Prisoner Day 3

Amy woke with the dawn. It was only half-way through her morning routine that she remembered the events of the previous day, and rushed through the rest of it and quite nearly flew down the street to Astoria's shop. The door was open, and Sammy was yawning on top of one of the empty counters. She hopped down to greet Amy. "Good morning."

Amy looked at her with a tilted head and narrowed eyes. "You're up early."

"You need me," she replied.

"I must admit to being surprised myself," Astoria said, coming downstairs with two bowls. "I also appreciate it, though. She'll be able to keep up with you."

Amy looked at her askance. "Keep up with me how?"

"When you go on a vacation to visit your parents today," Sammy said. "Well, when we do."

"Are... the blockades...?"

Sammy jumped down from the counter. "After breakfast we're going to go talk to the Magistrate. Maybe all of the taking care of Cavan you've done for him will inspire a favor or two in return."

"But most people are easier to deal with once they've eaten," Astoria said, filling the bowls with breakfast. "So we will all eat first. And we'll try to time it so that he has as well."

While Amy was itchy to get going, she had long learned that Astoria knew what she was talking about when it came to how people were, and how her suggestions were generally wise. So she sat down beside her teenaged friend and kept the two of her closest friends in Sallah company as they ate. And dealt with them coaxing her into eating as well. Amy wouldn't admit it, but she was glad that the two of them cared enough to force her to eat something, and then were successful in doing so.

Once they were finished and cleaned up, the three of them went to the Magistrate's compound on the Capital side of the through-road. When they presented themselves to the guard outside, he just waved them all in. They found the Magistrate was giving orders to nearly all of the guards in the main area. Or had just finished, as they all filed past the three women. The Magistrate smiled as he saw them. "I caught the killer. Hard to believe, isn't it?"

All three of the women expressed their surprise differently. Amy, for her part, had widened eyes and an open mouth, which she decided to use. "So that means the blockades are clear now?"

The Magistrate nodded. "That's what I'm having them all do. Soon enough traffic will resume. But I did want to talk to you two about it." He indicated Sammy and Amy. "She claimed to know you, this Silvaner."

"It was Gertrude?!" Sammy cried. Amy was just as shocked, but merely gaped at the Magistrate.

"So she didn't give any indication that this was what she was here for..." the Magistrate said, almost to himself. But Amy was no longer listening. She was hearing two voices in her head. But not two voices…

"Well it's yours too. Until recently, I hadn't the chance to slow down and look around."

"None of that now. You're not going to escape, so how would you take any revenge on her family?"

One voice.

"Magistrate," Amy said, cutting off Sammy's next incredulous exclamation with her calm tone. "I need to speak to her."

He turned to her, suddenly frowning. "What? Why?"

"She knows something about my parents and Mr. Ribbon."

"She has many things to say about Mr. Ribbon, none of them good. I wanted to ask you about them, too," the Magistrate told her.

"They're probably true."

His eyes widened. "He's..."

"A servant of the Archmage. I really have to talk to her, Magistrate. My family may be in danger."

"I find that hard to believe, even if he was involved with that sort. He's dead now; there's nothing that he can do to anyone, good or bad."

"He held me captive with the threat. I can't just assume the threat is gone," Amy told him. "I... have to, Magistrate Medoc. Please."

"You do owe her for taking care of Cavan all those times," Sammy pointed out with her arms folded and her sternest glare. Astoria bopped her on the head, ruining the effect.

Medoc turned back toward Amy. "Alright. But only you, only for a moment, and only while I'm with you."

So, the Magistrate lead Amy down to the cells beneath the offices. Hers was apparently the first one on the right. She had been seated on the small cot in the corner, but rose when she saw the two that had come down into the dank. "Miss Foster..." she said, sinking into a gentle curtsy.

"Could he have done something that would leave my family in danger?" Amy asked without preamble.

"Yes," Silvaner said instantly. "Go. Go now. Go prepared. And come back safely."

"What do you know about such things?" the Magistrate asked as he stepped closer to the bars, but Amy was already ascending the stairs.

She went directly to Sammy and Astoria. "I'm leaving now. Are you coming?"

"Was it her?" Sammy asked. "Was she the one who killed Ribbon?"

"Yes," Amy replied. Sammy gasped, but Amy pressed on. "And she confirmed that they might be in danger. I have to go."

"And I'm coming," Sammy said, her eyes determined.

"Be safe, you two," Astoria said. "Amy, if you need any help, you know how to send a message by fairy. Don't hold back on those."

"I won't," Amy told her. "We'll be taking precautions."

"There remains danger," a small voice said, and Amy turned around to find Cavan standing behind her. "More here than your home."

"It's alright, Cavan," Amy said, kneeling down and hugging the boy. "You're in a lot less danger. No more of those strange things with Mr. Ribbon."

"Less safe, not more. One may fall, but one will rise in his place. And one always remains behind."

"That's not ominous at all," Sammy bit out.

"Strange things?" Astoria asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Experiments," Amy said quietly. "I made sure that he couldn't get to Cavan all the time, but... I couldn't be everywhere at once."

"I'm not blaming you," Astoria said kindly, and her voice turned to ice. "Were he alive, I'm not sure he would live another day, the more you tell me." She took a deep breath . "I laid out two packs at my shop. Come back, get them, and maybe the road will be open by the time you get there."

"Oh, they're well on their way. I imagine that they'll be all done in a few minutes," a new voice said, coming in from outside. She had blonde hair and was dressed in purple practically from head to toe. Her hands were folded neatly in front of her.

"Mage Consul! I'm surprised you came yourself," Astoria said.

"I was nearby. Would you like to give your friends a farewell before we talk? Though I did come here rather to talk to the Magistrate..."

Astoria quickly gave a hug to both Amy and Sammy (to the latter's distress), and then Amy and Sammy headed back to the shop to pick up the supplies that Astoria had left for them.

"How long will it take to get there?" Sammy asked as they both put on the packs that Astoria had laid out. Amy momentarily wondered where she had gotten them.

"If we leave now, we would get there before dark," Amy said.

"Did you tell Alex anything about what's going on?" Sammy asked, abruptly changing the subject.

Amy shook her head. "No… I haven't really had the opportunity."

"Does he know you're leaving?"

"No… I didn't talk to him last night."

"You need to keep him in the loop more," Sammy admonished. "You should probably tell him everything."

But Amy didn't want to. Not him... he didn't deserve being thrown into this just as it got hairy. "When we come back, I'll tell him." Hopefully it would be over by then.

By the time the pair of them reached the edge of the barrier, it had been lifted and the guard who was there cleaning up some of the remaining supplies waved them on through. Shortly after being sure they had cleared the barrier, they turned north.

Amy was born on the farmland that was about a day's travel north of Sallah. It was owned by the same liege lord that owned the town, technically, but other than doing the bare minimum required by the Crown, he really didn't pry into local affairs too much. Rumor said he was far more interested in drink and his wife to bother with anything beyond strict requirements. Amy thought there were worse things that a lord could be doing, even if it made it a lot easier for people like Pabst Ribbon to operate without discovery.

She shook her head to get back to focusing on the path ahead of her.

While the main road lead quite a ways further east before turning north and heading to the capital, Amy and Sammy took a smaller path that was not nearly large enough to allow for the carriages that the wealthy or learned would be able to use. Though Amy knew that Astoria counted as both of those things, she for some reason couldn't imagine the old woman taking a carriage rather than walking. Perhaps it was because she had become like a second mother to her, or perhaps it was because she spent all of her time tending to her shop or making sure one of her many charges was doing alright.

Whenever Amy made this trip, she always stopped for lunch in a particular clearing in the surrounding trees that had a pre-dug firepit for use. Not that she always used it to help prepare the meal, but there was plenty of space to sit, and it was difficult to sneak up on the spot since it was so open. The clearing was one of the few times that a traveler along this particular path could tell precisely where the sun was. Most of the other places along the path it was possible to determine approximately what time it was by the amount of light that made it through the canopy over head, but determining the exact location of the sun, particularly when it wasn't directly overhead, became difficult.

Lunch was a quiet affair, like the trip itself. While Sammy did try to start conversations on a variety of subjects, and Amy tried to respond as best she could... Sammy seemed to be able to tell that Amy's heart wasn't in it and had eventually given up. When Amy had finished, Sammy quickly finished off her own fruit and rose. The two of them left the clearing without a word to each other.

Without the sun to tell them how long they'd been on the road, Amy pressed as fast as she thought Sammy could manage. Sammy did well enough keeping up with the pace that Amy set, so she thought she was doing alright.

It turned out that she had been doing more than alright. They managed to reach the opposite side of the small forest path before it got dark. The setting sun painted the clouds in blues and purples in the east and reds and oranges in the west. Amy only vaguely paid any attention, and only because Sammy was staring at the sky when she could. Amy was more focused on remembering the best way across the farmlands to the farm that she had grown up on.

She found, as most find, that her memory was better than she thought it was, and her feet did not lead her astray. She remembered that there was a particular cornfield that she could go through with the permission of the farmhands there. She remembered which of the next three fields were fallow this year and she could just walk diagonally across to make even better time. Sammy stayed on her heels and waved congenially at the farmhands that they passed. Amy vaguely remembered to raise a hand to join in Sammy's greeting most of the time. She was sure that she completely missed passing some people.

Finally though, just as the final reds on the clouds were gone, she was on her parents' farm. She broke into a trot and she heard Sammy speed up behind her. "Amy! What…?"

"Almost there!" Amy called back. And then they had arrived. The farmhouse loomed in front of them. Nothing was lit, and it didn't look like anyone was rustling about. "Something's wrong."

"No one seems to be here," Sammy said. Well, that wasn't good.

"I'm glad you came by," a voice said from behind the girls. Amy whipped around, her wand out and the first stroke made in her Rune before she recognized the man that had surprised her.

"Mr. Blan..."

"Your family is fine. They're in the Lord's mansion tonight as they were witnesses in a crime. They'll be back in a few days."

"They're in danger!" Amy said, louder than she had intended.

"Actually, not anymore," Mr. Blan said. "That's connected with the crime that they were witnesses to. It's a bit of a story, should we go inside? Here or my place is fine with me."

While there was a distinct possibility that the person in front of her wasn't Mr. Blan at all, but someone with an identity-concealing spell on, Amy didn't think so. He had the same mannerisms. He had the same voice. And even if someone was extremely good with face-changing, it was impossible to mimic those other things with magic. She erased the line in the dirt beneath her. "Here's fine. This is where I'm sleeping tonight, anyway."

Vin Blan nodded, and the three of them went into the farmhouse. Amy lit a few candles so that they could see, as the light from outside was continuing to fade to darkness rapidly.

"Now, as you may or may not know," Mr. Blan said, "my whole family work as farmhands. However, with the money my eldest daughter has been sending home we've been able to send her brothers to school. Your family, among others have had to replace them with other, new farmhands."

Amy vaguely remembered the hiring of new farmhands, but didn't know that the Blans were the ones who had pulled out.

"These new farmhands... well, most of them were fine. But there were a pair of farmhands that were not from around here, and no one knew where they were from. We thought they were nice enough, and they worked hard enough in the fields that no one really minded them. But there was something... off-putting about them. Never enough that I thought they were bad people, but something that made me itch a little. And I wasn't just being paranoid or anything; they had something up their sleeves.

"When it actually came to a head, I was on the Noir's farm on the west side of the area, so I didn't hear about it until I got home. But apparently one of the new farmhands had drawn Runes in the wheat fields and was summoning imps."

Sammy gasped. Amy had a hand to her mouth and stared at Mr. Blan with wide eyes.

"He didn't get very far with it, though, as another one of the newer farmhands spotted it and took him down. I don't know how, but apparently some in your family were there for the scuffle, so they went as witnesses to the crime." He let out a breath. "If you say that your family is in danger, then it is likely that the farmhand in question was after your family. And I don't think he'll be going after anyone else anytime soon."

"Why?" Sammy asked breathlessly.

"Well, once they got him to admit he was working for the Archmage's revival, he earned himself the gallows."

Amy slumped back into her chair. She had been too late, but it hadn't mattered. Her parents were alright. Would have been alright anyway…

"When was this?" Sammy asked.

"Oh, a little over a week ago," Mr. Blan said, looking vaguely up in thought. "Something like that anyway. You know how the witness-takers are, though. The first time your father will be able to send a brother with word to you it might be autumn, with all of the work that they're missing right now."

Mr. Blan stood up. "I do need to be getting back, but I'm glad I spotted you on your way over here. Anyway, there's no need to worry. Maybe come back next week for dinner? I'll certainly let them know that you had been by."

He left, giving a farewell to both of them that Sammy returned whole-heartedly and Amy barely noticed, before shutting the door with a soft click behind him.

"Amy," Sammy said after a moment. "I know you're exhausted and relieved, but I need you to help me fix some dinner and then show me where I should sleep."

That roused her. It was good Sammy had come along.