/n/jackal-among-snakes-1520/c-297
chapter-296

A window jerked open quietly on the second floor of an inn, and then someone slid into the room: a man armored in black. Someone else occupying the room sat up anxiously at the sudden entrance yet let out a sigh of relief when she laid eyes on the person. She threw off her sheets and rose to her feet.

“You’re supposed to look out windows, and walk out doors, Ganbaatar. When will you do things normally?” she said, wreathing herself in the discarded sheets.

Ganbaatar stumbled a little, coming to lean up against the wall. “When the term ‘normal’ applies to me.”

As he slouched down and pulled off his boot, the woman stepped up to him with brows furrowed in concern. In the light, one could see her blonde hair and sharp blue eyes. She knelt down just as she wrenched his boot off. One of his toes had been completely crushed.

“You searched the vampire out, didn’t you?” she said, voice sharp as a whip.

“I found him, actually. He had white irises—the eye was as helpful as ever,” Ganbaatar countered with a pained voice, pulling off the black wrappings around his head to reveal his golden-thread hair and elven ears. “He was alone. I took my chances.”

“And lost, from what I see,” the woman knelt down.

“Svetlana…” Ganbaatar trailed off. “I surprised him. I took him off guard. Even despite that… I only barely avoided death thrice. Now… now he knows.”

Svetlana held her hand out, a magic matrix swirling before her hand. Slowly, his crushed toe began to regain some of its structure. Once it was done, she lowered her hand. “Had I come with you, this would not have happened. Had you allowed me to help, this would not have happened.”

Ganbaatar flexed his toes, then rebutted, “You don’t know these fiends as I do. I left the sacred forests of my people to hunt them down. The glass eye—”

“I wish you’d never found the damn thing,” Svetlana shook her head and rose to her feet. “The past two months since you’ve gotten it, all you’ve done is seek out those it displays.”

Ganbaatar looked away. “I won’t ask you to continue on if you don’t want to.”

“All I wish is for there to be a reason you brought me along, Ganbaatar,” she said, blue eyes fixing on his own. “My aunt is a Magister of the Order of the Gray Owl, and I heard tell that she’s here, visiting with Margrave Ivan. What’s more, vampirism is illegal within all the cities of Vasquer. You need not go about this alone.”

“But I—”

“Could you beat him?” Svetlana interrupted. “You surprised him, and yet you lost.”

Ganbaatar seemed to debate that internally. “No. I don’t think I could, especially not if he’s alert, now.”

“Is he recognizable? Any distinguishing features?” Svetlana pressed.

Ganbaatar laughed. “It’s harder to forget him. A great hulk of a man, taller than me by two heads. He had elven ears… though he could not be of pure elven blood. Perhaps he is one of the offshoots, those born outside the sacred forest…”

“Then we go to my aunt. Failing that, we seek out the margrave,” Svetlana declared.

“Innocent people may die,” Ganbaatar disagreed. “We cannot involve the uninvolved: this is the first principle taught in the Sunscourge Monastery. This vampire is not an active threat—I saw him feed. He knocked a man unconscious and drained him of some blood, then let him be. To involve others would be to guarantee deaths. I cannot say I saw the extent of his abilities.”

Svetlana lightly pressed her foot against Ganbaatar’s recently healed toe, and he winced.

“You’d just as soon die on the streets?” she said pointedly. “You ambushed him, yet you came away wounded. Was he as badly affected?”

Ganbaatar rubbed at his toe, no response coming to his mind.