"We have to do something about this," Sujiu said into the silence, such as it was.

Four pairs of eyes glared at them maliciously from snarling faces marked by similarities born of inbreeding. The four women they found in the tower were all unarmed and barely clothed, and had bared their sharp, filed teeth and begun hissing at them as soon as they entered. Kailn could hardly blame them. The way their band appeared right now – filthy with gore and weapons in hand – would have elicited hisses from anyone, including wild animals.

There had been a long moment of tense staring when Niero, Sujiu, Mogashi, Malje and Kailn first barged into the room. They had waited to see if one of the cannibal tribe's women would produce a hidden weapon from somewhere and attack, but they had not. Even so, the cannibals were still clawing at air and everyone with a weapon was holding it tightly. Niero had attempted to speak to them, but they were not interested in speaking.

Which left them in their current situation. No one had answered Sujiu yet, so he went on.

"We can't turn them loose, they'd be at our throats before the first night's out. Should we just kill them?"

"Oy, I think we gone and done enough murderin' for the day, eh?" Niero interjected with a none too pleased expression.

"We could keep them as slaves," Malje suggested eagerly. "When we leave, we can take them with us, sell them in the first port and make a fair sum of it."

"Who did you think to sucker into buying one of them?" Sujiu shot back, indicating the savages, for there were no euphemisms for the bunch. Even at that moment, one was spitting at them, staining herself as much the floor. "I'm not much interested in becoming a slaver, either," he finished.

Malje might have argued the sentiment, except that from their expressions, the others seemed similarly predisposed. She shrugged and let it drop. She was not about to start serving future slaves herself, of course. "Fine. So we keep them here and set them loose to fend for themselves when a ship picks us up."

Sujiu gave a slight shake of his head. "It's unlikely these ones could survive on their own. And anyway, they can't stay here."

"Why not?" Niero retorted. "Th'room's kept them in place well enough so far, hasn'it?" Judging by their paleness, the women had not seen sunlight too many times in their lives. Beyond that, the room also stank.

"I don't think we can spare the food, and we'd have to keep a guard on them. We'd need to go through here every time we want to get to the uppermost level, where the lighthouse's lamp will be, and we can't move them into any other building because – well. You saw those shacks."

"The ground floor did have stairs leading down," Kailn observed. "If nowhere else, we could take them there."

There was a moment of silence. "True enough, but even if there's another lockable door down there, that doesn't solve the other issues."

"We can't feed four new mouths," Mogashi weighed in. "They may also be carrying strange diseases. Whoever guards them would be exposed." The Mwangi had been looking oddly uncomfortable about the whole business, Kailn noted.

"So just take them downstairs and leave them there to rot," Malje said, growing impatient. "I won't be serving them food or spending my days sitting in some dank dungeon to keep an eye on them. Let them eat each other, no skin off our backs."

"That's little better than torturing them to let ourselves feel good. If it's going to come to that, better to kill them ourselves. It'd spare them a slow death," Sujiu said, all too calmly in Kailn's opinion.

"Why's it seem like you're really, really determined to be murderin' these folk?" Niero muttered.

Sujiu glanced at him in annoyance. "Look, if you want to be the one guarding these..." he motioned at the four wild-women, still hissing, and left the thought unfinished, "...or if you think you can convince one of the others to help you with that, I'm not going to stop you. But you're not going to be doing them favors by letting them die over days or weeks of starvation and living off each other."

Niero threw his hands up in surrender. "Fine, fine. Can't say as you're wrong on any particular point... But you can do it yourself. I'm washin' my hands of this." He left the room through a door that would lead to the top of the building.

"Me too," Mogashi grunted, and followed the Varisian. The four members of the cannibal chieftain's personal harem watched them go with confused suspicion but only slightly abated hostility.

Sujiu did not call after them – which Kailn found unsurprising – but he did not even glare after them, which was somewhat surprising. As far as Kailn could discern, the man was only slightly more tense than a moment ago. He turned to him and Malje. "Kailn, can you make them sleep?"

The sorcerer shook his head. "No. My apologies." He was not much good with weapons, and was eyeing the door less discreetly than he might have.

Sujiu merely nodded. "Very well. Malje?"

"Go ahead," the half-elf woman said and strolled out of the room with her spear, unfazed. Kailn went with her, shooting an apologetic glance behind him. He closed the heavy, wooden door behind them with a clunk, leaving Sujiu facing the four scrawny, unarmed cannibal women alone with his rapier.

Niero and Mogashi had not gone far. They were looking out at the sea over the balustrade of solid stone that wound upwards around the lighthouse. It was barely low enough that Kailn could see over it, but he went to it and tried to focus on the sea. It was not yet midday and the worst of the heat was yet to come, and this high up there was a pleasant breeze in the air. The noon sun sparkled white in the dark blue expanse of a sea that spread into the far horizon.

However, only a moment or two after the door closed, the screams began, and afterwards Kailn could not remember seeing much of the sea.

lIlIl

Later that day, when the survivors had relocated their camp to the cannibals' place of residence and the worst of the tribe's offences against civilization had been put to the torch, life was mostly back to normal. Flames were dancing in a firepit in the middle of the camp and everyone was still awake aside from Niero, Mogashi and Gelik, who had late guard shifts to look forward to. Aerys was scribbling in her scroll, Malje was talking with Jask, Ishirō was brooding at the edge of the firelight and fingering his blade, Sasha was talking to Pezock the tengu and thus unavailable, and Sujiu was cleaning his arrows with meticulous care. Kailn was thinking about the day.

It was as Niero had said, really. Can't disagree on any particular point. So was he stupid, then, to still feel that it just did not sit well? Was it really good that a man should be able to kill four unarmed people and not bat an eye, just because it was necessary?

He glanced at Sujiu out of the corner of his eye. The archer had a huge bundle of arrows by him and was going through them one at a time, holding their fletching lightly between his fingers and stroking out any minute particles of dirt. Kailn did not know how often he actually found anything in there that could severely impair the flight of an arrow, but it was a ritual the archer went through almost daily. From looking at him it was immediately obvious that his thoughts were elsewhere.

Now that he thought about it, Kailn could hardly remember seeing Sujiu awake and without something in his hands at all times, usually a weapon. Was it about always having the answer at hand, Kailn wondered. A master key to open or close all doors? A solution to every problem?

He remembered the way the half-elf had looked when he came out of that room in the lighthouse, drenched in blood and breathing hard but with an expression little different from what he always wore. No one had said anything as he dragged out four bodies, some punctured through the heart or an eye and a couple with snapped necks, and proceeded to push them over the edge of the balustrade. One of the bodies had slipped from his hands, slick with blood as they were, and he had to try twice to get it over.

Kailn had cast a minor spell to cleanse him of the worst without being asked. The half-elf had thanked him in an even voice and they had all continued up the stairs to see what there was to be done about the lamp.

When they returned to camp to get the rest of their group, no one had volunteered the specifics of what had taken place in the lighthouse. It was well enough, though, as the others never pressed them for details. Having already seen more battle than he ever intended in his life, Kailn had a feeling he understood why.

What he still wanted to understand was what Sujiu thought about the whole affair. Having had enough of mulling it over in his head, Kailn decided to go and ask.

He rose and walked over. "Hello, Sujiu."

Sujiu looked up. "Hello, Kailn. Can I help you with something?" A degree of formality came easily to both of them, though Kailn rather doubted that Sujiu had ever been a butler. Interesting, that.

Kailn sat down. Protocol and pleasantries had ever been a central part of his life, but for all the halfling's desire to maintain connections to a more civilized world, on the jungle island they felt out of place. Still, a certain degree of tact was to be adhered to in conversational intercourse.

Kailn spoke quietly so as not to be overheard. "I was only wondering what your thoughts were on this past day." He did not have to specify which part. "I didn't get the impression that you were eager for things to go like they did, but you also seemed quite unperturbed after they did."

Sujiu did not answer immediately, and spoke slowly when he did. "My thoughts... I had thought to be discussing this with Niero, but maybe he came to similar conclusions as I did, over the day... Well." He put away an arrow and picked up a new one. "Anyway. My thoughts are what I said aloud back there, and involving the rest of the camp in a vote would not, I think, have changed much. It was the best thing to do, I'd say."

"Would you say it was the right thing?"

"Is it ever the right thing for anything to live at the expense of something else? I'm not a philosopher, I can't really dissert the particulars. Suffice to say it was necessary and the best I could think of, and there was little argument."

"Fair enough," Kailn allowed. Perhaps the soldier was not a philosopher, but there were definitely un-grunt-like elements to his vocabulary.

They sat a while in silence. Most of the others were turning in by now. "May I inquire as to one more thing?"

"Inquire away," Sujiu said.

"When you say it was for the best, were you thinking only of us, of them as well?"

"Them as well," was the reply.

"And what makes you so sure it was?"

"There's many ways to the same end. Those four were headed down a bad one of slow starvation or being mauled by some beast in the jungle if set loose. They showed no sign of having been out to hunt or even being out of the room for a long time." Sujiu was quiet for a moment. "Battlefield mercy, I suppose... A kind that doesn't end happily, but is no less valid for it."

"All right," Kailn said and rose to his feet. "Thank you for answering my questions. Good night."

"Good night."

When Kailn had gone, Sujiu rose and began to stretch. It was night by then, and he had first watch.