Byzantine

[Inkfinger]

It took three days before they could really get anything else done. Mikai had apparently been talking, and if there was one thing that spread fast in Salvar, it was rumors.

Two villages had met them at the portals, insisting that they drop the stuff and leave. One village didn't even do that. They just left a note: "Place food here."

It took them until their next restock in Aouk to learn what was happening. Their supplier - an on-again-off-again young woman with a lean, wolfish face and a love of gossip - was all too pleased to inform them that (according to the local scuttlebutt) they had assaulted the mayor and run off with his daughter.

Stupid, yes.

Amusing, yes.

Damaging? Also yes.

They had to tread more carefully after that. No arguments. No short orders, no teasing, and certainly no fights.

That policy worked alright at the next two villages, gray on the Scarab Map, as he'd taken to calling it. The trouble hit at the last stop of the day. They'd barely made it through the portal when his arm panged, a jolt of pain that sent him to his knees and Damyan to his side.

"What is it?" Kamen asked, eyes wide and worried. Cael felt a rush of gratitude for the young man. He often seemed the only one to care about Cael-as-a-person over Cael-as-a-revolutionary-leader or (worse yet) Cael-as-a-money-making-target.

"Don't know," he managed to gasp out as he pulled the map from its inner pocket. He didn't have to unfold it all the way to catch a glimpse of the red 'x' currently superimposed over their current location. "Alright, we're going to have to be carefu..." Cael froze with one hand sliding the map back into his pocket.

The thick envelope with the church papers was gone; only thin fabric met his questing fingers. His companions stared at him, and he felt a surge of sickening panic at the what-ifs that shot through his brain. He swallowed, hard, and spoke.

“Change of plans. We’re going back to Heivernok.”

Damyan and F’bael, he noted as he spun on his heel and hurried back toward the sequestered church, both looked stricken. It did nothing to help quell his nausea.

The papers weren't anywhere in the church - not in his balcony, not in the portals room, not even in the section of the sanctuary where he occasionally fell asleep. He practically tore the place apart looking for them before he was forced to admit that they were gone.

He knew where they'd gone, too.

That mayor.

But there was nothing much he could do about that. Mikai had gone red on the map. There was no way they could go back and find the papers, even if the mayor hadn't so obviously snubbed them. Going back to what was now a church run village and asking for his forged papers back...

He might as well just shove a sword in his own gut while he was at it.

Kamen helped him raid what looked like the minister's office to find parchment even close to the quality he needed to make the new papers. “That bastard tried to get me –us!- killed!” Cael ranted as he stretched the parchment out on the table, spiking it in the corners with the viciousness of an angry man who can’t get at the source of his anger. “All because he…I...he just..." He inhaled a deep breath, and exhaled it all in one gust. "I don't get it.”

Kamen sat on the other side of the table, watching as Cael plunked the inkwell down on the edge of the parchment, almost sloshing ink onto the paper. “People are stupid,” he offered, sliding the well back a couple of inches before he crossed his arms and rested his chin on them. “They’ll do anything if they’re annoyed enough.”

"Annoyed? He wasn't annoyed, he was a greedy bastard. There was enough food there to last them a month, Kamen.” Cael sat down and took a deep breath, starting the top letters. This document entitles the bearer… "I got his son papers out of the country, you know that?"

"No."

"Yeah, well, I did. Faked permissions, signatures, even orders for half that village t'get the hells out of Salvar." Cael growled. And got Damyan not to pull his head off. "You'd think he could've showed a bit of gratitude, wouldn't you?"

Kamen didn't answer.

Perhaps he knew it wouldn't do any good.