Alexia just regarded Syvis with a mixture of fright and simmering disbelief, flinching when she patted her leg. Her face still stung with pain from where claws had dug in, her skull throbbed where it had been struck to render her unconscious and its accompanying headache pulsed like an intrusive, searing light just above her field of vision. She just wanted to be away from here, but she felt like if she stood then she would vomit up what little was in her stomach. Though she pointedly did not look at neither the party of four nor the Free Companiers riding up to the edge of the campsite island, Alexia did inevitably see someone among the approaching mercenaries. Someone dreadfully familiar. Onager. The dwarf who had shot and killed her mother. And her breath froze in her chest.
Captain Marghast asked his question. Got three answers. One of which he quite enjoyed. "Fined!" He had a genial laugh, rolling his head back and holding his stomach. "Fined, she says! Now that's something." Looks to his left and right, at his companions. "Isn't that something?"
Still smiling from that, he then glanced Elliot's way.
And Elliot said,
"She doesn't mean a thing to me."
Captain Marghast lightly pointed a finger at him. Bounced it twice for emphasis. "Right there, my friend. That's honesty. You've always been that way, haven't you Elliot? I'm much the same. Honest, as well as sharing your lack of care for the girl. I'm afraid I wouldn't shed a tear if she were to be flayed alive right here, right now, and soundly would I sleep come the night if I witnessed the whole bloody ceremony of that." A slight turn of his head. "Do you know what I do care about?"
"Let's hear some more of that honesty then."
"Happy to oblige. My men, Elliot, of whom you were once one. Free to come, free to go, and you chose to go. That is alright, and you still have my respect, even if we're on opposite sides this time. In deference to that respect I thought we could perhaps settle this account like gentlemen, and I'll say that it appears we can."
Marghast looked to Syvis. "You're just along for the adventure, and minute human problems mean nothing to you either, right?"
To
Ceridwen, "You're just avoiding some manner of fine."
To Dulthir, "And you've kept your own counsel."
Then to all four of them. "Hardly a spirited defense of the girl, is it? Why, if I were an outsider looking in and had to guess at this, I'd say you lot were simply here for the coin carried by these dead fellows--" He gestured to the bodies of the slain House June guardsmen, "--and these live ones." A similar gesture to Mathew and Orrem.
Captain Marghast spread his hands in an open, inviting way. "Surely we can come to terms, and both walk away with something. Could we fight? Yes, certainly. But I would rather not risk losing a few men when an easier alternative to battle is well enough in play."
Elliot, keenly aware of his wounds and those of the three with him, felt a similar way about the risk. Fighting while at a disadvantage was a mistake, and the four of them were at several. He would do it if he had to--when backed into a corner there was but one option, after all. But right now the forerunner to violence as a means to achieve one's ends--discourse--was still alive. So long as it was, this wouldn't go the way it had with the guardsmen. Yet readiness could not be spared.
"Lay it out. What do you and the Free Company want?"
Marghast smiled and showed those white teeth again. "It's simple. The gold, or the girl. Either will be suitable enough."
Syvis Ceridwen Dulthir
