1:18 Communal lies.

Syjen had been playing nice from the start.

He whipped himself around, dealing me a solid slap that sent me to the floor.  Aleksei roared his discontent, but was suddenly silenced somehow. Icy cold slivers of pain began digging themselves into my skin, and I heard myself shrieking.

"Syjen-" Ylyssa managed, sounding as though she'd gone a considerable distance away.

"You will demand nothing of me!" Syjen thundered.  "I am in command here-"

"Syjenge," Ylyssa began again in a modulated tone.

"-and you will respect me accordingly!" Syjen finished.  I felt some kind of bonds go on to my feet, although I heard no jangling of chains.  I stopped screaming, embarrassed, and sat up slowly.

The view was less than kind.  Aleksei had stumbled back a few steps, gasping and clutching his chest as though he'd just been struck.  Silveredge maintained a blank and steady gaze at nothing, imitating stone in her stillness.  Ylyssa had woven the fingers of her hands together in front of her and was looking without very much emotion at a wild eyed Syjen.

"No one makes demands of you," she said quietly and with little inflection.  "She misses her shadow, that is all.  Not everyone is so hard hearted as you, that when a mate is lost, she can be easily replaced with just anyone."

Syjen waved a hand as he turned his back on her.  "Take her.  Get her away from me.  You suit each other- harpies, the pair of you.  Take her and go."

"Syjenge, please, think of-"

Syjen turned right around on his heel and marched straight up to Ylyssa.  For a moment, I felt as though she was about to taste his backhand herself.  "Níl aon níos mó ama ag smaoineamh."

It was at this point that I genuinely wondered how long this situation had been going on, and how long I had been a part of it.  Bahlzair's poison had worked such wonders that I wasn't sure if I'd been asleep for just one day, or possibly more.  It wasn't as though I could just turn to Silveredge and ask her how long she and the dark Elf had kept me in that part of the cave.

Ylyssa stepped away from her partner, then turned to extend a hand to me.  Glaring at Syjen- who had not turned, but merely stiffened his stance and looked at us from the corner of his eye- I accepted her hand and stood.

"What did you do to Bahlzair?" I asked gravely.

"Away with you, witch," Syjen replied with a scowl.  "If you're worth your fee, you'll scry, or call up some spirit to tell you."


"Aleksei?" Ylyssa asked calmly, turning her back on Syjen and making her way toward the doorway as soon as I had stood up.

"Get out, Ylyssane," Syjen breathed, "before passion overcomes better sense."

"Cén paisean a bhfuil sé ag caint faoi?" Ylyssa snorted.  "Nach bhfuil grá agat dom."


Syjen laughed cruelly in response.  "Ní gheall mé riamh grá agat. D'iarr tú airgead agus meas. Beidh ort iad. Téigh ar shiúl."

The way in which Syjen lifted his head just slightly exactly imitated the image that Bahlzair showed me on the wall.

With a shiver that couldn't be explained by cold, I followed Ylyssa out of the room and down the winding corridors.  The upward slopes and downward pitches no longer meant anything- I had no point of reference, and at that moment, didn't even want to attempt to figure one out.

"How did you discover Uirrigan's fate?" Ylyssa asked suddenly.  "What method did you use?"

"There was no method," I replied truthfully.  "I was in a trance.  I lay in my trance, and when I awoke, it broke upon me like a sunrise.  It was a vision."

"A vision," she repeated, slowing her pace.  "How often can you perform these rites or rituals?"

"I am very tired," I shrugged, again telling the honest truth.  "It may take me a few days to regain my ability to receive the visions again."

"Of course," Ylyssa nodded, now slowing to a stop.  We were in the middle of a very narrow walkway, like the one that led to Uirrigan's workshop.  "I know it costs a warlock much more to work with her abilities than it costs a wizard or a sorcerer to simply play with their magic.  Thus, I do not ask this lightly.  I-"

"You need me to tell you about Syjen," I sighed, fearing that this would be the truth.  Ylyssa merely nodded her answer, and I figured that I had at least three days to work the situation to my advantage.  Less, if Ylyssa were as unpredictable and rash as Uirrigan said.  She certainly didn't seem to have thought out her sudden attack on the paid party.

"Give me time to recharge myself, but act normally," I advised.  "Whatever you would commonly do, do that.  Do not change your manners in any way.  When I am properly rested, I will do my best to see what is in store for you.  What will you do for payment?"

"Whatever you wish, even unto your freedom, is yours.  I don't care anything about his orders," Ylyssa said with venom.  "For years, to be doing all his ward work, all his dirty slave work, with unmatched zeal-"

"Be careful," I counseled, trying to sound truly concerned.  "I'll divine Syjen's intentions toward you, and your best course of action against him.  All I need are alchemical materials, and time."

"Bahlzair is the best.  When Syjen does not notice, I bring him weeds that I know he desires.  I was going to sit with him to see what he needed when I saw- well- it must have been while you were in the trance.  You looked sick, almost dead.  But if it was serious work that you were doing, then of course-" Ylyssa stopped talking and dropped her head.  "Stay in my room with me.  Keep me company while you do this for me.  I was a promising child, once.  This match, this task- it's not fair.  It's his clan's wickedness.  I became the opposite of everything I ever wanted the moment my father gave me to him.  And for what?  To now suffer his disgust, his temper, and flagrant infidelity?"

Little by little, as I thought everything that I'd heard over, I began to understand.  A little of Uirrigan's explanation, a little of Aleksei's story, a little of Bahlzair's illustration, and a little of Ylyssa's rambling all began to fit together as one cohesive story- the long and unfortunate story of a lot of people getting caught in the wrong field at the wrong times.

1:17 Lady of the house.

Aleksei, in a grand show of sloshed concern, attempted a comforting phrase of some sort. "Ne to, chtoby boleznennyj, ne tak li?"

"Ye gods- the drunk wants to take care of me," Ylyssa managed, her voice muffled by her arms.  "But my own mate won't."

"Now, Ylyssa," Syjen began from the back of the room.

"What?" she shot back, sitting straight and turning around to glare at him.  "What do you want to say about this?"

"How long has it been since we've actually turned a profit?"  A brave question indeed, asked from twenty feet across the room.

Ylyssa snorted contemptuously.  "You're not after profit.  Had you been, you could have sold your damned pet before we even got her all the way here.  Don't give me that!"

"Net neobhodimosti krichat',"  Aleksei ventured, unwinding himself from around me and using the wall to get up.  "Vse v porjadke."

Some change began to darken the sea green Eladrin's normally self-satisfied face.  He came forward, possibly more to make an impression on Aleksei than on his mate.  "Ylyssa, those men had all paid to be here.  If I'd managed to sell Aleksei or the witch, so much the better, but I was charging an entrance fee.  Would you like to see the ledger, or the receipts?"

"Vse jeto bezopasno, i nikto ne postradal," Aleksei protested, ignoring Syjen's forward movement.  It seemed that all his attention was focused on Ylyssa, who made absolutely no motion to discourage him.  "Nikto ne vredil nikomu pravil'no."

"Aleksei, move aside," Syjen crabbed at last, glaring up at a beast that was easily twice his size.  "What is he saying, anyway?"

Aleksei turned a terrifying glare down on Syjen, a look so charged with a bone chilling hate that I could feel myself cringe.  For a moment, I genuinely feared what he could do.  "Ja zhelaju chto ja smoglo tashhit' vas k adu s mnoj."

Finally and at last, Ylyssa turned a weary gaze upon the towering Dragonborn.  "Dovol'no, dovol'no. Nikto ne budet tjanut' nikto v ad segodnja. Vy pravy. Kazhdyj celymi i nevredimymi. Ja slishkom jemocional'no reagiruet, pozhalujsta, lech' v postel', eh?"  Aleksei turned to Ylyssa and began to move toward her, only to be checked by a single, slender upraised finger.  "Ne oshibites'. Ja supruga drugogo cheloveka. Ja mogu predostavit' vam druguju piva, no jeto vse. Obeshhaj mne, chto vy budete vesti sebja vezhlivo."

With a comfortingly intoxicated smirk, Aleksei sat down where he was with a thump that resounded in the room.  "Ja obeshhaju chto vy ne zametite moe plohoe povedenie."

Ylyssa seemed to chuckle to herself for a second, then turned to go toward the other side of the room.

"You do remember that I don't speak a word of that gibberish?" Syjen frowned, put off by the clear display of playfulness between Aleksei and Ylyssa.  "He'll never learn Common if you-"

"And what should he learn Common for?" Ylyssa demanded, shuffling things around in a corner too far for me to see.  Since it was the same area that the stew had come from, I could only assume that someone was getting fed.

"So he can reliably communicate with whomever owns him," Syjen shot back, now putting himself firmly between a frozen Silveredge and the reclining Aleksei.  Aleksei looked up at him with total contempt.  "I doubt we'll be selling him back to someone who speaks whatever language that is, since they would be a Dragonborn themselves, wouldn't they?"

I'd been wrong about the food.  Instead, Ylyssa brought back a steaming cup, which she and Aleksei shared a smirk about.

"You can't sell him," Ylyssa sighed once the cup had been handed off.  "There's no market for him anywhere, unless you want to give him back his weapons and let him be a mercenary.  Esli vy mechtaete obo mne, vy ne mozhete byt' obvinen. Vy mozhete mechtat'. Ja tozhe."

Syjen whipped around, grabbed Silveredge, and shoved her forward.  The intent may have been to get her between Aleksei and Ylyssa, but since Silveredge was a dancer, she simply regained balance a few steps away.  "I can sell them," Syjen growled.  "All of them, and you too, if I wanted.  Working with Uirrigaen has taken its toll on you, making you forget your place."

"My place?  My place." Ylyssa pushed a gutteral laugh out of her body and crossed her arms over her chest.  "I've been in my place.  It's you who have forgotten what fidelity and loyalty are.  Had I desired to leave my place, you wouldn't have to worry about what to do with the Dragonborn."

"What would he do to you that he hasn't already done with me?" Syjen smiled grimly.  "I command well enough, spell or no."

"If you forgot, there's at least one piece of merchandice that's completely in her right mind," I finally piped up.  "I don't care who does what to whom, but what I do care about is being continuously lied to.  So somebody is going to finally tell me what is really going on here, or there will be consequences."

Aleksei, who'd finished whatever was in his cup with an alarming speed, pushed out a threateningly gurgling belch.  He sat all the way up with some effort, then sighed his contentment.  "Dajte mne devushek i pogovorite k vashemu suprugu," he suggested with a smile.   "Vozmozhno, jeto budet razdrazhat' ego dostatochno, chtoby obratit' vnimanie na vy."

"Well?"  Ylyssa demanded, stretching an arm toward me.  "The witch asked you to tell her the truth.  And I'd like to hear what you tell her."

"You already know the truth, Infernal," Syjen spat disgustedly.  "As soon as I find a buyer for you, you're off."

"Same spot as Bahlzair and Aleksei are in, huh?"  I probed, closing my eyes.

"That's right," Ylyssa stated flatly.  I could just imagine the scowl that went with that affirmation.

"That's interesting, because I can see that they've been here a while- a long while.  That either makes you a pretty abominable salesman, or a liar."  I opened my eyes and looked from a highly amused Aleksei to the two Eladrin.  "You're really just amusing yourselves with your toys.  A little pass time for the jailors."

"And there you have it," Ylyssa said in a mockingly congratulatory tone.  "Are we keeping this one now, too?  What harm will it do to-"

"Irrepairable damage, Ylyssane, to the clan," Syjengen stormed, suprising me.  "I will not be responsible for its defamation.  She stays with Aleksei, in the same room.  He can sport himself with her tonight."

"He's practically twice her-" Ylyssa began.

"Only if my woman comes too," I demanded suddenly.  "I- I've missed her."

And it was Ylyssa, not Syjen, who shot me a look of pure understanding.