From shadows deep, and squalor
Emerged the Red Queen, hale.
So silent fell her footsteps,
Her bow struck without fail.
Anon, there came a dragon
White-fang'd and fierce of eye.
The Red Queen did not falter,
But let her arrows fly.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cuinn finds her friend the next morning setting out food for the cats of Stormpoint; she is amused to see a softer side of Leandra. Cuinn, Leandra, and Callum depart for Islien. The journey is uneventful, and they soon reach the lush peninsula of Islien with its deep woods and artfully decorated city. Cuinn hasn't been to Isilvaere's lands since assuming Reynhild's identity, and their beauty stirs mixed emotions in her; she and Leandra bond over shared memories of childhoods of deprivation and hardship.
They find the Gilded Calf, a run-down dive remarkable only for how the gilding of the Inn's name has peeled almost entirely off its sign. Cuinn immediately recognizes the innkeeper from her days as a bandit, and asks Leandra to inquire about Sally's whereabouts, under the pretext of purchasing her services. With a long-suffering eyeroll, Leandra agrees. She learns that Sally and her flock are operating in a small hamlet currently occupied by sellswords that have drifted southward after the War of Independence, as they can conduct some of the more unsavoury aspects of their trade unhindered by the city and Isilvaere's laws. They eat a decent meal and rest, and leave for the hamlet.
The hamlet is tiny and deep in the countryside. To provide a cover story, Cuinn hunts a brace of hares to sell at the inn; Leandra, thoroughly a denizen of the city, both loathes the wilderness excursion and is grudgingly impressed at Cuinn's hunting prowess. They enter the hamlet's lone small public house to find it occupied by rough sellswords recuperating from the War of Independence, and a few harried-looking locals. Some boys and girls-- undoubtedly Sally's-- are present also; one of the sellswords is manhandling one of the girls. Cuinn calmly advises him to stop. He puffs up and picks a fight; she dispassionately knocks him cold with the pommel of her seax. The innkeeper orders her and Leandra out, and they leave.
Cuinn manages to catch the attention of one of the boys-- a sullen lad named Malcolm. She asks if he is Sally's, and he immediately replies "Are you going to kill her?" But he is conflicted and plainly frightened, and Cuinn and Leandra's coaxing gets nothing more out of him. He does, however, give them directions to the shack in the woods where Sally plies her vile trade. Cuinn gives him money and tells him to run away and seek lodging at the boarding-house in Islien.
Cuinn dislodges Callum from the grip of an overenthusiastic town child, and she and Leandra go find the shack. It is a stomach-turning sight indeed-- a two-room hovel in the woods that Sally evidently prostitutes the boys and girls out of. Leandra discreetly offers to wait outside. Cuinn quietly steps past the small sleeping bodies, and enters the back room.
The weathered old woman counting money and scribbling on scraps of parchment inside is, without a doubt, her mother, Sally. Cuinn comes to the cold realization that, if she had not run away, this might well have been her own future. She coldly greets her, and offers to buy the entire hovel full of children from her keeping. Sally, unbelievably, recognizes her instantly, and berates her for running away and abandoning her. Cuinn realizes that there will be no warmth, no reconnecting with her, not now, not ever, so she calmly asks for the information she came for-- the identity of her father. Sally demands money for the information, which Cuinn grudgingly pays.
Sally tells Cuinn that she did not give birth to her, but found her next to a dead woman in the woods, wrapped in a lavishly embroidered cloak and holding a gold signet ring.
Cuinn, stunned, attempts to maintain her composure, and demands to know more details, such as the insignia on the ring. Sally demands a truly extortionate amount of money for the information. Cuinn contemplates beating her for the information, but cannot bring herself to torture a old woman, and pays.
Sally says she sold the ring and cloak to a lieutenant of the Sons of Iron Mountain, a man named Kelros White-Eyes, currently in Islien. Cuinn states that she has given her enough money to purchase every child prostitute in the shack for life, and then some, and she will be taking them. She bids Sally a final farewell, and leaves with a half-dozen children. As she departs, she glimpses Sally out the window-- not watching her leave, nor the children, but counting the money.
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