By the time the light was coming through the high window, they'd run out of questions and moved on to waiting, which was the part that was supposed to break you.
I'd waited in worse places than this.
The officer came midmorning.
Shiny breastplate, crisp green cloak, a scar that ran down the side of his face that somehow made him look appealing, not dangerous.
He stood and watched me and said nothing.
I said nothing either.
He turned and left. I heard shushed whispers, then another guard. This one had a quality of danger around him that made me sit up straighter and take notice.
"Trailfinder," he said without looking at anyone but me. He held out his hand, and my pack was placed into it. He tipped it up and opened it on the table in front of him. My lodestone bounced once, and he picked it up, turned it over, and set it down. "From Crystallese."
"Yes."
"Traveling south."
So we were stating facts? Fine. "Yes."
He looked at me. "Alone?"
"Now I am.” I looked him over. “Well, you’re here and the others so, not alone…”
His expression didn’t change. "The men in the street."
"I defended myself."
"From men associated with Crystallese." He said it the way people said things they already knew the answer to. "Men you claimed had been following you."
I said nothing.
"And another man in the fountain square."
I kept my face still. "Is there a question?”
He looked at me for a long moment. He picked up the lodestone and turned it over in his hand. "A merchant was killed in his home, just south of Crystallese, near the border,” he said. "Do you know anything about that?”
“Why would I?”
"You'll come with me," he said. It wasn’t a question or a threat. It was simply a fact shared by someone who understood the situation and was patiently waiting for me to catch up.
I looked at the table. At the lodestone sitting there, small, ordinary, the thing I'd carried for years, that had found north when I couldn't. I felt like my north was being taken from me.
"Do I have a choice?" I asked.
He considered this seriously, which was more than most people would have done. "You have the choice of how you come," he said with careful precision. "That's not nothing."
I looked at him. At the uniform, the trained attention, the way he held himself with quiet certainty.
I stood. "Alright," I said. “Where are we going?”
“Virellan first.”
“First?”
He didn’t clarify.
