Chapter Text
Snow crunched beneath Estinien’s boots as he ran in the dark. Aymeric stumbled. Estinien held him up as best he could without impaling him on his armour. He had enough wounds already. The shafts of the arrows lodged in his blue coat had been slick with blood when Estinien snapped them off.
He would have fought to the death to buy him time to escape. As Lucia already had. And Handeloup. He didn’t know how many others. Aymeric forbade him. So he grabbed the Lord Commander and leapt out of a window.
The whirling snow hid the lights of Camp Dragonhead until they were upon it and he almost ran into the corner of the outer wall. He could only hope the snow was hiding their tracks just as well.
A voice yelled a command in the dark. Estinien threw their backs against the wall and held still. Over the howling wind he could just make out the clanking of mail and armour, chocobos stamping and calling to each other.
He could only just make out Haurchefant’s voice against the din.
“-to Boulder Downs, they will try to take the Daniffen Pass. Rotate the search parties from-”
Aymeric stiffened next to him.
It had to be a misdirect. Following the Holy See’s orders to give chase while emptying the fortress of most of his men. Or was he sending away the men loyal to Aymeric?
It was too late, they had already put their faith in him. There was nowhere left to run.
The sounds of armed forces got quieter, or were swallowed up more fully by the wind. Estinien stuck his head out, but he could see nothing more than the red haze of the braziers and the vague looming dark of the walls.
A shadow detached itself from the wall before him. He reached for his lance.
“Quickly, before more Inquisitors arrive,” a female voice said, barely loud enough to be heard. The shadow turned and plunged into the camp proper. Dark cloth swayed behind her, breaking up her silhouette immediately.
He swapped a look with Aymeric, then followed. Haurchefant was standing up on the Aetheryte platform, only distinguishable by the blue light reflecting off his hair. The shadow slunk up the stairs. There were a handful of guards posted at the top. They had their backs to the stairs.
Aymeric stumbled, and he sank down to one knee.
“Just… a moment,”
Estinien reached for him. Aymeric started to slump over. Estinien lifted him up into his arms, and with a desperate prayer to the Fury, he jumped to the top of the staircase.
The guards pointedly did not look. Haurchefant ran over, his face utterly drained of humour. His hands reached for Aymeric but hesitated over his wounds. Dark patches had spread across most of his torso.
“Your healers-?” Estinien started.
Haurchefant shook his head. “You haven’t the time, the Inquisitors will be here any moment.” He looked down to the shadow. In the light of the aetheryte she was a short and skinny figure clad in mottled grey and green. She nodded and stepped forward.
“Go,” Haurchefant said, touching Aymeric’s shoulder for a moment, before stepping back. He locked eyes with Estinien. “Clear your names and return to fight another day. Ishgard needs you both.”
The woman reached out to touch both of them with one hand, the other she curled at her chest. He felt weightless for a moment then hazy blue aether enveloped the three of them. Camp dragonhead disappeared.
Reality caught up with Estinien as they teleported. This wouldn’t buy them enough distance. Aetherytes demanded so much aether and the more passengers the less distance you could cover. At best they could get to Mor Dhona. They would have healers there at least, who wouldn’t ask too many questions. But it was the first place the Inquisitors would look when they realised they had fled Ishgard.
He could only hope the woman had the reserves to make a second jump in the same night. Estinien did not.
The haze lasted longer than he expected. She must not have been well practised. The woman kept her head bowed and her hand outstretched. Aymeric blinked his eyes open and looked around blearily, his head leaning against Estinien’s chest.
His feet touched down on hard ground again. The blue haze withdrew and an unfamiliar view dominated his vision: a vast, dark and flat horizon, smooth as glass. Thousands of skeletal masts rose up from the water, each with a shadowy opposite reflecting below. Blood red lined the lacy clouds in the distance, heralding the sun, but the rest of the sky was rosey peach and soft blue. A lonesome bird wailed a mournful cry.
He turned to their rescuer in shock. This could only be Limsa Lominsa, but that was thousands of malms from Ishgard. It wasn’t even on the near side of La Noscea.
“You’re the Warrior of Light,” Aymeric said, slurring slightly.
She pulled back her hood, then removed the scarf and mask she wore beneath that. Dark furred ears sprung up from where they had been flattened against her skull. The Warrior was a Miqo’te?
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Nobody else could… make that… distance.” Aymeric’s voice faded midway through the sentence.
Her brow creased and she drew out a potion from her clothes.
“I wouldn’t bet my life on that,” she said, supporting his head and angling the glass for him. “And I certainly won’t bet yours, Haurchefant would never forgive me.”
Aymeric gasped with a little more life as she drew back and recorked the bottle. She looked up at Estinien.
“Ready for another jump?”
He nodded.
She reached out. The haze took them, and relinquished them barely a second later.
They were in among the sea of sails now, standing on a wooden platform that wove between towering white cliffs and towers. The ships looked so much taller when amidst them.
The Warrior of Light took off across the platforms, once again little more than a shadow, passing the jetties, nets, and piles of cargo. Fishermen were loading and unloading boats in the gloom. A drunken sailor sang a miserable song in a drawn up rowboat, until someone yelled and threw a crab at him.
Estinien followed close on her heels, all too conscious of the eyes on them. He didn’t trust her but Haurchefant obviously did. If he could have anyone standing between them and their enemies, the elusive eikon slayer was a good choice. The other things he could remember of her legend were less encouraging.
The docks grew quieter as they neared the outskirts of the harbour. She slowed outside what looked like some kind of chapel. Estinien stopped in his tracks.
“Where are we?” he asked.
She gestured at the faded letters painted above the door.
‘The Dutiful Sisters of the Edelweiss’ it read. A convent?
“Put me down,” Aymeric said.
Estinien lowered him to his feet. He made a painted grunt and leaned on him heavily but he rallied enough to keep his head up.
“I’ve never heard of the Sisters of Edelweiss,” Estinien said, stretching out his stiff arms.
“Neither have I. But it is too late for such doubts now.”
The Warrior waited for them at the door. A burly roegadyn guard stood next to her, his arms crossed.
Aymeric straightened his shoulders and they ventured forth, through the heavily reinforced doors. Then through another set of doors, before entering–
A tavern?
The stench of cheap ale was strong, as well as an odd medicinal smell. Roughly a dozen people of all sorts of races were scattered around the tables, drinking, playing cards, and polishing knives. One snored, face down on a table. A few others were throwing knives at practice targets on the wall. In fact, they were all wearing knives, even the man behind the liquor cabinet.
The sensation of being closely watched was immediate. It was much too quiet for a tavern.
A male hyur in white and green rose from a table and approached.
“Who’s this lot?” He addressed the question at the Warrior.
She jerked her head towards them. “This is an elezen with a sword. And this elezen has a spear.”
Estinien narrowed his eyes. Aymeric tilted his head. The hyur looked them over.
“Sword. Spear. Welcome to Limsa.” He offered a jaunty smile. “I’m Captain Jacke.”
“A pleasure, Jacke, thank you for having us,” said Aymeric, who was surely still standing purely out of force of habit. Estinien feared he might try to bow and topple over.
“ ‘Sword’ requires medical attention,” he said tersely, already tired of the mystery. “Can you help us?”
Aymeric made a sound of protest at his rudeness, but Jacke just nodded. “Upstairs.”
The Warrior showed them to a sparsely furnished room with large windows then ducked out again to find a healer. Aymeric’s burst of energy faded away. He sank onto the short bed and was asleep within moments, his feet dangling off the end.
Estinien sat on the single rickety chair, held his lance vertically in his hands, and watched over him.
The Warrior returned with someone who introduced themselves as a scholar and summoned a fairy to work healing magic. They also carried large knives at their waist.
They cut open Aymeric’s clothes and removed the arrow heads and the snapped-off dagger in his shoulder. He slept through it.
The Warrior of Light stood at the windows, looking out across the docks. A light breeze drifted in, interrupting the humid heat and bringing the smell of salt and fish. A seagull perched on the window sill.
Estinien was peripherally aware that he was exhausted. Snow melted off his grieves and dripped onto the floor. He kept his eyes fixed to Aymeric’s slowly rising and falling chest. The Warrior kept hers fixed to the horizon.
“Were we followed?” he asked after some time. It could have been an hour. It could have been five minutes.
“Not yet,” she said quietly. “If they are clever they may trace us to the Moraby Docks, but from there they cannot know which way we went.”
“Many saw us arrive.”
She shrugged. “Snitching is a mortal sin in Limsa.”
“Righteous men commit mortal sins all the time,” he said in an empty voice, watching the healer leave with the tray full of arrowheads they pulled from Aymeric’s ruined torso.
He had known many of those archers. He had trained alongside some of them. Their blood was flaking off of the hinges of his gauntlets.
The Warrior glanced at him. “Do you need rest?”
“No.”
“There’s a bed in the next room. Nobody will be able to enter this room without walking past that door first.”
He sucked in a ragged breath and looked up at her. “Why? Why help us?”
“Haurchefant asked me to,” she said simply. “I owe him.”
“And what do you get out of it?”
She raised an eyebrow. He stared back, daring her to say ‘nothing’, to play at being selfless.
“I don’t know yet.” She frowned and crossed her arms. “What does the Heavens Ward get out of murdering the Archbishop and framing the Lord Commander for it?”
He stood. It was outrageous to his ears, an insult on so many levels, but it… was true. That was exactly what had happened.
“Power,” he ground out. The traitors.
Her lip curled with disdain. She looked back to the window.
He frowned a moment later. “Did Haurchefant tell you what happened?”
She shook her head. “It’s what the Inquisitors he sent off hunting said, ‘find the traitor and avenge the archbishop.’ Given the state Ser Aymeric is in, there are only so many possibilities.”
He lowered his head and returned grimly to his chair. He had just confirmed her suspicions. Whether or not that mattered, he didn’t know, but he found himself in no mood to extend faith to anyone.
“In truth, I don’t think the danger is in being followed, no Inquisitor would get more than five yalms without getting the clothes off their back stolen before the Admiralty found them and sent them straight back home.” She sighed and leaned back from the window. “But if they post the right kind of bounty in the right district? Then people may be motivated to recall the curiously dressed men they saw running through the city at sunrise.”
“What of those knife wielders downstairs?”
The corner of her lip turned up. “You will find none here willing to turn over free men to unjust captors.”
“Not even for a mountain of gil?”
She shook her head.
“You are an adventurer, Warrior of Light,” he drawled. “One famed for being swayed by money alone.”
She scoffed. “The Warrior of Light is also, famously, nameless and faceless.”
He looked up at her. Blue eyes with circular pupils watched him back. Light brown skin, a faded scar on her jaw, and a slightly crooked nose that had seen its fair share of punches. Probably in her early thirties, but he didn’t know enough about miqo’te to say for sure. She wouldn’t stand out in a crowd, unless you knew what you were looking for.
“Who are you then?” he asked quietly.
“Raelha Redorah, at your service.” She gave a half bow.
“Estinien.” He looked back at Aymeric. He looked a little less pale in the growing light.
“While you are in Limsa please be so kind as to forget my title belongs to me, as I shall do for the both of you,” she said.
“Understood.”
“I’ll leave you to your vigil then.”
She headed for the door. He caught her arm on the way past.
“If you should betray us, Lady Redorah…”
“Yes?” She looked down at him with a raised eyebrow.
“I will send all the ‘dutiful sisters of edelweiss’ to the ocean floor.”
Incongruously, she smiled. She inclined her head. “‘Til sea swallows all, Ser Estinien.”
Aymeric woke up.
Golden reflections of water danced across the white ceiling above him, swaying back and forward like waves. He watched it and could not comprehend where he was or what he was looking at. For a single merciful moment, he had the luxury of being confused.
Then reality found him like the dawn. He breathed in sharply and it hurt. Everything hurt .
He sat up, forcing himself to feel it. He curled in on himself for a moment.
Oh, Lucia .
He couldn’t form any thoughts beyond that for a moment, the grief lodging in his throat.
He closed his eyes. A cavalcade of the horrors played across the inside of his eyelids. The Archbishop - his father - collapsing in his arms, Lucia’s last cry cut off suddenly with a wet gurgle, Ser Grinnaux’s blood splattered grin. He didn’t want to think of it, but he couldn’t let himself turn away. He didn’t deserve to forget.
Lucia deserved better than this. She had given her life so he could make this right. He hissed in a breath that stung deep inside his lungs and ached as his ribs rose. He clenched his teeth and got up.
He looked about for his things and saw only his sword, leaning against the wall, and some undyed cotton clothes. He had been lying under a thin sheet, wearing little else. It was stiflingly hot. His Lord Commander’s mantle was nowhere to be found. It wouldn’t have been weather appropriate anyway, or indeed appropriate in any other manner.
What had happened to the rest of his knights? How many had died on his behalf? Did they lay down their arms, were they spared?
Did the Heavens Ward slaughter half the city’s forces in their treachery?
A strip of blue cloth on the floor caught his eye. Oh. They must have cut his clothes from his body. He picked it up. It was a piece of the padding from his collar, inlaid with gold. Carved off of him to save his life.
His fist clenched around it.
Had the High Houses known? Which of them abetted the treachery? Or did they simply sit on the sidelines and watch it unfold?
He bowed his head. That wasn’t fair. The zealous and cruel in the Holy See had so much power, and the nobility had much to lose. The threat of heresy accusations would tie their hands.
He put on the simple clothes left for him, wincing at the pull of barely healed injuries. By the time he was buttoning up the shirt, he felt bone tired.
He could not return to bed and sleep. Something had to be done. He knew not what, but… there had to be something.
He should have seen this coming. He should have prepared, should have protected his knights, his city.
He was stuck in a spiral of despair and self-recriminations, until the sound of footsteps landing on the roof above interrupted him. Reflexively part of him calmed. Estinien lived. It was down to just the two of them, the cursed survivors yet again. He dragged a hand through his hair. They would outlast this.
He turned to the open window just as a figure swung in.
It wasn’t Estinien.
Aymeric blindly reached for his sword. Then he gulped for air against the sharp pain wracking his chest.
“Whoa, easy there, mate. We’re friends here,” said the man.
Aymeric breathed heavily through his nose to get the pain back under control. He blinked hard at the hyur in front of him, embarrassed at the whole display.
He remembered, vaguely, that he had met this man the night before. The Warrior of Light had introduced them.
…The Warrior of Light? He must have been in a very bad way indeed the night before.
“My apologies,” he said. It took a long moment for the name to appear in his mind. “-Captain Jacke. I was expecting my compatriot.”
“Aye, and no wonder, he watched over you like a mother coeurl all day. He’s bedding in the next room if you want to check him.”
“I will in a moment, thank you.”
They remained looking at each other for a moment. Jacke was dressed humbly, with no visible sign of rank, but he had intelligent eyes that studied Aymeric carefully. Was he a pirate? Were they, in fact, guests here?
“You are a friend to the Warrior of Light?” Aymeric asked carefully.
Jacke tilted his head. “You got a primal in need o’ slayin’?”
“No.”
“Then no. I’ve never seen the Warrior of light in my life, don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Ah.” Aymeric schooled his expression. This was, inexplicably, familiar territory. He was an outsider being toyed with. “I must simply be misremembering. It was most kind of you to take us in without prompting.”
Jacke shrugged. “Everyone needs to get pulled out of the waves at some point.”
“I see.” Aymeric crossed his arms and held his expression placid through the wave of pain. “Forgive me if this is a foolish question, Captain Jacke, what exactly are you a captain of ?”
Jacke grinned. “Don’t you worry, cull. You’ll figure it out.” He shrugged. “Or you won’t. That’s up to you. The mort that brought you in last night will be downstairs with news of your bob ken after the next bell. Come on down when you’re ready.”
Then he left, without so much as a ‘by your leave’.
Aymeric frowned, frustrated and confused. He prided himself on being able to read people. It seemed that outside of Ishgardian rules of engagement he was at a significant disadvantage.
He followed him out to find Estinien. He was in the next room, unconscious on his side on a thin mattress. He had removed his helmet but nothing else, and the sleek black armour looked starkly out of place in the white washed and salt encrusted locale.
He looked very much like he had simply collapsed from exhaustion and hadn’t moved since.
Aymeric remembered the moment of terror when half of the Heavensward had surrounded him, and that black armour had been lost admist the white and blue.
He closed the door behind him quietly.
Estinien sat up with a jerk, reaching for his lance. He stopped a second later, recognising him. He sighed and dragged a hand down his face.
Aymeric lowered himself gingerly onto the chair by the bed.
“Are you well?” Estinien asked.
Aymeric nodded. Had there been a chirurgeon present he would surely have been ordered back to bed under the most dire warning. He scoffed. “I am better than I have any right to be. And you? Are you injured?”
“Don’t concern yourself on my account.”
“You cannot ask that of me. I would have died if not for you.” He covered his mouth with his hand. “I am sorry to have dragged you down with me.”
“Don’t insult me, Aymeric,” said Estinien gently, “I chose to stand with you. I would do so again.”
“They were counting on you doing the opposite. They must have presumed the dragoons would turn a blind eye to their coup.” Or else they would have taken some measures to muzzle them.
“Then they are fools, and they will pay the price for their treachery,” Estinien said.
He looked at his oldest friend, who had always hated politics and didn’t even care who sat on the Holy See’s throne so long as he got to kill dragons. Who had just lost any chance at ever slaying Nidhogg to save Aymeric’s life.
Estinien looked back seriously. He knew. The shadows under his eyes were darker and his skin too pale, but there was no hint of doubt on his face.
“They will have appointed their new Archbishop by now, whoever ordered this, and presumably a puppet Lord Commander,” said Aymeric. “We are the traitors now.”
Estinien scowled. “While the whoresons stab us in the back they undermine all of Ishgard’s defences. If Nidhogg should wake now…” A muscle ticked in his jaw. He looked away.
“This cannot stand,” Aymeric said. He took a deep breath and pulled himself up. “Come. I believe there is news waiting for us.”
“From Ishgard?”
“Presumably. It would depend on what a ‘bob ken’ refers to.”
Estinien stood and returned his lance to his back.
“I do not trust these people,” he said.
Neither do I, Aymeric did not say, lest the walls had ears. “For now they are our allies, and we have precious few of those.”
“Aye.” Estinien said, wistful. “We should not waste the chance they have bought for us.”
Aymeric lowered his head. His chest ached.
A few hours earlier, Raelha had stepped out of an aetheryte with a growing headache. She had made more long distance jumps in the last twenty four hours than was strictly wise, but needs must.
Sisipu gave her a look at her from inside the Fisherman’s Guild but said nothing. Fishermen were perhaps the only people who kept less personable hours than the rogues. The two organisations were accustomed to each other.
Raelha made her way back to the Dutiful Sisters. It was just past midday, and she hadn’t slept, which was a crying shame because she knew what awaited her at the Guild and it wasn’t something she wanted to tackle while only half awake.
Lonwoerd let her in with his usual grim expression.
“Jacke’s waiting for you in the library,” he said.
She nodded and put her game face on.
The ‘library’ probably had been one at some point, given the shelves lining the walls and the desks scattered around. Since the rogues moved in, it held few books, but stacks upon stacks of ship registrations, admiralty missives, port records, shipping manifests, and anything else that might help get the job done. Few were allowed inside, there was probably enough stolen, sensitive state material in there to get them all hanged thrice over.
She pushed open the doors. She was met with the sight of V’kebbe swinging back on a chair, Perimu sitting on a desk and cleaning a throwing knife, and Jacke leaning his hip against the desk with his arms crossed.
“Raelha, why’ve we got two fancy culls up in the crow’s nest?” came V'kebbe’s opening volley.
“Come on, Stray,” Perimu drawled in that too-friendly way of his, “no way ol’ Heron would compromise the Guild by dragging her foreign mates in like a drunk stumbling home from the ale house.”
Jacke just gave her a look. She would be selling this pitch on her own, or not at all.
“Thank you, Perimu, you’re exactly right, I would do no such thing,” she said, pulling herself up to sit on a desk opposite them. She dragged a chair closer with her foot and put her booted feet up. “They’re here because they’re going to help us get the job done.”
“Mm-hm.” V’kebbe’s eyebrow arched.
“And just how are two Ishgardians, one a noble and the other a dragon slayer, going to help keep the code?” Jacke asked.
“First, a question.” She raised a finger. “Who funds the bulk of slave taking across the Rhotano sea?”
“Ul'dah,” Jacke replied without hesitation.
“They’re the direct buyers, I’ll grant you, but they’re not supplying most of the gil. Since the Calamity, Ishgard can’t feed itself anymore, they import most of their food, cotton, medicine, and who knows what else. Every year they sell off massive supply contracts to the lowest bidder. And every year for the last seven years, the lowest bidder has been whoever can squeeze down their overheads by relying on slaves. Which is why there’s an annual surge in kidnappings every First Astral Moon.”
“How do you know all this?” Perimu asked.
“Because I’m a Twelve-damned professional, Underfoot.” She nodded at a stack of ledgers and missives on a shelf she’d gone to great lengths to get her hands on. Jacke had already looked it over, none of this was new information, she was just asking them to look at it from the other end.
“Alright,” said V’kebbe, a promisingly thoughtful expression on her face. “What does that have to do with our guests?”
“Excellent question. While Ishgard has never cared about the rest of Eorzea, last night the top dog was overthrown by his own bodyguards. But they botched the coup, and it's all gone sideways on them. Now in times of upset, Ishgard is ruled by the Lord Commander.” She raised a hand pointedly to the ceiling. “And when that upset subsides, the same Lord Commander gets a say in the next ruler.”
The reactions she got were rather more interested now. Jacke’s face remained his thoughtful mask.
“But he’s been thrown out,” V’kebbe said. “What’s to say he’ll ever get that power back?”
Perimu made a frustrated noise. “This is all politics and…and deals . That’s not what we’re about.”
“No. We’re about getting results.”
“You really think this’ll get those results?“ Jacke asked quietly.
She sighed. “We’ve been slaughtering our way through slave takers for years, and yet there are more slaves traded on the Rhotano now than ever before. Sure, the smarter pirates know to fear us and keep their hands clean, but as long as the money’s there, there will always be those more greedy than wise prepared to take the risk.”
She slid off the table and faced Jacke directly. V’kebbe and Underfoot could kick up a fuss, but Jacke’s word was the final one.
He looked down, his brow furrowed. Nobody hated slavery like he did.
“We’ve tried disrupting the taking, and the trading. It’s not working.” She spread her hands out. “Why not disrupt the paying?”
“The idea, I’ll give you. But he’s smart, Raelha.” He cast his eyes up to the ceiling. “They need us now , but for how long? As soon as the trouble’s passed, yer gonna be a mighty inconvenient loose end. And I don’t want to see you swing from a heretic’s gibbet.”
“Our friend the Mongrel has given me reason to think it won’t come to that. Not on Aymeric’s command.”
“Has she just?”
“Also, they don’t hang heretics, they throw them off cliffs.”
“Should feed ‘em to sharks,” Perimu said. “‘S got more flair to it. I still don’t like this.”
Raelha scoffed and addressed the room at large. “My dearest rogues and thief takers, we have a king maker on our hands. Shall we throw him out? Shall we leave him to the mercy of whichever hostage-taking pirate or bloodless monetarist finds him first?” She spread her arms wide. “Are we to declare him not our problem, then complain when Ishgard decrees the same of us?”
V’Kebbe and Perimu shared a look.
“It’s worth a shot,” V’kebbe said.
Perimu slumped. “Bugger it. Fine.”
They all looked at Jacke.
“Alright,” he said. “We’ll throw our oar in with your Lord Commander , and see how far this inlet goes. But this is your mission, Raelha, you’re handling it.”
She let out a relieved breath and nodded. “Of course.”
“Alright you two, go make some trouble for someone who deserves it.” He nodded at the others.
They both left, V’kebbe backflipping off her chair. The sound of the usual afternoon life of the guild flooded in before the door shut again and it was just Jacke and Raelha in the quiet.
She sat up on the desk where the others had been. Jacke sat next to her. She had yet to figure out why they kept so many chairs around.
“Yer such a pain when you’ve got an axe to grind,” he said, scratching his scalp under his bandana.
“Just doing my part to uphold the code.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He pulled the bandana off altogether and rubbed his temples. “You could’ve just joined the Scions if you were this desperate to rub shoulders with fancy foreign knobs.”
She gave him a flat look. He was unrepentant.
She sighed. “I mean it, you know. I’m tired of cutting down slavers every day only to turn around and find the total number of them has somehow gone up.”
“I know.” He absently rubbed his shoulder. She couldn’t remember which injury that corresponded to. One of the hundreds he’d picked up along the way. “They’re getting bolder too.”
“I can’t guarantee that this gambit will pay off, but… I don’t know. I feel good about this one. Those two idiots upstairs are just thick headed enough to make a difference.”
Jacke made a non-committal noise in his throat.
She leaned her elbows on her knees and hung her head. By the Twelve, she was tired. “I’m not trying to be a big dumb hero, and I’m not so arrogant as to think I can fix everything, but we may as well try, right?”
He smiled. “You are a big dumb hero. Sorry lass.”
“You take that back.”
“I tried to train it out of ye when we were kids, but there’s just no fixin’ some things.”
“Bastard.” She swung herself off of the desk.
“You too,” he said affectionately. Then his smile dropped. “I don’t want ‘em staying in the Sisters for more than a couple of days. They’ve seen too much already.”
“Yeah, alright.”
The stairs above them creaked. The Ishgardians were descending.