Trees shivered in the hideous wind that descended on the world. Eragos could feel his own skin drying, beneath that calm mask and that perfect White Rider's uniform. How long since he'd worn this uniform with pride? How long since he'd been able to put it on and become someone else? Sleeping Tiger's words still echoed in his mind. Find and slay these men. He'd refused, but now? Now he was considering it. Not just because of the man he was staring at but the significance of what he'd done. What he was doing. Claiming to be a man of honor, a man of principle, but all this time he held secrets in his heart that would have destroyed an honest man. How long had he covered it up? How long had it been secret, terrible and wrenching? There was something hideous in his eyes that Eragos did not recognize from their last meeting. That thing, hideous and secret, was replaced by surprise. He hadn't expected to see Eragos here.

"Lord Feareborne," said the older man. "To what do I owe the honor?"

"Narim."

( The secret was out. )

It was a long hour to the time he sat down, finally, with Sleeping Tiger at a rickety wooden table. The longest hour he could remember in quite some time. With the man properly bound Eragos had thought his work was finished. That was, at least, until Cols arrived with a limp form in his hands. Martine. Although he was wrapped in Cols' robes it was still a gruesome sight. Head nearly severed. Even if he'd been there to watch it happen, Cols said, there was nothing he could have done to help Martine. There was at least one murder they could be sure to make the assailant pay for. So when at last additional Riders arrived from the Castel, Eragos sent Cols on ahead. Martine. He didn't deserve to die that way. Not when he'd survived the hard spring rain of Tyrus. How long had it been since he'd thought of Tyrus? And now it was in his thoughts, constantly, and for more than one reason. Sleeping Tiger might not say as much, or even know how to answer the question, but Eragos was convinced before he sat down. The men in grey. It had to be the same. Who were they? And more importantly, what were they? Those thoughts kept him preoccupied long after Martine's death was just a stain upon his soul. All the while he wondered if the man would converse or simply try to kill him again.

( The answer was forthcoming. )

"Eithne, take Taereme to the Golden Lantern and pay whatever they ask."

Eithne wished she was deaf, not knowing what Eragos had said would have made her feel a hell of a lot better. Instead shed been ordered to take this traitor of a woman to a fine inn and pay for the room. Did Eragos assume she had money in the dress? When there was room for nothing in it besides her body as it was. Eithne had pulled Taereme down the street by her elbow, retrieved her stashed pack from her horse which was tied down the street, and then pulled her to the inn. The only money she had was her own, which made this even harder to part with. But she paid the gold all the while holding onto Taereme and pretending to be the woman's very best friend.

( She wanted to slit her throat, and then kill herself because of this. )

Four White Riders. One near the curve in the street, to watch for oncoming foot traffic. One at the opposite end, to monitor the intersection. And two close to the subject of their protection. In another time and place he would have thought it odd to provide so much security for one person if that person was not royalty. Those times had since passed him by. Whatever his feeling on this mission, whatever his thoughts on the Captain's intent, Eragos had his duty. It was something he clung to no matter what the situation. Duty. Duty kept him here when he received the Lady Vera's letter. Read so many times now that he doubted there was a crease undiscovered on the parchment. She should have come looking for him. Should have found him, and taken him with her. Not because she was helpless but because... he wanted to make her safe. In the old times, under the old code, knights had sworn to a single person. A king or queen, a lord or lady. He would have sworn to her but for the fact that she loved the land more than... she would not have that oath, so he'd given it where it seemed to matter, and now he was forgotten. It wasn't the only reason he'd joined. Just the most important. Now it seemed the very least.

( And wasn't that a strange thing? )

The sky told her that there was still time before the meeting time with those White Riders. She'd be a fool to go without having given thought to how she would protect herself against them, should they decide to go back on their word. It was not Taereme's desire to find herself at the bottom of a gaol, rats her only companions, until her bones rotted through her skin or until the white-clad keepers of the law of Simanel decided to toss her leagues away from civilization. If she danced this dangerous twisting of feet and limbs with them, she needed protection.

She thought she knew someone who may just be honor-bound enough to keep to his word if he gave it. The one she'd met before, the stranger, Sleeping Tiger, had no reason or need to feed her, but he'd done it all the same. He had a keenness to his eyes, but they had been neither lustful nor cruel nor judgmental when he turned them toward her. Such a man was a rare thing. The more she considered him, the more she believed that she would have the best of luck with him -- if there was any luck left to accord to a woman such as herself.

When she shouldered deftly through the doorway of the Wild Wheel Tavern, some looked up. Some didn't. Rosetta saw her from across the room, then turned away. Strange... the bar wench hardly ever passed up a chance to sneer at her - even if it was over the heads of a score of drunken lechers. Could it be that she'd earned some modicum of respect from her, for having tried to look after Grokken? Taereme looked over to where the tavern keeper typically sat. He was there tonight as well, and he nodded his head at her, once, gruffly. So someone had told him.

Strange to be well-received anywhere but a back alley. She smiled, uncertainly, then looked back at the crowd. A quick scan of the back tables had her moving through the seated crowd of chairs and tables and sweating, stinking flesh. When she sat down, uninvited, it was with a smile. "Sleeping Tiger," she greeted quietly, knowing very well the sensitivity of the name of a stranger. Not everyone wanted his name shouted in such a place as this.

When Eragos closed the door behind him, he hated the fact that they were sharing a room. Sleeping in the darkest section of Simanel seemed easier and also more timely than going back to the Castel every day. Part of him was certain that the woman, Taereme, was not going to arrive at the scheduled time and place. The rest of him was certain that even if she did, it wasn't going to make any difference. Eithne was still going to be angry over the suggestion. She'd warned him, not long ago, that she wouldn't wear a dress. Perhaps thinking or knowing in some part of her mind that Eragos had such a scheme planned. How she could have known, when not even Eragos knew, was beyond him. But with the dress in the box that he carried he knew it was going to be an argument. It always was, with her. He could politely point out that bashing a glass into a man's head was a violation of the White Riders' code, but that would only harden her resolve to be done with this. She might someday arrive at something approaching honorable, but she had a long way to go. In the meantime no harm had been done.

( Yet. )

They came like grim ghosts, quiet as the moonlight and as eager to haunt the less fortunate. The Wild Wheel Tavern was rarely visited by the White Riders despite its rowdy existence. When it was, it was at the owner's behest. Grokken was a rough, gruff man and his arms were strong, strong enough to throw most of the worst out of the tavern at the end of the night, but when he encountered the truly belligerent, it was only then that the White Riders were called. It gave Taereme enough time to clear out, herself. But the night had a few good hours still left in her, and Grokken hadn't even begun to toss men out on their ears yet. So he hadn't called them. And that meant that they'd come on their own. They'd come for something. Someone?

There were two at the back door. She could see them from the corner of her eye, all white-robed and ghastly. Taereme hadn't seen them passing by the window above the table where she sat, but then again, she would probably only see such a thing if the White Riders wanted her to. She hated them. She hated them for taking away her only true friend, and she hated them for threatening her lifestyle, if not her life. Most of all, she hated the sick, oily feeling that crept up her windpipe then exploded down her spine when she saw the second pair enter from the front door.

Rosetta was glaring hard at her, and any moment she was sure the tavern bitch was going to open her wide, red yap and cry "Harlot!" at the top of her lungs. When that happened, Taereme had best not be sitting at the table where she was. Most people didn't bother to notice a scrap of a woman such as she, unless she'd drawn attention to herself. She hadn't tonight, so there was the hope - the very delicate and slender hope - that the others around her wouldn't pair her with Sleeping Tiger. The irony, the brutal, ugly irony was that Sleeping Tiger hadn't once seemed interested in what Taereme usually sold. For all her intentions when she first approached the strange man, the most intimate they'd been was when they'd both tangled themselves in each other's laughter. But Rosetta wouldn't care about that. Rosetta would turn her in as soon as she could, if Rosetta had her way.

The sound of the door closing shut was enough to draw the eyes of everyone - even Rosetta - and Taereme used the distraction to carefully, quietly rise from where she'd been sitting. As she pressed her back against the wall and did her best to blend into the dull brown of the dirty stone, she herself gave them a once-over.

They were rather eye-catching...

Cloaked head to foot in their white garments, their forms were only vaguely recognizable as man and woman. Their hoods were up, their faces wholly covered by those horrific masks, and the only true sign of their humanity were their eyes from deep within the hollows of those white face shields. Imposing... If she let her imagination get the best of her, Taereme was certain she could see the skeletons they'd decayed out of countless bodies trailing behind them - ghosts to their ghostly figures, clinging like blood on a sword.

As near as she knew, Simanel didn't kill prostitutes. The worst sentence was to clap them up in the gaol, then import them out of the city in batches. That was good as dead, wasn't it? With no money and no supplies in the wilderness where a growing number of bandits who would take whatever you had - money or not - it was good enough to a hanging as they could manage without wasting the rope to tie around the necks of her and her nighttime sisters. She swallowed and eased her way against the wall. There would be no escape through either the back door or the front, but the window... Her back was against it now, her hands grappling at the closed lip of it, and the window...

... The window, her fingers found out, was nailed shut. Blasted Grokken! That slippery feeling of fear was giving way to panic. How many of her kind had disappeared from the streets these last months? Would she now join the number? Swallowing again, she ducked her head and tried for all her piteous worth to look like anything other than what she was.

The strong wood of Agrippa's desk was the only object on which Eragos felt comfortable focusing. Dressed in bandages - he had refused several times since returning to go to the temple, and no one could quite understand why - and his uniform the knight stared at it with something that approached blankness. She'd disappeared almost as soon as they'd returned. No word from her, no word of any kind, before she'd set out. And the one mercy that had been afforded him was a mask. His mask. Everything about it was the same, down to the last detail, and the only reason he hadn't worn it to this meeting was very simple. It was still shrouded in the folds of the box in which it had arrived. No note. Nothing except the symbol of the Riders on the top of the box. No one had to tell him who the mask had come from. It could only have been one person. Eragos would have thanked her for the gift if she'd appeared in front of him. Now he resented her, and it. She'd done it because she'd gone, again, and didn't want to say goodbye to his face. If she could forgive him for disappearing into a war for two years, he could forgive her for this, couldn't he?

( Only he wasn't sure. )

Money was a simple thing until there was no more of it. Perching on a low branch across the street from the Wild Wheel Tavern, Taereme watched the slow dribble of bodies sludge in and out of the squat building. By now she knew most of them by name or by face; by now she knew who she could approach and who would never be worth it. Unfortunately for her, there were a lot of the latter and none of the former tonight. None, at least, that she would get enough from in order to do anything useful about the hollow in her stomach. If there were one good thing that the White Riders had done for her, it was to clear the streets of much of her competition. The hiding and the running when they thundered down the stone roads was hard on her, but as long as the other girls were... away... (and she couldn't think of them in prison, no matter how good business would be because of it) ...as long as the other girls were away, there was a better chance for her to eat. But tonight, she was beginning to think she'd picked the wrong place to watch.

( Easier, sure, to stay here... )