It was two weeks? travel back to Weisshaupt.
The schooner had returned to Antiva City?s port for repair, and to report the deaths of the soldiers who had fallen during the pirate assault. A dozen names, but Ghil?s and Thaedrin?s were not on the list. They were of no consequence, where the navy was concerned. Lord Rorqual, with the Constable gone, housed them reluctantly and in much more humble quarters than the time before. Even safe as they were in his manor, there was little and less rest to be had; the second visit bore ten times the grimness of the first.
At dawn, the fat lord set them on two wagons, cramped and creaking, with sparse food and wine for the journey. Overland, with the horses slowed by the weight of their loads, it was a long, slow crawl back to the Hunterhorn Mountains. When Weisshaupt finally came into view, it may as well have been the Golden City itself.
Fidelity rode in near silence during the journey, as though it feared letting breath leave its lungs lest it refuse to return. Again and again, it refused requests to let Thaedrin speak through it, reminding them that these lips and this tongue belonged to this spirit now. There would be no lessening of its hold on the body for the sake of the blood mage; pact or no, he could not be trusted not to keep it afterward.
Over the fortnight, the spirit had repaired the physical damage to the corpse of Thaedrin Davinius and no longer looked decomposing. Still, there was no mistaking that this creature was something else: it retained its bloodless pallor and one eye remained a blind milky white. When it stepped out of the wagon, Wardens saluted out of instinct. It merely looked at them quizzically.
