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Description
Home, Sweet Home

Lana closed her eyes and started gathering her forces around her. Or tried to.

Nothing happened.

What...?

She concentrated again, so hard sweat started to form little beads on her forehead.

Still nothing. Absolutely nothing.

“What the friggin’ hells!”, she yelled

“Calm down!”, Bishop said sharply. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s not working”, she snapped. “That’s the matter! I can’t do a cursed thing!”

“The cage is surrounded by a field that prevents you from using magic”, one of the guards said. “You better stop it. You don’t want to anger the mistress.”

Lana narrowed her eyes at him. “Oh yeah? Well, you tell your mistress she can...”

A hand on her arm stopped her. She turned and looked at Bishop, who just silently shook his head.

“Let go, wolf boy”, she hissed.

He retracted his hand, but said: “Get a grip!”

She glowered at him, then reversed her attention to the guard. “Who is she?”, Lana demanded. “Tell me her name!”

The man only gave her a horrified glance, looked at Bishop and hurried away to the front of the coach, without answering her. Seething, she let herself sink against the thrumming bars, angrily chewing her nails.

Bishop sat back in silence, watching her with a neutral expression on his face. She regarded him with rising frustration and had just opened her mouth to snap at him when the coach lurched to a halt, throwing them both off balance. She found herself on the floor of the cage, with Bishop’s weight on her.

She shoved at him impatiently and hissed: “Get off!”, when she heard the amused voice of the woman say: “My, aren’t you two snug together.”

Lana felt Bishop lift himself and retreat into his corner of the cage. Now she had an unobstructed view of the woman’s face, the red lips curled into a poisonous smile. Somehow Lana expected a forked tongue darting out of her mouth.

“You insolent, craven strumpet! Let us out here at once, and I’ll show you how snug I feel!”

The woman laughed again. “And such a foul little mouth she has. Does she make good use of it, my little one?”

Lana gasped in fury. “Why, you wretched, venomous...”

“Lana.”, Bishop’s calm voice cut in.

Lana threw him a deathly glare, but stopped ranting. He was right, she was not accomplishing anything besides making a fool of herself. The thought infuriated her even more, but she clenched her teeth and held her tongue.

The amused glance of the woman shifted from her to Bishop. “Such restraint, my little one. Quite unlike you.”

Amen to that, Lana thought, fuming.

Bishop just regarded the woman wordlessly. She narrowed her eyes a bit, and Lana thought she was not happy with his calmness.

Maybe I should follow his lead, this seems to piss her off more than me yelling at her.

“We’ll see about that composure of yours when we’re home, little one”, the woman said silkily. “For now, it’s bedtime for you children.” She murmured some words under her breath, and suddenly everything went pitch black.

“No need for you two to know how to find my home”, she said. “And in case you wonder, we can see you just fine, so try not to do something unseemly.” She laughed, and Lana heard the door of the coach close, shortly before it lurched into motion again. This time she was prepared and held on to the bars, so she was not thrown about again.

“Bishop, tell me...”, she began furiously.

She stopped as she heard him move, and then his voice came right next to her, very low: “No, not now. They’re listening. We’ll talk later.”

She heard him move again, back into the other corner of the cage.

Damn him!

Why did he always have to be right?

Lana spent the next hours in silence, brooding in the darkness of her corner of the cage. Who the hells was that harlot?

Hosttower mage.

That much seemed sure. High ranking one, too, if one was to go by the amount of fear she caused in her guards. And the effortless way she had subdued Lana as well as Bishop. Without even breaking a sweat.

The harpy!

She sat, her anger simmering silently, while the coach lurched worse and worse. Obviously, they had left the main road and were jolting along a much rougher track. After a while, she had the feeling that every tooth in her mouth was shaken loose.

I’ll make her pay for this. Somehow!

After an eternity, the coach stopped. Lana was so sore that she hardly found the energy to be angry anymore. She heard footsteps approaching, and the darkness lifted at long last. She blinked, trying to get accustomed to the light, and noticed that first, she was deep in the woods, and second, the sun was already setting.

How long has she been dragging us along that track from hell? At least she’s got to be nearly as sore as I am, even if she was in the coach.

But the sweet, poisonous smile on the woman’s face betrayed no tiredness.

“Welcome home, children”, she purred. “I jumped ahead to prepare everything for your arrival. That last few hours of the road are just a little too rough for my taste.”

Lana stared at her, murder on her mind.

I’ll kill her. I swear I will.

The woman noticed Lana’s glare, and her smile broadened.

“Ah, such a fiery temper. Taming you will be nearly as much fun as it was with my little one over there.”

Lana swallowed.

She thinks she tamed Bishop? Tamed him?

She thought back to the kind of man he’d been. Cold, unemotional, merciless, with a mean, vicious streak and a penchant for shedding blood. And under that cold, emotionless surface a cesspit of boiling hate and fury.

Tame?

For the first time, she felt fear rise in her. Luckily for her, the woman had turned to the guards, so she could not see the expression on Lana’s face.

“Carry them inside, into my study.” She waved behind her with a careless gesture, and again Lana felt the paralysis grab hold of her limbs, spreading until she could do nothing but blink. A snap of the woman’s fingers, and the thrumming of the cage bars stopped. Without looking back, she vanished from Lana’s field of view.

She heard the bolt being pulled back and the door of the cage opened. Hands gripped her and pulled her out of the door, catching her before she hit the ground. Then she was carried some yards, and the front of an impressive and elegant, if sturdy mansion appeared.

She was carried through the massive front door that opened into a gloomy stairwell that reminded more of a castle than a mansion, with torches burning at the raw, unadorned stone walls. They dragged her up the broad stairs onto the second floor, along a no less gloomy corridor, through a second door into a large, rectangular room that contained uncounted bookcases, workbenches covered with alchemical instruments, a desk, a niche with a large four-poster bed in it – and a cell in the back wall.

It was the latter the guards dumped her in, then they turned around and left. The last one threw her a glance over his shoulder. She recognised the one she had spoken to on the way – if one could call it that. She saw fear in his eyes.

“Please”, he whispered. “Don’t make her angry. You really don’t want her angry with you.”

With that, he hurried out of the room, after the others. Only seconds later, the other group of guards entered, dragging Bishop along with them, throwing him into the cell after her. Then they closed the door and the bolt, and the same thrumming as in the cage on the coach went through the bars.

How will we ever get out of here?

She felt discouragement creep up in her, and she hated the feeling. As always, she countered it with anger. She would find some way to kick that hussy’s ass, and if it was the last thing she did in her life!

As if on cue, said hussy entered the room, stalking the cage, her hips swinging.

“Make yourself at home, children”, she smiled. “Do you like your new room? Isn’t it so much more comfy than the old one?” She snapped her fingers, and Lana found she could move again.

She drew herself up into a sitting position. Next to her, Bishop did the same. Lana glared up at the woman, but clenched her teeth, saying nothing.

“Now, now”, the woman said, soothingly. “You don’t have to thank me at once. I think I’ll go and have my dinner now. But I promise to be back later, so we can play some. Until then, have fun without me.” She turned, wiggled her fingers at them over her shoulder in a mocking wave and left, closing the door behind her.

“That bitch!”, Lana snarled, whirling round to face Bishop. “Who the hells does she think she is?”

“I guess she thinks she’s the one who can knock the two of us out with a snap of her fingers. For some reasons, she seems to believe that puts her in charge. I wonder why that is?”

“Don’t go all smart ass on me, wolf boy!”

“Then stop throwing useless temper tantrums! We’re alone for the first time since they caught us. I would prefer to spend the time talking about our options, but if you want to rant some, feel free.”

Argh! How I hate the man!

“When exactly did you become Mr. Sensible?”, she growled.

“Well, someone has to be, and you don’t seem up to the job.”

She eyed him with misgivings. “I hope you are aware that I dislike you immensely”, she said.

“Duly noted. Now, can we get back to business?”

“Gods, I’m not sure if I did not like you better before you lost your bleeding memory. You might have been a bastard, but at least you knew how to throw a fit.”

“Do you always have such a short fuse? I wonder how you manage a Keep with a temper like that.”

She sighed, her anger suddenly dissipating. “Honestly, I suck at the job”, she admitted, raking her fingers through her red locks. “I simply can’t do it, not without...”, she swallowed, and left the sentence unfinished. “Anyway, that’s why I’m here in the first place. I kind of left.”

He stared at her. “You mean, you just up and left?”

“Yes”, she said, sullenly.

“It’s called running away, you know?”

“And? What if it is?”, she asked defiantly. “Don’t go all moral on me – you being the one telling me twice I was a fool not to just leave all of them to their fate, offering to run off into the woods with me! The King of Shadows is defeated, and I decided my role was over. Besides, it was eating up my life! Never a moment alone. Always duty, duty, duty. Duty, and paperwork. Loads and loads of paperwork! It drove me insane. That and...”, her voice trailed off.

“...and what?”, he asked, softly.

She averted her face. “Nothing.” She hated herself for the way her voice shook.

I miss you so much, my love. Couldn’t bear the memories in that place.

“Fair enough. I won’t ask”, he said. Then, after a pause: “Did I really try to run off with you?”

She wiped the tears out of her eyes. “Yeah, well, I did not get my hopes up. You came on to every woman that got into a ten yard radius around you. And in your own special charming way, too.”

He shook his head. “Somehow, I think you were not really tempted by that offer.”

She had to smile a bit. “Not really.”

He sighed. “I apologise for judging you, ok? I had no right to do that. If you really risked your life against that King of Shadows, you have given enough to last a lifetime. You are entitled to a bit of happiness. So you had every right to leave.”

Bitterness rose in her, along with more tears.

Happiness?

She felt his finger on her cheek and turned her head. He had gathered one tear trailing down her face, and was regarding her with a soft expression, sorrow in his eyes.

“I’m sorry – did I say something wrong?”, he asked.

She just stared at him.

“What?”, he asked, obviously starting to feel uncomfortable under her scrutiny.

She shook her head. “This is just uncanny. Either you are the world’s best actor, or you’ve become a completely new person, quite the opposite of the old one. I guess that will take some time to get used to.”

“It’s no act”, he said, quietly.

She stared at him some moments more. “I believe you”, she said eventually. “So, let’s talk shop. Do you have any idea who that vixen is?”

He shook his head. “Unfortunately, no.”

“She seems to know you pretty well – and I did not like some of the things she said.”

He shivered. “Believe me, me neither. I wonder what she wants with me.”

“Must be an old acquaintance of your time in Luskan”, she mused. “Luckily she did not kill you outright.”

His gaze was suddenly intent on her. “Come again?”, he asked.

She looked at him, guiltily. “Well... you kind of have a history with Luskan.”

“I see”, he said. “And you forgot to tell me that because...?”

She threw her hands in the air, angry again, if mostly out of guilt. “Gods, Bishop, if I told you about every enemy you ever made, we’d be still sitting in that inn. Which would actually be better than sitting here, so forget I said that. Anyway, you used to work for Luskan, and you obviously did not part in good graces. So they’re kind of looking for you. Anyway, you never told me about any special friends, so I have no idea who our friendly black viper might be. I’m fairly sure she is a Hosttower mage, but my guess is as good as yours.”

“Anything else I should know about?”

“No”, she said, forcing herself to hold his gaze.

Well, and he shouldn’t know about Redfallow’s Watch. At least, not now.

“Hosttower Mage”, he said, his brows drawn together. “I wonder what dealings I had with her.”

“She seemed awfully happy to see you”, Lana said.

He shivered again. “I noticed that, too.”

Just as Lana drew breath to answer him, the door to the room opened, and the woman entered, a catlike smile on her face.

“Now, my children, it’s playtime”, she purred.

Description
Home, Sweet Home

Lana closed her eyes and started gathering her forces around her. Or tried to.

Nothing happened.

What...?

She concentrated again, so hard sweat started to form little beads on her forehead.

Still nothing. Absolutely nothing.

“What the friggin’ hells!”, she yelled

“Calm down!”, Bishop said sharply. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s not working”, she snapped. “That’s the matter! I can’t do a cursed thing!”

“The cage is surrounded by a field that prevents you from using magic”, one of the guards said. “You better stop it. You don’t want to anger the mistress.”

Lana narrowed her eyes at him. “Oh yeah? Well, you tell your mistress she can...”

A hand on her arm stopped her. She turned and looked at Bishop, who just silently shook his head.

“Let go, wolf boy”, she hissed.

He retracted his hand, but said: “Get a grip!”

She glowered at him, then reversed her attention to the guard. “Who is she?”, Lana demanded. “Tell me her name!”

The man only gave her a horrified glance, looked at Bishop and hurried away to the front of the coach, without answering her. Seething, she let herself sink against the thrumming bars, angrily chewing her nails.

Bishop sat back in silence, watching her with a neutral expression on his face. She regarded him with rising frustration and had just opened her mouth to snap at him when the coach lurched to a halt, throwing them both off balance. She found herself on the floor of the cage, with Bishop’s weight on her.

She shoved at him impatiently and hissed: “Get off!”, when she heard the amused voice of the woman say: “My, aren’t you two snug together.”

Lana felt Bishop lift himself and retreat into his corner of the cage. Now she had an unobstructed view of the woman’s face, the red lips curled into a poisonous smile. Somehow Lana expected a forked tongue darting out of her mouth.

“You insolent, craven strumpet! Let us out here at once, and I’ll show you how snug I feel!”

The woman laughed again. “And such a foul little mouth she has. Does she make good use of it, my little one?”

Lana gasped in fury. “Why, you wretched, venomous...”

“Lana.”, Bishop’s calm voice cut in.

Lana threw him a deathly glare, but stopped ranting. He was right, she was not accomplishing anything besides making a fool of herself. The thought infuriated her even more, but she clenched her teeth and held her tongue.

The amused glance of the woman shifted from her to Bishop. “Such restraint, my little one. Quite unlike you.”

Amen to that, Lana thought, fuming.

Bishop just regarded the woman wordlessly. She narrowed her eyes a bit, and Lana thought she was not happy with his calmness.

Maybe I should follow his lead, this seems to piss her off more than me yelling at her.

“We’ll see about that composure of yours when we’re home, little one”, the woman said silkily. “For now, it’s bedtime for you children.” She murmured some words under her breath, and suddenly everything went pitch black.

“No need for you two to know how to find my home”, she said. “And in case you wonder, we can see you just fine, so try not to do something unseemly.” She laughed, and Lana heard the door of the coach close, shortly before it lurched into motion again. This time she was prepared and held on to the bars, so she was not thrown about again.

“Bishop, tell me...”, she began furiously.

She stopped as she heard him move, and then his voice came right next to her, very low: “No, not now. They’re listening. We’ll talk later.”

She heard him move again, back into the other corner of the cage.

Damn him!

Why did he always have to be right?

Lana spent the next hours in silence, brooding in the darkness of her corner of the cage. Who the hells was that harlot?

Hosttower mage.

That much seemed sure. High ranking one, too, if one was to go by the amount of fear she caused in her guards. And the effortless way she had subdued Lana as well as Bishop. Without even breaking a sweat.

The harpy!

She sat, her anger simmering silently, while the coach lurched worse and worse. Obviously, they had left the main road and were jolting along a much rougher track. After a while, she had the feeling that every tooth in her mouth was shaken loose.

I’ll make her pay for this. Somehow!

After an eternity, the coach stopped. Lana was so sore that she hardly found the energy to be angry anymore. She heard footsteps approaching, and the darkness lifted at long last. She blinked, trying to get accustomed to the light, and noticed that first, she was deep in the woods, and second, the sun was already setting.

How long has she been dragging us along that track from hell? At least she’s got to be nearly as sore as I am, even if she was in the coach.

But the sweet, poisonous smile on the woman’s face betrayed no tiredness.

“Welcome home, children”, she purred. “I jumped ahead to prepare everything for your arrival. That last few hours of the road are just a little too rough for my taste.”

Lana stared at her, murder on her mind.

I’ll kill her. I swear I will.

The woman noticed Lana’s glare, and her smile broadened.

“Ah, such a fiery temper. Taming you will be nearly as much fun as it was with my little one over there.”

Lana swallowed.

She thinks she tamed Bishop? Tamed him?

She thought back to the kind of man he’d been. Cold, unemotional, merciless, with a mean, vicious streak and a penchant for shedding blood. And under that cold, emotionless surface a cesspit of boiling hate and fury.

Tame?

For the first time, she felt fear rise in her. Luckily for her, the woman had turned to the guards, so she could not see the expression on Lana’s face.

“Carry them inside, into my study.” She waved behind her with a careless gesture, and again Lana felt the paralysis grab hold of her limbs, spreading until she could do nothing but blink. A snap of the woman’s fingers, and the thrumming of the cage bars stopped. Without looking back, she vanished from Lana’s field of view.

She heard the bolt being pulled back and the door of the cage opened. Hands gripped her and pulled her out of the door, catching her before she hit the ground. Then she was carried some yards, and the front of an impressive and elegant, if sturdy mansion appeared.

She was carried through the massive front door that opened into a gloomy stairwell that reminded more of a castle than a mansion, with torches burning at the raw, unadorned stone walls. They dragged her up the broad stairs onto the second floor, along a no less gloomy corridor, through a second door into a large, rectangular room that contained uncounted bookcases, workbenches covered with alchemical instruments, a desk, a niche with a large four-poster bed in it – and a cell in the back wall.

It was the latter the guards dumped her in, then they turned around and left. The last one threw her a glance over his shoulder. She recognised the one she had spoken to on the way – if one could call it that. She saw fear in his eyes.

“Please”, he whispered. “Don’t make her angry. You really don’t want her angry with you.”

With that, he hurried out of the room, after the others. Only seconds later, the other group of guards entered, dragging Bishop along with them, throwing him into the cell after her. Then they closed the door and the bolt, and the same thrumming as in the cage on the coach went through the bars.

How will we ever get out of here?

She felt discouragement creep up in her, and she hated the feeling. As always, she countered it with anger. She would find some way to kick that hussy’s ass, and if it was the last thing she did in her life!

As if on cue, said hussy entered the room, stalking the cage, her hips swinging.

“Make yourself at home, children”, she smiled. “Do you like your new room? Isn’t it so much more comfy than the old one?” She snapped her fingers, and Lana found she could move again.

She drew herself up into a sitting position. Next to her, Bishop did the same. Lana glared up at the woman, but clenched her teeth, saying nothing.

“Now, now”, the woman said, soothingly. “You don’t have to thank me at once. I think I’ll go and have my dinner now. But I promise to be back later, so we can play some. Until then, have fun without me.” She turned, wiggled her fingers at them over her shoulder in a mocking wave and left, closing the door behind her.

“That bitch!”, Lana snarled, whirling round to face Bishop. “Who the hells does she think she is?”

“I guess she thinks she’s the one who can knock the two of us out with a snap of her fingers. For some reasons, she seems to believe that puts her in charge. I wonder why that is?”

“Don’t go all smart ass on me, wolf boy!”

“Then stop throwing useless temper tantrums! We’re alone for the first time since they caught us. I would prefer to spend the time talking about our options, but if you want to rant some, feel free.”

Argh! How I hate the man!

“When exactly did you become Mr. Sensible?”, she growled.

“Well, someone has to be, and you don’t seem up to the job.”

She eyed him with misgivings. “I hope you are aware that I dislike you immensely”, she said.

“Duly noted. Now, can we get back to business?”

“Gods, I’m not sure if I did not like you better before you lost your bleeding memory. You might have been a bastard, but at least you knew how to throw a fit.”

“Do you always have such a short fuse? I wonder how you manage a Keep with a temper like that.”

She sighed, her anger suddenly dissipating. “Honestly, I suck at the job”, she admitted, raking her fingers through her red locks. “I simply can’t do it, not without...”, she swallowed, and left the sentence unfinished. “Anyway, that’s why I’m here in the first place. I kind of left.”

He stared at her. “You mean, you just up and left?”

“Yes”, she said, sullenly.

“It’s called running away, you know?”

“And? What if it is?”, she asked defiantly. “Don’t go all moral on me – you being the one telling me twice I was a fool not to just leave all of them to their fate, offering to run off into the woods with me! The King of Shadows is defeated, and I decided my role was over. Besides, it was eating up my life! Never a moment alone. Always duty, duty, duty. Duty, and paperwork. Loads and loads of paperwork! It drove me insane. That and...”, her voice trailed off.

“...and what?”, he asked, softly.

She averted her face. “Nothing.” She hated herself for the way her voice shook.

I miss you so much, my love. Couldn’t bear the memories in that place.

“Fair enough. I won’t ask”, he said. Then, after a pause: “Did I really try to run off with you?”

She wiped the tears out of her eyes. “Yeah, well, I did not get my hopes up. You came on to every woman that got into a ten yard radius around you. And in your own special charming way, too.”

He shook his head. “Somehow, I think you were not really tempted by that offer.”

She had to smile a bit. “Not really.”

He sighed. “I apologise for judging you, ok? I had no right to do that. If you really risked your life against that King of Shadows, you have given enough to last a lifetime. You are entitled to a bit of happiness. So you had every right to leave.”

Bitterness rose in her, along with more tears.

Happiness?

She felt his finger on her cheek and turned her head. He had gathered one tear trailing down her face, and was regarding her with a soft expression, sorrow in his eyes.

“I’m sorry – did I say something wrong?”, he asked.

She just stared at him.

“What?”, he asked, obviously starting to feel uncomfortable under her scrutiny.

She shook her head. “This is just uncanny. Either you are the world’s best actor, or you’ve become a completely new person, quite the opposite of the old one. I guess that will take some time to get used to.”

“It’s no act”, he said, quietly.

She stared at him some moments more. “I believe you”, she said eventually. “So, let’s talk shop. Do you have any idea who that vixen is?”

He shook his head. “Unfortunately, no.”

“She seems to know you pretty well – and I did not like some of the things she said.”

He shivered. “Believe me, me neither. I wonder what she wants with me.”

“Must be an old acquaintance of your time in Luskan”, she mused. “Luckily she did not kill you outright.”

His gaze was suddenly intent on her. “Come again?”, he asked.

She looked at him, guiltily. “Well... you kind of have a history with Luskan.”

“I see”, he said. “And you forgot to tell me that because...?”

She threw her hands in the air, angry again, if mostly out of guilt. “Gods, Bishop, if I told you about every enemy you ever made, we’d be still sitting in that inn. Which would actually be better than sitting here, so forget I said that. Anyway, you used to work for Luskan, and you obviously did not part in good graces. So they’re kind of looking for you. Anyway, you never told me about any special friends, so I have no idea who our friendly black viper might be. I’m fairly sure she is a Hosttower mage, but my guess is as good as yours.”

“Anything else I should know about?”

“No”, she said, forcing herself to hold his gaze.

Well, and he shouldn’t know about Redfallow’s Watch. At least, not now.

“Hosttower Mage”, he said, his brows drawn together. “I wonder what dealings I had with her.”

“She seemed awfully happy to see you”, Lana said.

He shivered again. “I noticed that, too.”

Just as Lana drew breath to answer him, the door to the room opened, and the woman entered, a catlike smile on her face.

“Now, my children, it’s playtime”, she purred.