Donaven told Kiao to stay back. He wasn’t specific on how back she needed to stay. She wanted to see what was going on, so she followed him downstair. The huntresses had all moved from the table to the hall. Briar and Laurel stood at either side of Soletus’s room. Helene, Eione, and Xylia all tucked themselves into Soletus’ room.

“How many is out there,” asked Donaven, pausing.

“Six,” whispered Lobelia. She stopped at the table with the doorway being guarded by the eldest who held the door cracked with his foot against it.

The warden leaned over and grabbed a frying pan hanging on the wall. He took his spectacles off and gave them to Lobelia. He marched over and motioned for the older tod to step aside. Kiao expected him to keep the door shut, instead he opened it wide with the hand holding the pan kept to his side. Five tall men stood behind the elder. They were impressive looking for just farmers. Taller and broader than Donaven. They knew that and straightened their spines when they saw him looking surprised. Their gazes shifted past him and rested on Kiao.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said, sounding overly pleasant.

The elder elf spoke in a tight voice. “I’m not here to play games. Give her to me.”

“Inappropriate! You’re an elder. Use your words. Try again from the beginning. Let’s start with your greeting. Talk to me as you would a family member with all the warmth in the world.”

The elder got red in the face. “I have no time to stand for that flippant attitude of yours. Move aside.”

“Here’s an amazing thing, you don’t have to. You can leave.”

“You are here to serve us! We are the people,” he spat. Kiao watched one of them the men push forward. “Now let the people have their justice for what that priestess did.”

“So rude,” said Donaven, holding his ground. “Personally, if my home was destroyed, I would reflect and be thankful that I made it with my life. That there is more for me to do in this world. Lean on my faith, come together as a town, help each. Not grasp for the ridiculous for a happening. That’s just me of course.”

The elder sneered. “You pompous bastard! Move!”

The door was forced open further and two of the men stepped inside, only for one of them to meet a frying pan in the face. The other met Donaven's foot in the diaphragm. Donaven rammed the first one who was struck in the face back and pushed them all out the door except for the elder who tried to sneak in. Briar pushed past Kiao and, with Lobelia’s oldest son, took him by the upper arms and dragged him back out. Kiao come running forward in case someone got hurt. She didn’t know if Donaven could handle them. When she came to the door, she saw a fight that would’ve left many a monk proud. His reflexes saved him from a fist to the face. His thin frame left him light on his feet, making him agile, moving and dodging out of their way and kicking them in the ribs. He was no Soletus and certainly not Oeric in terms of strength, but he had brains in using the frying pan as a shield, a blunt object, and a tool to scoop dirt from the ground and fling it into the eyes of one of them men. When he was done, they were all in various stages of being unable to fight. He was still standing with Briar and the tod who pushed the elder towards the men around him.

“Now,” stated Donaven, spinning the frying pan in his hand. “Come back when you learn some manners and use your words.” The warden gestured for everyone to go back inside. He shut the door and went to the table and dropped into a seat.

Lobelia swayed her head and put her hands on her hips. “Done showing off Donnie?”

“I’m never done that,” he said, winking at her. “I wonder if I can talk the order into making combat frying pans. Dias only said not to use pointy objects made from iron. This is blunt.”

Kiao then stood at his side. “I’m so sorry about this. I didn’t think they would follow. I should’ve convinced them not to do this.”

“Convinced them how? Listen, Sister, if people don’t have sense to hear sense, no amount of convincing is going to help them understand. Sometimes they can be shown with a frying pan. Now, a full escort sounds completely necessary.” He stood up. “I’m going to send a few messages,” he said as he walked toward the hall, then stopped in mid-step. He took a step back and Soletus stepped out.

His brow was knitted together. “Laurel told me there was fighting.”

Donaven looked up at Soletus. “Wow. The last time you were this feathery headed little lad barely to my waist. I don’t think Oeric is as tall as you.”

Soletus studied Donaven for a long moment and then smiled. “Oh, you’re one of Edithlyn’s son.”

Kiao pictured the wisewoman and the kanu in front of her side-by-side. Even though they both were Kanu and had brown skin, they looked nothing alike. Eithdlyn did mention her sons occasionally. They were rowdy and like to fight a lot. They also didn’t live in town, but she had said that one of them was a warden in passing. She wasn’t certain about the other.

“Well, I’m not her great son. I wonder around too much for her liking. A bit like the kettle calling the pot black. When I met her, she was still offering her services on the road.”

Briar stood over to the side with her brow raised. “So, you know who I am?”

“Of course, Lady Briar. Though to be fair, you look like the Patriarch more than Maelyra,” he said.

“I can’t say I remember you,” said Briar, sounding suspicious. “In fact, you don’t look like Edithlyn. Like at all.”

“I’m adopted. I found myself very alone at an older young age and was terrible at fending for myself. I found a prickly kanu woman wanting to become the best wisewoman around for survival. Don’t tell her I called her prickly. Anyway, I can tell you the tale later. In fact, I will tell them at dinner, for now, I need to send some communications for assistance.”

With that, Donaven left and Lobelia shaking her head. “I’m sorry. He’ll likely tell his life story, keeping you up late listening to it.”

Briar still looked perturbed. “I think I remember him. Though, I remember him being ill for a long time. He was there at the society house for about a year.”

“His hand,” asked Kiao.

“No, that happened, I guess later on. I just remember him with some sort of condition,” said Briar, glancing at Kiao.

Lobelia then said loudly and pointed to Soletus. “Why are you still standing? You need to lie back down. You still look exhausted.”

He looked very alert and Kiao doubt he would lie down. However, he gave Briar a long look which likely met he wanted her to explain to him what happened, and he vanished down the hall. Briar then came to Kiao and whispered to her. “When you get back, I want you to look at his good hand and tell me what you see.”

Kiao was occupied with helping Lobelia fix dinner after that. By the time Donaven came back down, he immediately came back, this time more appropriately armed with some kind of one-handed hooked fighting cane over his shoulder with a bow and quiver.

“I’ll be back,” was all he said. And returned right as dinner was being served. And it was then that Kiao caught what Briar told her and it made her curl her own hands. His middle and index were the same length.

There were only two things that could mean. A female elf with her own condition or an androgynous elf. Two separate conditions that shared a single trait. As Kiao believed that her body was confused. Something was causing it to be something that it wasn’t because of some sort of imbalance in her make-up. Neither she nor Brother Oli couldn’t find a cure, but small treatments that managed it. Androgynous elves were a physical different, and it wasn’t something one could always tell by appearance.

She assumed that was what he was. It wasn’t her business whether the order realized it or not. Because the other thing that hand suggest was unlikely. She doubted he was like her. A female disguised, taking advantage of her oddity. She couldn't imagine another like her getting away with it even longer. She got away with it because she was a chanter, and they were automatically made priests. Donaven was a monk. There was just too much physical contact when training. He would have had to live in the dorms. She got away with because she didn’t have to. Had basically her own private place. And people to help shield her. From his stories, he joined the Brotherhood a lot older than her. He was in his 30's when he joined and entered as a priest, then changed to being a monk.

The brotherhood didn’t have a physical examination when joining. You just needed the desire to join and the training would make it better. Only certain elves had to have a physical annually. The only way for him to be able to do it was being very careful and never seen without clothing. Impossible in the boy’s dorm. Modesty, while preferred, that wasn’t what you were going to get all the time, especially when the bath was open.

Then again, she speculated to herself that maybe he didn’t live in the dorms. It wasn’t a requirement when you lived in town. Soletus and Lyndon choose too, as they wanted the freedom and fit in with everyone else. Donaven could have very well trained and walked back to where Edithlyn lived. Or better, Kiao was over-thinking and was getting too excited about something that was likely not to be true.

When dinner was over, Donaven left them to go to the tower, and Kiao and the huntresses hunted for rooms to stay in. Kiao checked in on Soletus one last time for the evening. He surprisingly ate. In fact, he gobbled down a great deal of food. A sign that he was likely going to do too much the next day, only to exhaust himself. When she went in then, he was lying on his back, a little restless, but not so much that it kept him at a light sleep. However, something caught Kiao’s eye through the crack in the curtains of the window. A light flickering below in the distance.

She backed up and shut the door to Soletus’s room and headed to the tower. She summoned her cluster of star light and went up in the gloom. Donaven wasn’t in the aviary. It was quiet in there with only sleepy bird noises. She did see that the stairs continued to a ladder. Cool air flowing down from it and scaled it. The hatch door open and when she peered above the platform there, she saw Donnie sitting in a beam of moonlight looking outward.

“You see the light,” he whispered to her.

“Yes, through Soletus’s window.”

“It’s a campfire. Not that many men, but they are there. They should be back at their town, taking care of what they have left,” he said with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

“Again, I’m sorry for this.”

“I don’t understand why you keep apologizing. Missions go sideways. There are unwise people in this world who don’t know when to stop. Accept you can’t control them.”

“I get that, but I’m a priestess and a chanter. Part of my duty is to help spread Dias’s voice,” she said, frustrated with herself. It felt like years ago with Espen’s family all over again. “This was the opportunity to do so. To provide them peace and guidance. I thought maybe I had grown enough to do so.”

He then told her gently. “And I understand that. But even Lenneth with her voice came across those with clay stuck in their ears.”

“True, but I don’t like that I had to run.”

“Lenneth ran too,” he reminded her. “In fact, she had Stephren there at one point with her. They both couldn’t do something about some towns. And like them, they aren’t yours to deal with.”

Kiao pulled herself up and sat on the edge of the hatchway. “And I run that trouble right to you. That’s unfair.”

“For me or for them,” he asked with a smile in his voice.

Kiao laughed lightly. She couldn’t help it at the man in front of her. “That’s some confidence there.”

“You have to be confident being a former spy and scout.”

“Why would the order have a spy,” she said confused. He didn't mention it at dinner.

“It was on the Brotherhood's greatest acts of underhanded tactics. Not something Solgard wants to talk about. But it had to be done. The province became overwhelmed with raiders. More so than the past. They were pushed here by the Seat and thought an order full of pacifists would just let them terrorize towns. The misinterpret that whole thing of us not liking killing and war just a tad. They were certain their might meant something. Might without skill, without good stable leadership is always going to crumble to an organized force. I helped tear them apart from the inside out.”

“I see.”

“So, I’m experienced when dealing with bullies. Hawke is nothing more than a poorly throughout tantrum. Because of that, Sister, rest. Leave them to me.”

Kiao wasn’t sleepy. She was concerned. “You should sleep as well.”

“I would be a poor scout if I did,” he stated. “But before you go…” he paused. She couldn’t see his face completely, but she could hear his breath catch as if wanting to say something, but stopped himself.

“Is there something else?”

He exhaled. “I…wanted to ask you something. Mostly, why the order has let you stay and not ousted you?”

“The Patriarch and the fact I’m a strong healer. They can’t afford not to have me in the order. In fact, they didn’t want me to go on this tour of sorts because I'm needed home. Brother Jaron, the chanter in charge of the infirmary now, wanted me to have the experience. So off I went.”

“Jaron,” said Donaven, sounding shocked. “He’s, there? That wondering wolf settled down back in town?”

“To be fair, his home was destroyed by giants. So, he came back here with his wife.”

“Oh,” said Donaven. “Married as well. I feel a little behind in that aspect of life. Then again, there is little point in me getting married. I guess you feel that way at times.”

Kiao was surprised by that transition. Not enough for her not to answer. “I see you figured some things out. I actually have someone,” said Kiao softly. "We just happened. I guess you and Lobelia aren’t anything.”

“Hardly. Lobelia tolerates me. I gave her a home when she was struggling to find one. She comes from a rough background, but that's her story to tell,” he said then paused a long moment and he let out a nervous chuckle. “I never imagined this being so hard. I don’t like revealing myself often.”

Kiao would’ve paid coin to see his face. She could only see him holding his head down long enough.

“I take it you’re not male,” helped Kiao.

“My birth mother named me Kiera. No fault of hers. She wanted a daughter and with me, she got to choose. Not quite how that works because I made for a terrible Kiera. I was always with the boys. And it turns out, I’m exactly a boy either.”

Kiao wasn’t disappointed at hearing that. It made sense.

“It is the reason I became the orders spy. I’m naturally gifted for disguise,” he told her. “I was wondering if you were the same because I rarely ever meet anyone like me.”

“No,” said Kiao. “I’ve a condition. It’s caused issues with my appearance and some other problematic things.”

She felt a little odd about their rather open conversation. Then again, he was about the same age as Nimbus. A mature adult with a lot of confidence and honesty it seemed.

“I see. Well, that is interesting. Anyway, you should be off to bed.”

“Donaven.”

“You can call me Donnie.”

“Did the order shove you out here? I mean, I get the impression from a close friend of mine that the order doesn't really like different."

“Oh no. This was my choice. I can ask Solgard for anything and he’ll let me have it. Call it payment for what I did to stop those raiders. It was dangerous for me, and he knew it. I disguised myself as a wisewoman and soothsayer, tending their wounds. Speaking of confusing futures. They were a superstitious lot. Every time I went to their hollow in the woods, I risked everything. And more the once I found myself threatened by a man. They come to realize that I had many knives hidden on my person, as well as an endless of supplies of toxins. A few were surprised by how strong I was.”

“And Edithlyn was okay with this?”

“Oh no, she hated it. She hated every moment of it. Tried to talk me out of it and then would thrust some vial in my hands that could incapacitate, cause bouts of the runs, or full body rashes. At one point, they thought they were hit with a plague. However, I did it for the order and I did it for this province. After I was done with that, I became a scout as I told. That's when my little accident happened. I know that I should be retired and doing something else. But I asked Solgard for a useful duty and he offered this. Now, young lady, off with you. I can tell more stories later. You might be here for a while.”

Kiao nodded. “Very, well. I’m off to bed.” She paused for a moment. “Thank you for telling me this. I know we aren’t the same, but it’s nice to know there are more oddities out there. You should talk to Soletus in detail about what you are. You might be able inspire him.”

“Oh. Well I can do that,” he told here. “Goodnight Sister Kiao.”

“Night,” she told him and left.