The maid hadn't lit the fire in the room and it was all but winter already. Slack-twisted. Western servitors were pathetic and Edwin Odesseiron would have happily told them so in as many lengthy words as they deserved were he not firmly bound and gagged. He sat grimly in the darkness on one of the two beds and listened with dismay to the libidinous, lamentable attempts at lechery next door. His pair of Red Wizard captors had a whore with them; Edwin heard the enthusiastic feminine squeaks between the grotesque, pitiful gruntings of the pair of them. If only they'd learn to shut up and allow him rest. They mocked him endlessly while they travelled back to Thay in daylight hours.

His empty, queasy stomach turned again; a worse pain than his stiffened limbs. He'd every reason to feel concerned about Thay, even as Homen Odesseiron's nephew. He'd missed a chance, he'd been sent far away when the Bhaalspawn was killed, he was officially responsible for the murder of another Red Wizard in a way that wasn't subtle enough that his name would be left out of it. It was an acceptable promotion strategy, Edwin told himself. He deserved Philias' rank and a hero's welcome home...but he'd hardly get it. (Philias too deserved his death! Just as those pathetic laundering peasants in Nashkel.)

They are...going to insert a fish hook below my navel and slowly twine out my guts piece by piece. His captors—of far less illustrious family name than Odesseiron—had enjoyed offering up various fates to him.

Or boil me in a cauldron of oil. Head first, to be lucky.

Or unravel my magic from me and transmute me into a low demon or beast forevermore.

Or hang me up by the...by the town square. Which that whining brat was planning to do anyway. He'd seen the row of corpses on his way out of the city.

One of his captors groaned in pleasure in the next room, probably Goiorias the Oleaginiously Fat rather than Pettr the Mincingly Goat-Faced, according to his current nicknames for the mismatched oafish pair. Edwin rocked back and forth on the bed in the hope that the sounds would disguise their simian mating noises. (Did he sound like that? No, he was dignified, he told himself.)

It was desperate indeed when Edwin Odesseiron could not manage the necessary spells to free himself. He was not even sure if the simians had taken up his spellbook at all, and it had been many days now since he'd studied.

(He couldn't remember if he'd studied much following that Amnian town in the middle of nowhere where they'd all deserved what happened to them and to their city. It had felt as if it slipped his mind somewhat.)

He hummed to himself. His captors had their charming little ways of silencing him every so often. It was difficult to concentrate on any one thing at a time, sometimes; his mind would seize at some other detail and fly onwards, at his ever-growing pace of thought that outstripped any who dared compete with Edwin Odesseiron in the matter of intelligence. No simian could ever possibly understand. Edwin banged his head against the wall several times simply because he could. His mind spun with the brief distraction, and then he heard a voice through the quiet. It was all dark in here.

"Odesseiron."

There were hands behind his back on the leather thongs that restrained him. A magery-lock held the threads tightly in place, but the hands were still unpicking them. And then the gag came off, and then a candle was lit; and Cythandria had come for him after all.

"Can you walk?" she demanded of him in the flickering, faint light. She rose slowly herself as if she needed to limp. Edwin followed her and fell flat on his face at his first steps. Feeling sharply returned to his limbs and by degrees he got up again. "Follow me. We must leave quietly." She draped a black cloak over him. Edwin clutched at the thick edges that hid his Red Wizard's colouring of a prisoner. Almost all of Cythandria's right leg showed bare from her tatters of robes, her clothing to be charitably called skimpy.

"You were the whore," he burst out, with the powers of his deductions. "...Concubine."

"Yes. I managed to weave a sleep spell on the two of them, eventually. Men are so easily distracted." A light coating of sweat gleamed on Cythandria's pale leg. In the quiet inn they walked into the moonlight, where waited the Red Wizards' horse-drawn caravan, small for two of them and a prisoner.

"Steal it and be far from here while they still sleep," Edwin ordered.

"No. It will make them thoroughly pursue; we'll travel by other means," Cythandria said, shaking out her long fair hair below her shoulders. It had grown, though the ends of it were shaggy and ill-kempt; and her face was haggard and old.

"Very well. I suppose I have little choice," Edwin agreed. "Did you at least retrieve my spellbook as well?"

Cythandria glared back at him. "Go find it yourself."

The Red Wizards had secured their possessions with various wards Edwin felt simply too exhausted to bother to untangle. He ignored her vicious barb.

"You've grown rather ugly," he said. "Your clothing is of the lowest harlot, your grooming is disgraceful, you have just come from two fools of Red Wizards, and your face is ruined." Far too gaunt, dark-circled below her eyes, marked and shadowed; even in the moonlight he could see Cythandria's degeneration. Women never looked after themselves properly for long; some said after twenty or twenty-five they all became grotesque for their age.

"I could say you have never been handsome yourself," Cythandria said icily, "you smell disgusting, and if you did not have an excuse of inexperience for your ineptness in bed it would have been unforgiveable. I was cursed by Sarevok for betrayal and if not for his death... Well. He was slain and I am free."

She drew her own cloak across her thinned body and began to walk on a path away from the town, into narrow deep woods that Edwin knew marked a byway to yet another small and poor barbaric western town.

"Slow down," he complained. He could hear the sounds of animals moving in the distance, and hastened to catch up with her. Once they'd committed carnal fornications aplenty in that spare room in the Iron Throne that would have seen them both murdered by Sarevok—Edwin knew, had always known well, fearing golden eyes and a hungry tearing blade even after he was dead; his godhood and rage and terrifying force and bindings— Many more times they had worked together on magic while he had desired her once-fine body; and many crimes they had committed they both took fair share in. "Come with me, Cythandria."

In the end, they had only each other to depend upon here.

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