Stare sucked in her breath and lifted her eyes to look right at her accuser. It was Gravelle again, apparent the man had some form of spite for her. The kenku looked at him a short while, then turned away.
“That has very little to do with Hugin, lord Gravelle,” she found herself saying quietly. “Instead it would be more prudent to focus on the issue at hand. Hugin has consistently insulted Vit - Sir Elssmith, time and time again. First it was mere comments that my employer could endure, then it was deeper insults. He has continually defied him, caused upset within the Hollow and now-”
“So you won't tell us what you were doing?”
“Oh for heaven's sake, Gravelle,” a new voice said. This one was young and merry and Stare recognised the brother as the human Frendir, the first other she had ever met. He smiled pleasantly at Stare before he went on. “Let the girl go on. Clearly Vitruvion trusts her enough to send her here in his steady, let her get on.”
Gravelle looked awfully taken aback, but he scowled deeply and fell silent. Moving back into his chair he forced his young 'guest’ to raise herself onto her knees to keep up with the length of leash she was given. Stare forced herself to look away, give a simple thank you nod at Frendir before going on. “Thank you, lord Frendir.” She fixed her roaming gaze back on, eyes dancing over the bothers one by one, in turn. “Hugin was insulting not only here but also in the city itself. You all know the story of Reign, and that she was still technically,” she paused, hating the words she was about to say, “a guest of Sir Elssmith's. However, Hugin had since had her in his apartment for …”
Two months.
“Two months, yes. Last week, though, things took a turn for the worse. I am sorry to say that Hugin murdered Reign, and thus made the greatest insult.”
There was a deadly silence.
“He killed a guest that,” her jaw tightened as she began to despise herself for her language, “Was not his. That is not his right, there was never a transference of ownership. Therefore, Hugin destroyed Sir Elssmith's property.”
Property. Ownership. Very words that should not describe the girls’ lives here … but in fact did describe hers very true and very well. The difference being though, Stare had been through the trial by fire and now was more willing to serve Vitruvion than she ever had been before. Yes, she had had very little choice in the matter, ever really, but there were many choices now these days that she made. For herself. In the very end, she had to admit she had a god as her patron now. Forever.
“Wait, Reign is dead?”
It was not a male voice this time … but rather a female one. All eyes glanced over to where a tall, mostly unbound woman, save for a collar around her neck, knelt by the feet of an older elf. Her eyes were huge, and full of pain, and if Stare had never seen her before and known of her relationship with her ‘host,’ she perhaps would have needed to publicly demand some form of punishment. Which would not have felt good in the slightest. As it was, this was the one woman who, aside from Stare, could speak in the proceedings and that was mainly as her ‘host,’ the elf who smiled behind her, had no way of communicating himself.
