Of Gods and Warriors ✓

Chapter 15

The shelf beside her bunk bed where the package had once been, was empty.

Farren uttered a wail and was about to fall to her knees and collapse, the day's pent up misery ready to escape into a proper hair-gripping, fists-pounding bout of sobbing. Good thing too, because there was no one except them in the dormitory at this hour.

But that dramatic descent into despair was stopped abruptly by Klo, who yanked her back to her feet with one firm hand.

"But--"

"You knocked the things off the shelf, remember? When you lit a candle and it nearly set the bed on fire that night," said Klo, always the level-headed one, "now look in the gap between the bed and the wall, will you?"

"Oh," said Farren, and felt like a fool. Then she shook herself. "Oh, I was just going to do that."

She levelled Farren with a smug look, then a nod. "Of course you were."

Farren crawled underneath the bed, mostly to hide her embarrassment. She wedged one hand into the narrow gap between the wall and the bed.

An assortment of her possessions-- a coin purse, an empty inkwell, a spare Quarleen mask wrapped in paper and a revolting amount of dust and cobwebs came into reach. Then finally she retrieved a rectangular object from the mess and emerged from under the bunk bed.

When on its front, it was hardly differentiable from the package Farren had received from her brother that day, but as she turned it over, the small seal in one corner came into view.

'Rodormann' it read, the letters in a circle around a dagger.

This was when Linder rushed in through the doors of the dormitory, Rendarr and Corporal Gray in tow.

"Who screamed?" asked Linder, looking worried and rather confused.

"That'd be me." Farren sat cross-legged on the floor, the parcel in her lap. "Here, this is the package we told you about."

Linder's frown only deepened, and Rendarr beside him did a passable imitation.

"How come you have it?" Linder glanced at Klo, "I was under the impression the package got destroyed with the commander's office, Sergeant Wolturs."

Gray gave Farren a narrow-eyed stare. "I'm pretty sure you have a hand in this."

"This may surprise you," said Farren, "but I did not steal it."

She gestured to the burnt remains of the box of cookies from Finnian on one side. "This explains everything."

To Linder and Gray, without context, an incinerated box of cookies sadly did not explain anything. And the next moment, everyone was talking over everyone.

"Shut up, all of you!"

Everyone looked at Klo, who pinched the bridge of her nose tiredly, brows crinkled. With the commander's sudden death, the camp had fallen into disarray, and both Lieutenant Evander and Second Lieutenant Audryn had leaned upon Klo for keeping things in order.

"Ah, forgive my outburst," she sighed.

"It's quite alright," said Linder, who looked equally as tired, "I understand the pressure you must be under."

She thanked him, then turned to the others. "Let me clear things up."

After she explained and cleared up the confusion with the two similar packages, the chaos resolved, however grudgingly, as Corporal Gray seemed set upon proving Farren a thief, and Linder, surprisingly, defended her. At last, they gathered around the package on the floor.