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The campfire has relaxed, almost done burning. The dawn was near. Eysin was sitting near the fire, wrapped in a blanket, looking sickly. Calmly watching the flickers, as it was burning
out. The old man, who had earlier introduced himself as Vinu Laos, poured from the thermos the last cup of tea and offered it to her.
“You saw him earlier today?” Vinu asks.
“He asked me to deliver a letter,” with a shaky hand she reaches into her pocket and grabs a folded, crumpled envelope. The envelope has bloodstains on it. So does her hand. She unwraps it and lifts it between their faces. It’s still unopened.
Eysin handed the bloody envelope to Vinu, as if in exchange for the cup of tea. He takes it, opens it carefully and reads a few lines. He then folds it again and puts the letter back into the envelope.
“How are you feeling?” Vinu asks.
Eysin thinks about it for a little bit and comments, “I’m cold, burns here and there.”
“And how’s the wound?”
Eysin places her hand below her left ribs, she gently presses on it, all dry doesn’t feel anything. She pressed a little harder because it almost felt like it had never been there – and that wasn’t right – she’d been terrified about it past this whole night, “I feel nothing.”
Vinu smiles, “Then it’s done healing. Hadn’t he used the marbles on you…”
Eysin asks, “What exactly healed me?”
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“A small pink marble,” Vinu holds another one of them between his fingers, and then it disappears again. “Think of it like stem cells – your framework started building from that point, so, it was ready to work in that area…”
Eysin can feel something move in her flesh, around her bones – sometimes it hurts, other times it simply itches. Sometimes it hurts like all her nerves are getting strong electric shocks.
“Once the red and the white have integrated, I am going to have to bother you again. The white marble was Andre’s computer, and it has some information on it that will help.”
“Help with what, exactly?”
Vinu didn’t know whether he should elaborate. She needn’t get involved, he thought. But she was involved already, so, maybe she deserved to know what she had been running for during the last day and night.
“RESO is compromised. Some of the upper levels of their guilds are infiltrated by a bunch of Nords. They are gathering information and undermining our region’s security.”
“Is that why Kamille was helping me?” She shakes her houlders and raises her eyebrows, eyes stuck in the fire.
“She’s a curious case. I guess house Rozenbaers are looking to replace the Nords once they are gone,” Vinu shrugs.
Eysin decides that she doesn’t care about those affairs.
“Andre has asked me to get you back to Perona.”
Without comment, Eysin just drank the tea. It had a pleasant taste, but it had been better one cup before. When it had been hotter. Even so, it felt comforting. But she made the mistake of recalling the last time she had seen him. Andre had been shot dead in his workshop. “They shot him like some dog.”
“And you.” The old man says it without displaying any emotion. Vinu tries to get out the last drops of tea from the thermos, right into his mouth, then closes it and puts it aside. “In any case, you shouldn’t return to Reval. Until we have flushed out all the Nords, it’s not safe for you, as they see in you an accomplice of the so-called crime.”
“Crime,” Eysin mumbles to herself. She hadn’t done anything wrong.
That Andre was dead – she had nothing to do with it. That she was being
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