Solah Provel rarely regretted her choices. Today was an exception. Contrary to Hartmann's predictions, the letter she carried as not an insurance policy.

It was a death sentence.

She waited in a dark wooden booth in a tavern called the Maw. It was close to the Amrets, the great markets where mercenaries were hired in their thousands and the outcome of wars and the fate of nations was decided. It was in this district that runner boys could be trusted to deliver messages quickly and discreetly. Discretion was of paramount importance to Provel today, as the expectation and hopes she had entertained seemed to crumble to dust. 

Dran was not as she had remembered even from the last time she had stepped ashore four months ago. A tension hung over the city, revealing itself momentarily in the refusal of innkeepers, beggars or merchants to meet the eye of a stranger. Silent and subtle cues from the streets had been absorbed by Provel as she made her way across the city earlier. They amalgamated into a general sense of fear and panic. Once, long ago, there had been a chance that a courier of a letter the likes of which Hartmann had given her might be protected by the rules that had governed Dran for nearly a thousand years. Not now, it would appear.

The reasoning behind Provel's bleak assessment was abundantly clear. The only troops on the streets were Varrens. The other five houses of Dran were invisible, confined to their Korags; unprecedented. 

In ways that had never seemed to possible to Provel when she agreed to Hartmann's task, Dran appeared to be the Varrens' city. Law and the freedom from arbitrary arrest and execution had always rested on a delicate balance of political forces across the city. Quite why Greyll, Mondrias and Evayn soldiers were nowhere to be seen was unknown to Provel and she had no desire to find out.

Seeing a runner boy by the tavern entrance, Provel gestured him to step into the dark. She reached for a note she had written to Foye, an old flame who worked as a reeve for the House Mondrias. It was simple and to the point. Come now to the Maw, I need you. 

She gave the boy a coin and sent him on his way, knowing that within the hour the message would find its way to the House Mondrias and to the only help she could hope for. Once the  boy had departed, she settled into the uneasy silence of the tavern, drawing slowly on a Del Marahan brakha, blowing clouds blue smoke into the gloom.

People, Provel had heard it be said, were like mirrors, reflecting truths back to each other. Today this was more true than at any other time she could remember. As she sat in the corner of the tavern she observed the innkeeper, absent mindedly cleaning pewter tankards with an old rag. She looked at him, but he studiously ignored her, refusing to make eye contact. Instead he glanced up periodically towards the door, looking to see what lay outside. As she observed the man, a large broad shouldered Dranian with who's hefty gut suggested that he had been drinking the tavern's profits for years, her mouth went dry with fear.

He was waiting for them, for the Varrens, he knew full well there was trouble in his tavern in the guise of a brakha smoking sea captain and this was soon to be rectified. Looking right and left, she noticed the handful of other patrons finish their drinks and shuffle towards the doorway and out onto the street. Provel had never quite had the mentality required to go down fighting and preferred to talk or negotiate her way out of most crises. The nature of seafaring across the Greater Arc Sea, with all its attendant dangers and hardships made most sea folk eminently receptive to compromise and negotiation. To survive today, she realised quickly, all that had to be forgotten and even then, violent unreason was highly unlikely to prevail.

She got up and made her way to the bar, reaching for a coin to pay, burning brakha in her mouth. She placed the coin on the counter and the man silently reached for it, still unable to look her in the eye. Taking her brakha, she stubbed the burning embers out on his hand. He roared with pain and surprise as she grabbed a half empty bottle of root spirit and smashed it over his head, grabbing him by the hair and slamming his face on the counter. Blood and alcohol mingled together on the counter and Provel put the broken bottle to his throat.

"How long have I got?" she asked grimly.

The man, terrified of both Provel and whoever the Varrens had dispatched to seize her meekly shook his head and sobbed. He didn't need to say a thing, she could guess the answer. Your time is up Captain Provel, they're here. In disgust at her own naivety, Provel threw the innkeeper to the floor where he hid.

She made her way around the counter and into the filthy kitchen, looking for anything resembling a meat cleaver she could defend herself with. There, at the back of the kitchen, by an open fire was exactly the kind of knife she wanted, clutched by a young girl who looked both angry and terrified. Provel raised her hands slowly.

"What's your name girl," she said camly.

"Raisa," she replied sullenly, "...and that's my father, you hit him."

"Sorry about that Raisa, really I am" she said.  The girl shrugged, suggesting a less than close father daughter relationship.

 "Raisa I need that knife, I want you to give it to me," Provel said, gesturing towards it.

"Or what?"

"Or nothing, I can't take it, but I need it and I need you to help me."

The girl, pretty and pale, stared long at Provel and then with another shrug placed the cleaver on the table.

"Take it if you need it." she said simply and turned away. As she did, Provel heard the creak of the tavern door and the thud of boots on the floorboards. She looked back at the girl and a flash of genius, part born of desperation came to her.

"Raisa," she whispered, reaching for more coin than the girl would see in half a year, "Raisa, I need something else. I need you to take this to the Evayn Korag. It is for their lord."

She produced Hartmann's letter and placed it on the table as Raisa turned round, seeing the coins that went with it. Provel instantly saw in Raisa's expression that the offer of money was a miscalculation. She stared, expressionless at the letter.

"What? What do you want? Money? I can give you more..."

Raisa shrugged a final time.

"Keep it, I'll do what you want. You're a captain, right? Take me when you go, that's all."

Rarely lost for words, Provel looked at the girl and nodded, seeing the flicker of a wintery smile on the girl's face as her liberation from a life of tedium beckoned. Raisa took the letter, pushed her way through the back door of the tavern and out on to the street. At least now, when Provel's inevitable capture by the Varren Household came, she had a modicum of leverage.

She stepped out of the kitchen and into the bar room of the tavern. Sat at a table with a small glass of root spirit was a tall, slender man with tightly cropped white hair and a weather worn face and black and crimson Varren livery. He lifted his glass in salute to her. 

She looked to her left and saw a dozen Varren men in the courtyard outside the tavern, swords drawn.

"Shall we?" asked the man, gesturing towards the door.