The sun was just about to pierce the veil of forest when Darius and Tohrment took form in front of a small, thatch-roofed cottage miles and miles and miles away from the site of the abduction and the mansion beside it... and the reptilian thing who had greeted them in that dank underground hallway.

"Are you sure about this?" Tohrment asked, switching his satchel to his opposite shoulder.

At the present, Darius felt sure about nothing. For truth, he was surprised that he and the boy had managed to get free of that symphath 's house without a fight. In point of fact, however, they had been escorted out as though they had been invited guests.

Then again, sin-eaters always kept their own best advantage in sight, and verily, Darius and Tohrment were of far greater use to the head of that household alive as opposed to dead.

"Are you sure?" Tohrment prompted again. "You hesitate to go therein."

"Alas, my tarrying has naught to do with you." Darius walked forward, picking up the beaten path that led to the front door, said groundway having been created by the repeated passing of his own boots. "I shall not have you sleeping on the cold stone floor of the Tomb. My home is rough, but has a roof and walls sufficient to shelter not one, but two."

For a brief moment, he entertained a fantasy that he lived as he had once done, in a castle full of rooms and doggen and lovely appointments, in a luxurious place where he could open his doors to friends and family and have those whom he loved safe and secure and tended to.

Perhaps he would find a way to have that again.

Although given that he had no family and no friends, it was hardly something to pursue with alacrity.

Popping the cast-iron latch free, he put his torso to the oak door-- which, considering its size and heft, was more of a movable wall. After he and Tohr went inside, he lit the oil lamp that hung by the entrance and closed them in, laying a broad beam thick as a tree trunk across the panel.

So modest. Only one chair before the hearth and a single pallet across the way. And there was not much more to be had down below the earth, just some precious supplies and a hidden tunnel that terminated well into the bounds of the forest.

"Shall we have a repast?" Darius said as he began to disarm.

"Yes, sire."

The boy removed his own weapons and went to the hearth, settling down onto his haunches and lighting the peat that was always set when there wasn't a fire burning. As the scent of the smoking moss wafted over, Darius pulled up the trapdoor in the dirt floor and went underground to his food and ale and his parchments. He returned with cheeses and breads and smoked venison.

The fire cast a glow over Tohr's face as he warmed his hands and asked, "What dost thou make of it all?"

Darius joined the boy and shared what little he had to offer with the only guest he had ever had in his home. "I have always believed destiny makes for strange bedfellows. But the concept that our interests could be aligned with one of those... things... is an anathema. Then again, he seemed equally disposed toward shock and dismay. For truth, those sin- eaters favor us in no greater regard than we favor them. We are but rats at their feet."

Tohrment partook of the ale flask. "I should never wish to mix my blood with theirs--they disgust my senses. All of them."

"And he feels similarly. The fact that his blooded son took the female and held her even for a day within his walls made him ill. He is as incented as we to find both parties returned unto their families."

"But why use us?"

Darius' smiled coldly. "To punish the son. 'Tis the perfect corrective action--to have the female's kind rip his 'love' from him and leave him with the burden of that absence as well as the knowledge that inferiors had bested him. And if we bring her home safe? Her family will move and take her away, and never, ever allow ill to befall her again. She will live long on the earth and that sin-eater's spawn shall have to know that for every day he draws breath. This is in their nature--and precisely the kind of soul shattering that the father could not attempt without you or me. That is why we were told where to go and what we would find."

Tohrment shook his head like he didn't understand the way the other race thought. "She will be ruined in the eyes of her bloodline. Indeed, the glymera will shun them all--"

"No, they won't." Darius held up his palm to halt the boy's talk.

"Because they shall never know. No one shall. This secret shall be betwixt me and thee. Verily, the sin-eater has no cause to come forward for his own kind would shun him and his--and thus the female shall be protected from the fallout."

"How will we accomplish such a deceit with Sampsone, though?"

Darius brought the ale flask to his lips and swallowed. "Upon the fall of night tomorrow, we shall head north, as the sin-eater suggested. We shall find what is ours and bring her home to her blooded family and tell them that it was a human."

"What if the female talks?"

Darius had considered that. "I suspect that as a daughter of the glymera she is well aware of how much she stands to lose. Silence shall protect not only her but her family."

Although the foregoing logic assumed she was in her right mind when they got to her. And that might well not be the case, may the Virgin Scribe ease the female's tortured soul.

" This could be an ambush," Tohrment murmured.

"Perhaps, but I do not believe so. Further, however, I am not afraid of any conflict." Darius lifted his stare to his protege's. "The worst thing that can happen is that I die in the pursuit of an innocent--and that is the very best way to go. And if 'tis a trap, I will guarantee you I shall take out a legion on my way unto the Fade."

Tohrment's face positively shone with respect and reverence and Darius felt saddened at the pledge of faith. If the boy had had a real father, instead of a brutish lush, he wouldn't have felt as such toward a relative stranger.

Wouldn't be in this modest shelter, either.

Darius didn't have the heart to point this out to his guest, however. "More cheese?"

"Yes, thank you."

As they finished their repast, Darius's eyes went to his black daggers, which were hanging from the harnesses he wore o'er his chest. He had a strange conviction that it wouldn't be long before Tohrment got a set--the boy was smart, and resourceful, and his instincts were good.

Of course, Darius hadn't seen him fight yet. But that would come. In this war, that would always come.

Tohrment's brow furrowed in the firelight. "How old did they say she was?"

Darius wiped his mouth on a cloth and felt the nape of his neck get tight. "I don't know."

The pair of them fell silent and Darius guessed that what was suddenly in his mind was spinning in Tohrment's as well.

The last thing the situation needed was a further, dire complication.

Alas, ambush or not, they were going up north to the coastal area the symphath had directed them to. Once there, they would head a mile out of the small village and find upon the cliffs the retreat the sin-eater had described... and they would discover whether they had been sent forth into a lie.

Or used to further a purpose that aligned both them and that whip- thin reptile.

Darius was truly not worried, however. Sin-eaters were untrustworthy, but they were compulsively self-serving... and vindictive even against their own young.

It was a case of nature over character : The latter made them a bad bet; the former made them utterly predictable.

He and Tohrment were going to find what they were in search of up north by the sea. He just knew it.

The question was, in what condition the poor female would be...