The Knight stayed by the house all day and she watched him from the shadows of the alley, shaking from the dampness of her clothing and the cold chill of the air. He was frustrated, she could see him getting angry with the people that lived about the small hovel of a home, and nobody seemed to be willing to help him. The light of day was fading quickly though and he was looking about worriedly why she could not tell. Perhaps the Prince would hurt him like her father hurt her when she could not do what he asked. That tempted her to step out and see at least what he wanted, but if her father found that out when he returned she would be beaten possibly to death which made her shrink back into shadows further and decided she would have to find food and a place to sleep that was not home. The thought frightened her but she had done it before when father was drunk and angry at her for being there. He had brought a woman home with him and she had been sent out and she had wandered for a long time until she had finally collapsed exhausted in a dark alley completely unprotected.

This time she found a dark corner well away from the street and curled up shaking. The ground was damp and the wind though it was muted by the twists of the alley was still cold to her thin body and she lay still save for her shaking as the sun set and the sky went dark. She did her best to sleep but there were so many noises about her that she was awake for most of the night. She heard rats scuttling about and she heard a fight break out a ways away, something that were she in her home she'd have not heard and she sobbed softly wondering why the Prince would not help her father. He would not have been so angry if he'd have just helped; sobbing softly to herself she managed to eventually cry herself to sleep.

When she awoke she found her breath coming out in small white puffs and she was so very cold and getting up was very difficult to do her body ached and did not want to move. Her stomach snarled angrily at her though, she had not eaten at all yesterday, there had not been time between washing fathers clothing and going to that horrible palace. The Knight outside her home, she wondered if he was still there, not that it mattered she thought glumly. Father had taken absolutely all the food, including what he normally had set aside for her. It was all gone, and she did not know when he would be coming back, she had never had no food at all before. She walked slowly back towards the street to see that the Knight was still there still sitting looking worriedly about it was as if he knew that she should be there. She just wanted to go home and curl up under her blanket out of the wind but the Knight kept her from doing that. And she trudged back down the alley though she missed the fact that the Knight caught a movement in the back alley and wondered for a moment if he was seeing things from sitting out in the cold all night.

It had been a long time since he had had to perform a watch at night with no one else about him and he wondered at how dangerous feeling Middle Port was. He could not believe that a child could survive here on their own for a night even given some of the fighting that he had heard. He waited though even as other Knights came to tell him that the Prince wanted to know if he had found the child. He had not found her though he knew from the disgusted words of those that lived about the area that this was her home and that nobody was there. He glanced to the Sea, the wind was picking up harsher now than it had been, an icy storm was brewing, and the neighbours had stated that the drunken fisherman had gone out to sea. Had he taken the child with him? Would the child drown in the storm with the father? He was certain that if she was out with him that that would be her cruel fate, yet he could find none that had seen her save that she had followed him to the docks dutifully. He should his head, how she could follow a monster about and look to him for care was beyondBalegil however the other Knights brought him some rations and he hoped that though they were meagre to him he'd be able to share them with the small girl. He wondered at her after all the Prince was so shocked by her that he had hesitated to halt the man, perhaps afraid that doing so would cause her more harm at the fathers hands. Balegil had no children yet but the thought of harming one was foreign to him.

The day passed though without the child returning to the house and several neighbours were looking at him strangely as he ate his rations until by late that night there was only a few mouthfuls of way bread left and one piece of fruit. And still that night she did not return and another knight came to the young lord and the Prince had released him of his duty to find the child though all of the guards were now on alert to her. They were to bring her in if they found her and to make sure that she was safe, what the Prince and Lord Balegil did not realise was that the girl was afraid of them and would avoid them at all costs if she thought that she could.

She slipped had slipped away from the house seeing all the Knights about it realising that there was no chance for her to return home. She wondered how long the men would stay there but it did not matter she would need to find a safer place to sleep this night than she had last night. That much she did know. With that she began slipping through the back alleys until she found some dark corner hidden well away from the main streets of Middle Port where no grown man could venture the spaces that she had slipped through where too small and there she slept that night cold but not as scared as she had been earlier. Tomorrow she would try to find food, she thought as she clenched at her stomach with her good hand. She was so very hungry.