She draped flowers around his neck.

It was difficult to tell that there'd been a fight. Someone had thrown down sawdust to clean up what little blood there was. He could see narrow choked lines of it. As though it had been pushed about by some of those flat brooms they used on marble and stone. As though. He knew it as well as he'd have known if he'd watched it happen. Then one of those pretty temple dedicates with the straw hair had come out, sponge and bucket in hand, for the work of scrubbing what did not sweep. No one wanted a temple and a tavern to have anything in common, did they? This worked so well in the tavern that it was bound to make its way to the temple. They were not bloodless things, either of them. They were the places where life happened.

One of the dedicates had swept by him, thin waist easily fitting into the crook of his arm as she slung a string of flowers around his neck and kissed both of his cheeks.

( Well, festivals were liberal times, here. )

He should have been interrogating prisoners. There were four of them. As more than one lieutenant had pointed out, he was not an expert in interrogation. His training was that of a soldier, not that of a questioner, and it was important that he know the difference. That he keep himself apart from all of this. That was what found him not in the hall of the iron bars but in the hall of the creaking wood.

There were many such chambers in a castle. Long, rectangular rooms of naked stone that held banners from bygone eras. When he was a boy, and Gerbold had brought him to this place, it had been difficult not to admire the banners. There was history woven into their fabric. He'd stared long after he was meant to. Gerbold had been forced to drag him away. Now they seemed merely old. On the verge of becoming threadbare. Ulbarich had no idea what the future held for him.

( The roots he had were being cut away, little by slow, it seemed. )