a/n: This chapter has been completely rewritten for various reasons, the most obvious being that the original chapter sucked. :) I'm much happier with this one; I hope you will be too.

Days became weeks and weeks turned to months and Sieban counted the passage of time by the spells and techniques she learned. At first, she almost missed her master, Tarmas, back in West Harbor, his discipline and guidance. Even as he disapproved of her chosen school, her ambitions, Tarmas had taught Sieban the magic craft honestly; and for her part, Sieban had been the near ideal pupil: quiet, studious, and quick to master. Tarmas had had his uses, but Neverwinter had mages too. What she could not learn from them, Sieban strove to teach herself, not always successfully, but there were results. A new spell here, a potion there—the successes outweighed the risk of failure. She learned.

When the order came, Sieban was in her lab, hunched over her cluttered table, carefully copying a recently acquired scroll into her spell book.

The first knock, she didn't hear, absorbed as she was in her work. The second knock she ignored. The third was accompanied by angry shouting.

"Don't ignore me! I know you're in there!" More pounding. "You've got a visitor. You know it's bad enough you losers make me clean up after you; I'm not running your messages too." Sieban heard Qara huff in the silence that followed. For several seconds the only sound was the scratching of quill on parchment as Sieban sketched out runes and power words. Finally, Qara spoke, her tone petulant. "Fine, whatever. Don't think I'll care when your 'friend' kills you in your sleep."

Sieban waited one, two, three breaths, but Qara said no more. The sorceress had left.

Visitors from Moire, that was odd. In the past, Sieban had always received orders directly through Moire; something must have changed. She should greet this visitor, Sieban thought. Nothing good could come of them, but ignoring them could only be much worse.

As soon as she was finished, she would see to them, then. Moire was not worth the loss that would result from interrupting her scribing.

Each scritch of quill on parchment dragged Sieban further from reality, slowly reducing her world to the book before her. She noticed nothing, heard nothing. The sound of the lock clicking and the door creaking never pierced her perception.

A hand landed heavily on Sieban's shoulder and only years of practice kept her quill hand from jerking and marring her hard work.

"I think you over estimate your importance, thinking you can just ignore a call from Ms. Moire." The voice was gruff, deep, and male. So this was Qara's reported visitor.

The hand withdrew. Sieban said nothing as she copied the final bit of the spell. The writing on the scroll glowed briefly before dissolving into shining particles and whisking off the parchment. Contrary to her passive composure as she set down her quill and closed her spell book, icy rage had settled Sieban's veins. She rested her hands palms-down on the table and followed with her eyes the pale brown birth marks that speckled her skin to where they disappeared at her wrists, hidden beneath the cuffs of her sleeves.

"Get out. I will be finished shortly," she whispered, refusing to look at her visitor lest the sight of him stir her to act foolishly.

He laughed. The derisive sound chilled Sieban's anger just a little more. "Almost half a year and you still don't know your place. You've got nerve, mouthing off to your higher-ups. I don't like that."

"Superior or not, you will leave." Every second this man spent invading, defiling, the sanctuary Sieban had built for herself made her stomach turn. Not even Neeshka, ever the curious snoop, had set foot in this room since Sieban had claimed it, yet this man not only dared to break his way in, but spoke with a swagger as though he were master of this realm. Sieban wondered if he had friends and how quickly would they come running if he screamed.

The chair scraped across the wooden floor as Sieban stood up and smoothed the wrinkles out of the front of her robes. "We may speak in the common room. It will be much more comfortable there."

"Just sit back down."

"I will not."

"You don't understand. I'm not giving you a choice." The heavy hand from earlier grabbed Sieban's left bicep tightly enough to hurt. She tried to resist, but Sieban was not a strong woman, and the man tossed her about as effortlessly as though she were a rag doll.

Using his free hand, he swung Sieban's chair around with a clunk and threw her into it so hard it rocked back precariously on its legs. Pain shot through her left arm as it pulled against the direction she fell and Sieban stifled a cry in her throat. She would not give him the pleasure.

He planted his grip on either of Sieban's shoulders, pinning her back in the chair. For the first time, Sieban got a proper look at her visitor. He wasn't a tall man, noticeably shorter than her, though many people were, but he was well built. Muscles in his neck shifted in time to his breathing; even covered as he was in his leather armor, Sieban could sense the practiced strength in his arms and torso. She knew enough to know that this was a man who lived life by the sword.

What drew her attention most however was his face; the high slopes of his cheeks and almost delicate curve of his nose seemed out of place alongside his voice. She had not expected the pale almond shaped eyes or blue-tinted hair with greying roots, or slightly pointed ears.

"Do you know who I am?" He asked with the casual tone of a one asking a noblewoman to spare a copper before slitting her throat for her purse.

Sieban knew very few of Moire's lackeys and none of them were half-elves; her silence said as much.

A dark expression crossed his face and was gone as quickly as it appeared. "Too bad for you and better for me. Well, all you need to know is what Ms. Moire tells you, and that means all you need care about is what I tell you."

"Let me go." Only the tense set of Sieban's jaw gave her anger away. Her fingers twitched slightly, as though eager to spin the complex patterns spell work required, but she kept her hands firmly in her lap. For the time being.

He shook her roughly and slammed her against the back of the chair again; further protest died in the wake of hisses of pain. "I'll be finished shortly," he sneered, echoing Sieban's earlier words.

Sieban fell silent. She was strong in her art, but not strong enough. She was fast, but not fast enough. Sieban was not certain she could defeat this man, and that thought galled her.

Content with Sieban's seeming obedience, he continued. "I have orders, something Ms. Moire wants done tonight." The dark look crossed his face again; this time it stayed, nestled behind his eyes. "You're going to burn down the Watch building. Send a message; make sure they know who's responsible."

The words were clear enough, but they did not quite connect in Sieban's mind. The man had already released her, and had stepped back to leave before she found her voice. "Stop." To her surprise, he did. "I suppose you have plan as to how I am to go about this? A night is not enough time."

"Figure it out, because you'll have to make it enough." The corners of his mouth turned up, though no sane person would have called the expression a smile. "All that matters is that a few Watch hounds are killed."

"And how am I to keepmyself from be killed?"

"That's not my problem, is it? Now if you're done wasting my time…" He grasped the door knob and waved to indicate that he was leaving.

Sieban pursed her lips. "I will kill you."

"No, you won't." With that, he was gone. He didn't bother to shut the door behind him.

Sieban's shoulder throbbed steadily; her arm ached; she hardly noticed.

The room looked no different than it had before her "meeting." The scrolls Sieban had planned to study were still stacked in a neat pile by her spell book. Puddles of unidentifiable liquids from her last experiment pooled in the warped wood of her workbench; she had intended to clean up later. A battered rucksack containing inks, charcoal, empty potion bottles, blank scrolls—prizes from Sieban's last trip to the Merchants' Quarter—sat atop a mini bookshelf by the door. Everything was in its place, where it belonged, as it should be.

Yet Sieban still felt like something was wrong, like she had been violated. She could not protect her own, and that infuriated her, made her blood run cold with hate. She had learned, but not enough.

She deserved to kowtow to the scum of Neverwinter.

The Watch would burn by daybreak tomorrow, Sieban decided as she rose swiftly to her feet. She returned her seat to its proper place, pushed in against the table. The loss of life was not so terrible in Sieban's eyes; perhaps in helping Moire, she could help herself. Her gentleman caller was out of reach, but she could always turn her ire to other targets just as deserving. That plan was sound.

Sieban considered her spells and spell book. Any one of them could be useful in plotting the night's scheme. Any one of them could have been useful moments ago in ending that fool of half-elf's life.

Suddenly, without so much as a shout, Sieban swept the scrolls and book off the table, sending parchment flapping and fluttering to the floor. Her spell book landed spin up with a soft thud. The pages bent and crumpled under the weight of the cover.

Sieban turned her back on the mess and swept out of the room. She shut the door, but she did not lock it.

a/n: Constructive criticism is always appreciated.