Peter sat up a little straighter, a shrewd expression on his face. “Does Lynette know what you can do?” he asked Koradan. It was an oddly cryptic question, and Lynette tried to figure out what he could mean. The obvious answer was that he was asking if she knew Koradan could disguise himself as a human, but she saw no reason whatsoever that Peter would know about the magical gem.
“She does,” Koradan replied, and Lynette frowned at him quizzically.
“What about Best?” Peter asked.
“No, he doesn’t,” Koradan said.
“And do you want him to?”
Koradan glanced from Peter, to Best, and back to Lynette. “You know the thing I showed you last night?” Koradan said, subtly fiddling with the cord of the necklace. “Peter knows about it.”
Well, that both confirmed Lynette’s suspicions and explained the clandestine questions. But it didn’t explain how Peter knew in the first place.
“It was a long and complicated series of events, a long time ago,” Peter said, in answer to the unspoken question. “But what about Best?”
“And the rest of the village, for that matter?” Lynette said.
“What are you all talking about?” Paul asked, looking from one of them to the other, completely baffled.
“I’m perfectly happy to tell Paul,” Koradan said, but Rodgard interrupted him before he could get any further.
“Seriously? You want to tell the entire village?”
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?” Koradan said. “We came here by accident, but even so, we’re looking for a foothold in the human world. A place we can call home. But we can’t just set up shop in the middle of a human village. Not like this. Even if the people here accept us, once word got out to the surrounding villages, we’d have a riot on our hands. Or worse, someone could leak the news all the way back to Minia, and then we’ve got an army of warriors knocking at our door. So if we want to live with humans…” He left the rest of the idea unsaid, but the implication was clear; to live with humans, they would have to look like humans.
“I’d just like to remind you all that I’m waiting extremely patiently to find out what on earth you’re talking about,” Best said, sounding surprisingly genial for someone who was being left out of a large part of the conversation. “But I’m not all that surprised that you’re leaving me out of it. I’ve had my share of suspicions about the salases and I haven’t hidden them. But for what it’s worth, my doubts aren’t based on the fact that you’re from Chalandros. It’s more a natural caution about whether you’ll pitch in because you care about this community, or just do the bits that serve yourselves. I’d have the same doubts about any human I met. But to even consider walking into Minia with a big damn target on your backs, that pretty much puts my doubts to rest. But I interrupted. Please, continue,” he said, waving for the conversation to resume.
“I think there are a few questions that need answering before we start considering this issue any further,” Lynette said, feeling oddly protective of Koradan and his men. If they let the secret slip to the wrong people, it could put not just the salases, but ‘demons’ all over the world in grave danger. “First, we need to ask Markon if he wants to go, and talk to the vreki. If either of them refuse, the whole idea is dead in the water.”
“There’s another question that goes alongside that,” Rodgard said. He’d been reasonably quiet for most of the conversation and far less argumentative than Lynette had expected. “Whichever of us goes, we’re going to need a human to come with us. We don’t know where the city is, and we certainly don’t know how to find the hospital once we arrive. So one of you is going to have to come along to point the way.”
“I’ll go,” Paul said, at the same time as Lynette said, “It’ll have to be me.”
“I can go,” Paul repeated. “I’ve ridden on a vreki before, and Mum took me to visit Minia when I was ten. I remember it really clearly. I can find the hospital-”
“No,” Lynette said, sure of her refusal this time. “I need to be the one to go.”
“Why?” Paul asked, a stubborn set to his jaw.
“Because I’m a nurse. And Markon is going to need a lot of care to see that he makes it there safely. And because someone is going to have to go to the hospital and convince the staff to follow them out into the forest to collect a badly injured patient. They know me. Some of them do, at least, from when I worked there ten years ago. So I have a better chance of convincing them to help. And because they know me, they’re more likely to take the request for help seriously and less likely to think I’ve simply been brainwashed by a dragon.”
“I’m going to agree with your mother on this one,” Koradan said. “Anyone who goes is risking their lives on the chance that the people in the city will believe that riding a vreki equates to consorting with demons. If things go badly, we’ll need to cut and run on very short notice. I don’t want you caught up in that.”
Paul sighed, but relented. “Okay, fine. Maybe not this time. But if this goes really well, you could create a service. Like a flying carriage service to carry people from villages all over the place to the city, and anyone who was injured could go to the hospital, and then people all over the region would see that vreki aren’t evil and-”
“Whoa, slow down a damn minute,” Lynette interrupted him. “We haven’t even asked Markon if he wants to go yet. Or asked the vreki if they’re willing to take him. So don’t go making plans for the next decade or two.”
“Sorry,” Paul said, sounding sheepish. “It’s just… I really hope it works.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” Koradan said. “But one step at a time.”
“I have a suggestion,” Peter said. “One which might help you decide how honest you want to be with the rest of the village. Part of your original agreement with us was that you would leave and never return after you’d finished helping rescue our men. It was a part of the deal that I was never entirely happy about, but it seemed a hard ask to argue about it at the time. And asking you to fly Markon to Minia is well and truly outside the bounds of that original agreement. So this would give you an opportunity to ask the village to change their minds on that part of the deal. If you take Markon to Minia, would the village allow you to settle here long term? Would they be willing to welcome you as one of their own?”
“If nothing else, it would give us a real indication of public sentiment,” Rodgard said.
But Koradan shook his head. “There would be too much riding on the answer. Some people would be compelled to say yes just because they care about Markon, and then we risk them betraying us later. But a slightly better way might be to say that we’ll take Markon anyway, but ask for clemency as a simple gesture of goodwill. Which finds out whether people will change their minds not because they’re being forced to, but because they genuinely believe we’re good for the village.”
“And if the answer is yes, you might consider telling them the rest of the story,” Peter said, his eyes gleaming in anticipation.
