Busy day, but there is always ten minutes to write:
Chapter 6
Aleida’s mission is a difficult one. He must figure out where the brother is being kept and arrange for the brother to be freed, using the bribe and message she’s given to him to deliver to his captors. he has everything in a sealed box. This chapter he tells them of what she gave and what he plans to do.
His plan is pretty basic. His background in dealing with people and money and his intelligence from staying at home and at school while most others were drafted into the profitable business of wars (more on this another time) leads him to a level of understanding of many of the people and places he feels they may encounter. He wants to stay away from small towns, because towns of few people have a strong connection and mistrust of outsiders. Everyone knows everyone else’s business relatively quickly.
The group encounters a trader and buys a map and some supplies from the man (more of the world building here) and they make campe for the night around a small fire and read the map together, the ends of it weighed to the floor by rocks. Ikrivain suggests they go to the nearest city and learn of the criminal element and from that learn where special prisoners are detained. He suspects nobody would know who Aleida’s brother is, but they would know where such a type of prisoner would be detained.
During the encounter with the merchant they noticed the man had a daughter and wife and the daughter had been ill. That evening they are attacked by a small girl who looks like that girl but is bloodied and deranged and appear almost dead herself. They are able to subdue her after she nearly kills Thea but Ikrivain, who himself is overcome by the rush of magical residue quickly fading into sickness earlier that evening (magic used nearby) is able to react and pull the girl off and Thea’s sister stabs the girl dead.
They go back to find the merchant and discover he and his wife are dead and their caravan tossed.