She was silent.
"She's a mage, my lord," said Oreg. It was difficult to see him in the dark. I hadn't heard him approach.
"So much I did know," I said. Bastilla had looked around when he'd spoken, so I knew that he hadn't been using his trick of being unseen and unheard by anyone except me.
"I am a slave, whatever you believe," she said finally. "And I'm not a very good mage, but I am the only slave Ciernack has who is also mageborn. He finds me useful." She gestured, and a cold white flame appeared in her hand. She held it up and stared into my face for a long moment. Her complexion was pale, but that might have been because of the brilliance of the light she'd called. Her eyes glittered with stress. I don't know what she was looking for in my expression nor if she found it before she extinguished the light.
"I see," I said. "Where did he get you? Avinhelle?" Her accent sounded western, all soft consonants.
She hesitated, then nodded. "From the Cholyte refuge."
"You were sworn to Chole?" The patron goddess of Avinhelle demanded mages to serve in her temples: slaves in truth, but not ordinary slaves. For the first time I believed her claims. "How did he get you out?" I asked. The Cholytes were very well defended.
I could hear the bitter smile in her voice. "My life was dearly bought. I understand the Cholynn was in need of wealth to gain more power with the high king."
"She sold you to him."
Bastilla inclined her head.
"You are free to go where you will, you know. We're about as far from Avinhelle as we can get and still be in the Five Kingdoms, but I can pay for an escort home." And not much more, if the rest of us were going to make it to Oranstone.
She shook her head. "My family sold me to the Cholynn, my lord. They would be obliged to return me, and the Cholynn would simply send me back to the man she sold me to in the first place. I have no place to go. If you take me with you, I'll make myself useful." She lowered her head and shifted against the tree.
"How did you know about Hurog?" asked Oreg suddenly. "Hurog has not been a refuge for runaway slaves for a very long time. If you'd arrived few months earlier, my lord's father would have had you returned to your owner immediately."
She laughed without amusement. "Ciernack has a slave boy whose job it is to keep the fire burning in the room where the men drink. He told me that once a great lord came in and told stories about a fabled keep called Hurog. He must have listened very hard, for the boy knew three or four stories by heart."
I laughed, feeling even more stupid. "No, he probably heard them any number of times. Last time I went to court, I went to Ciernack's place several times and told those stories over and over to anyone with the misfortune to be in my company." I'd been trying to help a friend out of Ciernack's clutches. I'd failed.
So it had been my stories that caused Bastilla to come to Hurog. Even that straw in my downfall had been by my own doing.
I rubbed my face. "You are certain you want to stay with us? If you come, you're likely to find yourself in the middle of a full-scale war in Oranstone."
"Better with you, my lord, than out selling myself in the streets."
"Ah, then," I said with casual cheerfulness, "you'll just have to hire on with a mercenary band." I leaned closer to her and purred, "For you know, 'tis an ill-prepared mercenary who doesn't have his own mage to counter the magics sent against him."
There was a little silence, then she said, "How do you do that? One minute a stupid lout, the next a lord, and an instant later a…a…"
"Tavein Kirrete at your service," I bowed with more flourish than grace.
Oreg snickered suddenly. "I'd forgotten about him. He was a mercenary who came to train with the Blue Guard a few years ago," he explained to Bastilla. "Thought an awful lot of himself, and he left the day after Stala, Ward's aunt, wiped the dirt with his face. Couldn't stomach being beaten by a woman. You play him better than he did himself."
I bowed shallowly to acknowledge the compliment. Even Oreg didn't see the whole truth. Everyone I portrayed, including the lord, was an act as well. He was gleaned from stories of Seleg and from Seleg's journals hidden in the library. I hadn't been a real person since I was twelve.
"A younger son," I said out loud. "Too many people have met Tavern."
"What?" asked Bastilla.
"I can't be Ward of Hurog; he's too likely to get sent to Estian, eh? Everyone knows he's an idiot who belongs in the King's Asylum. I think I'll be a younger son in disgrace and trying to restore his good name. I took horses and money from my home when I escaped in the night with my faithful retainer…Now, let's see, should that be Axiel or Penrod? Penrod, I believe, he has that old-retainer air about him—and my squire, Ciarra, whom we shall call Ciar because it's safer for her to be a boy. Axiel will be a man we met upon the road, destitute, a fighter whose master died due to illness…the scourge. Oreg will be my cousin or bastard half brother or something."
"Is he?" asked Bastilla, sounding faintly intrigued.
Drawn back from my tale-telling, I frowned. "Yes, but he doesn't like to talk about it."
"I don't?" asked Oreg, raising an eyebrow.
"No," I replied firmly.
"What about me?" asked Bastilla leaning forward.
"She's the cause of your disgrace?" offered Oreg.
"No," I shook my head. "Too melodramatic. I think we hired you at Tyrfannig. An Avinhelle-born wizard stranded at a northern seaport."
"Rescued from a shipwreck?" she offered enthusiastically. "Stranded too far from home to afford passage back, so I took employment with a likely-looking group of soldiers?"
"Sure," I nodded. I liked her, and not just because she was beautiful.
"I thought you were against melodrama," muttered Oreg.
"This is strange," Bastilla said with abrupt seriousness. "I would never have thought to end up here, so far from home. Cholytes are forbidden to leave the Tower. Some of them walk around with a permanent glow from talking to the goddess. But I never felt her. The potions that we were given to help us reach her never worked on me. The Cholynn was very upset because I did neither the goddess nor the Tower any good." Underneath the stiffness, I heard shame.
Oreg snorted. "Drugged the lot of you so they could siphon your powers. You don't need drugs for the gods to touch you. Ask the ascetics at Menogue. They have Aethervon's power, enough to crisp the Acolyte Tower, and their people aren't drained husks after a year's apprenticeship."
I cleared my throat, hoping Bastilla, Avinhelle-born, didn't know much Tallvenish history.
"Menogue? The ruin outside of Estian? I was told it was destroyed in the Reformation Wars." Several hundred years ago. "And Aethervon's order with it."
There was a long silence, then Oreg said, "I'm something of a historian. Sometimes I think I live more closely to the past than the present."
Of course she accepted it. The truth was much less believable.
"How did you two meet?" asked Bastilla after a moment. "Axiel and Penrod don't know you. You're too young to be as good a wizard as you are; even the Cholynn couldn't teleport herself without a complicated ceremony, and you do it in the blink of an eye."
I assumed she was talking to Oreg, as I hadn't teleported myself anywhere.
"Oreg's one of the family," I said.
"Bastard," confirmed Oreg truthfully enough. "I'm older than I look. There was this spell…" His voice trailed off, then started up again briskly. "I decided I wanted to see the family estates. It was easy to get in without anyone knowing, but Ward and his sister found me out."
He lied as well as I did; use as much of the truth as you can to give the wrong impression. Perhaps it was something in the blood.