Amara watches dawn's glow seep across the land through the crude grate over her cell window.  The fisherman's village was a squat-shouldered sprawl on the landscape beyond, parallel rows of the few short piers jutting into the water like the remnant teeth in an old man's smile, black lines into the silver, shimmering water, the broad river waiting, flowing through the night and through the villagers' dreams with the incessant patience of a god.  Soon, the heat would return, and the summer village would be a creeping anthill of activity, small figures tottering from menial task to task, feeding on this river, feeding back to it, from the rays of day to the early dusk.<br/><br/>Last night, in the cell, she heard the chatter from the inn... as the only congregation spot aside from the church-- and the church was not open this late except for scheduled functions-- the inn's dining room played host to an impromptu town hall, with a dozen quarrelsome voices voicing progressively louder and more slurred edicts as to the fate of the 'murderess in the cell', the 'devil's concubine', the 'banshee', the 'wench'.<br/><br/>Knowing nothing of her, nothing of what she'd suffered, and caring not that she'd only stayed to help them, would have placed herself between them and the blade-teeth of fate-- she'd been willing to risk her life simply to help them, to save the lost child for whose fate they'd been so concerned...<br/><br/>That was why she had stayed.  To help them.  But then, the wagon had come... three villagers riding in the straw-matted bed, two scraggly mules drawing the creaking cart through the village path, the two in back propping something between them--<br/><em><br/>They'd been holding harpoons.  Lacking swords, or even decently threatening knives, they'd arrived with Xavian on the cart with his abdomen still pierced by two of the narrow-pointed arrows these villagers used to hut swamp rats, fisher-lizards, and hulk-crab.  But here they were, a brigand captured and wounded, puffed up with pride like bantams in spring.<br/><br/>Xavian's pack had been laden with silver, small tools, glassware-- all easily recognized as plunder from the Werstav farm, where the old widower who lived his life among the villagers had been found slain by his hired hands that morning.  The villagers had militarized in their comical fashion, and it seemed that morning that Xavian had finally taken two nips of justice for his wrongs...<br/><br/>He'd been a decent man when she met him.  A planner, a tactician-- a bit of a flirt, in fact-- but he gave coin to the church, he helped an old man rebuild his fence that spring, he'd taken a goblin's arrow in the thigh while repulsing a roving bandit raid not three months prior.  <br/><br/>Xavian had been a good man... but what she saw in the back of the wagon-- the gaunt, slack-faced shell of a man, his piercing blue eyes flashing with contempt at the villagers like some maddened dog-- this was not Xavian, and in a single season he'd gone from compatriot to monster.  <br/><br/>She'd not seen him in three weeks, and had hoped never to lay eye upon him again-- nor the rest of the Crimson Band.  She'd ridden with them, aided them in battle-- but when they changed, it was sudden... still, she'd stayed on, waited, and prayed, until the night where she'd found Xavian with his skinning knife, paring the flesh from an old woman's finger one joint at a time, demanding with unwavering patience that she take him-- only him-- to the wealthiest home in town, and to knock-- get the servant to open the door... </em><br/><br/>The dawn's gray light has grown amber with the rising sun, and cast the shadow of Xavian's corpse where it swings from the sprawling banyan tree in the middle of town, a puddle of filth and blood drying at his feet.  The people had not known, yesterday, how to hang him so he died quickly.  So they let him die slowly, kicking at the end of the rope like a fly, slowly entombed by an invisible spider, until he only swung limply, his pierced body seeping blood slowly into the dirt.<br/><br/><em>Amara could not hear his interrogation, except the angry shouts through the church's narrow, tall windows.  She waited for the elders, hoped that she could share some insight with them... and then, their sudden silence, and Xavian's slow, rolling laughter, bubbling up like some vile fumes from the bog-- slow at first, then faster, louder, until he hit a fever-pitch of wicked laughter that they silenced-- suddenly-- with some sort of cudgel.<br/><br/>It was then that they emerged, their harpoons, their makeshift spears, their hunting knives, and encircled her-- terror in their eyes, as if she were some vile, contemptible beast...</em><br/><br/>'Damn you Xavian..' she thought as she strained back a sob in her throat.<br/><br/>Whatever lies there had been... they'd succeeded.