Chapter 3

Far to the north of the Pridelands, the sun gleamed down upon the scorched and barren lands of the Outlands. Ever the Pridelands erstwhile neighbour, and no less a habitat for creatures' cunning, vicious and mighty in their own right. Where the Pridelands were verdant, in bloom and full of life, the Outlands remained scarred, dry, and arid. Cracked like rock. A trio of hyenas clambered across the Badlands, the only movement to be seen from above for miles around. The hyenas were jittery. But that wasn't unusual for hyenas. Nor, for these particular hyenas.

"Uh, Boss?" On of them asked the leader, his voice tinted by uncertainty. He was looking at the 'boss' with an all too familiar birdbrained expression upon his face.

"What is it Chunju?" Janja asked in irritation. The spotted hyena was impatient. They ought not to have spent so long near the frontier. He was late enough as it is.

"Are you sure we're doing the right thing coming in to this place? It gives me the heebie jeebies." He said, scratching himself with a nervous.

"Eh? Whatcha talking about Chunju?" He asked him.

"Well, its just, you know. There are stories about this place." He said anxiously. Janja snorted. Stories. That was all he needed. Chunju listening to tall tales and fantasies. The hyena was not gifted with imagination, and what stories he did know tended to be blunt and unsubtle affairs. The scary ones tended to involve dead things.

"What do you mean, stories? It's the heart of the Outlands." He reminded him. He paused momentarily to help his fellow climber over a larger bit of rock. He landed with an awkward thump.

"Well, you know." Chunju said. Janja shrugged his shoulders, and pushed his fringe out from the front of his face. It had thickened out in his later years, as had his forearms. He was wiry, muscled, and easily one of the larger hyenas in what many considered to be a spirit-blasted place.

"Know what?" He asked him. Great Kings of Bone and Blood, this was like pulling teeth.

"This is where Zira and her rebels lived, right? What if she's still clinging around here, somehow? Or what if there are still Outlanders around here somewhere?" The later was more plausible. But unlikely. Janja gave another unconcerned shrug of indifference.

"Then we send them on to Simba and the Pridelands. No worries." He said, more sharply than he'd intended to. Chunji didn't look satisfied, but didn't argue. Besides, they'd already arrived. Too late to turn back now.

He looked up at his destination, and swallowed. The looming termite mound of Golgorath pierced the skies above him. If a third of the stories the Pridelands told about this place were true, he wouldn't be surprised if ghosts really did stalk the winding maze of tunnels and cavernous pits. It was by far the most defensible location in the Outlands however. Aside from Pride Rock, and the terrifying catacombs of the elephant graveyard, it could even be said to be the foremost fortress in the Serengeti. Not bad for a bunch of barely sapient insects. Leading the rest of the hyenas, and advanced through the cavernous web of passages, towards the highest peak of the mound. It overlooked the Outlands. You could even see Priderock from there. He knew that was where he would find his boss. He swallowed, mentally preparing his speech to the leader of the Outlanders.

Soon enough, natural light lit up the mound, and there, perched on the edge of the tower of Golgorath, the leader of their Outsiders awaited him.

"Hey, uh… Boss Lady Jasiri." He greeted her. The female striped hyena shifted at his approach. Jasiri turned to him, and gave him a soft smile. It was sincere but strained.

"Good. Your back." She said. Then her expression darkened. "You shouldn't call me that." She warned him. Jasiri smiled.

"Wouldn't have to, if you'd let people call ya Matriarch…" He offered at her dour expression. If he'd intended to amuse her though, he had miscalculated, because her face became positively tempestuous and he backed up quickly.

"I'm no-one's Matriarch." She snapped. "Besides, this isn't a hyena clan. Not with Dogo's pack of jackals and Kiburi's float of crocs sticking around." She reminded him. Janja snorted, showing what he thought of his fellow subjects. Jasiri remained impassive.

The Black Tower, and formerly the home of Zira and her merry band of rebels. He swallowed with uncharacteristic seriousness.

"Guess we could call you Queen in the Outlands." Not of the Outlands. No one could possibly claim that title. It implied a control of the Outlands that was simply impossible to achieve.

"I'm not a lioness either. Or haven't you noticed?" She asked him. Janja held a paw up in mock surrender.

"Boss-Lady it is then." He repeated. Jasiri gave him a withering glare.

"What took you so long? You supposed to be back days ago." She snapped at him, and Janja's genial smirk vanished once again. Suddenly, she was all business. That didn't bode well.

"We took a detour. Scouted around in the Shadowlands a little bit. Rest of the world's been shaken up last few years or so. I had folks I wanted to check in on." He said evasively. Normally Jasiri would have risen to that. Instead she merely gave a grunt. That was odd. She never had such a positive reaction to mention of their shared ancestral homeland. Now Janja was really starting to get worried. He frowned. "What is it Jasiri?" He asked her. "I've not seen ya like antsy this since that incident in the Pridelands… Ya know. During that hullabaloo" He said. Wong choice.

Jasiri gave a grimace, suddenly reminded of the reason she had sent Janja on that fools expedition in the first place.

"That 'hullabaloo' was the presentation of Prince Kovu's Son! Who – in case you've forgotten – is the current King's Grandson and going to be the King of the Pridelands himself someday."

"Simba isn't our King." Janja said flatly, and Jasiri's ears dropped again. Still, she valiantly pressed on.

"I told you to make a good impression. And you ignored everything I said and nearly ate one of the King advisors. Then you tried to start a betting pool over who would win in a fight between me and Prince Kovu's sister!" She snapped, provoking another grin from Janja.

"Hey, I was being supportive. I had every confidence that you would beat her." Janja whined. The would-be matriarch pushed a paw through her mane. Jasiri growled.

"I didn't want to fight Vitani! And nor should you! Do you have some twisted compulsion to pick a fight with every leader of the Lion Guard that's ever lived?" She scowled, thinking back to his continual rivalry with Kion, and short-lived rebellion against the spectre of Scar that haunted the Outlands.

"Maybe. Good a theory as any." He smirked. Jasiri didn't share his humour. Janja rolled his eyes. It wasn't healthy. The years had drained the humour out of Jasiri. It wasn't natural for a hyena to be as restrained as she was. Hyenas needed to let loose once in a while. Live a little. Laugh a little. He sighed.

"Alright." He said. "I'll bite. What's got your spots in a twist?" Janja asked her. Jasiri looked down at the shapes of the other hyenas. Chunja was busy poking around with a bone, and Cheezi was chatting with Tano about something she really didn't want to know the particulars, going by Tano's horrified facial expression. She let out a sigh.

"I just got word from Mzingo." She said. Janja remembered the vulture well, and rolled his eyes. Jasiri continued anyway. "They have some worrying news…" She confessed.

"What happened? Someone break a four generational protocol?" Janja snickered.

"Someone made it into the Pridelands and slaughtered an entire herd of wildebeest. Or Giraffes. The report wasn't clear. It doesn't matter. No one saw anything. Something ripped through them, and vanished like a ghost." She said. Janja whistled through his teeth.

"Daym." He muttered. He was almost impressed. Who was he kidding? He was impressed. "If we'd been able to do pull that off in the old days…" He muttered. Jasiri arched an eyebrow at him.

"Really? You're not concerned that whoever managed it got into the Pridelands and out again, and didn't leave anything that might have seen it alive?" She asked him. That got his attention, and Janja hesitated for the first time.

"Who knows. Maybe Chunja has the right of it, and it really is Zira's ghost." He suggested, trying to liven the mood. Jasiri's eyes widened.

"Janja don't even joke about that. The Outlands have had quite enough long dead tyrants resurrecting themselves. Besides, I'm sure there are enough real and living threats to the Outlands without dreaming up more of them." She said, shuddering. With a faint sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, Janja realised she hadn't dismissed the possibility outright. He shuddered, deciding not to swell on that particularly discomforting thought. Janja sighed.

"My main worry, is what if the Pridelanders think we're behind it? History is full of criminals and raiders using the Outlands to attack the Pridelands." She said, her voice picking up in speed and growing louder as her agitation became obvious. "Vitani has no love for hyenas. And if she's half the lioness her mother was, we have every reason to think she'd kill us without a second thought if it suited her! Simba may be King, but he could pass that on to his daughter any day now, and then that means Kovu's son would rule, and that could lead –"

"Jasiri. Chill. Ya need to relax." Janja said.

"Relax! How can you tell me to relax? Do you understand what's at stake here? There hasn't been a kingdom in the Outlands before, and I can't be the one to let it all fly apart –"

"It'll be okay. Kion –" Janja began to say, but what he would have said was lost as Jasiri snarled.

"Kion is gone! He isn't ever coming back!" Jasiri snapped at him. Janja held still for a moment, and Jasiri exhaled.

"I was going to say," Janja said carefully, "That Kion put you in charge of the Outlands for a reason. You're a great leader, you understand the circle of life mumbo jumbo, and yah enough of a piece of work to be worth liking, even if ya do act more like a lioness than a hyena sometimes." He said, expecting Jasiri to react in mock indignation to that particular insult.

Jasiri simply sighed. Then she swallowed. "I've called the rest of the of the Outlanders here. Dogo's pack. Kiburi's float. The Skinks. Any of the other reptiles. Everyone. We need to be ready to act as one. We'll see if Si si ne sawa, really holds true…" She said. For the first time, Janja really looked at her. She seemed tired. Really tired. She had never wanted to lead a pack larger than a handful of hyenas and even then she'd shared leadership with her cousin. Now she was responsible for the welfare of the Outlands and those who dwelled there. Janja may have been on the side of the Great Kings and the Pridelanders these days, but even so, Kion still had a lot to answer for, in his mind.

"What do you need me to do?" He asked her. Jasiri looked at him.

"Just… be there. Please?" She asked him. Janja gave a wicked grin, that was almost infectious. How far they had come since they'd been pubs, fighting in the Outlands for drops of water and scraps of meat, around Lion Guards the Great Spirits.

"Course." He said. "Ya can count on me." It was a testament to how much things had changed in the years of the Serengeti, that he wasn't lying. And that Jasiri believed him.

Back in the Pridelands, others were also remembering the deeds of the former Lion Guard. Kiava, running as he did so, gave a triumphant roar in intimidation of his absent uncle. The ground did not shake with any great calamity, and the clouds above did not distort into echoes of the Kings of the past. His rival however, fell to the ground nevertheless in mock defeat, clutching at his chest as he did so. He was a flamehaired cub, with deep orange eyes, his tuft of hair the only distinguishing mark that separated him from his similarly hued sibling. The two were shockingly alike, almost as if the Kings had erred and accidently placed two of the same cub upon the earth. The male was wrestling with the familiar sight of Kiava, the Crown Prince, blessedly innocent of the fact that with age, such games could become almost treasonous. The two cubs were entirely wrapped up in their game whilst another pair of cubs raced around the rocks. She wasn't sure if they were pretending to be Anga, or Fuli. One of the fast movers. That much was certain. The female of the twins was outracing the other, fourth cub. A pale-coated girl-cub by the name of Zuri.

Kiara watched them at play, giving a soft smile as she did so. Little Zuri reminded her of her own cubhood friend, and it pleased her to no end that Mazuri's niece would follow in her aunt and namesakes pawprints in being a close friend to the King. Kiara kept half an eye on her son. Kovu was with Simba again, trying to make head or tail of this sudden crisis. Simba had sent out messengers to the surrounding territories. They were too far from the other Kingdoms to hear much from the Southern Pride, or Mountain Pride, but perhaps the Backlanders had heard something; certainly, the Great Herds would have a vested interest in stopping something capable of wiping out an entire herd in a single night.

"Kiara?" A familiar voice called her. Kiara blinked, pulled from her thoughts by her mother. Nala smiled down at her, and Kiara rose and quickly nuzzled the aging Queen.

"Mom!" She greeted her. "You're not leading the hunting party today?" She asked her. Nala smiled. She lead the hunting party in name only these days. Whilst she was hardly decrepit, he was beginning to slow down. Still, no one would dare have raised an objection.

"Not today. Damu is leading them in my place." She said.

Kiara arched an eye brow. "Zuri's Mother? That will have raised some eyebrows."

"Because she's an Outlander? Bah. She's also Mazuri's half sister, don't forget." Nala said scornfully. "Besides. The former Outlanders are the better hunters." She said candidly. Kiara did a double take at what would be treated by some of the former Pridelanders as blasphemy. "I've got better things to do then pander to outdated prejudices. I'm already compromising by not putting your dear husband on the hunt." Nala quipped. Kiara shook her head.

"Not this again…" She muttered. Nala glanced at the cubs.

"Do… Do you mind coming this way for a little bit?" She asked her daughter. "I wanted to speak to you about something." Kiara blinked in surprise. Unusual.

"Uh, sure. Hang on a second." She looked around, and quickly found the person she was looking for.

"Danyal! Come over here for a second!" She called out to one of the figures sitting some distance away. Nala watched in interest as the person she called came to his feet quickly and moved over to where Kiara stood.

"Kia- Uh, Your Highness?" He asked her, catching himself. Standing before the Queen and the Crown Princess, was an odd sight. It was odd, because standing before them, was a juvenile male lion. He had light brown fur, a tuft of dark hair that was reaching down into the beginnings of a dark mane, and a rather striking pair of emerald green eyes. He moved over, looking faintly nervous as he approached, as if unsure as to why the Princess of the Pridelands would be interested in him.

"Danyal, would you be so kind as to watch the cubs again, for a little bit? I won't be far." She asked him. He looked a little relieved, and stamped the ground, nodding.

"Of course, your highness!" He said, and moved away to where the cubs were engaged in their next adventure. His movement attracted the attention of some of the other lionesses, who reacted as they usually did. Kiara watched him go, and shook her head.

"Speaking of outdated prejudices…" She muttered sadly. Nala knew what she meant, but didn't raise the issue, as she watched the occasional look of undisguised alarm from the other lionesses when they saw Danyal approach the other cubs.

"Danyal will keep an eye on them. The cubs like him, he has all sorts of stories rolled up in that head of his." Kiara said, confidently. Nala smiled. It didn't come as a surprise to her that Kiara had taken to asking Danyal of all people to keep an eye on the cubs. He was a brooding, quiet sort. Usually found lurking around the edges of Pride Rock, trying to keep out of the way. Kiara, in her completely innocent way, was never one to let anyone be alone. She was right, the cubs did seem to enjoy his company. More importantly, unlike Zazu, Timon or Pumbaa, the cubs had never quite managed to escape his watch. Though that may have been more to do with the fact that Danyal, unlike the others, knew how to keep a cub entertained.

The princess moved some distance away from the others, far from prying eyes of nosey lionesses, and other less benign influences. Nala kept apace, and after some distance, spoke to Kiara quietly.

"So what's the news?" Kiara asked her, before she could speak.

"Nothing new yet. I've not seen Simba like this since Kiava was born." She said. Simba had been nervous then. As with Nala's own pregnancy, only Timon, Pumba, and a steady supply of snails to slurp had kept him at 'jittery'. Kiara winced.

"Is Daddy okay?" She asked him. Nala paused.

"He's worried. We'd planned… well… Obviously that's been delayed a little now." Nala said, swallowing. "But Simba and I had been planning to… step back a little bit. Now that Kiava has been born. We'd been thinking about… well. Passing on the Crown. To you and Kovu." Nala admitted. Kiara stopped, stunned.

"What?" Kiara shook her head. Her parents? Stepping back? Such a thing was impossible.

"Well, it was going to happen sooner or later… And… well… We thought that since Kiava was born and is healthy, and you and Kovu are clearly fit to rule, why put it off? It was… difficult… for Simba, when he took the throne. It would have been worse if he'd actually taken the crown when his father had died. We've talked about it. Rather than waiting for your father and I to end our journeys on the circle of life… and have to deal with ruling for the first time as all that… distasteful… stuff. We could step back. Visit Kion and Rani. Even go with Timon and Pumba back to where we first met… Maybe even visit King Malka and Mazuri in the Mountain Pride. Malka's an old friend, but Simba's never visited their home in turn." Nala said, a little wistfully. Kiara could still only stare at her mother, mouth agape.

"I… I don't know what to say." She asked. Nala smiled and nuzzled her daughter.

"Don't worry about it. We'll handle this. And when heaver rogue, or pack of rogue that's been plundering our land has been dealt with we'll see what happens. We wouldn't leave in the middle of a crisis, would we?" She asked her. Kiara smiled.

Back where they had come from, Kiava and the remaining cubs were staring at Danyal, and Danyal continued his story.

"Then…" He said. "The spirit of Scar vanished, into the wind. Kion had defeated him for the last time." He finished the story. The enraptured cubs cheered at the conclusion of the story, and Danyal gave a smirk. They certainly seemed to like that one.

"That was awesome Danyal!" Sara said, the flame haired female, giving an elated grin. Danyal gave an appreciative smile.

"You must have heard it a thousand times." He said. The stories of Kion's guard were more popular than the ones he knew well. His better stories predated Kion, and were mostly concerned with Scar and his Lion Guard, or of the years between Simba's exile and his return. But the cubs preferred the tales of Kion and his merry band. He couldn't blame them. They were from a happier time, and were less grim.

"I still don't get it." Inti said. "How come Simba didn't –" He trailed off. "Is that exactly how it happened?" He asked him. Danyal looked offended. "Its how everyone always tells the story." He said.

"Yeah, but I've never seen an eagle able to lift a fully grown lion… And you never mention any of the other lions or lionesses… And there was all that time between Scar's attack, and them retaking the Pridelands!" He said, trailing off. Zuri shook her head.

"Inti, it's only a story. Doesn't matter if that's not exactly how it happened." Zuri said. That much was true. Danyal did have a tendency to leave out other characters when he told the story. And she certainly hoped that the other adults had made themselves a bit more useful in real life. But it made an excellent story. And that was the main thing.

"So, what happened next?" Kiava asked him.

"Yeah, after Kion was scarred! Tell us about his journey to the tree of life!" Inti said. Danyal rolled his eyes. They already knew the stories easily as well as he did. Better in some cases. But nevertheless, they preferred to badger him until he told them.

Zuri, for her part, shuddered.

"I thought Scar sounded positively beastly. And its not fair that he got a second go at it! Simba defeated him once, fair and square! Why should he get to come back as a ghost?" She asked, shuddering. Danyal shrugged.

"You'll have to ask Rafiki about that sort of thing. I only know that Kion and his Lion Guard managed to defeat him. By most accounts, Scar was a shell of his former self that time round. Just a force of envy and spite. Hardly the tyrant he was…" He said. He cleared his throat.

"That's enough dusty histories and old stories for now. What about a game?" He asked wracking his brains, trying to remember what it was that cubs played together. They didn't need his input. Without much prompting, the cubs decided upon a race, and asked Danyal to act as arbiter. He was happy with that: It didn't involve him getting up from where he sat by the mouth of the den, and more importantly, it didn't involve having to chase after the cubs; they'd come towards him. Before he could give the go ahead however, he heard a pawfall behind him though, and turned, expecting to see Nala and Kiara returning.

Instead, another lioness met his gaze. A gold-coated Pridelander, with scarlet eyes. He recognised her. She wasn't one of the cubs mothers. Rather she was one of the more capable huntresses in Nala's hunting party. She looked at the cubs with a vaguely concerned expression, and then turned back to Danyal.

"Sabini." Danyal said. The lioness in front of him gave him a glare. She had an expression that appeared to be perpetually irritated, as if stuck with a piece of some foul fruit in her teeth. The sourness in her expression pulled her face in different directions, that left even her most earnest smile like a grimace. Danyal didn't like her. And it was no secret that she didn't like him.

"Where is the Queen?" She asked him, without greeting him. Danyal scowled.

"How should I know?" He returned, and immediately turned his back to her, returning his full attention to cubs.

"Insolent brat, look at me when –" She began, but Danyal's tail was already twitching in annoyance, and he scowled back at her over his shoulder.

"I'm very busy, Sabini. Doing a job. Go and bother someone else." He told her. Sabini looked pained by his defiance.

"I swear to the Kings, if I were your mother…" Sabini began to scold him, but Danyal only scowled at her again.

"But you're not. A state of affairs I am deliriously content with." Sabini twitched again, in an exasperated manner, and then left without another word heading back down from Pride Rock, making in the direction of the watering hole, muttering about insolence as she did so. Danyal couldn't resist a slight feeling of satisfaction, even though he knew he wouldn't make it till the end of the day before hearing that she'd complained to someone about him. Again. He was used to it.

"She's going the wrong way…" Inti observed, as she departed them. "The Queen and the Princess went back to the den to talk." He said. Danyal smirked.

"Is she? That's a shame. I wonder what she wanted to talk to Queen Nala about?" He said, without much sincerity. The other cubs didn't seem to notice his antipathy towards Sabini, except for Inti who grinned. He'd wanted to say something like that to Sabini for ages, but had always been wary of his own mother's reaction. Sometimes, he thought Danyal was lucky not to have to deal with that sort of thing on a daily basis.

Sabini left the adolescent with the cubs. She shook her head. She didn't understand why the adolescent was allowed to stick around in the Pridelands. Taking in the motherless brat was all well and good when he was a cub, but he could take care of himself now. Not that she had ever seen him hunt. That would be the day. She hadn't found Nala. Which was a pity. She needed to speak to her urgently. These killings couldn't continue.

In the few days since the giraffe herd had been slaughtered, the Pride had reacted with shock and caution. The cubs weren't allowed to explore by themselves, which made sense. But distressingly, the Lion Guard hadn't found hide nor hair of the party responsible for the wholesale slaughter of the Pridelands food. And it was beginning to show; the hunting party hadn't caught anything since the butchery had started. And in the intervening days, a second herd of Zebra had reached a similarly sticky end.

Muttering a quick prayer to the Kings, she reached the watering hole, and scowled at the only other resident; a rhino that took one look at her expression and quickly made an exit. Sabini sighed, and took a long drink of water.

"You took your time." A voice said.

Sabini glanced up, and saw another lioness.

"Almasi. Good that you're well. I just saw your twins. You don't have a problem with them being watched by Danyal?" She asked her. Almasi had born her twins just prior to the birth of Kiara's Son, and the cubs had grown up to become fast friends. Even so, Almasi appeared genuinely surprised. Too surprised to be offended or insulted by her question.

"No. Why would I? Danyal is a perfectly responsible young lion." Almasi said. Almasi was a Pridelander lioness. A loyalist during the civil war, to her credit in Sabini's eyes. She'd lived through the later years of Scar's tyranny, albeit as a cub, and had grown up during Zira's rebellion. She ought to know better than anyone the dangers of letting someone like Danyal anywhere near her cubs.

"No reason." Sabini said. If Almasi was being wilfully blind, that was her affair and her prerogative. She took another sip of the cooling water. The watering hole wasn't the largest in the Pridelands, but it was by far the closest to the Pride Rock, and as such was almost exclusively used by the Pride.

"Did you hear the news?" Almasi asked her. "Another herd of Zebra was wiped out last night. Just left to rot in the heat. Not a bite taken for meat. Horrible." She said, shaking her head.

"I heard." Sabini said. "I wanted to talk to Nala about it. But she's somewhere else today." Almasi nodded in agreement.

"I tell you what, I hope the Guard takes care of it sooner rather than later. Gives me the creeps thinking there's something capable of that, living in our borders." She shuddered. "To kill that many and not take so much of a bite from it? Its perverse. Its killing for the sake of it. What kind of creature thinks like that?" She asked. "Even the hyenas wouldn't kill without reason. Spirits, they wouldn't leave so much of the bones." That wasn't entirely true. Hyenas could, and did kill for sport. And even lionesses might occasionally let of some steam with an illicit hunt that produced more meat than was needed. That was wasteful and frowned upon, especially by King Simba who had a tendency to get a little… judgemental… About such things. The culling of an entire herd though, on an almost industrialised scale not something the Pridelands had seen before. Almasi was no vegetarian, but there was a difference between killing for meat, and killing for pure pleasure. It did not bode well for the living to be in the presence of something that could treat life itself with such contempt.

"Hah! The Lion Guard. Yeah. They'll protect us. The Lion Guard left us a long time ago." Sabini snapped. She looked troubled. Deeply troubled. Almasi looked confused by her expression.

"Sabini… Is everything alright?" She asked her. Sabini sighed.

"It just seems perfectly clear to me, that the only ones capable of such slaughter would be a lioness. Or a group of lionesses. Unable to restrain themselves." She said. Almasi swallowed at the troubling pronouncement.

"Maybe." She conceded. "But I'm sure Vitani and her Lion Guard will track down any rogues before they can hurt anyone else." She said, confidently. Sabini gave a bitter laugh. Idiots. The whole lot of them. Unable to see what was right in front of their very eyes.

"Rogues. Whoever said they were Rogues? There's no shortage of bloodthirsty killers in the Pridelands these days." Sabini sneered. Almasi stopped, and stared at Sabini, a wide-eyed expression of pure shock on her face. Sabini gulped down the last of the water, aware that she had said more than she meant to, and certainly more than was expedient these days.

"What… What makes you say that?" She asked her. Sabini held her tongue though, and turned away.

"Maybe I'm wrong…" She said. Finishing her drink, she turned and stalked away. Almasi watched her go, staring at the back of her head as she did so, remaining unconvinced.