I figured it'd been long enough since I updated, so here it is, chapter 5 of Part 3.
I especially wanted to thank Trajectory of Simplicity for the wonderful wonderful review you left for this story, and LoweFantasy, TheWonderfulShoe, Serethia, and CatsGotTongue for your continued support.
Kudos to all others who were kind enough to review, favourite, or subscribe, and I hope you like this chapter.
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Other Perspectives - 5 of 8
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Escaping after that was easy. Nobody took any notice of her; she really had faded into the background, as inconsequential as a pebble. She snagged a knife from a passing man and cut herself free, and snuck out as soon as she was able. Her friends had dropped to exhausted sleep, crying themselves out, and Arn and Medilia had been quick to follow. The kidnappers were languid in their confidence, and rarely patrolled the area.
Fi wished that she could cut her friends free too, but if she went on her own, she knew there wouldn't be any pursuers, not a single one; it was best to get help, lead the way back, maybe even lead the search all the way to the slavers' lairs.
Fi took a small knife from the pile of loot, chucked the stolen one back so the criminal she'd taken it from would only think he'd misplaced it, and slipped away.
She looked and looked, till she Saw the way they had come, and snapping branches and leaves as she went to make sure she would know how to find this place again, went home.
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I found them. It took me the whole night, but I found them. My body was not happy with me.
The eastern sky was growing warmer, the dusky deathly grey that harked the brightening sky and burning sun. My heart thudded deeply, brain buzzing, legs shaking, all of them chorusing one vital message: we're gods-damned tired give us a freakin' rest!
Considering I'd been using time magic the whole way here, stretching my perception of minutes and hours to the point that everything felt like a stunted slow version of itself, it was a fairly reasonable request for my body to make.
I told it it could wait.
I finished the fruit I was snacking on and threw the core away, trying to figure out what to do next. I wish I'd known where my stupid stone mask was; sneaking would have been so much easier. Go in, take out the bandits by… never mind, I had to plan with things I have. And speed, speed was of the essence, because I really was absolutely gobsmackingly tired.
I cancelled the time-inversion, the world rushing back to its normal pace, or I slowing down to match it. Either way, the thudding of my heart eased. The buzzing worsened; hornets of sleep-deprivation were about to burst from their hive.
They'd stopped by a stream for quick access to water, and I pedaled back and up said stream, splashing my face in its dark icy folds once I figured I was far enough away. I finished the last cold gloopy bits of stew, sloshed stream water in the bottle to clean and drink the rest of it, and set it aside. Checked my gear again: shield, sword, quiver of arrows, handful of bombs, coil of rope, knife and potion. I set aside the potion in case one of the kids were injured. And I needed to make a bow.
I had the materials; the swamps had had an excellent array of weeping willows for the string and a supple sapling for the bow. I fixed it up now, bending the wood, testing the tautness, shooting out a small slithering shadow in the stream. Not nearly as powerful as I was used to, hell, it was practically a toy. But it was better than nothing.
Especially since it would give me a focus point for some ice arrows, and maybe some light arrows too, in lieu of deku nuts.
The shadow in the stream turned out to be a decent fish, which I gutted and scraped of its scales and fins, gnawing off the raw meat like Ruto had taught me. Still hungry, I tore open a half-rotted tree nearby and grabbed myself handfuls of pincer-grubs. They were best boiled in milk, but you deal with what you're dealt. I threw them in my cloth bag, buried it in the wet banks of the stream, super-heated my hands with Din's Fire and cooked myself some baked grubs.
I still couldn't quite tell Agitha that I considered her favourite companions mostly as a primary food source. Except the golden ones, of course, but still.
Right. Taking out the bag of curled up, steamed up morsels of creamy food from the baking sand, I considered my obstacles.
Five large watery dodongos. Ten bandits. Probably four or five prisoners, at the centre of the camp, watched by two on active guard and another two sitting around making sure everything was alright. The kids seemed alright but it was hard to tell since they were all huddled up asleep, though I could only hope that they were relatively unharmed. They had to be; if what that rooster-headed redhaired guy had said was accurate, about Sheikah in chains… they'd try to keep the merchandise unharmed.
I shuddered. Monsters were monsters, but people could be a different kind of evil. A worse kind of evil.
Time to show them how I dealt with it.
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If the gods were good I could collapse knowing that everything was fine.
If it didn't work then I would collapse knowing I'd failed Fi again, and probably not wake up at all. At least the sheer amount of noise I'd make would make it easier for the clan to find us. I'd left a trail for them to follow, one that Sheik would see even with his eyes closed, probably. And I'd called for backup, though when she'd be arriving was a mystery.
I lit five bombs at once and slipped them into each dodongo's saddle bag, and ran. The combination of bunnyhood and inverted time made me a blur, letting me circle the parameters of the camp immeasurably quickly, dropping a bomb every few light spells till I had them bracketed against the stream. I scrambled up a sturdy tree and cocked my arrows, curling ice over the sharpened heads.
The first bombs went off in quick succession, and the dodongos started shrieking. Slowed time made their shock and pain a series of languid stretches, wreathed in violent flame and noise.
The bandits were next, jumping to attention, gathering weapons, as the dodongos screamed from their burns. The monsters snapped their bonds and stampeded around the camp, and before the men could really do anything the second wave of bombs around the camp detonated.
These I laced with Light, flashing like thunder, making the explosions badder and meaner than they were, almost all bark and hardly any bite but the bandits were spooked anyway, and fled towards the safety of the stream. Ice arrows splashed into the waters before their feet and erupted bushes and fountains of ice and that truly scared them and brought them back in, floundering in terror as my flavour of chaos reigned.
My heart lurched from so much magic. A third and final wave of bombs went off and most were gathered where I wanted them, just a few stragglers that I needed to personally herd. Jumping down from my tree, arrows all spent, I ran around whacking the men with my sheathed sword, paddling the slow and confused men till they were all a comfortable distance within each other.
I took off the bunnyhood, cancelled the time magic and raised my sword, calling on the grass and earth and bushes nearby to fuel the final spell.
"Nayru's Judgement!"
Grass died. Earth sunk down, bushes withered and a tree broke in half as the life was sapped out of it, and a blue crystal snapped into existence, a prism made of solid magic trapping the kidnappers in.
A headache slammed into my forehead so hard it might as well have been a stone mallet. I physically reeled from the sudden onslaught of agony and I may have screamed as my ears rung like two mad harpies out to eat my soul.
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I woke up to Epona blowing hot air at my face. I coughed. "You're late. Some backup you are."
She snorted more horse-flavoured hot air at me, and I coughed again, head a soft heart of pulsing pain, throat ragged and raw. "No."
A whinny. "No."
She nudged a hoof against my arm, and grabbed the sleeve in her strong teeth and started dragging me over the ground. I didn't have the strength to protest. The earth scraped under my back, pebbles rolling through my hair and around my shoulders. My sword clattered in my grip, and dust got scooped into my boots. "I'm fine."
She snorted and let go of my arm, the limb flopping over my chest. I was right next to the stake where the prisoners were tied, and they were looking at me and my horse like they didn't know what to do.
Well, that was embarrassing. "Can you reach the knife in my belt?"
The eldest man there hesitated. "Uh."
Oh, right, might not speak Common. I said the word knife in Sheikah.
"Oh, I can speak Common, that's not… are you alright?"
"Tired. Just need a map. Nap. If the… crystal fades, wake… me…?"
I could've sworn I only closed my eyes for five minutes, but the sun was past noon when I opened them again. I'd curled up, Epona to my back and keeping watch, with my blade still in my hands in case of a fight. Something smelled nice, like steaming herbs.
Groggily sitting up, leaning on Epona, I fished through the saddlebags till I found some dry honeyed knobs of carrot. I took one for myself and three for Epona, gingerly scooting over towards her shoulder till she could reach me herself. Honestly. How she keeps finding me in the middle of nowhere was still a mystery, but it was one I was happy not thinking about.
A woman noticed I was awake and hustled over, though she hesitated when Epona gave a warning whuffle.
"She's fine," I told them both, firmly patting my friend's flank, "She won't hurt you."
Of course she won't, Epona seemed to say, still chewing on sweet carrots. For a horse she could be one sarcastic drama queen. Rolling my eyes I chewed a corner of my own treat, which proved a harder task than I'd anticipated. I looked at this woman, Sheikah with blond-brown hair, wearing rangers' trousers but a farmer's long shirt. "You're not from the clan."
"Not the Redspears, no," she agreed after a surprised second, handing me a jar of water. "My husband and I are from Grimdust, of the Calatian Regions."
Oh, right, we were close to Calatia too, weren't we. The Three Way Border, between there, Kanalet and Hyrule. There was meant to be a ridiculously large trades town where the borders met, but I'd personally never been. Too many people.
Well, just went to show that this kidnapping business was a lot bigger in scope than we'd first thought. I glanced at the crystal cage as I set aside the now empty bottle, and they were still firmly behind the blue walls, so I relaxed. The clan could interrogate them, once they arrived.
Speaking of the clan, Sheik. Fi.
"Where are the kids?"
"They, they went to collect kindling, and more food."
"Were they hurt?"
"The boy was beaten rather badly round the mouth, but nothing he won't recover from. But… I'm so sorry. You're Lin, aren't you?"
Cold dread shuddered down my spine and pooled in my stomach. "Why are you sorry?"
"There's, there's no easy way to say this. Your sister, she… she's gone."
"Sister? I don't have a sister, I'm just looking for Fi, she has blue hair, I think she's maybe thirteen or fourteen years old I never asked because it didn't occur to me to and, her brother's my… I don't know what he is to me, but is that who you're talking about? Fi? What do you mean she's gone?"
She was almost as confused as I was, but maybe it was something Fi had said to protect themselves or trick the bandits or whatever, but it didn't matter, that was not what mattered. I staggered forward, grasping her shoulder, and I may have frightened her with my sudden move. "What do you mean she's gone!?"
"They, killed her. I'm so very sorry."
I processed that, slowly. They… killed her. Killed her? Fi?
This couldn't be true. It just, couldn't. Why would they kill her, she was meant to be sold, she was meant to be valuable. How could I have let this happen? How had it happened? And, Farore, how, how would I ever be able to face Sheik? I dropped the carrot piece for Epona to finish and I lurched up, using my sword as a crutch, the woman telling me that I shouldn't move, that I needed rest.
That was going to have to wait.
"Lady Lin!" I caught sight of Torail and that other girl, Ciela I think, and they looked horrified to see me standing. They saved me the trouble of rushing towards them, they rushing to me instead, and it gave me time to close my eyes and ride the wave of dizziness that swept through me. It passed as they reached me. They looked awful, especially Torail, with his split and bruised lip, a gash crawling up to his hairline.
"Tell me it's not true. Please."
Ciela burst into tears, and Torail looked down.
If only the earth would swallow me whole, if only the sky would storm and strike me, if only if only if only. If only I'd been faster!
"How?"
"They… they killed her."
"Yes but how?" I practically wailed, because there must be a way to fix this, surely, I was the person that fixed things. "When? I, pink fairies. I gave her pink fairies. What happened to them? What happened to her?"
Torail was sobbing too, and I couldn't understand a single word he was saying. I felt a presence behind me and I whipped round with my sword and nearly lopped the Sheikah man's head off, the one I'd talked to about my knife.
He flinched away from my blade, half a breath away from his neck. "We must eat. We are all tired."
"Tell me what happened."
"We will. But we must eat. You used a lot of magic. Still using a lot of magic. We must save our strength."
I finally pulled my blade back, unable to disagree. These two would probably give me the best answers, and they were tired, hungry kids. I was a tired hungry kid.
Oh, Fi. Fi. What happened to you?
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They found her shivering in a cave, failing to start a fire. She'd made the mistake of trying to cross the swamps in the dark, and her clothes had soaked through and she had nearly drowned and the cold was now shaking in her very bones.
She wept with relief when she heard the voices in the light of pre-dawn, of Sheikah scouts checking their course. They bundled her up and carried her back to camp, where they put her in front of a fire, made her put her hands in warm water and bundled her up tighter than a packed up tent. Boiled water was handed to her, warming her from the inside before she tried small morsels of meat and onions, and it had never felt better to be home.
A horse thundered into camp, black as night and welcome as sunshine. "Fi!"
"Tartem!"
Her big brother skidded to her side and hugged her tightly, so tightly she could hardly breathe, pressing her head firmly into his chest as she burst out crying. "Thank the bright ladies, Fi, you're safe now, you're safe now…"
She wept and wept, stuttered and choked apologies tumbling out with her tears, and he just shushed her and rocked her, kissing her head, reassuring himself as well as his little sister that she was there. Really there.
When he found whoever was responsible for making his nartem cry, he was going to gut them alive.
"Hush, hush," he told her for now, just basking in the knowledge that she was safe and relatively unhurt, "Why are you apologizing? This wasn't your fault."
"L-Lin, they kept saying that she's dead, I'm so-so-so sorry she wouldn't have, she wouldn't have if we'd been more careful I-"
"Wait, wait, hush, Fi," he whispered, holding her head gently as he made her look at him, "What do you mean? Lin, isn't with you?"
Fi froze, the horror of being the inadvertent messenger of Lin's demise to her unsuspecting brother stabbing her viciously in the heart, and spiraled into violent tears once more.
And as much as he wanted answers, Tharlaigh held his tongue and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, letting her bawl and shake against him. There was no way that his words would reach her while she was so overwhelmed, so he waited, and figured out what he would ask in which order.
First off, how had she escaped? Did she know where Torail and Ciela were? Were they unharmed? If she had to, could she lead them back to the kidnappers? How many of them were there? Were there any other prisoners? Where had they planned to go?
Did she have any conceivable idea where Lin was?
Tharlaigh gripped his sister tighter, fear and worry and anger warring in his gut. He'd seen the bloodstains and the arrows that she'd left on the shrine stones, the shards of a broken bottle that he assumed had kept the pink fairy that saved her life. He shuddered to imagine what kind of corpse she would have been if not for that creature, shuddered to even think of how he would have reacted if he'd found her lying there, having arrived too late.
Why hadn't she waited for him? He'd been right outside their tent when he heard her play a song that thrummed with time magic, and he'd seen her zip past in a brown blur.
He'd sworn with such vitriol that even the veterans had blinked in surprise.
As soon as he found that infernal, ridiculous, terrifying girl he was going to put her on a leash.
Fi wept, and Tharlaigh waited.
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Nothing they said made sense.
I munched on steamed herbs, fried nuts and raw fish as the rabbit and two remaining fish on the spit got cooked and they told me what had happened. Before that, I had to tell them that it was fine, fresh fish didn't equate to food poisoning and I'd done this with the Zoras plenty of times, but still they looked at me like a crazy person as I ate. I was used to this.
Anyway. Fi had acted up. The leader had threatened her, she acted up some more, she got killed.
But they couldn't tell me how she died. Stabbed? No. Strangled? No. Anything? Nothing. Where had it happened? At the camp, by their spike, but there was no blood, no body, just a piece of rope that had been cut away, the one that Fi had been tied to. They couldn't recall what Fi had acted up about, except that it was maybe about me (they'd been told I'd died. I didn't tell them how true that was), but nothing more.
...Could this mean that Fi could still be alive? Was one of the kidnappers able to do mind-magic? It would explain why these disappearances had been going on for so long; who would think to report someone missing if they didn't know that there was a person to miss? Or if they were told that they'd died, who would look for them?
Either way, they had told me all they could. I sucked on my fish-spine, getting at the last of my meal, and chucked the remains into the stream. The guts I buried in the ground. Then I stood, brushing my hands off, and picked up my sword.
"Lady Lin?"
I couldn't help but smile. It was just so sweet when people called me that. "Just Lin, Torail."
"Uh, Lin, what you doing?"
I peered around, found my bottle of red potion and tossed it at him. "I'm asking them what I asked you."
They looked at me like I was an even crazier person.
The smile dropped, and I gripped my sword tighter. "This makes no sense. If she's dead, where's the body? If she's gone, where did she go? We don't have the answers, but they might. Stay here," I added, "I might do some… ugly, things. And drink that potion Torail you look awful."
They had tried breaking the walls; I had felt it in the spell. But now they'd given up, sitting sullenly and nervously in cramped huddles. The bigger the crystal, the more taxing it was for me, so I had not been kind when I'd herded them together.
One of them hissed when they got a good look at me. "You should be dead."
"You must be Scarves," I replied, considering he didn't have a cut on his leg. "Good aim."
"I pierced your lungs twice!"
"Yes you did. Shall I return the favour?"
He didn't respond.
"Now. Who's the leader?"
"That would be me," a man not much older than Sheik replied, languid, tall, dark-haired and handsome, if not for the smug curl of his lip. "My dear."
When our eyes met I shuddered a little, suddenly reminded of when I'd first met Zelda, when I still thought I was Kokiri. There'd been a strange sense of recognition, one that I experienced again and again with my friends that eventually became Sages, a frisson of fate that had sent shivers through my bones.
I sometimes forgot that I had felt the very same thing when I had stared at Ganondorf, his eyes locked with mine during a thunderstorm.
He grinned widely at me, practically purring. "Have we met?"
I swallowed. "No."
"Are you sure? Maybe it was in another lifetime," he drawled, leaning on the prism wall, "I can imagine us being the best of friends. Actually, more than that."
I snorted. "Best enemies, more like."
"Sounds interesting. I like it."
"Tell me what you did with Fi."
"I would rather tell you what I want to do with you."
"Blue hair, yay tall, thirteen years old, probably. Scarves and Helmet captured her with the other two kids. I want her back."
"And what would I get in return?"
I said it slowly: "I won't kill you."
"That's the funny thing," he drawled some more, his grin widening, "I don't think you're the killing type. You seem awfully… honourable, to me."
"I've tortured people before. I'm quite good at it."
"Interesting."
My temper flared. "Tell me where she is or I will carve your eyes out."
"Ah," he winced, though he still managed to keep his smirk, "They told you about my Sight."
"I couldn't care less. Now tell me where Fi is!"
"Didn't they tell you? We killed her."
"Where did you put her body?" I snarled, already thinking of my options. If she'd bled out there was nothing I could do. But if it was strangulation, drowning, poisoning, any form of death that had her mostly in tact, if I could find her before her body could really start to rot, if nothing wild or monstrous had savaged her corpse… there were things I could try.
"Ah, you noticed that. Clever. Well, see, let us say she was being… difficult. I was handling one of your possessions, a bottle of pink fairies. She demanded it back. We were all quite convinced that you were dead, Tubert being such an excellent shot."
"I was. I got bored, I came back."
"You are proving yourself to be such an interesting person. Anyway, yes," he continued, raising patronizingly placating hands, "She demanded the fairies as a memento, but these things sell so well, I had to shut her up."
Cold dripped under my ribs. "With what?"
"Ever heard of quifh?"
"Drug, sleep, nausea, slight after-taste of tea. I hate it."
"Speaking from experience, clearly. Well, I may have given her too much, gave the children the impression that I killed her with it. The heart is liable to stop at any time, given enough excitement."
"What, did, you, do to her!"
"I sent her ahead," he shrugged, waving a careless hand at the sky, "There was no point keeping her around if she caused trouble, so I sent her ahead with one of my men. I couldn't really kill her, her Sight was too powerful to waste."
For the first time in hours, I was beginning to feel some hope. "Why not all of you? Why just her?"
"Upstarts like her try to get a rebellion going, and nuisances like that bore me. And we had a few more Sheikah coming in, or so we hoped, so we stuck around to regroup. My final team were all new to the business, so for all I know they may well be dead." he shrugged again, grinning like a shark. "Life."
I shuddered. "How are you so calm?"
"Because you're so fascinating. This is fairy magic, is it not? Power of the highest calibre, second only to ones blessed by Gods. And you're clearly capable, intelligent, knowledgeable… unfortunate as it is with this wall between us, I think it was fate that we meet today, Lin."
"I meant your men. They could be dead, and you're smiling at me."
"I could be dead right now, and I'd still be smiling at you."
"...You're insane."
"Also your only hope for finding your precious Fi," he pointed out, a certain dark quality lacing his words. "I could lead you to her. My men and I are the only ones that know where she's to be sold."
I crossed my arms. "You're telling me to let you all go."
"It would be the fastest way."
"Or I could just torture the place out of you."
"And waste time stalling here? She was sent out last night. It'll take a few hours of hard riding before you reach the trades-post, and that's if you don't get lost. And a small frail thing like her? Especially with that eye-catching shade of blue hair, I can tell you now she'd be quite popular. Who knows? She may have already been bought."
His men behind him were smiling at me too, leering, mocking, smug, monstrous. I shuddered to think that people like them might be sizing Fi up right now, to be taken away, where I might not be able to find her.
"Fine. Fine, I'll let you go."
"We'll need one of the Sheikah, though. The girl, I think."
"...Excuse me?"
"See, I specialize in capturing Sheikah. If you want to infiltrate the cages, which, I'm assuming you do, we're going to need at least one of them. I could claim you were trying to protect her, but just you? I have a reputation to uphold."
"You think I care!? No! The only one you'll be taking is me!"
"I don't think you're in the position to negotiate, Lin."
"Farore's Rage," I said, making the spell up. As far as they were concerned, next thing they knew the cage was gone in a flash of green light, I had their leader on the ground face down in the dirt, each man was tied together on a single rope and every single one of them had a broken leg.
There was shocked silence, then screaming.
I'd turned him around, making sure he saw what I'd done. Not to mention I didn't want him to see me sweating; freezing time to do all that had taken a lot out of me. "I don't negotiate."
This strange, insane man grunted. Or chuckled. It was hard to tell, with my foot digging firmly into the small of his back, sword-tip kissing the nape of his neck. "Fair enough. But the point still stands. If I'm taking you, we might need some disguise magic, or some such. If I arrive with just a Hylian, they'll find it suspicious."
I gritted my teeth. I could wait. I could wait for Sheik and the others to arrive, explain the plan, have him come with me and we could go rescue his sister together. But what if that waiting gave these buyers enough time to whisk Fi away, and what then?
I shuddered. No, I couldn't face him, couldn't confess my failure. I liked being loved by him, I'd never felt so wanted like this, if I could rescue Fi before he really knew just how much of a farce I was…
"You can't know what you can't See, right?"
"...So?"
"Do you know a Sheikah's Sight just by looking at them, or do you need to look at their eyes?"
"I'm not very comfortable with sharing my secrets but," he grunted, even as I dug my heel into his spine, "I'll make an exception for you. Their eyes."
"So, hypothetically, if my eyes were swollen shut, you wouldn't know whether I was Sheikah or not."
"...No, I guess not."
"Try anything and I'll break both your legs," I warned, before taking my foot off him and glaring at the quieting bandits. "And you lot. If you try to escape, I'll burn you alive."
This I punctuated with flames in my hands, and they cowered. I admit, it was satisfying.
But already I was exhausted. I'd lost too much blood yesterday, I was running on snacks between spells and fights and interrogations, and the thought of more work ahead that involved people and not monsters made me weak in the knees.
This pale-haired man was already standing and was smiling at me, and I jolted. I trapped him in Nayru's Judgement again and he rolled his eyes and I backpedalled right back, heart thudding with dread. I'd nearly just, left him there. Like I trusted him. Focus. Focus!
I staggered back towards the fire and food, dropping onto my butt and sighing. There was still some crying and screaming from the men and their broken legs, and Arn and Medilia looked particularly stricken with my… methods.
I grabbed a plate that they'd saved for me, filled with cooling rabbit meat, more herbs, and more nuts. I reached back towards Epona, who was chewing on some grass (I envied that she could just up and eat everything in sight), and pulled out the rest of the honeyed carrot pieces. "Who has a really good punch?"
I don't think they understood my meaning because they just looked at each other. I took a few bites of food before resigning myself to long, tedious explanations. "I need to sneak into the slave-pens as a prisoner, and to do that I need two black eyes. So, I need someone to punch me."
Ciela asked Torail something. He answered. She asked something again, her pitch rising dramatically, and Torail asked me in turn, "Are you serious?"
"Yes."
He said yes in Sheikah.
"Actually Torail, could you do it?" I asked, thinking back, chewing on carrot pieces, "You were really good at the hand to hand part of the training. I'm no expert, but you made it look easy, which usually means… I know it's crazy, but it's my only option here."
"No, I, you feel I am good?"
"Of course." I wouldn't be asking otherwise. Ciela was deft with small things like lock-picking and knots, but her overall accuracy was… not something I would trust with my face. It was one of few places that I didn't have any large noticeable scars, and a broken nose was not something I particularly desired. "You have good instincts, reflexes, and your form looks solid. I wish I could do that."
He sounded like he didn't believe me. "But, I lose, all times."
"Nothing wrong with that," I shrugged, "Just shows you don't like hurting people. What's to fault?"
He wilted, twiddling a piece of grass. I rolled my eyes. "You're worried because you were captured? Please. This isn't your fault, and it looks like you put up a pretty decent fight. How's the red potion?"
"...Good."
"Good. I still need you to punch me."
"Why?"
"They're saying Fi's alive. I know," I added, raising a fork to stop their protests, "That you're pretty sure she's dead. And maybe she is. But in case she isn't, he's taking me to where they buy and sell people, and I need to go alone for your safety. I've left a trail for Shei-Tharlaigh to follow," I raised my free hand, and green light fluttered round my knuckles, "Farore's Path, I like to call it. Stay here and the clan will find you, and they will interrogate the rest. I'll try to be back..." I remembered how badly I'd overestimated how long I'd be away for a rescue mission and decided not to set a date. "As soon as I can."
"You trust them?"
I snorted. "Of course not. But I need to go."
And he looked at me for a long while, and I wondered if he was using his Sight, and if he was, then, well. He would see that I wasn't lying.
"Come on," I beckoned, standing up, having finished my meal and my carrots, "Just, don't break my nose."
I knew he wouldn't. He grinned a little nervously anyway.
I love writing Lin because I get to make her do the most insane stuff.
I am a sadist.
Hope you enjoyed!
S.S.