They waited almost an hour for someone as important as Karl Grelden to show up, but Eddek assured Simon that was quite normal. "He probably hasn't even received the messenger yet," the boy explained in hushed tones as they sat under a tree just outside the gate while Lizzie grazed nearby.

"All will be well," Kayla agreed. "Just one more thing, and then perhaps I can get a proper bath and a hot meal."

Simon wouldn't begrudge her either, of course. He'd buy her some new clothes, too, to replace the ones that had been ruined by her own lifeblood, but all that could only come after they were let inside.

After interacting with the hard eyes of clanholds all the way here, Simon wasn't really surprised by the guard's suspicion. He was just impatient.

He was sure that he would have faced all that and more during his time in Zurari if he hadn't used a word of flesh to give him the appearance of a Murani native. Even as welcome as Ionia could be, as a nation, it was more than a little xenophobic, too. Still, somehow, Charia topped them all in his mind, annoyed as he waited at the finish line.

When the big man himself arrived, it was with a whole entourage. The man had four bodyguards, a herald, and several other people whose purpose Simon could not immediately discern. As he did so, he made a big deal about Eddek while he all but ignored Simon and Kayla. Though they were let inside to accompany the boy, it was clear that Simon was being afforded similar courtesies to the maidservant rather than a citizen or a warrior.

Even when he thanked Simon and offered him a handshake, it was a perfunctory thing. The welcome that accompanied it was without enthusiasm, and the man said, "You're welcome to dine with us, but any rewards, well, I'll leave that up to the boy's father if you stick around that long."

Simon didn't care about the money, but he still found it hard to keep a straight face when he thanked the man. As unenthusiastic as that was, though his words to Kayla stung worse.

When the Karl looked at Kayla's wounds and said, "Aye, a near thing, but I'll have my healer look at you and see if she can yet undo some of the foreigner's butchery. You might have grown into a very pretty woman before all of this."

Simon held his tongue, but only just as he watched the girl's smile fade. I'm definitely going to have to do something about that, he told himself, pushing dress shopping up a couple places on his list, though.

Before he could worry about that, though, first he had to follow the man into the city, which, while not overcrowded, certainly felt that way as the Karl's procession of guards and guests drew a crowd. Once inside, Simon could see in even greater detail how the place resembled the clanholds as each district wrapped around itself like a wall within a wall, and even larger places did the same.

While such arrangements were prudent in the mountains, they bordered on the paranoid here. Simon could certainly see no obvious signs of treachery or thievery, but lines of blood ran deep all through the place.

It was only when they reached the Karl's hall that they found the enthusiasm their introductions at the gate had lacked. There, what started as a simple lunch of bread and sliced meat quickly became rowdy as the men of his clan were much more interested in the boy's rescue, and once the drinking started, they tried to pry more details out of Simon. While he was tempted to take all the credit for two kills, he knew that was the wrong move.

Bragging would not be the way to win these people, and after the way they'd treated Kayla, he wasn't even sure that he wanted to. Instead, he didn't even take all of the credit for the only owlbear they knew of and left out the second one entirely.

"Well, you see, I was only able to take it down with a sword because it was distracted trying to chew its way inside the wagon to get to the kids," Simon told them after he finished building it up to be a giant, nine-foot-tall gore-covered monstrosity.

While that part had been almost true, once he finished that part, he left the truth well behind and twisted the story entirely. "I might have killed it, of course, but it was Eddek that bloodied the thing first," he shared, giving Eddek a hard look not to contradict him. "Even after the thing laid waste to most of his household, once it clawed his maidservant, he found the short sword you see on him now and speared the thing right through the eye!"

That brought roars of approval and a number of cheers. The best Eddek himself managed to contribute to the story was, "I… I did what I could," but no one cared about that. After that, it was all celebrations for hours, and dinner only redoubled them as more of clan Grelden came back, and the story had to be told all over again.

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This was the closest the prickly warriors ever got to opening up to Simon, and as soon as they went to bed that night and slept it off, it was like it never even happened. Well, at least as far as Simon was concerned. For Eddek, their respect and deference were more long-lasting. Simon appreciated that at least, and once he decided the boy was in good company, he took the girl and made himself scarce.

"But I have chores to do," she protested.

"The servants of that clan have chores they'd like you to do," Simon corrected, "But you serve Eddek, do you not? He would not wish to be seen with you in bloody rags."

"I don't think anyone would wish to be seen with me," she said half to herself as she bemoaned her condition.

"Nonsense," Simon said. "You're a beautiful girl, and you'll grow into a stunning young woman in a few years. Don't listen to that, Karl. He has no idea what he's talking about."

"It would be easy if he were the only one," she said as they walked through the streets, "But the other girls and the house matron… well, they weren't kind."

"Then the sooner we put their hospitality behind us, the better," Simon agreed as they approached a street dominated by tailors.

"Behind?" she asked. "But where would we go?"

"Doesn't clan Eddek have property here?" Simon countered. "Surely there was more of a plan than just travel all this way and stay with your allies for a couple of years."

"They do, and there was," she agreed, "But it's complicated… running a household takes coin and people. With only one servant and half a guard, no offense… It would look very strange. There's no way I could cook his meals and clean his clothes if I was the only one taking care of him!"

"Well, after we find you something new to wear, you can show me Eddek's hall," Simon said. "Then we can decide what to do about it."

Simon tried three tailors before he found one that seemed to love his coin purse more than resent his presence. There, while he showed Kayla various fabrics and cuts and planned a wardrobe to replace the one she'd lost, Simon contemplated how much these two had suffered even after their rescue.

Presumably, they'd never made it to the city for this moot, of course, but once their Karl's forces found them with the miller, they would have come the same way and been subjected to the same calumny that they were now. Maybe Kayla would have been treated better without facial scars, but he didn't get the feeling that any women were treated well here.

Eddek, though, Simon could see years of bullying in that kid's future. Without a family here, he was just important enough for more established figures to bother with and just malleable enough to mold or bully into doing whatever others wanted.

Simon could no longer recall Kayla's exact words of warning about what the nobles had done to the boy on the eve of her massacre, but he still had the impression, even after all these years, that it was undeservedly cruel.

They were there for almost two hours, and in the end, Simon actually paid the man with a gold coin because the bill was so high, but he didn't really care. It was worth it to see Kayla smile. The tailor tried to chisel Simon, even then arguing, "Foreign gold isn't worth half as much as good silver pengs," insisting he owed him no change.

Simon wasn't falling for it, though. He simply took the coin back and said, that's fine. We'll just shop somewhere else. Sorry for wasting your time. The man tried to bluff and said nothing until Simon reached the door with a very confused Kayla, but he shouted, "Wait!"

After that, there was an intense round of haggling, with more than a few insults on both sides, but eventually, Simon got what he considered was a fair deal, more or less. After all that, though, he made the man write out exactly what it was they'd purchased, in colors, materials, and sizes, and sign it.

"I don't care if you try to cheat me," he explained softly enough that Kayla couldn't hear. "But if you screw this up and upset her? I'll burn your whole shop. I'll do it, too. I'm a lowlander, and we're nothing but savages."

The tailor's expression had soured completely by this point, but Simon didn't care. If the man did anything to ruin his gift to the servant girl, there would be hell to pay. For her part, she probably caught most of the unpleasantness but chose to ignore it as they left the shop. Instead, she practically floated all the way to Eddek's small hall as she thanked him for his generosity.

"I just don't see why you're doing it, though," she said when it finally came time to offer a note of complaint, "I doubt Karl Eddek will reimburse you."

"You and your master have been through a lot," Simon said as he approached the door and looked for the best way to pry the boards that sealed it free. "I'm just trying to balance the scales. I can make money whenever I want. That's not so hard."

"I wish I could," she complained as he used his dagger to work the wood free. "But we can't all be so lucky."

Simon tried to explain that everyone makes their own luck but ended up with a lecture on Charian gender roles. Apparently, women weren't allowed to be warriors here any more than they were in Ionia. That didn't surprise Simon, but it did sadden him.

Still, even as he processed all that and decided what, if anything, he could do about it, he got the door open and was completely unprepared for what he found. The place was a mess. Not only did it look like it hadn't been swept in a decade, but half the furniture was broken or toppled over.

"Well, we got our work cut out for us, don't we?" Simon sighed.

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