After so boldly storming into the garrison, my pupil’s next trick was to escape from it with the armor. Unfortunately, there was nothing so convenient as a hidden passage to the sewers to allow him to slip out. I would know, I had checked for just such a thing. I even considered making one, but forced architecture was never my specialty.

He dared not don the armor just yet, or the grand ruse may have been for naught. Contrary to popular belief, fitted armor doesn’t make much noise when moving, but the commander’s armor was fitted to a man much thicker through the waist than my student. With all the steel packed up and bundled with the gambeson, all together slung over his shoulder, he had to escape back into the depths of Puerto Faro.

“Where are you going?” Aisha demanded as he was checking the weight and jumping around. He had to stop and re-pack before he was satisfied.

“Dunno, out. I have to stop at the temple and I’ll figure it out from there. The real Lucius just marched off to his death. I’ll have to blend in with the routed forces after he gets killed,” he said. Once he had it back on his shoulders he turned to face the girl. “You should probably stay at the temple. Neither side is going to mess with the faith. It will be safe.”

She hung her head and twisted her foot. The room had once belonged to her father, but in the dead of night, alone with a man she barely knew and surrounded by violence, nothing about it comforted her. “I guess you’re right. Will you help me get there?”

“I can do that. Just… you realize you can’t tell your brother about me, right? It doesn’t really matter. As long as the soldiers follow me, whether I am or am not the real Lucius will stop mattering. But I don’t want to regret helping you,” he said. His voice was calm and consoling, intimate as a whisper, and yet he put his hand on the pommel of his stolen blade.

“You’re not going to kill him, are you?”

“If he lets us flee, then no. If he chases us. What choice will I have?”

She couldn’t answer that question. She knew what her brother had sparked, even if he hadn’t been the one to lay the groundwork. Months of occupation by foreigners had simmered hatred within the people of Puerto Faro. They had been ruled over by incompetents and bastards, forced to bow heads to conscripts. But it was still her brother who had started the fighting. “I won’t say anything. If you escape, it won’t matter.”

She followed behind him after that, and the two made their way up to the roof. There had been a garden protected from the salty wind by some cloth, but the new owner hadn’t bothered to tend it. The plants were withered brown, and the curtains blown off. Aisha lingered next to it as Lucius crept over to the edge. The Voluntaries were speaking still, but this time to the sound of arming up. Belts were tightening, boots stamping, and the lights from top to bottom were going out. The lietunants of the voluntaries had come to some decision, though they had yet to voice it to the men. Announcing a retreat without the commander would be desertion of duty.

“Come on. While we still can,” he said, and took a leap off the back. The palisade surrounding the garrison was only so high, much shorter than the building. He was able to land on the roof of the adjacent house with ease, rolling across the dirt-strewn roof and getting his footing.

“Are you insane?” Aisha demanded, staring across the alley gap to him. Lucius held out his hands to catch her and waited. Eventually, she bundled up the hem of her dress in her hands and took the leap. She landed in his arms gracefully, though he was never able to say as much. Lucius in fact preferred to not mention at all what landed in his arms that night.

The two of them stole off into the city. The men roaming the streets weren’t out for Canta’s vendetta. At worst they were opportunists that shied away at the sight of his blade. Those that would have fought had all assembled at the Medini family estado. A great many cries of pain haunted the city, chasing after their ears as they ducked heads and ran.

The Temple of Last Respite was a glorious thing, and overburdened by iconography. Generations of merchants and pilgrims had poured their money into it as offerings, each eager to add their own statue or mural or other depiction of devotion. The priests never bothered to tell them that the Shepherd doesn’t deal in indulgences the way other deities do. The artists weren’t ones to complain either. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with what those guilty merchants did with their blood money. Their slaves might have had other opinions, but memoirs of slaves are few and far between. I myself made such a donation, though no one is ever impressed by the statue. It is by far the most accurate depiction of her however.

“You must be Tolzi’s friend,” the priest said as he lofted a lantern over his head and shined it at Lucius and Aisha.

“Is Leomund already here?” Lucius asked. The words transformed the priest for anxiety to relief, and he let the two of them in. “As I said, you should stay here for refuge. They won’t turn you away,” he told Aisha, and got a nod from the priest who seemed to understand the situation. Lucius proceeded to the back of the temple, past the pews and past the prayer corners, he left the main hall and stepped into one of the contemplation chambers.

Leomund Tolzi waited for him there. The elder of the Tolzi brothers, he was one of my most useful assets in those days, and had been Lucius’ primary sparring partner for over a year. The enormous deserter from the north was far better than him with a blade, and with spears and bows, and just about everything else, but hadn’t won a spar with my undying pupil in months. It would have been a problem for the scheme if he thought himself better than Lucius. “How did the thieving go?”

“Well enough. How did the cleanup go?”

“Well enough. Solhart got his men slaughtered at the Medini family place. Marched them right into the bazaar and got more arrows stuck in them than a porcupine. The little rat managed to escape, but we took his head off and took care of the body. Even better than planned; people know he escaped the ambush,” Leomund said with a grin that could have cowed a lion. “But, they didn’t see him die.”

“The rebels will move on the garrison soon. Do they stand a chance.”

“A chance, yeah. I wouldn’t bet on them though.”

“Right then,” Lucius said with a nod, and set the bag of armor down. He tugged it open. “Time to be the hero. Just… do me a favor and make sure that girl doesn’t get into trouble, yeah? She helped me sneak in. She knows.”

Leomund leaned back, the candlelight shadows shifting and darkening across his face. “Should I kill her?”

“No, there’s no need. She’s good-hearted, unlike everyone else in this city,” Lucius said as he stared into the eye sockets of the commander’s helmet. Leomund nodded, and let Lucius don the armor beneath the solemn gaze of the Shepherd.(1)

This was a useful atmosphere for preparing Lucius. A temple to the sun might have riled him up, might have spurred his immature heart to an imprudent action. Puerto Faro was already lost to the Vassish, they just didn’t know it yet. Courage is hardly necessary for a retreat.

Once he had the commander’s armor on, he looked like a different man; he looked like he should be in charge. The dyed mane atop his helm added several inches of supposed height, and the segmented pauldrons broadened his shoulders beyond his years. After what adjustments could be done; he wore it even better than the real Lucius von Solhart.

He paid his thanks to the priest, and bid farewell to Leomund and Aisha. Using a side exit to an alley, lest someone think the temple had provided him aid, Lucius ran back into the dark streets of Puerto Faro. The city was lit by fire, though it wasn’t on fire. The hardpacked dirt and plaster buildings were plenty resilient to a toppled lantern or a careless torch, but those twinkling blazes forced their color upon the city all the same.

Lucius didn’t go directly to the garrison, putting himself on the wrong side of a mob would have accomplished nothing. He headed to where the soldiers would have to flee; he headed to the harbor. The Vassish were not a desert people, not one of them would want to run into the sandy darkness to find safety. They had come to Puerto Faro by ship, and they would flee by ship.

Getting stopped by two drunk Cynizia was an obstacle he had no patience for. They saw him, the armor he wore, and knew well enough what they were looking at. Perhaps they had been but mere pretenders, grown boys who wanted to have a bit of an adventure and say they had been part of the Canta Vendetta. Lucius found them without any blood on them, and left them dead in the street without having raised an alarm.

(1) The Shepherd is by far the least odious of the divines. Her domain is explicitly the cycle of rebirth, of sowing souls back into the mortal realm. She has no audacious festivals in her name, and asks very little of those that would call her their goddess. The very nature of her faith is a contemplative one, for those concerned their affairs will end and what they will leave behind. Some of the more barbarous tribes of the world view her as a judge, as the final gaze of justice to sort the righteous from the sinners. Giordanans see her only as what awaits a traveller through the desert; a cool and gentle peace and an end to the struggle.