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Well,

I kind of expected to find the entire place empty, and everyone long gone.  I wouldn't have expected to see us again.

But I did without figuring on the brat's parents.  They were still camped out, caravan and all.  Not to mention, our familiars were waiting for us.  It was so hard to have been cut off for that time. Not really cut off, but not in real contact, not using a second set of eyes and ears.

The parents started chewing on us immediately for not getting their kid back to them faster. Here I am, hungry, tired, covered with spider demon gore and this lady is holding a perfumed lace ball to her face and screaming at me about how I had a duty to do a better job and how I shouldn't have dallied, and didn't I know, and ...

I don't know what came over me.  I looked her square in the face, let some fire leak out around the edges, and told her "take it up with my mother, I'm just a kid and I need a bath."  I turned my back on her and walked off.

Ariel did something I've never seen her do either.  She used a spell on someone outside of a fight.  She silenced the lady and her husband with one of the spells from her book.  It clamped down on them, right through whatever protection they had.

That shocked them.  She then looked them square in the eyes (I was watching from my cat's view, just because I was walking away doesn't mean I trusted my back to those two) and said "you are welcome.  I'm glad I could save your son's life and appreciate your gratitude. I can think of nothing else we have to say to each other."

The head guard of the caravan stepped forward and put his hand on the ambassador and started whispering to him, pretty loudly, gesturing at me, the city of glass, and I guess making a point that they really could take it up with mom.  I'm not going to do that again, but I was so angry.

They could have said thanks.

They could have just let me find a bath.

But to scream and me and rub it in that I stink to high heaven ... as if I didn't know.  The caravan master caught my eye and said that he would hold things until we were finished cleaning up.

The trip back was quiet.  The kid gave his parents an amazing lecture on all sorts of things, and the silence still had them bound.  The next day he pulled out the sack from behind the rock he had hidden it and began a lecture on all the things he brought back (and all the things we hadn't --  how he had been allowed "everything" including the cap we put on him to help protect him).  

Ariel eventually relented, after we got a written apology -- and once she relented she removed the silence.  

Their number one attendant had approached us with the apology, in writing, and didn't say much.  Ariel read it and it froze in her hands and then she crumpled it up, breaking it to bits.  I guess an ambassador who can't talk isn't worth much.  She walked up and released the magic and walked off, her falcon watching them all the time.  She never got closer than ten feet, but her rope can now really extend -- that golden wire we picked up from the spider demon really added to what she can do with it -- and she released the spell using it from a distance.

We needed to come up with a way to heal that rift, but I couldn't think of one.  Neither could Ariel, but she bet that we could ask her dad -- that's his job, after all.

But it didn't take that long.

The caravan master came to sit down next to us when we were still a couple days out of the city.  We had been really grooming the horses since we had to return them.  The brat's mom had been eyeing the horses and talking to people and staring at us with a pretty pale glaze.  It got paler and weirder as the days went on. Horses are really rare and these were a sign of favor.  Anyway, the brat's dad spent the day with the caravan master. We had spent the day by ourselves.

The master sat down and coughed.  Then he asked our pardon.  Then he apologized for not having made it clearer that we were not guards, but were helping out of kindness.  He apologized for not having divided the spoils between us and the child when the child took everything.  (I didn't correct him.  It isn't like Ariel and I really felt like looting corpses or wanted anything that we had not gotten -- and those strands of blue-white gold were valuable, powerful and fit all we felt like taking).  He apologized for the anguished state of the child's mother and how she was not entitled to treat guards or anyone else as she had.

He then mentioned that he could have her killed for us, if my mother was going to require that of him.  He understood the affront, and as an ambassador her husband understood the weight of the price that one must sometimes pay.  No one wanted another city of glass (and it was obvious that no one really understood my Mom.  It wasn't the rudeness, or the fact they tried to eat her, but the fact that they had already given themselves to such evil and destroyed all the goodness out from their midst).  He explained that as the caravan master it was his duty to see what he could do to restore peace, and that as we had not named a price, and given my ritual challenge (how was I supposed to know that the way I said "talk to my mother" would translate as "seek the final resolution" which meant my mother would fight her mother any time, any place, with full force) they were trying to seek a fair resolution to the blood insult with which my kindness had been repaid.

He was kind of talking facing the fire, not me and not Ariel.  Ariel's falcon was watching everything closely and my cat was hidden in shadows watching our back from a secure place.  No one was moving towards us, though the ambassador was holding his wife as if to say good-bye.

Then the master explained that if necessary, he would join the wife in whatever punishment or death we chose, but please not to slay his guards or blame them for failing to rescue the child or to block the mother.  They had felt our displeasure at not joining them (ok, we had been a little miffed and hadn't participated in the patrols and stuff on the way back, but a lot of that was thinking on what to do and dealing with the magic blue-white gold strands we had).

He just kept talking in a neutral way.  I didn't know what to say when Ariel interrupted him.

"We aren't killing anyone and you aren't either.  My father killed the bitter king, he doesn't follow him.  And I don't take out my temper on idiots as long as they shut up."  She glared.

He sat there, though you could see him relax and his left hand dropped some coins he was holding.  The guy who had carried the apology to us suddenly tapped the ambassador on the shoulder and you could see them crying, but in a good way, from relief.  The men who were standing by ready to grab the brat's mom kind of wandered off, acting casual as if they had just been there by accident.

I looked at him.  "We're happy, just trying not to disrupt your peace."  That seems kind of lame when I look back, but I was so non-plussed at the guy.

Sure she was really rude, and sure I was pretty mad, but I'm not going to rescue some brat just to turn him into an orphan. My dad would never forgive me.  (Well, he is a saint of sorts, so never is too long, but I could feel how his judgment would rest from here).  It never occured to me to do more than ignore her (and cheer for the time the group was under silence, though I thought Ariel did the right thing by lifting it).

Ariel spoke again "When I lifted the silence, I was through with them, and I thought the things their child had made a good gift -- those things should lift any claim they have against you.  If not, they can always give the things back and we can start over on all the issues."

That made him smile, though he also shook just a little, as his nerves took hold.  Ariel had just made the wife's forgiveness subject to her not giving him a hard time over anything that happened, and let the kid and his family keep what was apparently enough loot that they would step very quietly to avoid any duty to give it up and divide it.

I then caught myself.  "Would you like some of our bread, or some of our salt?"  I knew exactly what I was offering, including the offer of protection and forgiveness.  I wanted to cement the moment so he completely understood that we really were square with everyone.  He took some of the bread we had made, though he skipped on the salt, which I expected.  

Ariel finished with "They can give the leader's share to you, as our gift for your wisdom and kindness."  No kidding.  He had resolved the problem we had with these people.  I didn't want an enemy, I didn't want blood vengance, I didn't want anything but to have this whole thing forgotten.  "Let your name be the one that is credited with this story, and let us leave our place in silence."  

You could see him getting the point.  I don't think anyone wanted this story to spread.  We were telling them that we did not want credit for the rescue, did not want recompense for the insult, and that if they paid him the peacemaker's gift by giving him the leader's share (not our shares, but the extra that one of us was entitled to for being "the leader" in that little mess in the city's hidden places), that made us all even.

"I don't think this needs to be spoken further of" Ariel finished.  Boy, that kid doesn't speak much, but when she lays it out you can tell she has really been thinking.  I wish I was as smart as she is.  She really nailed it.

Looking through my cat's eyes and listening through the shadow's ears I could see the ambassador's group reacting.  This was good news to them.  No embarassment over what happened.  Just a simple story of their son being lost and the caravan master rescuing him.  They got to keep most of the stuff the kid had, including the gifts we directly gave him (i.e. that cap -- they were pretty attached to it, it was a valuable magic relic of the kind usually only entrusted to someone until they are safe and then to be returned) and just had to give over to the caravan master a leader's share of the gold and gems the kid had stuck in that sack.  He got to keep the rest -- enough that the ambassador was already starting this mission well ahead of the game.  No fights to the finish with my mom, no substitute conflict to someone's death, not even any futher apologies.

They were holding in their excitement and trying to get some privacy before they celebrated.

The next day everyone was happier, even the other guards.  They had gotten the follower's shares, which meant that they had all gotten more than a year's wages in gold each.  A number smiled or winked at us.  It wasn't just the joy of a caravan coming home, but more like everyone had won the lottery.  The brat even came by to thank us (and give us a lecture on some plants and a type of rock) and his mother curtsied without the pale look or any hostility.  Guess that had burned out of her.  She was wearing a large ruby (I remembered it from the things I saw go into the sack -- the thing was as large as a giant marble and the light cast white stars against the brilliant crimson of the sphere) -- clasped in a golden chain.  She was a little tentative though.

We just smiled back and wished her long life and good health and God's blessings.

She seemed very pleased, as if the good fortune she had in the way everything had worked out wasn't real until then.

Ariel and I were pleased.

Things were very calm for the next twenty hours, until we reached the city, and then all the focus was on the reception for the ambassador.  We returned the horses and that went well.  Quietly, without disrupting the new king or his reception for the new ambassador.

Later, as we were getting ready to head on home, the assistant, the one who had carried the apology to us, dropped by.

"You were most kind, and patient" he said.

We chatted a bit, letting him talk.  He was very pleased with how we had worked things through, and how they had gone. The brat was much closer to behaving than he had been.  His parents were much less inclined to spoil him, or to let the risk of his causing trouble arise.  The parents also appreciated each other much more than they had.  They had learned a lesson from the risks and trouble they had faced.

He saw us as on the hero path and was seeking our good graces, while reassuring himself that what he thought had happened really had -- that we had forgiven his master's household and had put things behind us and might even be friends in the future.

The rest of the trip was not much of an event.  We were careful and invisible and got home in good time.  My mom wanted the whole story and retold it to my dad for me.  She was very pleased that I had penetrated that which was hidden to her and had cleansed out a great deal of evil.  I could tell that we would return, that there was more to take care of, but that for now, we had done the things that needed to be done and that my parents could not do themselves.

Ariel's dad wanted to talk to both of us, for more feedback and more of the story.  You could tell he had a professional interest in how the mess had arisen and how it had been resolved.  He was so pleased with Ariel, and pleased with me as well.  He gave us both white silver turkish puzzle rings and told us that we might have use of them in the future.  (both of them held a confusion spell and a path finding spell).

Then it was back to school and working on the science fair.  Talk about tough!

Aurelium strands (the amygdalin aureus).

Each girl found three.

+d6 to POW, +3d6 to magic points.

Woven into hair, they also add to armor = to magic points and to magic point and hit point recovery = POW per movement round.  +1d2 per strand to APP. +1 per strand to the force of any resistance to poison and 6 points of damage reduction from poison.

Woven into a staff they add to the staff's armor and to damage resistance by the staff's bearer, as well as adding to magic point recovery and self-healing of the weapon (but not the bearer).  Each strand also adds 3 meters to the length the rope can extend.  They add +1 per strand to the force of any poison attack (except against the bearer) of any weapon attuned to the staff user and +d6 per strand to the damage of any poison attack (yes, the long knife is affected by this).

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