"Thought you'd get away with it, did you?"

The gnome tried to sink down deeper into the chair, but found that doing so put him on a level where his eyes couldn't see over the scarred tabletop. "No," he replied meekly, "which is to say, er, I really wasn't trying to get away with anything, my good man. I live there, you see -- with my friends -- and I simply forgot my keys. Happens all the time, I'm always losing things, you know . . . "

Across from Boddyknock, the larger of the two guards lifted his eyebrows meaningfully at his companion. "Babbling, Sergeant Jacobson. Do you think it could be a sign of a guilty conscience?"

"He says he lives there," replied the other, stressing the word 'says' just enough.

"Now, really," Boddyknock protested, "I do live there!"

Jacobson frowned, scratching a gauntleted hand through his unkempt dark beard. "The companions to the Hero of Neverwinter live there. Lord Nasher himself offered them the use of it whenever they were in the city, for their troubles." The sergeant's eyes misted over slightly; it was clear to him that risking one's neck for one's city was the height of mortal moral fiber.

"But I was one of the companions!" Boddyknock raised a fist to thump on the table for emphasis, then thought better of it. "At . . . at least, for a little while!"

"We asked around about that," the larger man replied, "nobody knows you."

"Well, he might have slipped by their notice, Briar . . . " Jacobson interrupted. "He is a wee bit . . . ah . . . wee."

Not certain wether to be angry or alarmed, and trying not to fidget too much, Boddyknock sighed heavily. "This is all some horrible mistake, I assure you!"

"Rather convenient that he chose a time when they were all out of the city to 'lose his keys' though, inn't?" Jacobson said. He removed a piece of paper from inside his breastplate and held it up so they could all see it; 'Gone Horde Huntin' it said, and the smiley face at the bottom indicated it had likely been penned by Linu . . . and the horns and tail that it had later been added to by Tomi. "Guess he was hoping to evade notice again when he was breaking in."

"I was most certainly not breaking in!" the gnome said, anger finally winning out temporarily. "As I told you before, I lost my keys! I was preforming a simple Knock spell to rectify the situation without causing a ruckus!"

"The back door was left open." interrupted Jacobson again, shifting so that the torchlight lay more fully on Boddyknock's face. "Looks like willfull destruction of property to me."

"The . . . the backdoor was open?" Boddyknock wilted visibly. "Oh . . . oh my, how dreadful. Why, any vagrant could have wandered in off the street, couldn't they?"

The two men exchanged a glance.

Sometime later, sitting on the edge of his cot in the cell, Boddyknock tried to puzzle out why the others had left him behind. He was willing to admit, he was small enough to escape notice, and, unlike Tomi, lacked the lung capacity (not to mention crude bodily functions) to make up for it. But surely he was a valued member of the team? Surely they wouldn't have forgotten him so easily, after all they'd been through together . . . ?

Sighing, he reached into one of his many pockets and pulled out a small deck of cards. Ah well; they weren't likely to get far before they remembered him. And of course he'd forgive them; he was a forgiving sort, after all.

Surely, they'd be back any minute now.

Wouldn't they?