Morphiel took a long drink of tea. He absently wondered if the assassins would have started their attempts already, but he was pretty sure that stringent, metallic flavor in the tea was just the natural tannins. His tea did not taste any different than it had over the last few years.

"How do you feel?"

He looked to see if it was Faith or Grace talking. Both looked at him for the answer. It occurred to him to worry about answering the one who had actually asked, but then he remembered, they were Mirrorfolk, Ispilu. Sometimes, it did not matter which actually said, thought, or did something. Sometimes, if one of them did, they both did. This was one of those occasions.

Morphiel sighed. "I've been better. And worse. I no longer feel the pain in my side. Give me another day and I'll be back to normal."

"We saw something at the beach in Laszlofi's territory," Grace said. "It was a sigil in the sand. A hexagon, at each vertex another hexagon, and in the middle a figure in spiked armor."

Morphiel shook his head. "Should that mean something to me?"

Faith said, "We were hoping it would. We don't know what it means."

"Well I don't. I'm sorry." He took another sip of tea. "It must be magic of some manner, but I don't have the foggiest idea who to ask about it."

"But we now know that Laszlofi is involved," Grace pressed. "He was probably the help Steuben Trent referred to. If he's using the children as part of--"

"Laszlofi was not the help that caused Steuben Trent to vanish into thin air like that." Morphiel set his cup down. "Lord Laszlofi is Veil-faithful, not whatever that dark magic was. His consulting magi are all Veil-magi. Now he may be one finger of whatever else is going on, and he may be allowing things to happen within his borders--"

"And what is he allowing to happen within his borders?" Grace tilted her head to one side, her eyes narrowed in hunter's focus.

"I don't know." Morphiel spoke firmly, evenly, meeting her gaze. "That's part of what we still have left to find out. We will have to be careful about it. No inquest I could open--"

Grace gestured impatiently with open hands. "He's stealing your children!"

"We don't know who's stealing the children!" Morphiel glared at her. "Do you think that Oerdoeg or those hobgoblins were local talent?! What about that obsidian wizard?! or the cloaked man with the glove?! Steuben Trent himself is not local, he's a mercenary from Starfall!"

Grace clenched one fist. "Laszlofi isn't too proud to hire mercenary help! Why are you?!"

Morphiel felt a familiar fire in his gut. He narrowed his eyes angrily. "Excuse me?"

"Your house is too far fallen into disfavor to open an inquest, you have no army, nor any militia, you refuse to trust your own people to form one--"

"They're common peasants and woodsmen! We have been over this ground before! What do you want them to do, show up to Laszlofi's manor armed with pitchforks and torches?!"

Grace rose in her seat. "It's their children being kidnapped and raped and tortured! They count on you to protect them, and you can't! At least they'd make an effort!"

Morphiel felt his throat heat with the fire of anger. "You tread on dangerous ground, Paladin."

"And you don't." She glared. "What happened in Marraddon City?"

Morphiel felt the fire seize up and leave him.

"You're a former Staff of Justice. We know that much. We recognize the training in your fighting style, the way you talk about the sacred duty of the office--"

Faith finally spoke. "We found your medal."

Morphiel looked to her.

Faith went on, calmly. "You were awarded the Silver Sun. Awarded to service personnel who display exceptional valor while engaged in law-enforcement operations against a criminal element representing moderate to severe threat to public peace and order, and in the face of danger to yourself. Did I get that right?"

"What makes you think it's mine?" Morphiel poured himself some more tea.

"Lord Hinterstrad," Faith looked at him in frank, calm, disarming clarity. "What happened in Marraddon City?"

Morphiel leaned back, sighing. He started to deny it a hundred different ways. It wasn't mine. I wasn't the Staff, my grandfather was. My grandfather knew a man. Our Godfather was a Staff. It's a family heirloom.

None of it seemed right. These ladies had seem him naked, not just in body, but in form. They knew what he was.

There was nowhere left to hide.

"I was part of a sting operation to catch Eliyahu 'The Night-Wolf' Harrel," Morphiel said. "He was a katsa, fixer for the Brotherhood of the Lamp, known by more than a score of aliases from one end of the continent to the other. The fact that he was known at all attests to why he was just a mid-level man and not one of the Minyan or their enforcers. We knew he was helping the riots along, but we didn't know how, or what the Minyan's involvement was." Morphiel leaned forward, staring into his tea. "He was a large man. His favorite weapons were a pair of gloves with scissor-blades inside the thumb and forefinger. When he would kill a man, he would simply decapitate them with a squeeze. He moved...silently."

Grace sat down, listening intently.

"He moved silently," Morphiel went on. "I have no idea how a man that size was ever able to do so. He stepped as lightly as a sparrow, and was as swift as his namesake." He looked to Faith. "He lived in a warehouse on the docks he had fortified himself. It was booby-trapped. Fishing hooks hung from the cieling at eye-level. Blunderbusses and barrels of powder attached to tripwires, packed with shrapnel of chunks of nails, floor-tacks, caltrops, quicksilver, poison that stopped your blood from clotting. Buckets of acid, lamp-oil, I could go on." He looked back into his tea. "We went in first. We could have paid the mercenaries, but it was our duty. Only one mercenary went in with us."

"Steuben Trent," Faith offered.

"Yes." Morphiel chuckled. "He's a Sworden, a child of the Vermillion Father. He wouldn't let us have all the glory." Morphiel shook his head. "The problem with Mercenaries is that they can be bought, and the Brotherhood of the Lamp knew that. The Night-Wolf was ready for us. One of them had probably warned him."

"So what did you do?" Grace asked, her voice quiet and sollemn.

"I didn't earn that medal." Morphiel looked to her. "They didn't know I was a changeling. There was no danger to me. I could hear him, I could see him in the dark, his booby-traps did no more harm to me than confetti would have. His blades were steel, but they were short range and I had a staff." Morphiel stood up. "It was not valor. It was the least they could have expected of me if they had known." He turned to walk into the parlour.

Morphiel heard Faith call after him, "You saved their lives!"

"No I didn't." Morphiel turned to face her, sadly. "I know the rest of the story." He shut the door.