"Eltwen?" Theiden echoed, staring at the unrecognizable, dirty figure before them. "As in the bookkeeper, Nevitas Eltwen?" He fought to keep the horror from creeping up in his words. If the witch hunters suspected he had turned against their policies, he'd be thrown out in an instant.

But what had the bookkeeper done? He lived just a few streets over, and Theiden had taken Em to visit his shop on several occasions.

"Yes, him," Decliteur replied, still staring at the motionless figure kneeling on the cold stone flagstones. "The baker, Valas—you know him, don't you?—found an informant. Apparently, this man—" Decliteur pulled the bookkeeper's hair back to make Mr. Eltwen face them, "—has been helping witches get into the city."

Something akin to the shock of jumping in ice-cold river water ran through Theiden at the sight of the man. Mr. Eltwen's face was nearly unrecognizable, with cuts, bruises, and a swollen black eye. A glint of light in the corner of his vision had Theiden turning to look at the floor, where the shattered remains of the bookkeeper's spectacles reflected the flames off the mounted wall torch.

"He'd been tricking people into letting a witch into their homes," Colverne continued from the doorway of the cell. "The creature was feeding potions to children and casting curses in their homes, according to reports."

"Healing," a raspy voice contradicted. Theiden looked back to see that the bookkeeper had come to his senses, though his injured eye was still swollen shut. "She was healing them."

"So you admit it," Decliteur said, triumph creeping into his tone.

"Healin'? Demon's work, all a' it," Callan swore, hacking a glob of spit that landed just before Mr. Eltwen's knees. "Dealin' in potions—sounds like yer witch, don't it?" he asked, turning to Theiden.

"Uh, a bit, yeah," Theiden said, trying to ignore the furious rhythm of his heart, every beat warning him that this was wrong, wrong, wrong.

"Show 'im the herbs," Callan said.

Theiden took a deep breath and took out the sage from his pocket once more. Decliteur grabbed the bookkeeper's chin and turned him to face Theiden's way.

"Does that look familiar?" Decliteur hissed.

From where he was standing, Theiden could see the shock register in the bookkeeper's expression, though it was muted by the swelling and gashes on the man's face. It was a look of dread and fear—though not for his own life. Theiden hesitated. What relation would a nice old man like Mr. Eltwen have with Lenesa?

"Where is she?" the bookkeeper whispered.

"I'll take that as a yes," Decliteur said, dragging the bookkeeper by the hair so that he faced him once more. "Was it your witch that killed the woman picking berries in the forest this afternoon?"

Mr. Eltwen tried to shake his head, but Decliteur's grip in his hair hindered the motion. "She would never do that," he said, voice scratchy as straw.

"And the attack at the river gate several nights ago?" Decliteur challenged.

"It wasn't her," the bookkeeper replied.

"Colverne, get the sharpest blade you have," Deliteur ordered.

"She has black spirals on her skin, Mr. Eltwen," Theiden interrupted. All eyes had turned to face him now, but at least Colverne wasn't leaving to find something to chop off the bookkeeper's fingers with.

"I was held captive by her in the mountains this past Spring," Theiden explained. "I only saw those marks on other creatures who had given into evil intentions." Lenesa's explanation again echoed in his memory. "It means they've killed using their magic."

"Is that so?" Decliteur said thoughtfully. "Well, then, it looks like we have our answer."

"It wasn't her magic!" Mr. Eltwen cried.

Decliteur growled and pulled the man's head back by the hair again. "What do you mean?"

"I told you she's a healer," the bookkeeper said, choking out the words as his head was bent back at an unnatural angle. "What happened at the gate was something different from what she is capable of." He looked beyond Decliteur, to where Colverne was leaning against the open door to the cell. "You should know. You've come across that kind of magic once before."

"If you're talking about that time in the mountains, it was lightning that got me, not a tsunami," Colverne replied calmly. "I don't see any correlation."

"Weather," Mr. Eltwen rasped. "That kind of magic deals with the elements."

"Impossible," Decliteur snarled. "I killed that sort of hag years ago. You can't possibly be suggesting that she's still alive."

"Who says it's the same witch?" the bookkeeper challenged.

"It was this witch that witnesses saw the night the guards were attacked," Decliteur snapped, pointing to the herbs in Theiden's hand. "We're going after her, not this 'other witch' that you've made up."

Mr. Eltwen shook his head. "It wasn't her. She wouldn't do this. You can torture me all you want, but it won't change the truth. I saw her after that event at the river gate." He turned to Theiden. "She wasn't like those monsters you saw in the mountains."

"Not all monsters have to be the same," Decliteur said dismissively. He paused at the sound of a door opening and shutting, and hurried feet making their way down the smoke-filled steps to the hallway behind them. Theiden, Decliteur, Callan, and Colverne turned to see the man who had been covering Colverne's post in the tapestry room standing in front of the open door of the cell, breathing heavily from his sprint to see them.

"What is it, Mevrith?" Colverne barked.

"Ah, yes, sir," the man replied. "Well, we just got the report from the forest gate, and..."

Decliteur nodded at Callan to keep watch over their prisoner while he went to join the conversation between Colverne and Mevrith, which carried on in hushed tones. Theiden shifted impatiently, waiting to hear the news. Finally, the discussion ended, and Decliteur turned back to face them with a pleased glint in his eyes.

"Well, it looks like it won't be long now before we catch this witch of yours," he told the bookkeeper. "The guards at the gate recorded a woman with the name of Eltwen passing into the city earlier today.  I suppose you thought you'd protect her by giving her your name?  Well, it's only made our job easier.  As soon as she tries to leave, we'll have her."

The bookkeeper struggled against the chains binding him. "Don't you dare hurt her! She's done nothing wrong! Please! Leave her alone! She's not the monster you believe her to be!"

Decliteur ignored him, instead nodding to Theiden and Callan. "Let's go," he said.

Theiden tried to ignore the bookkeeper's protests as they left the cell, the desperation and fear in the man's tone echoing long after Colverne had shut the door and effectively blocked out the sounds.

"What'll we do?" Callan asked as their group proceeded back aboveground.

"We wait," Decliteur said. "We'll send a few men to assist the guards in her capture, and they'll send us word afterwards. In the meantime, why don't we enjoy the festival?"

"Sounds good ta me," Callan said.

Decliteur turned to Theiden. "You should come to the bonfire tonight. We're planning to burn the faun's body."

Theiden fought to hide the shiver that wormed its way down his spine at the memory of the faun's death. "Perhaps not this night," he said. "My family has been wary of me leaving for long periods of time, especially at night, ever since—well, I'm sure you understand."

"Of course," Decliteur said, clapping a hand on Theiden's shoulder. "Though perhaps you can convince them to join us on the final night of the festival." He gave a grim smile. "Have they ever celebrated the tradition of staying up all night on the last day, to make the shortest night the longest? The capture of this witch will certainly make it a memorable experience if they haven't done so before."

"I think my daughter's still a bit too young for that," Theiden hedged, "but I'll consider it."

Despite the summer heat, Theiden felt cold as he left the witch hunter's building and made his way back home. The shouts of festival revelers were a dull blur of sounds that carried over from the city center, where the main festivities had begun in the more affluent part of town. Theiden had been a part of the crowd when he was younger, pursuing pretty girls and then attending with Malisse in later years. The dancing and games had made the shorter nights seemingly stretch on endlessly, and all the torches, colors, and bonfires had made the darkness seem almost like day.

Lost in the memories of happier days, Theiden almost missed the sound of a slate tile sliding from a roof and shattering into the gutter of the street. He froze at the horrified gasp of a solitary reveler, and then looked up to see the cause of the incident. A ribbon-flash of red disappeared over the ridge—unmistakably a tail, and one Theiden had seen before.

"What was that?" someone muttered to their friend, who shrugged and merely urged their companion farther up the street. The other witness, who was by himself, merely cast a final wary glance skywards before hurrying back in what Theiden assumed was the direction of his house.

With no one else around on this street, Theiden cautiously made his way into one of the alleyways that would bring him to the other side of the house. When he looked up again, however, there was nothing out of ordinary to be seen on the rooftop.

He had a bad feeling about this.

Theiden casually strolled back out to the street and continued home, now watchful of any telltale glimpses of red. But it wasn't until he had turned down his own street that he finally encountered the goblin again—just as it was knocking over a cart of barrels that had been delivered to the dressmaker's shop earlier that day.

"Demon!" someone shrieked as the little form of Gil darted past their feet and around the corner. "Guardians of the realms, protect us!"

"Someone call the witch hunters!" another pedestrian shouted. This one, Theiden noted, looked more than a little drunk, and waved a bottle in the direction the goblin had gone. This was confirmed by the man's next sentence, as he spewed out with false bravado, "Teach it a lesson, that one! I'll show it!" before promptly bumping his shoulder against a wall and sliding down to rest on the cobblestones and take another swig of his drink.

Shutters of nearby houses that hadn't already been closed were now slammed shut at the racket, but Theiden was most startled as the front door to one of the houses burst open instead. A tall woman with long dark hair and a plain brown cloak strode out into the night in the direction of another terrified scream from the next street over that marked Gil's progress through the city. Only seconds later, another figure, this one in a hooded green cloak, left the same house despite several protests first shouted from within.

Theiden blinked after the retreating figures, then looked back at the house, where a middle-aged woman was standing with her hands on her hips in the open doorway. As soon as she saw Theiden, however, her worried expression turned to a scowl and she slammed the door shut. At the noise, a baby's muted cry started up from within one of the other houses along the street.

It had been a long day, but Theiden didn't dare to mistake the two women he had just seen. Certainly, he was used to seeing Kivirra in glaring red clothes and with different-colored hair, but the face had undoubtedly been hers. Which only meant that the second figure was none other than Lenesa—he had seen that cloak and rigid posture too many times to deny it.

Lenesa. The realization was like an electrified current. After all that had happened with the witch hunters, Theiden was starting to realize that his relationship with the witch was too complicated than to simply cut her out of his life and pretend that they had never met. The witch hunters weren't what he thought they were. They stood for darker things that reeked of the worst of humanity. And the witches weren't all the monsters he believed them to be. Was there any hope that the city could coexist peacefully with them?

The bookkeeper's haunting pleas echoed in his mind.

Is it too late to help Lenesa?

He couldn't let her leave the city now. After what he had heard Decliteur discuss, it sounded like Lenesa would be caught as soon as she presented her papers to pass the new checkpoint that had been set up at the gate.

Another muffled crash stirred Theiden from his indecision, and he set off at a run after the two women and another chorus of shrieks. A flutter of green, a wave of dark brown—Theiden chased after the flitting colors of their cloaks as they wove through the streets and around the buildings. The sounds of music and voices grew ever louder, and more and more streets were decorated with colored ribbons as the goblin led them closer to the city center.  It seemed like everyone had decided to venture out on the first night of the festival.

The planks of the ferryman's bridge clattered beneath his feet as he ran across the river that separated the lower city from the upper-class houses. The richer citizens had built their houses on one of the foothills of the Azaloms, putting them both literally and figuratively higher than the rest of the city. The streets on this side of the river were steeper, and Theiden struggled to keep the two witches ahead of him in his vision. He lost them for a moment around a corner at the top of a steep incline, and by the time he had caught up to where he last saw them, they were gone.

Theiden winced and bent over with his hands on his knees, breathing heavily and trying to catch his breath. Not even the run through the forest earlier that day had been as difficult as navigating the narrow twists and turns and steep streets of the city. There was a reason Gil had been evading capture for the past few weeks. He was fast and impossibly light on his feet. No one had been able to keep up with him long enough to catch him yet.

When Theiden had recovered a little bit, he straightened up and focused on his surroundings.  Cheers suddenly erupted from the other side of an ivy-covered wall, and the adrenaline coursing through his veins had him jumping at the unexpected sound.

Slowly, Theiden made his way to the end of the wall and looked around. He had made it to the city center without realizing it. The central plaza was several city blocks wide and long, framed by towering buildings standing on arched columns that gave dome-shaped views out onto the rest of the city. A fountain had been constructed in the center—a statue of the legendary Ayries Arcstrong that Theiden had failed to first recognize in the witch hunters' tapestry. Unlike the tapestry figure, this Ayries was not wearing golden armor, but was instead constructed of gray stone in the form of a simple tunic and trousers, and merely held a shield for protection while water spurted out of the end of the outstretched sword in his right hand, a weak imitation of the blood that had really spattered from the blade all those years ago.

Now, however, a cluster of young women in flower crowns and pastel-colored dresses were standing on a platform before the fountain, partially blocking it from view. The first round of the Flower Queen contest had evidently just begun, and Theiden could only hope that the goblin and witches stayed clear of the impossibly large crowd that had gathered to watch.

~*~*~*~*~

It's funny, I think this is my least popular story that I have in progress, and yet it's the one I've been the most motivated to write for a while now.  Has that happened to anyone else?  I feel I should be motivated by the stories that get more votes, and while that does motivate me, I think it's because I have the clearest view of where this story is going that I want to write it the most.  Oh well.

Also, back in chapter 1 I posted an image of what I imagine this city/bridge/hill to look like, but I've since lost the image on my computer, so...if you're curious about what this foothill thing is that I'm talking about, you can check it out there.  :) I was also inspired to have a plaza based on the Plaza Mayor in Madrid.   Thanks for reading!