1:5 Euphemisms, rich men, and other wicked things.

Mi'ishaen doesn't care to tell this part of the story, for reasons that will very soon become clear.  I try not to enjoy it too much, for her sake.

Apparently, she had always been a very early riser.  Your handmaiden has never been likewise blessed.

The ancient witch woman of dawn had hardly reached her bloody fingers into the sky before I heard Mi'ishaen begin to shuffle around.  Although I was still tired, I made sure to get up and gather all my weapons and findings together, so that I could go with her.  Since there wasn't a door to open any longer, it wasn't difficult for us not to make any noise as we left the abandoned home.  

The windows of the dirty stone buildings all around were still dark, without a soul moving to even draw water or light a hearth within them.  In the streets, a half-naked beggar snored, and a few weary women prepared themselves and their children for a hard day's labor in someone's field or kitchen.  I was hardly conscious at all, and moved nearly automatically toward the water barrel that the women were using to wash their children's faces.  Mi'ishaen stopped me with a single hand laid on my upper arm, which thrilled and scared me at once.  

"I'm not an entertainer," she quietly explained.  "People see a Tiefling woman in armor, they don't wonder what tricks I do.  Better they just not see me."

I had grown used to being stared at, since I was usually the first of my kind that common people saw, but had no idea what those same common people might think of Tieflings.  Before meeting Mi'ishaen, I had only heard tales of her demon-touched race, and they had been so fantastic that I'd dismissed them as false.  Thinking of this, I felt alarmingly ignorant, and couldn't manage to make any answer to her at all.  Thankfully, she turned and moved along without waiting for a verbal response.

I recognized the road she was taking out of the town as the one I'd traveled not long before, behind entirely different people, for an entirely different reason.  Half-awake and hustling, my head bowed, my imagination replayed the shouts of those people again- the crimes of which they had accused him.  The curses they had hurled at him.  That morning, each bloodcurdling shriek and harrowed cry had filled my heart with a horrible delight.

I bumped into Mi'ishaen's back when she stopped suddenly.  Being well-trained, I didn't allow myself to even think to look up to see what was the matter.

"There's a miscreant about," a gruff female voice said.  "A guard went missing last night, and many of the traveling merchants are complaining of having been robbed."

"I myself was robbed not two days gone," Mi'ishaen replied, the strains of practiced humility in her voice.  "I thought it best not to bring it to anyone's attention.  Well you must know what others might suspect."

"Well, you're not doing yourself any favors, walking around with a slave cowed behind you like that.  I see you've evolved beyond using chains or binding spells, but consider allowing her to at least lift her head like a free woman," the voice replied.  "Most places, slavery's illegal... Bhairoset included."

Mi'ishaen paused, but only briefly.  "I thank m'lady very kindly.  Surely I would do well to heed your advice."  She turned to me slowly, and I picked up my head ever so slightly, to acknowledge the fact that she had turned her gaze upon me.  It didn't occur to me to simply lift my gaze to meet hers, so I was outright shocked when she put a firm first knuckle under my chin to lift my head for me.  I caught my breath, ripped from my passive acceptance of the conversation and presented with the threat of having to participate in it.  I was overwhelmingly relieved Mi'ishaen turned back around smoothly, and fought hard to keep my feelings away from my face.

"A little better," the guard noted.  I realized with a nervous tremor that she was a Dragonborn.  The tales of the war between those races, in bloody, terrifying glory, had even burrowed down to the Shadowfell.  Since I'd seen with my own eyes that Tieflings were just as real as Dragonborn, I had to accept the idea that the battles I'd heard of weren't wicked stories meant to scare my sisters and I.  Also, having fought Mi'ishaen so recently, I knew that simple scale and government-sanctioned armor would be little match for even a second's worth of actual anger.  When she had just met me, she had wielded her blade as though we were the bitterest of enemies.  And my heart, for some reason, had thrilled within me as though it had been enchanted.  Just the remembering of the first time she challenged me made it beat faster.

"May I pass?" Mi'ishaen asked, her tone respectful and light.  I wondered if she was smiling that brimstone smile with which she had told me of her grief for her mother, then felt a bit embarrassed for being so hopeful about it.

"Of course; I mean you no harm," the guard replied grandly, as though she were doing Mi'ishaen some great favor.  "Beware the gallows; the last batch of wretches to feel Bhairoset's justice have not yet been cleared from them."

"I shall mind them," Mi'ishaen replied, moving off at a steady pace.

We both remained quiet for a time after that, as the sky grew more red and orange with each passing moment.  By the time the sun had fully risen, I could see Bhairoset's "gallows," which seemed inconvenient, since they all had more leaves than hanging space.  In front of one stately trunk, I sat down in the middle of the street and looked up at the bloated, bruised body that swung above.

"This one?" Mi'ishaen asked as she turned to look at me, bewildered.  "Is this one your best friend?"

"He was," I replied happily.  "But now it's over.  I will be forever grateful to the peasant who accused him."

Mi'ishaen looked at the body carefully from her distance, seeming to want to tattoo the image of the shame in her mind.  "What was he doing?"

"Nothing but his custom," I replied.  "Unfortunately for him, his custom was flagrantly illegal here.  He was a master of arcana.  His family was powerful, and rich, so he was spoiled and full of self-styled wit.  He could have helped so many, both before and after he left the Shadowfell.  But he didn't care to.  He just manipulated people into buying false potions, or poorly enchanted items, or spells that were nothing but gibbledygabble.  When he thought the populace wasn't deserving of his 'arts,' he'd stand me in the center of town and have me dance while he burned my clothes off with spells.  He liked it when people applauded him- it never mattered why."

"Wait a minute," Mi'ishaen said, her tone deepening considerably.  "You're saying he cast actual, dangerous fire spells at you?  Not just prestidigitation foolery?"

I looked at her momentarily, and continued when I realized that her anger wasn't for me. 

"He said those wouldn't draw the crowds.  I've survived offensive fire spells by the hundreds; been singed and outright burned more times than I can count.  That's not what he was hung for, though- he tried to market a false love spell to a farmer's wife here who knew more about the ancient magics than he did.  Not wanting to be exposed as a fraud, he tried to petrify her."  I snickered at the memory of the wrinkled woman's face when he'd spoken his magic words.  "He either misspoke or miscalculated- I'm not sure which- but she corrected him as gently as if she were his mother, then properly cast the spell herself.  He went stone solid with this, 'How dare you' look on his face.  She told the guard that he'd tried to kill her, and they promptly forced him out here and hung him.  No trial, but plenty of people came to watch him swing."

Mi'ishaen looked at the body again, a slow and sour recognition crossing her face.

"May we never meet another such friend.  They won't survive me."

"I will believe it," I replied, getting up to shuffle myself behind her.

"And don't skulk around as though I were going to- befriend you.  No."  She turned and began walking again, leaving me bewildered and rather confused.  "If you're coming with me, then you keep your head as high as you see mine, and your gaze as steady.  The way you speak of him- and that thing that guard had- that shouldn't happen to anything, not any living thing.  You're a solid pickpocket, a pretty good fighter, and a very good dancer.  You're not some... worthless beast."

I wrapped my arms around myself for a few moments, looking over my shoulder at the man who had dragged me behind him like an inane beast for longer than I cared to remember.

No more.  Hanging, bloated, on a branch of Bhairoset's justice.

"What, do you want the farm woman to come and bring him back to life?" Mi'ishaen asked sharply.  She'd stopped in the road up ahead and had turned back to look at me.  For a moment, I thought she was angry with me- then I recognized that she was smiling.

Ah, that grim hellfire smile.

 I'd always been fascinated with the way the denizens of the Nine Hells were always painted smiling amid the flames that so tortured the souls that they enslaved.  I'd also wondered how those souls had been so careless as to end up in the Nine Hells in the first place.

I said nothing, but hustled up the road after Mi'ishaen, pleased to have been the cause of that twisted and quite possibly wicked grin.