"'Trust me'" he says," Tohopekaliga said in a sardonic tone. "Good plan, genius."

Jacob closed his eyes and rubbed a hand on his forehead at the verbal jab. "It's not my fault," he countered, opening his eyes to give the tauren in the cell across from his a stern look. "They're not reacting like the Alliance guards I know back home; they're all paranoid."

"I did mention that, did I not?" Toho asked from where she laid back along a stone shelf that served as a bedding area. Of course, it was far too small for her frame to lie completely flat, but she managed a moderate reclining position that Jacob was secretly impressed she could achieve with her size. "They have been firing cannons at ships, what made you think they would let a tauren and a man pretending to be a noble go?"

"I am not pretending," Jacob replied, and then sighed when Toho gave him a questioning look from across the narrow aisle between cells. "I am who I claim I am, though I understand that you would have reservations given my earlier deception."

"You will excuse me then if I do not bow to you," Toho snidely responded. "For that reason as well as the fact that this cell is rather too small to let me do a proper curtsey."

Her harsh tone cut into Jacob more than he thought it could, and he shook his head a bit both to dismiss her words and to let him have a moment to collect his thoughts. "I am not like most nobles; none of my line are," he calmly began. "We are a relatively new house, with my grandfather being the first appointed by then Lord Admiral Gavin Proudmoore after the old baron Augustus died without leaving a proper living heir. My family were merchants and manufacturers, and we do not forget our roots." Jacob paused then to snort lightly. "As if the other noble houses would let us forget, the arrogant inbred fools."

Tohopekaliga gave him an inscrutable look as he finished, and Jacob blushed as he sat back on his cell's sleeping shelf. "You don't believe me," he said, not making it a question.

"I find it hard to believe, yes," Toho said cautiously. "As that jerk lieutenant observed, it is an odd thing for a baron's son to be wandering around in places he is likely to be harmed."

Jacob looked to the side for a moment to think before he responded. "I did say we're a bit different," he said, his voice slightly quieter than before. "My grandfather made my father and his brothers go into the world to keep their connections to the people we came from. So too did my father, and I cannot say I blame him one iota after meeting the spoiled brats that are the scions of other noble houses.

"Of course, I didn't have to pick a false name to travel under and leave behind all civilization," Jacob allowed, and sighed heavily as he dropped his gaze to the floor. "I suppose I was taken in with the idea of adventure and exploring the 'dark' continent." He shook his head then. "Sounds ridiculous now, doesn't it?" He asked, looking up at Toho.

To his surprise, Jacob saw the tauren giving him an appraising look, as if she hadn't quite seen him before. She continued to do this in silence for a few moments before she quietly began to speak. "A desire for adventure does not make one a fool, nor does what happened to you and your friends," she said. "As I told you when you awoke in my camp, this is a harsh and unforgiving world. Sometimes it will get even the best of us," Toho added, glancing to the side for a moment in memory. "But I don't think you are a fool, no, not when what you describe your family doing is so similar to my people's own practices."

Despite the situation, Jacob felt his interest rise at that. "Oh? How so?" He asked, perplexed.

"When a tauren reaches adulthood, he or she is sent away to pursue a series of trials called the Rites of the Earthmother," Toho began, her voice giving an ever so slight hitch at the last word. "They are broken into three rites: those of strength, vision, and wisdom. Each can take much time and no tauren is allowed back into society without passing them, save for those rare individuals who accomplish a feat so grand or honorable that the rites seem trivial or redundant in comparison.

"What you have described your family doing is much the same: send out the children to let them learn their true place in the world, separate from the cushion of the family, so that they may understand their purpose in a manner that could ordinarily take years to learn." Toho paused then, again giving Jacob another appraising look. "I had not thought that humans were so concerned with such things given what I have heard of your predilection towards feudalism. It is admirable."

Jacob took a moment to think on Toho's words, and he blushed slightly. "Thank you," he said, though he wasn't sure why.

Toho looked about to say something else, but the door to the jail opened, admitting the light of day into the ordinarily dark building. Both prisoners turned their heads away and squinted until their eyes could adjust whereupon they looked to see a pair of guards standing in the doorway. One of the men came forward and stopped in between the two cells and then turned to face Jacob. "Alright, captain Fairmount wants to see you now," he said, his tone even before he stepped to the cell door and produced a set of keys.

Jacob blinked at that, but quickly stood as the cell was opened. "Well, let us not keep the good captain waiting," he said, walking out after the guard nodded at his words and stepped aside. Jacob turned to leave the jail, but paused to glance over to Tohopekaliga. "I'll be back," he promised, ignoring the looks he got from the guards.

Toho nodded. "I believe it," she said, and then watched as the humans left.

The march from the squat, simply built jail to the hold's keep was short, but still lasted long enough for Jacob to get a good look at the place. Central tower-style keep, two auxiliary towers on the plateau rising behind the keep, stable and ancillary buildings on lower level and storage on the upper. Looks like fairly standard Alliance outpost planning, he thought, going over the arrangements as the guards took him up the hill in the center of the hold's walled area, where the keep was sited. But I saw a lot of tents on the upper level; they're bunking more soldiers here than they're set up for on a permanent basis. I wonder why?

The question disturbed him in a vague fashion, but Jacob put it out of his head as he and the guards reached the sole ground entrance to the tower keep. Another pair of guards, these in full plate armor, stood guard, which considering the heavy guard he had seen at the hold's main gate, seemed rather unnecessary.

Jacob once again had to force other considerations out of his mind as the jailers took him up through the tower and, finally arriving on the top level, reached the presence of captain Fairmount herself. She stood conferring with a mage and another soldier around a table upon which lay maps of the area surrounding Northwatch. As Jacob and his escorts approached she turned her silver-haired head to regard him, and the younger man felt a brief chill run down his spine.

Fairmount studied him for a moment before she nodded to the jailers. "I'll handle this from here, you two go back to your posts," she ordered, prompting the two guards to salute and spin on their heels to leave. She then turned and regarded her companions. "Jarrin, Farrik, please go see to the patrols we've worked out while I speak with the gentleman from Kul Tiras."

"Of course, captain," the mage replied for the two, and they left without incident. Jacob waited until they were gone before taking a good long look around the room. "Well, since I'm here I suppose you've confirmed my identity then?" He asked after finally matching his eyes to the officer.

"As much as we can," Fairmount allowed. She then reached down to the table and picked up a pouch that Jacob recognized as his, and offered it to him. "The seals and signatures match up with the book from Stormwind, though I still find it hard to believe," she continued as Jacob took the pouch and fastened it to his belt. "You're a long way from home, sir."

"Family business," Jacob said, providing all the answer he was willing to give the woman standing in front of him.

"I see," Fairmount said, leveling a skeptical look at him. "Well if you're not going to be forthcoming, then I am not sure if I want you here while the hold is under threat," she said, pushing to see how far she could go.

"Then I shan't stay long then," Jacob replied, unconcerned with her probing. "My business in Kalimdor is almost finished, and I will be happy to take the next supply ship to Theramore and be out of your hair," he explained.

Fairmount thought about that for a minute, and then nodded. "Fair enough. The Sprite's Wind will come around in about two days. I think we can put up with you until then," she allowed.

Jacob raised an eyebrow at the captain's forthright distaste of himself, but he forced his thoughts elsewhere. "Then there is only one more thing to discuss with you," he said.

"Oh?" Fairmount replied, suspicion in her voice. "And that might be?"

"The tauren you have in the jail," he said. "I want her released."

"And why would you be concerned with her?" Fairmount asked.

"She's the reason I am here and alive, and not a corpse on the savannah," Jacob replied evenly. "She came across me in the Barrens and I managed to arrange to pay for her to bring me here after I'd been lost for days," he added, lying a bit as he figured the paranoid captain wouldn't believe in a kindly, good-natured Hordesman.

"Really?" Fairmount asked, though her tone told Jacob it was a figurative gesture. "Funny, then, that she happens to know Common."

"A bit unusual perhaps," Jacob replied. "I fail to see any humor in it."

"Strange then," Fairmount countered. "Or suspicious, possibly contrived."

Jacob raised an eyebrow. "Are you suggesting that she contrived to make me lost?" He asked, confused.

Fairmount shook her head. "Rather, mister Vayo, your story itself is contrived," she said, her demeanor stone cold. "It seems to me to be a rather convenient excuse to bring a Horde spy close to a secure position."

Jacob blinked for a moment in shock before he felt his gorge rise. "Now you wait a minute you sap-sucking cow!" He thundered, fists clenching and starting to reach for the weapons he no longer carried – taken of course by his jailers – before he regained a measure of control. "If you dare accuse me of something like that, you had better have some damn good evidence to back up your insanity, or by the Light and all that is holy and right in this world, I will have your commission served to me on a silver platter and your hide tacked to my door.

"What is wrong with you people?" He continued his bluster, not intending to let the captain get her say in just yet. "Since I have arrived at this bloody fortress I have been arrested, jailed, harassed and just short of accused of treason based on nothing more than a brief association with a tauren. Is it so inconceivable, so unimaginable to you that within the throngs of the Horde there exists at least one person with a modicum of compassion that you conjure up an excuse to explain her concern for human life as nothing more than a story dreamt up to spy on the Alliance? Are you so paranoid, so utterly daft that you see spies and assassins hiding in every shadow that you arrest random travelers and fire on unarmed merchantman?"

"How do you know about the merchantmen?" Fairmount asked, still suspicious.

Something in Jacob's head clicked then, and he gave the captain a suspicious glare of his own. "A better question, captain, would be how you know to what I refer?" He said carefully. "If you truly believed those ships to be pirates or Horde attackers, you would be referring to them as such. Instead, you react as if you already knew those ships were unarmed and non-hostile." A moment of dead silence met that, and Jacob felt his blood run cold. "By the Light- you're doing this on purpose!"

"Guards, I think our guest needs a nice rest," Fairmount said, addressing her words to someone behind Jacob. The young man turned and saw that a pair of armed guards had come into the room from somewhere, doubtlessly drawn by the argument. "Take him back to the stockade and stick him in the cell across from his accomplice."

"You can't do this," Jacob said, turning back to the captain. "I am a nobleman of Kul Tiras. You cannot just arrest me without charges." He hated to speak so after decrying the nobility, but he was willing to use any tool at his disposal.

Unfortunately, captain Fairmount just smirked ever so slightly. "I'm afraid I can do this; a friend of mine in SI7 calls it 'protective custody,'" she said. "You'll be under it until we can bundle you off on the Sprite's Wind. After that, you can scream your fool head off anywhere else in the Alliance, but it won't do you a lick of good." She glanced at the guards. "Take him away."

The sound of the jail door opening caused Tohopekaliga to snap her head up to see Jacob being brought back into the jail. At first she felt a flare of optimism, but the dejected and angry look on Jacob's face, combined with the smugly superior smirks on the two guards' quickly squashed that hope. She held her expression as neutral as she could, but couldn't help frown when her former charge was placed back into the cell he had only recently been freed from. "Alright, the cow next," one of the guards said to his compatriot.

"I am not a cow anymore than you are a disgusting ape," Toho said to the man in irritation.

The guard who had spoken grunted, but despite the backtalk he showed no anger. Instead, he turned to the other man. "Go get Tanner and Clay, we'll need some armed escorts to keep her honest."

Toho glanced to Jacob and met his eyes. Despite the differences between their cultures and upbringings, the two understood each other, and Jacob gave her the slightest of headshakes. Toho nodded to him briefly and waited patiently until the extra guards – fully armed and armored, she noted – were brought in and held an extended guard position just beyond her reach as the cell door was opened. "Alright, tauren, no funny business and we don't need to run you through, understand?"

"I understand," Toho said. "I will be peaceful."

"Good, let's get going."

Captain Fairmount had regained her composure after Jacob was taken away, and so she looked calm and steely-eyed at Tohopekaliga as the latter was brought into her presence. The tauren huntress felt a pang of nervousness run up her spine, but she decided it was mainly due to the two men in full combat gear standing at the entrance to the room that caused that particular feeling rather than the cold human in front of her.

Fairmount dismissed the jailers as she had done with Jacob, but left the two, armed men standing at the ready near the room's entrance. No doubt the sword on the table is hers, Toho thought, observing that the older woman stayed close by it even with guards in the room. The nearness of the weapon seemed to give her confidence, and despite the three-foot height advantage Toho had Fairmount gave the tauren a look one might give an offensive insect. "Sit," the human said, giving a halfhearted wave.

Toho glanced around her before she replied. "I do not see a chair."

"The floor is good enough for you," Fairmount retorted. Toho narrowed her eyes a bit at the human's tone, but the tauren complied and quietly sat down on the stone floor. In this position even humans were taller than her, and Fairmount took advantage of this to look down her nose at the huntress. "What is your full name?" Fairmount asked in an imperious tone.

"Tohopekaliga Starchaser," Toho replied.

"I know a few things about your people," Fairmount said. "Enough to know that you're giving me your tribe name in its Common translation, but not your given name. Why is that?"

Toho hitched an eyebrow up at that. "My given name is the one that I identify with myself. Translating it would change its identity and deny myself. My tribe, though, takes its name from an event, and so we feel free to translate it to emphasize its meaning rather than its identity."

Fairmount hesitated then, surprised at the intricacy of the response. She recovered soon enough, however, and pressed on. "Why did you come to Northwatch Hold?"

"Because your soldiers held swords and bows and told me to come or they would kill me," Toho replied evenly. Fairmount frowned at that, and she shook her head briefly. "No. What was the reason that you came close enough to be captured by our patrol?"

Toho felt a bit of disappointment as the human closed the language loophole, but she pushed it out of her mind. "The human with me needed to be led across the Barrens," she began cautiously. "He offered coin so I agreed to his request."

"How is it you came to meet him?" Fairmount asked.

Toho hesitated for a moment before she replied. "I came across him on the scene of a battle. I do not know exactly what occurred, but I did gather that he was lost and lacked supplies. He asked if there were a way across the Barrens to an Alliance outpost, and I offered to take him if he paid in coin."

"Really?" Fairmount asked in a disbelieving tone. "It seems strange to me that he would ask such a thing of a Hordesman. Even more strange that you would be so generous to a potential enemy, even considering the coin you could make."

The tauren shrugged her shoulders, and hoped she wasn't stepping on whatever story Jacob had told the captain. "Money is money; both the Horde and the Alliance use the same standards, more or less."

"But the Alliance is a threat to the Horde, isn't it?" Fairmount asked as she started to walk, circling around Toho. "You have to have realized that the man you were helping might one day raise his blade against you or your own. Why help him, when you could just as easily beaten him and take his gold?"

"I am no thief," Toho spat out. "And I have no quarrel with the Alliance. So long as you stay to your territories I have no desire to fight you."

"Yet your fellow Hordesmen think differently," Fairmount countered. "Your Warchief has even launched an attack on Theramore before."

"To stop your mad admiral from launching the world back into the burning Hell of war," Toho snapped.

Fairmount's hand moved quickly, backhanding the tauren across her muzzle. The armored gauntlet the captain wore gave enough weight to the strike to snap Toho's head to the side. "You will not speak of admiral Daelin in such a manner," she growled. "He was a great man, cut down by half-brained savages such as yourself. You had best keep your tongue civil if you wish to keep it at all."

Toho glared up at the human, but she studiously kept her mouth shut. Fairmount waited a moment before resuming her questioning. "The men in the patrol who captured you reported that you were at one point aiming a firearm towards them," she began. "If you have no quarrel with the Alliance, then why were you acting in a threatening manner?"

"Northwatch Hold's paranoia is well known from Freewind Post to Ratchet and beyond," Toho replied. "I figured your men would attack me. I suspect they would certainly have done so, firearm or not, had Jacob not been there."

"So you admit that you did raise a weapon against soldiers of the Alliance?" Fairmount needled.

"Only in self-defense," Toho countered.

"Why would you need to defend yourself, then?" Fairmount asked. "Perhaps you knew you were doing something that would be considered a threat? Like spying?"

"From what I hear, you consider passing butterflies as threats to your fortress," Toho scoffed. "I have seen the bodies of unfortunate persons who have run afoul of your foot patrols."

"So you thought you'd get even then, eh?" Fairmount prodded, her voice accusatory.

"Don't be ridiculous," Tohopekaliga replied. "Northwatch is too well armed and staffed for that."

"Aha!" Fairmount exclaimed, moving next to the table with her sword on it. "So you have been spying."

Toho blushed and shook her head. "Spying is not necessary when you see a fortress like this," she said. "One can see your men patrolling the walls and towers easily from a distance and know you have plenty. And if you consider that spying, then maybe you should be more concerned with making your men invisible than with passing travelers."

Fairmount silently studied the tauren for a moment, and then shook her head. "Your story isn't adding up," she said, picking up her sword. "You somehow contrived to be accessible to a human noble traveling in the Barrens when he needed help, you conveniently know Common to a surprising degree of fluency, and you seem to know an awful lot about this hold and its operations, despite your protestations to the contrary." The captain hefted her blade up then, but held it only at guard, as if daring Tohopekaliga to try something. "I think you are a Horde spy, and sooner or later, we'll get to the bottom of this," she said, and then looked over at the guards in the room. "Take her back to the stockade, and make sure to clap some irons on her legs this time." Fairmount then looked down at Toho. "We'll have another talk tomorrow morning. If you're not more cooperative by then, I will be forced to resort to more persuasive measures."

Toho felt her blood run cold at that, but she remained stoic as the two guards in the room came up behind her and held their swords out. "All right you, time to go," one of them said. Begrudgingly, the tauren started to stand.

A glint of something around Tohopekaliga's neck caught Fairmount's eye then, and before the huntress could finish standing the captain had the tip of her blade poised next to Toho's neck, making the tauren freeze in mid-motion. "What is this?" Fairmount asked, dipping the blade down to a golden chain barely visible in the fur around Toho's neck. The captain deftly maneuvered the blade to drag the chain up enough so that it pulled the trinket it was attached to out from the loose cloth of Toho's linen shirt. Fairmount recognized it immediately, and her face darkened with rage. "You dare rob from the dead and wear your spoils so openly? I should cut you down for this insult."

"The necklace is mine," Toho protested, though her voice lacked strength as she felt rather vulnerable without armor or weapons – naturally confiscated upon being arrested. "It belonged to my father, as it belonged to his father and his father before."

"You are a filthy liar," Fairmount snapped, and then reached forward and yanked the trinket away from the tauren, snapping the necklace off. "No savage of the Horde wears a symbol of the Church of the Light. Not unless they've taken it as spoils from the dead."

"They do if they adhere to the tenants of the Light," Toho replied.

"And how would you know of such things?" Fairmount scoffed. Toho just smirked back, and her answer was nearly startling to the captain. "Did you think that Lady Proudmoore's expedition were the first humans to cross the sea to Kalimdor?"

Fairmount had no reply to that. Instead she waved for the guards to take Toho away, and they quickly prodded the tauren into movement. The captain waited until they were gone before she looked down to study the amulet more closely. "No," she said after verifying her suspicions, and then clenched her fist around the symbol. "No, this will not stand. Not when we're so close." With that, she turned and marched out of the room to look for one of her yeomen. "Someone get me Farrik!"

Jacob looked up as Toho was escorted back into the jail, and he felt some worry when he saw a look of consternation upon her face. Like she had done before, he kept his peace as she was locked back into her cell, though he found that hard to do when one of the jailers went outside and quickly returned with a set of leg irons that fit easily over the tauren's ankles, just above her hooves. Looks like Fairmount is well prepared, the human warrior noted with growing confidence in his spur of the moment realization. The confirmation gave him little comfort, however, as it spoke of underhanded plots and scheming, neither of which he had any love for.

Finally, after some time the jailers finished their task and locked Toho back into the cell. "Dinner will be served in two hours," the head jailer, a balding man with a businesslike air, said. "If you use your chamber pot before then I suggest you make it known, because after dinner no one is going to be coming in here until daybreak."

Jacob and Toho both made eye contact with the jailer, and though they didn't respond he could sense they understood well enough. "Try not to make too much noise," he said, and then turned and left after the last of his assistants had departed. The light level in the small stockade dropped significantly once the door was shut, and both prisoners waited a few moments for their eyes to adjust before they turned to look at each other. "Well," Jacob began. "How did your meeting with the good captain go?" He asked in mock pleasantness.

Tohopekaliga rolled her eyes, but a slight, brief tug at the corner of her mouth told Jacob she appreciated the humor. "I really wish you would have just let me start shooting; at least then I could have been killed and spared meeting the stuck up krikta."

Jacob chuckled momentarily at that. "Krikta?" He asked, confused.

Toho blushed slightly. "I am sorry, it is a foul swear taurahe swear. I should be better mannered, but…" Her voice trailed off and she looked over his head, eyes focusing on a distant point well beyond the jail. After a moment of this silence, she sighed and then made eye contact again. "Fairmount was determined to get me to admit to being a spy, and I dare say she hoped I would confess to some sort of attack upon Northwatch."

"I would not be surprised at all, considering I believe she is actively trying to trigger such an attack," Jacob said, and then he gave a brief description of his interview with Fairmount and explained his sudden hunch. "And now they clap you in irons suspiciously well-designed for tauren. It seems to me that Fairmount is up to something."

"It does seem like that, doesn't it?" Toho rhetorically asked. "If what you're saying is true, then we may be in great danger."

"Yeah," Jacob said, and then glanced around. "Though at the moment it doesn't look like we can do much about it."

"Unfortunately, no," Toho replied, slumping where she sat on the sleeping shelf. "But we must be on the lookout for an opportunity to escape. That is," she looked up at Jacob then, her expression openly questioning. "If you feel you can do what may be necessary?"

Jacob felt his face flush then, and he shook his head a bit. "I don't want to kill anyone here."

"Neither do I," Toho replied. "Not even captain Fairmount. However, we may be required to do things that may hurt people, and well… If someone is doing his best to kill you, would you hesitate in defending yourself?"

Again, Jacob felt his face flush, but after a moment of consideration he nodded his head. "Aye, I do not intend to die on a guard's sword."

"One more question, then," Toho said, and she anxiously licked her lips before continuing. "Would you do the same if it were me about to be run through, though it may require a human death to save a tauren?"

Silence fell in the jail then, and Jacob felt the turmoil of indecision in his mind. He glanced down to his feet and took some time to think before he sighed and then looked back up at the tauren. "Yes, I will," he said. "I owe you my life, that I have not forgotten. Also," he added, glancing to the side a bit. "I promised Gratan that you would not die unless I had already fallen."

Toho blinked in surprise at that, and again silence fell over the pair. After a moment she closed her eyes and bowed her head in the direction of the human. "I am humbled, and I thank you," she said, opening her eyes to look at him again. "I admit I had my fears, especially after how you reacted to me at first."

Jacob shook his head at that. "As I said, I do owe you my life. In addition, the seeds of your words over the past few days have not fallen upon infertile ground," he added. "Whatever the rest of your people may be like, you yourself have proven honorable while my own brethren have been duplicitous. If I blind myself to that then I may as well dig a grave for myself and die now, for life would hold no learning nor growth for me."

Toho smiled at that. "Then let us pray that no graves lie in our future."

"Amen."

"So?" Fairmount asked of her second-in-command.

Farrik stroked his chin for a moment and then finally nodded. "It will be tricky to keep it secret, but I think I know the men to help me carry this out; they have no love of the Horde or its sympathizers."

"Excellent," Fairmount replied, leaning back in her seat, one hand resting on the chair's arm while the other toyed with the necklace taken from the captured tauren. "This needs to be done soon, preferably tonight, so that I can write up a report to send to the squib's father."

"I shall accommodate," Farrik replied. "By your leave?"

"Of course," Fairmount said, waving the man off. He bowed slightly and then turned and headed for the closed door to the room. Before he got there, however, the door opened and in stepped a striking young woman dressed in the robes of a priestess. She nearly ran into the retreating officer, and only a quick backstep by the man prevented this. "Oh, I am sorry lieutenant," she sad.

Farrik smiled at her. "A minor issue; think nothing of it, priestess Omiya."

The priestess graced him with a smile and nodded. "The Light bless you for your patience then."

Farrik chuckled and nodded his head to Omiya before he left the room, closing the door behind him. Omiya then turned and walked towards Fairmount, who remained seated in her chair next to the map table. "You called for me, captian?"

"I did," Fairmount confirmed, standing up as she spoke. "I have here an item taken from the tauren we captured today and I wanted you to take a look at it." She raised her hand and held out the necklace, upon which Omiya took it. "A pendant of the church?" The priestess asked.

"That's what I hope to ask you," Fairmount replied. "The prisoner claimed it belongs to her family, but given she's a savage I doubt that story highly." The captain paused then to pick up the mug of ale she had been nursing since dismissing Tohopekaliga and took a modest swig. "I was hoping you could tell me if it is a crude forgery, or something that came from the Eastern Kingdoms?"

"Hmm?" Omiya murmured, looking up after seemingly been entranced by the amulet. "Oh, yes, of course. In fact, I can tell you right now that I recognize the craftsmanship; it was definitely made back in the old world, at Northshire."

"Just as I thought: the lying beast is a dirty grave robber, too," Fairmount said, back down. "Well, she can no longer defile our beliefs. If you would, priestess, please see that gets to someone who deserves it."

"Of course, captain," Omiya replied, and then bowed slightly to the Alliance officer. "I will go see to that now. Unless you require anything else of me?"

Fairmount shook her head. "No, thank you. I think I have everything taken care of for now."

"Then peace be with you," Omiya said, and then turned and left the room. Several minutes of stairs and walking later, she was outside and alone in the gathering gloom.

Omiya paused for a moment to look around, and once she was sure no one else was near, she again looked at the amulet and studied it intensely. "Oh captain Fairmount," she sadly spoke to herself. "If only you could recognize this the way I do…"

The woman looked around again, and then placed the necklace in a pocket. Light knows I should recognize it, Omiya thought as she resumed her movement though the gathering twilight. I'm the one who made it all those years ago, along with all of its brothers.

Plans started to form in her head; she knew the captain was up to something dark, had indeed read it in Fairmount's and Farrik's emotions. If this comes back to me now, then the Light has made it so to warn me. Omiya nodded to herself as she headed for the building in which she had modest accommodations. Before the night is over, I must act.