The Song of Loss

Chapter Eleven - Just Rewards

Sunlight burned through the large glass windows lining the back of the town hall. It wasn't hard to imagine that the accused would make themselves look guilty while trying to avoid looking at the light and in turn looking as if they were avoiding the council's eyes. Guilty or not they'd look suspicious.

The light stung Darcy's eyes and she was glad of Percy's limited healing magic. That morning she'd awoken with the fading traces of a horrific headache. He'd been hovering over Darcy with her head in his lap. One of his hands moved gently across her forehead and into her hair while he whispered quiet words. A smile stretched across his face when he noticed her eyes were open.

"About time, dear bard," he said with a sigh. His hand fell from her head so he could help her sit up. Dark half circles lined his face beneath his eyes.

They'd brought Darcy back to the room at the inn while the guards rounded up the people in the underground hideout. The others were nowhere in sight, aside from Kasi curled up on the couch across the room. The boy looked just as worn out as Darcy felt. He had her flute clutched in one hand as if his life depended on it.

It wasn't until midday that Darcy was able to piece together the entire chain of events from the moment she'd been grabbed from the alley to when she'd woken up that morning. The flute had been found only a few feet away from where she'd last been, in one piece but useless for what they'd originally needed it for. In the original plan, the group was meant to find her only a few hours after her capture. The loss of the focus object for their tracking spell meant they didn't find her until nearly the next night.

Realizing she'd lost an entire day thanks to whatever the cultists had done to her made Darcy's skin crawl. They could have easily done away with her while she was sleeping and she really would have been lost. It was only because of Kasi that she'd been found at all. He'd managed to use the flute and reverse engineer the spell she'd used on him when they first met, with some help from Reyner and Percy.

Now, dressed in her normal clothes with the flute tucked safely into a hidden pocket in her sleeve Percy had sewn in for her, she was able to stand comfortably in the sunlight. Her feet still stung like hell from the uneven stone ground she'd been dragged across. That pain was negligible as long as she stood with most of her weight on the balls of her feet.

The mayor and the city council watched their small group from their long table set up in front of the windows. None of them really caught Darcy's eyes, she'd have passed them all in the street without much of a backwards glance. It must be part of the job description so that visitors wouldn't know who to behave in front of. How easy it must be to catch someone committing a crime when they don't think you can do anything about it.

The mayor cleared his throat, taking a break from his rant about taking risks and commendable bravery. "Let's just bring out the prisoners to confirm they're who you saw and we'll move on to the matter of your reward."

To Darcy's left, Krea shifted, sighing under her breath. The woman had tried to interrupt a few times throughout the speech to bring up their reward. Each time it had resulted in the mayor restarting his sentence and giving her a withering look. After a nudge from Cedric she'd stopped, muttering to Darcy instead.

The two of them had patched things up over the unpatchable dress. Oddly, Darcy had been worried how Krea would react to the loss of her things. The answer had been a small tantrum followed by a somewhat affectionate pat on the back. That, and a promise to take the losses out of Darcy's share of the earnings.

A guard stepped out from a side door and waved forward a line of chained prisoners. The group looked to Darcy to confirm they were each part of the cultists as she'd been the one to see them in the most detail.