"Where have you been?" The words jolted Sara awake. Tess? She was looking down at her leg guards, still heavy with water in her hands. "And what are you doing?" Not Tess. Sara took a long blink before looking up to find the speaker. Reza! Great. "Tulen was looking for you earlier you know."

Sara looked slowly around. She was sitting, leaning awkwardly against a wall in a cleaning alcove of the servant's court of the guild. She looked down at the leg guard again. "Cleaning?" The word came out thick, even in Sara's ear. The world was still out of focus for Sara.

"Cleaning?" Reza straightened her skirts as she collected herself, and then gasped and lost her composure again as she saw the injured side of Sara's face. "Who did that to you?"

"Ah..." Thinking hurts. "Not a who?" Sara mumbled, trying to remember how she got from the Arena to the guild. She could only find small, disjointed splinters of the day's memories in her head.

"Noddawhat?" Reza loomed over her, framed by her full skirts in the small cleaning alcove.

"Not. A. Who. A what." Sara had to talk slowly to keep her words clear. She licked her dry lips. "An Uskusk."

"An Uskusk!" She gaped. "I mean... What would you even-!" She straightened her skirts again. "Alright. Idiot Barbarian." She sighed. "Well you are scaring away the servants your Uskusk related injuries, so I am going to have to take you out of here. Probably to a doctor, since you should get that checked out before-"

"No doctor!" Sara blurted, a little too forcefully for her aching head. "It's...not that bad actually." Sara shied away from Reza's hand reaching out to probe the cut on her head. "Just a small cut."

"A small cut, gushing a river of blood. Sure." Reza stood up and paused. "And what's that smell?"

"The Uskusk...sprayed me." Sara lifted her chin defiantly against the laughter that never arrived. "I think."

"You think?"

"I was unconscious at the time. So its tough to say." Sara shrugged and leaned in to pick up the leg guard she had not known she dropped and start scrubbing again, but Reza plucked the brush and leg guard from her hands, setting them down on the ground.

"Why don't we let Kri handle this, yes?" Reza said gently.

"I can handle it, Erada. Its fine." Sara struggled to use the wall to lift herself up. Just leave me alone and try not to betray me. Her vision was blanketed with stars by the time she managed to stand, but she pretended she could still see, and looked in Reza's general direction. "I said I am fine Reza. It is a matter of...honor?" I can play the Barbarian, if that is what you want to see.

"So, the rumors are true then."

"What?" Sara was not expecting that.

"Only a bloodmage would want to heal themselves instead of using a doctor." Reza said.

Sara laughed, then winced. Bloodmage? "No. Not a bloodmage." Or am I? I did manage some small healing before. Sara frowned in thought for a moment, drawing on memories of stories of the real barbarians. "Just as long as I have not been healed, I can say that the fight between the Uskusk and I is not over." Most of her vision had returned and she locked eyes with Reza. "And I plan on winning."

Reza burst out laughing. "Sorry Esaralina, I think the Usksuk already won. There is more blood outside of you than inside. Just come on, I will get you a pusher so we can get you to the doctor." Reza reached out to grab her arm and Sara recoiled again.

"No! I am serious Reza. No doctors. No healing. No anything." Sara backed away, still using the wall for support.

"What is wrong with you?" Reza asked as she advanced into the alcove. "Let's just go."

Sara thought frantically as the girl approached. Too injured to escape. "Wait! Just wait!" I need leverage. "Loana!"

"What?" Reza paused.

"Loana. I talked to Loana...the day I joined the guild." Sara could hear her words slurring.

Reza's eyes narrowed. "Impossible. She is in a coma." Sara could hear the annoyance in her voice, but she had paused her advance.

"I know. I mean I did not know at the time. But I know now." Sara tried to figure out how much to tell. I was planning on telling her anyway. "She showed me around the temple. She helped me...find a solution to a problem. I gave her a silver piece. For her help."

"I don't believe you." Sara could hear the doubt in Reza's voice. She had stopped moving towards Sara, but she still blocked Sara from exiting.

"You can talk to her too. But no doctors. Promise me that and I can show you how." Sara licked her dry lips again nervously. And keep your hands away from me.

Reza met her eyes for a long moment, folding her arms. "How, exactly, will I be able to talk to her."

A spike of relief shot through Sara. "Shadows." Sara hoped the shadows worked the same since they were trapped in the rod.

Another long pause from Reza. "Fine. No doctors. But we still have to get out of here, or Tulen will be mad at us for panicking the help. And leave the stuff that got...sprayed. I am not sitting in a pusher with that smell. Kri can handle it."

* * * * *

A door slammed shut, waking Sara with a jolt. She gasped as she sat up. Her head still throbbed, but not as much as it had.

"Well, look who is finally up." Reza said, taking off her cloak.

Sara blinked herself awake and felt her head wound with her hand. It does not just feel better, it is better. Sara worriedly flexed her ankle, which felt much less swollen. She could hardly feel any pain. She checked her ribs, and her bruised arms. All healed. "Reza! I said no doctors!"

"And there weren't any. Just Zets." Reza said patiently, settling herself into a chair near the bed.

Sara scanned the room wide-eyed, noticing Zets sleeping in a nearby chair. She will betray me! They all do! "No healing either, Reza!"

"That wasn't the deal." Reza said. "Besides, you passed out in the pusher before we got halfway here. Zets says you would have been lucky to regain consciousness if she had not helped. So you are welcome." Sara tried to quell her panic while Reza talked. "What do you have against doctors anyway?"

"I don't know." Sara said, inspecting the sleeping form of Zets. She will betray me, when she wakes. Sara started looking for ways to escape while her hands searched her pockets for her caravan ticket. The ticket must still be at the Guild. "Where are we?" Sara asked, realizing for the first time she did not recognize the room they were in.

"The Inn next to the Baths." Reza said.

Sara tried to see out of the window, but the angle only showed sky. "The Baths?"

"Yeah, you told me to take you there before you passed out." Reza said. The baths. The rod. Loana. A good distraction for Reza. "You said you would tell me how to talk to Loana, remember? The shadows?" Reza folded her arms. "So we are here. No doctors. How do we do it? Or is the Barbarian too uncivilized to hold up her end of a deal?"

Sara started putting the pieces of her plan together. She fished around automatically in her waist pouch for the token from the Baths while her brain worked. "Here." Sara said holding out the token. "This is for a long term storage locker in the Baths. Inside there is rod wrapped in a cloak." She met Reza's eyes. "Things, bad things will happen if you touch it, so try not to do that.I wouldn't even take it out of the cloak until you get back here." If Sara learned anything in the past few days it was that Reza was curious, and that she could not resist something off-limits. I just hope the shadows keep her busy long enough for me to get away.

"Why not?" Reza asked, suspicious.

"You will see once you get it back here. Just trust me, no touching." Sara said.

Reza held the token silently for a moment before moving for the door. Sara could feel her adrenaline rising the closer she got to the door. Almost there! Take the bait! Sara gripped the bedsheets as the door opened, but Reza stopped in the doorway for a long moment. Sara tried to will her through the doorway with her mind, but Reza never left the room entirely.

After a moment she shut the door and turned back to Sara. "Kri should be back with it momentarily." Kri! How could I forget about her! New distraction...I need a new distraction. Sara looked around frantically. The boat!

"While we are here, I have something else to confess, I-"

"You're a bloodmage!" Sara jumped at Zets' interjection. She's up! I'm out of time.

"Ah, no. I'm not." Sara inspected Zets trying to figure out how much she knew, how much she had discovered while healing her.

"Oh." Zets sounded disappointed. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure." Sara said flatly. "I definitely can't heal myself." Not without coating a room in blood.

There was silence in the room for a moment before there was a quiet knock on the door. Already? Sara scooted out of the bed, ready to make a dash for the door while Zets and Reza were focused on Kri entering with the bundled cloak.

"Whoa, a living rod!" Zets said when they unwrapped the bundle on a small table.

"A Shadu-rod." Sara corrected, waiting for the right moment to slip out of the room. They were still crowded too close to the door.

"A living Shadu-rod." Zets repeated reverently.

"How do you even have a living Shadu-rod?" Reza asked, giving Sara an accusing look. "Do you know what you could do with something like this?"

Living rods were not cheap, but one that only made Shadu had limited applications. "Well its not exactly a real living rod." Sara said.

"What do you mean?" Reza's eyes narrowed.

"Its kind of a piece of a tree's spirit I think." Sara said quietly.

"What do you mean 'kind of a piece of a tree's spirit." Reza's eyes narrowed further, and Zets momentarily suspended her inspection of the rod to further scrutinize Sara. "I thought you didn't talk to trees."

"Ah, well I don't. This tree was more interested in...trying to possess me."

"What!" Zets exclaimed. "Like the Barnans."  Zets paused. "Maybe you are a demon then." She almost whispered as she narrowed her eyes at Sara.

"You just healed me! You know I'm not a demon either! The spirit got caught in the rod before it could really possess me."

"Exactly what a demon would say..." Zets said, still looking skeptical.

Sara looked at Reza for help, but she had gone back to looking at the rod. "A piece of tree spirit. Shadows." She murmured to herself, reaching out to the rod.

Sara thought fast. They are still too close to the door, they need to move further into the room before they get lost in the shadows. "Before you touch it," Sara saw Reza's hand pause at her words. "Before you touch it, you should know that it has some odd effects. One of them is that it lets you see the shadows. The Shadu type of shadows."

Sara could see Reza pause in thought. "So my sister is a shadow?"

"Well, not just shadows, but that is what you will notice first. I didn't know what I was seeing at the time though. I think...I think what I saw was her soul."

"Where?" Reza asked.

"At the entrance to the Alessan temple. She was...greeting the patrons."

Reza looked like she was going to say something else but she was interrupted by Zets, who was unfurling the cloak. "Are the shadows infecting the cloak?" She squeaked. The formerly pristine blue cloak was marbled with brown stains of Sara's dried blood.

Sara sighed. Reza stepped away from the cloak to avoid its fluttering edges, holding a hand up defensively. "Actually, that is...just blood." Sara said.

"Just blood?" Reza asked. "That is a lot of blood." Her eyes narrowed at Sara again. "Your blood?"

"Yes." Sara said reluctantly, almost as a whisper.

"I knew it!" Zets said. "She's a bloodmage."

"Shadow-seer." Reza corrected, pointing to the rod.

"She a partially-tree-possessed-blood-mage-shadow-seer." Zets glanced back at Sara, who was scowling at them both. "And-angry-barbarian." She added belatedly.

Sara growled. "Look, just try the rod. But do it over by the window, so you can see how it affects your vision. You should both try it in fact. The effects last for a short time after you stop using it, but you should be able to draw on it like a normal rod."

 "Nope." Zets said quickly, moving the cloak between her and the rod. "I'm not touching it."

Reza adjusted her dress to keep it from touching the swirling cloak. "Fine." She said nervously. "Fine, I'll do it." Sara could see Reza brace herself as she slowly reached down to pick up the rod. Sara edged closer to the door. "Whoa." Reza said after she had held the rod for a moment.

"Well! What do you see?" Zets asked, hastily taking out a tablet.

"Shadows. Forming. Reforming. Its like the world is constantly reshaping itself. She looked directly at Sara, who froze, almost out of the door. Sara saw her eyes go out of focus. "Everything. Everyone changes."

"Except your sister." Sara added quietly. She realized Kri was watching her silently on her approach to the door. "Where is my armor?" Sara mouthed to Kri when she reached the door.

"In your room, or outside the door to the rooms in the hallway." Kri said quietly.

"Thanks." Sara said, and slipped out.

* * * * *

Sara let out a sigh as she sat in the hard wooden chair, waiting for the older woman to look up from her writing. The pain in her ribs was barely a twinge after the healing, but it was still enough to keep her back straight. Sara was also glad to be off the injured ankle, not knowing how much exactly Zets had been able to heal it.

"You were not at the Assembly earlier." Lady Tulen said, without looking up from her writing. Sara sat across from her in her office. The other magikers in the guild had herded her into Lady Tulen's office as soon as she had arrived. She had thought she could make a quick stop for her ticket and get out, but with every tick of the clock in Lady Tulen's otherwise silent office Sara was losing hope that Lady Tulen would let her leave quickly.

"No, Lady Tulen I was not." Sara said confidently. She tried to keep herself small on the seat. She felt grimy from her panicked actions to get away from Reza as well as her fight with the Uskusk.

"Where were you?" She asked.

Sara willed her nervous leg to stop shaking. "Helping a friend." Sara was not comfortable enough with Lady Tulen to tell her about the Arena job. She would definitely betray me. "He asked me to go with him before I knew that there would be an Assembly today."

Lady Tulen did not say anything at first, she just kept scratching at the parchment in front of her with an over-sized quill. "You are moving your appearance in the wrong direction." She said bluntly. "I thought I instructed you to dress more appropriately for a Guild comprised of Nobles." She finally looked up, giving a disgusted look to Sara's bloodstained tunic and torn cloak.

"Another reason I was not at the Assembly, Lady Tulen. My luggage has still not arrived, but it should be here in a few more days."

Lady Tulen gave a small grunt before reaching under the desk to retrieve at money pouch. It did not look like it contained many coins, but she still set it gently in front of Sara.

"Use that to improve your appearance in the meantime. Lady Voreli was back again today. Apparently you managed to impress her during your previous job. She was disappointed that you were not available today." Then it will not be the last time she is disappointed. "So you will be available the next time she calls on the Guild. Understood?"

"Yes, Lady." Sara fidgeted under her gaze.

"Good." Lady Tulen went back to scratching on the parchment. Sara moved to the edge of her chair, wondering if she had been dismissed, but before she committed to standing, Lady Tulen spoke again. "Also, someone from the Arena left this for you." She pulled another money pouch out from under the desk after she had set her quill. She pursed her lips as she deposited next to the other pouch still on the desk. "Perhaps you should use some of that to have your face healed." What is wrong with my face! Lady Tulen sighed. "We do not forbid gambling here. But it is discouraged. Especially with charge prices so high."

"Ah, of course. It was actually...for a friend." Sara said.

"I am sure." Lady Tulen said, not sounding very convinced. "Here is another recommendation then." She steepled her hands in front of her. "Be careful who you choose for friends in this city."

"Of course." Sara did not need to pretend to agree with that statement. Sara bowed as she stood, turning quickly towards to door. She marched out of her office and towards her room as fast as she could.