Chapter 15

Kai woke slowly. Her head was throbbing, and she could swear that she heard voices. Maybe I'm insane, she thought. Don't insane people hear voices in their heads?

At first, she couldn't quite differentiate anything but a meaningless drone, like everyone who was talking was in the next room, but then Ver's voice cut through her blurry thoughts.

"Be quiet, traitor. Where's yer precious Sherra now?"

"She's out on privet business," answered someone else smoothly. Kai shivered; he sounded very familiar. "Ah, look, one of them's waking," he said in the tone of an indulgent uncle.

Kai forced her reluctant eyes open to find that they were all staring at her; they being Ver, Fang/Joren, and Dal; but Kai would have bet her daggers (except that she was certain that she no longer had them) that there were more people waiting upstairs. She was pretty sure that it was a basement of some type, probably the home of some merchant or storekeeper in some obscure part of the city. Kai frowned and tried to move her hands, and discovered that they were tied like Vers', Danais', and Lalasas'. Dal, she noticed, was unrestrained and stood uncomfortably next to Fang.

"Joren," she said, nodding curtly, and was amused inside when he showed the slightest wince at her use of his really name. "Dal. I see you've switched sides," she commented with a forcibly unemotional voice.

"You know," Joren remarked in a conversational tone before Dal could blanch, "I could kill you right now."

"But you wouldn't," she countered, glad that her mind wasn't as slow as her body to free itself from the aftereffects of the poison. "Or you would have done that already instead of waiting for us to wake up."

"For a girl, you're pretty quick," he remarked, though his smile didn't reach his eyes. "We could use someone like you on our side." He indicated Dal, who was shifting nervously from foot to foot, as if this was the last place he wanted to be. "Join your friends and your family."

"If you mean to tell me that all my friends are joining, then you're dead wrong," Kai said after a nervous glance at Ver. She wondered if he had been offered this same thing, and what he had said. "And I have no family." Was it her imagination, or had Ver just paled? No, it must be the poor lighting around here.

"Ah, you don't know?" Fang asked in obviously mock surprise as he looked in shock from Dal to Ver. "I thought they, being your friends, whom you could trust, would tell you something like this." Dal wouldn't meet her eyes, and Ver was determinedly glaring at the floor.

"And I suppose that you, not being my friend, who I'm pretty certain that I can't trust, will tell me anyway," Kai remarked, harboring doubts inside.

"Tell whom what?" a sleep-slurred voice asked from Kai's left. Danai was awake.

"We were just telling Kai about your aunt and uncle," Fang said with his new but really bad acting skills. "Oh, but you didn't know, either, did you? It was just Ver and Dal in on the secret?"

"No," Dal answered with obvious reluctance. Joren glared at him until he went on, "George knew, and most of the older ones in the Dove. Solomon. Orem. Marek. Rispah." He paused to look guilty. "I tol' ya," he said to Fang, "And Ver tol' Matt and Treble."

"They guessed," Ver corrected, finally looking up.

"Guessed what?" Kai demanded.

"Well, I'd tell you all if you joined my side," Joren said with a shrug. "Otherwise, I'd have to kill you so it wouldn't matter anyway."

"It don't matter now," Ver said. "What difference does it make?"

"She should know if she's going against everything her parents worked and died for," the ex-squire answered Ver but looked at Kai.

"How would you know about her parents?" Danai scoffed. "She doesn't know."

"It makes no difference to me," Joren said with another shrug. "I mean, I can just kill you all and be done with it. You, however, can learn whom your parents," he nodded at both Danai and Kai, "were and help the cause they worked for."

Kai suddenly realized something. "This was how you got Sherra, wasn't it?"

"Not exactly, but similar," Fang agreed with a malicious grin at Dal.

"And then," Danai continued with a smile, "You got her to convince Dal to switch sides too."

A nod.

Kai paused, thinking. "So, all our friends really haven't joined, they've just been blackmailed or tricked into it, and any family I have isn't alive, as you said that my parents died. So none of this matters." Ver and Dal both grinned in relief.

"You don't care that they've all lied to you for years?"

Danai frowned. "What were they lying to us about?"

Kai bit her lip. It probably wouldn't help them if she started asking those kinds of questions.

"But you're fighting against me, yes?" Fang asked. "Why would I tell you?"

"Danai, it doesn't matter," Kai said with sudden definitiveness. Was it her imagination or did both Dal and Ver seem much happier now?

There was a creak as a door was opened somewhere upstairs, then another creak and a light appeared on top of the stairs on Ver's right. Down came the light, and with it, Sherra. She paled a bit when she saw who was here, but continued on just the same.

"Bit sends a message, sir," she said, handing Joren a piece of paper rolled into a tight coil.

He read it and swore. "I'm leaving," he said simply before rushing up the stairs to the door. "Sherra, you're in charge. No moving."

"Wow, that was easy," Sherra marveled. The three of them looked at her, surprised, and she said, "I learned how to write from some traveling storyteller on the street." They continued their befuddlement. "There was no message from Bit," Sherra declared slowly and clearly. "I made it up. Fabricated. Pretended. Lied. Not real."

"Excuse us fer a moment," Dal said, grabbing Sherra and forcefully dragging her away, but they could still hear them anyway, so it was kind of pointless. "What are ya doin'?" he demanded.

"What I should have done before. He doesn't have any hold over me. You can stay if you want."

"Not now. I only came 'cause I thought ya were in trouble!" Dal said something too quiet for them to hear.

"I didn't want to! I only did it because I thought he would do something if I didn't!" Sherra shot back angrily.

"Umm…guys," Ver called over. "If ya want ta leave, we should probably do it now. It's always better if yar not there when people find out ya've betrayed them. Trust me."

"He's right," Sherra said, deliberately ignoring Dal's protests. She went and untied Danai. Dal sighed resignedly, then appeared to catch himself and laughed.

"What's happening?" Lalasa asked. She had just woken up.

"About time," Dal said with a grin as he loosened her ropes. "Good morning. Or afternoon."

"How long do we have?" Ver asked, standing.

"An hour, at least. Fang's got to get to the other side of the city and back, and no one, not even him, can do it that fast with dinnertime traffic in the streets," Sherra commented. "The people upstairs are merchants, blackmailed into Fang's legions. I casually suggested that they go get something to eat, so the place is empty."

"Thanks," Kai said as her ropes came undone. "So where do we go?" she asked.

"Aren't ya back ta the palace?" Ver asked, obviously trying not to appear too angry about it. "Doesn't this show ya that ya'd be better off stayin' at the Dove for a while?"

"I don't know," Kai said with a sigh. "What are you going to do, Danai?"

Danai looked from one to the other. "I'd much rather stay in the city, but I don't really think anywhere's safe right now. I was found in both places, so what difference does it make?"

"I think you should both come back," Lalasa said quietly. Everyone turned to look at her, and she blushed a little. "Maybe even you, too," she said to Ver.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Lalasa," Kai said and quickly performed all necessary introductions. She felt horrible that she hadn't remembered Lalasa, even though she was quiet.

"I'm not steppin' inside that noble-ridden…" he stopped what he was going to say when Kai glared at him, nodding her head towards Lalasa. "…place," he finished weakly. "Besides, Sherra and Dal need to hide more than I do."

"No, you're too involved now," Sherra said. "You were here, and he knows that you're ouch!" she cried when Dal stepped on her foot.

"On to him," Dal supplied quickly. Kai scowled. "Forgot to mention that she knows, too," he said sheepishly.

"They don't know about that?" Sherra asked, eyes wide.

"They'll figure it out sooner 'r later if ya keep talkin' about it," Ver broke in. "We should really get goin'."

"That's another thing," Kai started as she followed Dal up the stairs. "When we get wherever we're going, someone's going to tell me and Danai what in Mithros everyone else knows."

"I thought ya said it didn't matter," Dal said from behind her.

"That doesn't mean we don't want to know," Danai put in from the bottom of the stairs.

"At this rate, they won't need anyone to tell them," Sherra said. "After you," she said, indicating that Lalasa should go up the stairs first, making the barmaid last in line.

If anyone were to see this odd line of people queuing up, they would have probably never believed that just a few minutes ago, two of them had been hated, four had been hostages, and all seven of them had been expecting to die by the end of the day.

But none of them, not even Sherra, realized that around the city, six set of eyes latched onto their group. "Send a message to tell him he was right," Bit said from a nearby rooftop.

"Go spread the word that the doves have flown the nest," Treble said from a nearby alleyway.

But from yet another place, someone else was watching, and waiting.

Ok, yes, I realize that this chapter was really bad, but even though I knew what was supposed to happen, I've had horrible writers' block. Grin I am happy now that Sherra and Dal are back on the good side though.

I got an email that claimed that they were ruling out responding to reviewers in stories, but, as there hasn't been anything in the rules or on the homepage, I'm going to do it anyway!

Kaysin: Wow, I'm so embarrassed that you caught all those mistakes. I really don't want to be seen as one of those writers who say, "It's my story, I can do whatever I want," but if I made it so that squires couldn't have servants then that would kinda ruin the whole plot. About Zahir: that I forgot. Horrible memory. But even if the king was his knightmaster, they never reported the fight because right after that Kai ran away, and when she came back, they/I forgot. Let's just say that they didn't have proof to bring it up in court, I guess.

BigBigStarr: Thank you! I'm so happy that there are people who actually like what I write.

Hestia: Yeah, I'm kinda slow to update, I know.

Mina: I kindas like him on the good side though. Just in reminder, this is not The Matrix or Mission Impossible or whatever else you're thinking of.

Tessadragon: Sorry, I thought it was better to have them save themselves, even if it's extremely anticlimactic, than to have the big sword-swinging knights come in and save them. The next chapter will be more exciting (I hope).

Come on, I know you all want to review…