"They are not debts worth settling anyway. Vargis would only dig himself another hole the next time he rolled dice."
As for the rest of it, Conlan only grimaced to spare himself the trouble. Ignoring Vargis wasn't rude as much as it was an act of grace. His friend was encouraged by banter and quips; he was spurred along even further by pride. Conlan still had a little bit of it left, though he thought most of it would be gone in the next few years. He had learned not to trigger Vargis' storytelling mode, which was a talent all to itself. His friend had a way of bringing up every embarassing detail; and he did have a canny ability to pick up what most embarrassed Conlan. The Captain asked him once why he tolerated Vargis. The truth was...
Conlan looked over at Vera. He smiled, handed her the map. It was a merchant map. Needlessly complicated, but full of information such as routes and posts and gypsy passes. Farms that welcomed Riders were marked off with cheap ink. When she immediately started tracing routes with her fingers, Conlan knew she could read it well enough. She had not smiled once since she entered. In fact, in the glimpses he'd gotten of this young girl previously, she was never smiling. Usually Vargis was enough to get past a guarded soul. Yet she was silent, sat straight, didn't fidget and her eyes were clear as ice. Conlan realized that it wasn't distaste that held her still. There wasn't anything to ward them off. But the darkness behind the way she shifted her attention from person to person was...distrust. How strange to see that emotion so calm in someone so young.
"You'll be our navigator," Conlan said to her. "Pick our road to Ackerly. Vargis will tell you if you've made the wrong choice. He's good at that."
"Ackerly?"
Conlan tilted his head to the side. "You know it?"
The girl's lips thinned. "I've never been there," she said. She looked back down at the map.
"But you know it." Conlan knew he was pressing, but her manner was so strange that he had to. She was a Lady, however young or sheltered she was, and had no business with a town so small and far to the East that most in Eistocene weren't aware it existed. Captain Mearann had spoken to no one else and Vargis only had a big mouth when it came to insulting him.
The rest of the room was as quiet as Vera had been this whole time.
"I'm always in places I shouldn't be in. So I've heard of Ackerly. Every few years there are raids and soldiers go out from the lower garrison in the North Tower. They're the best with raiders..." she said. Vera didn't look up from the map. "It's an oddity. Even when the army hangs the whole lot of them, another bunch always shows up again. They loosened patrols six months ago because they are going to try to track them when it happens again. But there hasn't been any raids. I didn't know girls were missing."
Conlan ran his hand through his hair. If she hadn't known about the girls, then he hadn't known the army had a plan for the raids. Or that they were leaving Ackerly unprotected to use as live bait. This was hearsay. He knew that. And he wasn't sure how raids tied into the disappearance of a few girls, but it was enough to make the situation more dangerous than before.
He looked to Vargis. The reason he kept him around was because he always said when something was wrong. His moral compass was different than most, but when it came to the facts and telling it as it was...