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The trio drew to an abrupt halt as the implications dawned. Hands dropped to hilts, or rose in readiness to cast.

It was Mellorin who, glancing just the right way through sheer happenstance, saw the spear arcing toward them. She screamed something garbled even as she dived to the soil. The weapon planted itself in the earth nearby, vibrating with a dull thrum, and Kaleb completely understood when he saw her eyes widen in alarm.

It looked very much like someone had just hurled a sharpened tree at them. The spear was two feet longer, and a third again as thick, as that wielded by the ogre in the swamp.

They turned-Mellorin and Jassion picking themselves up from where they'd thrown themselves aside-and there he was, emerging from the house's shadow. The tip of his horn surely cleared fourteen feet, and Mellorin could damn near have stretched out her saddle on one of his arms. In one fist he clutched a second spear, not quite as large as the first, and a weapon that was less a sword than a row of jagged steel teeth protruded from the other.

"All right." His voice was the cry of the earthquake, the deep echo of the mountain hollows. "I knew someone would find me eventually, so let's get this done with. I have cows to milk. You want to tell me what horrible atrocities you're here to avenge, or should we forgo the formalities and just start ruining each other's outfits?"

"Yep, he's definitely been with your father," Kaleb whispered to Mellorin. Then, more loudly, as Jassion began to slide Talon from over his shoulder, "No! Damn it, no steel!" Then, louder, "Davro, we're not here to hurt you."

"Good," the ogre said, his advance never slowing. "Because I'm pretty certain you won't."

"Look," Kaleb continued, backing slowly away, "we just want to talk to you. Just talk!"

"He's not buying it, Kaleb," Jassion growled.

"He's also no good to us dead," the sorcerer reminded him. "My name is Kaleb," he shouted.

"Never heard of you."

"This is Jassion, Baron of Braetlyn."

That, finally, got a reaction. The ogre halted, nostrils flaring. "You, I've heard a great deal about." He cocked his arm, ready to throw, and Jassion tensed to spring aside.

Mellorin stepped forward, shrugging off Kaleb's hand as he reached to stop her, ignoring his hiss of warning.

"My name," she said, holding sword and dagger out to her sides rather than before her, "is Mellorin Rebaine."

And the ogre finally froze-more out of shock, Kaleb surmised, than anything else.

"Mellorin Rebaine?" Perhaps uncertain he'd heard properly, Davro tilted his head, his horn and his shadow making him look very much like a bewildered sundial.

"Yes. I know you've no reason to love my father-"

The ogre unleashed a peculiar barking cough, and the others could only wonder in confusion. It wasn't until he wiped away a tear with the back of his sword-hand that they realized he'd been laughing.

"I see that you've inherited a certain gift for understatement," he said finally.

She nodded. "Among other things. But that's actually why we're here, Davro. Help us, and you might find some measure of retribution."

Davro's brow furrowed, making the great horn quiver. "Perhaps," he said, planting the butt of the spear in the soil beside him, "you'd better come in after all.

"But please use the scraper by the door, would you? I just swept the damn place." "I take it you're no great admirer of your father, then?"

Mellorin sat on the edge of a lumpy mattress that was apparently stuffed with untanned hides and untreated furs, and tried hard to breathe as little as possible. Kaleb perched beside her, offering no sign of his own discomfort save for the occasional flaring of his nostrils, while Jassion stood apart and made no attempt at all to keep the revulsion off his face. Davro himself squatted atop a broad stump that apparently served him as a stool. This close, and undistracted by the rigors of battle, Mellorin noted that each of his hands boasted only four thick fingers, and the deep red of his skin-which she'd previously attributed to sunburn, both on him and the ogre in the swamp-was his normal shade.

Recognizing belatedly that she'd been addressed, she blinked and focused on Davro's face, trying not to gawk at the solitary eye, the towering horn, or the protruding lower tusks. "I, ah, actually know surprisingly few details of my father's life," she admitted. "I didn't even know who he really was until a few years ago, and my mother still thinks me ignorant." Or she did before I ran off with Kaleb and my uncle. "But no, I'm not happy at all with what I do know. Corvis Rebaine was not a good man."

"Again with the understatement," Davro rumbled, accompanied by another bestial chuckle. "So what is this, then? Are you out on a great crusade of justice, to make right your father's wrongs?" The disdain was palpable, thick enough to paint with.

Kaleb frowned. "I'm not certain that her motivations are germane to-"

"No," Mellorin interrupted. "That is, if I can make up for some of what he did, I'll certainly take the opportunity. But it's not why I'm here. I want," she elaborated without waiting to be asked, "to find out how he could do what he did… why he abandoned his family to pick up where he left off after so many years."

"He wanted to protect you from Audriss," Davro protested, even as his expression twisted in what could only be stunned disbelief that he was defending the man.

"Originally, maybe. But he didn't stop there."

"Of course he didn't." The ogre shook his head. "I should have known. You can't believe anything that bastard says. If he told me the sun would rise tomorrow, I'd stock up on torches."

"Right. I want to ask him why."

"I see." The ogre chewed the inside of his lip. Then, "And if you pull the other one, my horn lights up like a firefly."

"What-?" Mellorin sounded almost shocked, and Jassion was scowling darkly, but Kaleb's lips curled into a shallow, knowing smile.

"The thing about your father," Davro said, "is that he had a motive for everything, be it ulterior or just-uh, 'terior,' I suppose. And I don't believe for a second that your apple, however cute and tiny, fell that far from his ugly, ornery tree. Curiosity can make a person do a lot of things, but give up the only life they know? Uh-uh. You don't have a question, Little Rebaine, you have a goal."

And for the first time in Kaleb's experience, he saw the girl's expression twist-not in fury, not in sorrow, but in hatred. "My father," she repeated, "was not a good man. He was a monster. Those lives he didn't destroy…" A single tear threatened to spill from her eye, then evaporated in the searing heat of her emotion. "… he turned into lies. And he never paid for any of it."

"He lost his family," Kaleb pointed out. "He lost you."

"Another crime, Kaleb. Not a punishment."

"All of which is utterly immaterial," Jassion growled, unable to swallow his rising impatience-and, just perhaps, taken aback by the fervor of his niece's hate. Mellorin leaned back, breathing heavily, and allowed the interruption to go unchallenged. "We need your help finding him. Nothing else matters."

"I have no loyalty to Rebaine," Davro said thoughtfully. "And precious little affection for him."

"Then-"

"But I also don't need trouble from the likes of him again, and he knows where I live. I like my solitude; you might've picked up on that. I'm not convinced it's in my best interests to get involved."

"Is that so?" The baron took a single pugnacious step. "Then perhaps, ogre, you might consider what sorts of attention we can call down on your valley! You'd never be left alone again, if you-"

"No!" Kaleb shot to his feet, grasping Jassion's shoulders and spinning him around. "You might try not talking for a change, old boy. You clearly need the practice."

"What the hell do you think you're-"

"How do you think Rebaine got his help in the first place, you idiot?" he hissed, casting a glance at Davro's rapidly reddening face. Then, to the ogre, "My apologies, Davro. My companion spoke without thinking. We would not, of course, attempt to force your cooperation."