew horseshoes into nails. 'For nothing! Just more wasted time. We ought at least to make sure that damn monster pays for his own crimes before we leave!'
Mellorin scowled but chose, for the moment, not to respond. 'I don't understand,' she asked Kaleb instead. 'He was about to tell us something. What happened?'
'I don't know,' the sorcerer admitted with a much smaller shrug than Davro's. 'Maybe he sensed something of my magics? Ogres aren't much taken with sorcery. Or maybe I really did remind him of someone.'
'Or maybe he's just a lunatic!' Jassion snapped. 'What does it matter?'
'It's just, if we could convince him to finish what he was saying…'
'He doesn't have to,' Kaleb told her. 'I know what he was saying.' Then, 'If you two keep staring at me like that, your eyes are going to pop out and roll away.'
'You know?' Jassion squeaked.
'I'm almost certain that's what I just said. It's what I heard myself say. Perhaps I need to clean out my ears.'
Despite his warning, the others continued to stare.
'During his various campaigns,' Kaleb said with a sigh, 'Rebaine cast a spell on his lieutenants, so he could find them again if necessary. It's a flimsy, tenuous magic, and no, before you even ask, I can't use it to trace him back. If the spell had been cast on me personally, I could probably do it, but as it is, the connection's just too faint.'
'Oh,' Mellorin said, disappointed. 'I guess maybe we did come all this way-and kill that ogre,' she added deliberately, '-for nothing.'
Jassion, however, was frowning, not in his typical disapproving scowl but apparently in thought. 'I admit, I know almost nothing about magic…'
Kaleb's eyes went comically wide. Jassion ignored him.
'But would such a spell last indefinitely?'
'No,' the sorcerer told him. 'A long time-decades, potentially, if no other magics interfered with it-but not forever.'
'So wouldn't Rebaine have likely cast the spell on Davro again, after his war against the Serpent? In case
