“But, Krysty, how the hell can I explain to Markos about his brother?” Mildred asked. “Sineta, I could handle. She’ll understand why Barras didn’t tell her, and trusted me to do it for her at this time. But Markos is too proud, too stubborn.”
“So don’t tell him it’s his brother who’s involved. Just tell him about Elias, and say you didn’t get a look at the other man involved as he was masked.”
“You really think he’ll go for that?” Mildred asked skeptically.
“Think about how much he dislikes Elias,” Krysty pointed out.
“I can understand that—look how he had us deceived,” J.B. commented. “Markos was aware of how he was, but prove it when you’re that blunt and he’s Mister Nice Guy all the time.”
Mildred turned to the Armorer and smiled. Of course J.B. would understand Markos. “Yeah, maybe if I play on that, I won’t have to let on about Chan until he can see for himself.”
“Markos good fighter,” Jak chipped in quietly from his position near the window. “Night make hard for two on two. Could be better bet.”
“Okay,” Mildred affirmed. “Let’s do it.”
MARKOS LOOKED PUZZLED when he entered Sineta’s quarters to find Mildred and Jak waiting for him, along with the baron’s daughter.
“You sent word that there was an urgent matter to be settled between ourselves,” he began. “I fail to see—”
“It is,” the fine-boned woman interjected, “but as of yet, I have no idea as to its substance. That is what Mildred and Jak have to tell us.”
Markos sucked in his breath. “Why do I get bad feelings that the two of them are involved?” he murmured. “Particularly when I see another injury on you,” he added, indicating the crease on Mildred’s forehead. Although it had been dressed by Krysty, even under a bandage it suggested nothing but trouble.
“Because it’s not a pretty story,” she said simply before going on to outline the attempt on her life, and how Jak had saved her at the side of the river.
“There is one thing that is a mystery to me,” Markos mused, interrupting her. “Why they did not chill you when they had the chance, and why they took you to the river.”
“Because they wanted to hide my corpse,” Mildred explained. “And as for why they took me down to the river…” She turned to the baron’s daughter. “Sineta, there’s something I have to tell you. Something that happened between your father and me. And I need to tell you why he did what he did.”
And she began to tell her about the legend of the whitelands treasure and why the baron had entrusted her with the information. Sineta stayed silent and listened carefully, but Mildred could see that Markos was almost bursting with anger and indignation that the baron should trust Mildred and her friends and not his own people. A view he expressed when Mildred had finished.
Sineta waited for him to finish before speaking.
“Can you not see that my father was right? At such a time as this, when there is upheaval and the disparate elements that make a community have to be pulled together in both spirit and physical being, the gathering of the old treasure would be a distraction that would pull us apart. People like your brother would wish us to remain and not take this back to the ones from whom it was originally plundered. And yet, right now, they have acquiesced to the need to journey on and are working together with the rest of us. To have this treasure taken from hiding and presented once we are on the whitelands is the only way to proceed. Of course I am hurt that my father chose one other than myself to impart this knowledge, but my feelings do not matter when set against the needs of the community that I must serve. If I can live with that, cannot you?”
Markos sighed. “You are right, of course. The post I hold, and of which I am proud, dictates that the community must come first, and that is how it should be.”
Let’s hope that you still see it that way in a couple of hours, Mildred thought.