It was evening when the rain slowed to a mist, and people began to emerge from the hovels and storefronts that lined the cobbled path. The flotsam and jetsam that washed down the gully and puddled in the wagon tracks of the road brought a new foulness to the humid, fetid air.
Carioness looked up into the cloudy evening sky, pulling his hood a bit forward, and stepped out into the roadway, avoiding the rivers and riverlets that were slowing into ponds and puddles. It had been a fortnight since he had last seen Apennon, and wasn't quite sure if he would be able to find him again. Apennon had a way of not being found, even when he wasn't avoiding Carioness, and he was very much avoiding him. He owed Apennon a sound beating, but that wasn't why he was looking for the slippery vermin. Apennon still had the sword he had taken from The Vendipaln, and it was Carioness who had been tasked with returning it to its place in the hallowed hall. When Carioness had found Apennon, it was quite by accident, and Apennon took advantage of the surprise to disappear into the crowd. Apennon was not carrying the sword, which troubled Carioness. Had he already sold it? Had he damaged it? Carioness feared that neither was the case. Apennon was not a thief. Was he a Believer? Few things made Carioness nervous, but Believers were the boogeyman every child grew up fearing for the tales told to make them behave. There was irony in that, and the thought made Carioness smirk derisively.
As he moved through the streets people nodded towards him, recognizing the scarlet trim and ornate deep blue and silver designs of the High Praetorian with respect and a smile. There was curiosity too, as Carioness walked alone, and the Guard was rarely seen, but more rarely seen singularly. But Carioness was no common High Praetorian, and they had no reason to know that he always worked alone.
Apennon had been a student of the Arts, and taught history at the University. It was long thought that he was a leader of a shadowy group that sought to overthrow the Saemositen and its republican rule of the Three Realms, a cult that was called The Gramen, for the region they were thought to hail from. It was a bastion of nationalism and the last remnants of the past rule that had darkened the continent for millenia almost two hundred years ago. There was irony in this too, his being a historian. He was well aware of the rife, terror and ruin of the Canseore, the family that had ruled the largest Realm with fear, hate and violence. It took centuries to overthrow them and establish the Saemositen, the people they had ruled keeping them in power for the hope of favor in the short term, denying the realities of the long. The peace and prosperity that came with the fall of the Canseore brought the Three Realms together, as the leaders of the Three Realms found their way to common good rather than common animosity.
He paused having found himself in the midst of a round, where the worn streets went off in five different directions, one differing from the other not the least in appearance, only in the direction in which they promised to go. This vexed him, badly, as he had neither the time, patience nor desire to muddle with riddle. And so he sat at the edge of the ornate fountain in the center, and he waited. If there was one thing predictable about Apennon, it was that he too has no time to waste in playing this game.
