The young kidnapped woman let out a quiet gasp at the end of Stare's tirade. The kenku though, out of politeness and knowing that she was representing Vitruvion here - who … was, well, her god, - tried to ignore it, keeping her beak somewhat high.

“This is my newest guest,” Gravelle very briefly smiled, and shoved a hand behind him to grab the young girls breast. Stare folded her hands into tight fists to keep herself from screaming at him. “And I no longer have room for her in my measly apartment. Thus I need a larger one.”

For some years now, Stare knew, Gravelle had been intensely complaining about the location of his apartments. The Hollow was an ancient catacomb, hardly used but that existed in a wide spiralling tunnel that gently declined deeper into the earth. There were ten sections, sets of rooms that were called the 'apartments’ of the ten brothers, intersected via the centre by an offshoot room of a great octagonal shape that served as a council chamber. Below the apartments was where the guards Hell was, where guests who had once been in favour and now were no longer were sent and never heard of again. Because of the Hell, and because of the fact Vitruvion lived in the apartments to the closest to the surface of the world, and was the chairman and last living founder of the Hollow, there was a tradition that the higher up your apartment on the path, the more important you were.

Gravelle currently resided somewhere in the bottom section, beyond the council chamber. He thought, however, that he deserved to live beyond and closer to the light of day. Stare realised that this, claiming he had not the room to house this, his sixth 'guest’, was just a new plan to gain heights.

Stare's jaw tightened a little as she imagined what personal nightmare his girls must be living through. Indeed, she had lived under Vitruvion for four and a half painful months, but she could imagine Gravelle was worse.

“Lord Gravelle,” Stare said slowly, trying to think of what best to do. What Vitruvion expected her to do. Deal with all these matters as I would, he had said. Certainly, she knew ready, that meant not giving in to his desires and giving him a new apartment. But her eyes looked to the young woman for a moment and thought of what best she could do right now, for her.

“Lord Gravelle, you have made the choice to take in another … guest.” She forced the word out from her beak. “You know the capacity of your own apartments.”

The older man narrowed his eyes. “You dare talk to me in that way.”

“I speak as my Lord Elssmith has allowed me to,” she pulled her hands in front of her and clasped them with decorum. “As the authority of his steward allows me. Now, I can advise that there is no possibility of you moving apartment as there is-”

“Well these ones are hardly used to the best of their capacity,” Gravelle interrupted. “How about your lord move out? He only has two guests at the moment.”

Stare saw Eirik from the corner of her eye grip the hilt of his sword tighter. The kenku fought to keep her own calm, for all the truth that she wanted to kill this man right now and free the young woman who had only just passed into maturity. In fact she would gladly kill all the brothers and free every girl whilst Vitruvion was gone but his request for her to 'not start a revolution’ was foremost in her mind.

“That,” she testily replied, “is not even in discussion.”