Veleria found Adrian sitting at a table in a space that one might consider as being between his front room and kitchen. He was organizing and signing some documents. Some of the scrolls were quite long. Beside his left hand was a dagger and some gold coins that had spilled out of a small coin purse. She took the seat opposite him.
“Do you run a business?” She asked curiously.
“Something like that.” He said.
She watched him roll up one of the signed scrolls, heat some wax, then stamp the overlap. The seal he used looked official, though she couldn’t place the origin.
“Does it hurt?” He asked her, raising his eyes.
“What?”
“That scar,” Adrian confirmed.
She realized then that her blouse was still open. She drew the strings close. It was a large one, this blouse, and she figured it was one of his.
“It doesn’t hurt,” she said with a shake of her head. “It is…Warm, though.”
“Strange.” Adrian mused.
Using the dagger, he slid some of the gold coins beside the stamped scroll. She counted four. Pricey thing that, whatever “that” was. She caught his eyes again.
“Where are we?”
It was more demanding a tone than she intended.
“Coast of Almor.” He said plainly.
She was momentarily taken aback by this. Now she had more questions than answers—namely, concerning this man.
“Where the hell did you find me?” She continued, placing one hand firmly on the table. Now the tone she used was entirely intentional.
“Mass grave near Dovetail.”
He answered more quickly than she expected. She cleared her throat.
“What were you doing all the way in Dovetail?” Then, she added, “at a mass grave, no less.”
“I have my reasons.” Once again, he spoke plainly. She meant to press him further, but Adrian stopped her short with a subtle wave of his hand. “Listen, you were on top of the pile. You were still breathing. Still had color. So, I took you back to Almor with me.”
“You live here?” This time she croaked.
“This is my home, yes.”
“Uhm,” she looked around for the second time, “by yourself?”
With an extraordinarily deft hand that caused her to recoil, Adrian flipped the dagger into the air and retrieved it with relative ease.
He said, “just me and a strange woman who I thought was no better than dead until today.”
Veleria slowly moved her hands to her lap and looked down at them. If his claims were true, then Adrian had found her with a scarred chest sitting on top of a corpse pile in the Dovetail region. That was not far from where she was caught.
“Did you drink that water?” He asked her.
Looking up at him, Veleria shook her head. She didn’t know why she wasn’t thirsty.
“You’ve been out for a while. No water, no food. Yet, you can walk and talk without issue. Do you agree that is strange?”
“Yes,” she replied quietly.
Adrian tapped the table with his dagger.
“You said someone stabbed you. Who was it?”
Veleria twiddled her thumbs under the table. There was a good reason to withhold this information from him, but at the same time she wondered if it mattered. Somehow, she had survived. Somehow, she was alive in Almor despite the fact that her killer would have had to drag her corpse all the way to Dovetail. She must have been dead.
Following a moment of silence that Adrian patiently allowed without even a single twitch of his finger, Veleria told him the truth.
“Vos’iin Ceras’beur,” she noted the subtle movement in his brow, “is one of many employed by a sorceress known as Alk’Hath. He was sent to kill me…for I had learned too much.”
“You mean to tell me that I’ve housed the enemy of a known mad woman?” Adrian set the dagger down and leaned back in his seat. “What do you mean you learned too much? Were you one of hers, or someone else’s?”
Now this is where she should have stopped. Letting him know who killed her was one thing, but divulging the name of her employer was going too far. At the same time, however, Veleria was certain that her demise had occurred a week prior. She was a dead woman talking. Did any of this even matter in regard to her current predicament?
So, she told him.
“The Autumn Council hired me to learn her motives.”
This time, Adrian took to his feet. He paced. He laughed a little. It was agonizing her. Veleria nearly rose herself, but Adrian drove his fist into a cabinet and she decided better.
“Absolutely mental,” Adrian muttered.
Veleria didn’t comment. Not after that display.
“I’ve managed to avoid involving myself in the affairs of that insane sorceress and that of the elves. But look at me now.” He continued, briefly glancing towards her before continuing to pace.
She coughed, “You don’t have to actually involve yourself…”
“Really?” Adrian countered, facing her now. She felt very small. “From my perspective, you need to return to the council. Tell them what you know.”
He was right, of course. That was her original intent, and exactly where she was headed before Vos’iin caught her. She also figured they had already written her off given her disappearance.
“That’s my problem, though.” She said. “Not yours. I could leave now. We never met.”
She would have made good on that, had Adrian not intervened. He immediately stopped his pacing and walked over to her, placing one hand on Veleria’s shoulder before she could rise from her seat.
“You mentioned that Vos’iin fellow doesn’t leave a job unfinished. What if he went back and saw you missing?” He asked.
Veleria hadn’t wanted to consider that possibility. She had seen him do it before—Not checking his work, per se, but reveling in the act. Whether he went back or not would only matter if the possibility of her getting up and walking away was feasible.
“I have no aptitude for magics,” she told Adrian. “If he returned and saw my body was missing, he would likely have assumed that someone took me. Not that I got up and walked away.”
“Still,” Adrian sighed. He removed his hand from her shoulder. “I can take you to the council. Give it some thought.”