[Joren's here to pay for this… He can't shrug this off. He won't…
Arrest didn't seem to have inconvenienced [Joren very much. That will change…
[Squire, p 146 2004 version
Joren had taken to wandering the halls of the Palace and it's grounds in the evenings, just as he had done as a page. Though now, as a convicted felon, he had been brushed off by each of his tried companions, and this evening, walked alone.
That was a mistake.
"Stone Mountain!" A voice rang over the courtyard Joren stood in. He turned to see a tall man that looked surprisingly like one of the pages Joren had trained with – Nealan the Prize Idiot.
"Present," Joren sang back sarcastically.
"You're the one that got the Lady Squire pissed off, aren't you?" the man asked, approaching.
"Oh go on. How pissed off was she?" Joren taunted.
"Very. Oh, how she would like to be the one to do what I'm about to do now!" the man jeered, then swiftly punched him in the nose. Joren groaned and clutched his bleeding, broken nose.
"Perhaps you shouldn't have been loitering around your estates, getting out of practice? You might have actually seen that coming," the man spat. "You disgust me. Hurt, anger, annoy, or merely cast a shadow upon that image of perfection again, and a broken nose and pissed of Sergeant will be the least of your worries."
With that the tall man left the Squire to his bleeding and went back into the castle, smirking.