Chapter 37.2: A Quick Reunion

Penny’s attention was instantly beyond Jinkke and back to the shaded figures. She didn’t want to admit it, but with a bit more focus, she too could now see the angular black and gray patterns of their Vigil uniforms. One of them stepped out into the daylight, and even at that distance, the woman’s straw-blond hair was evident in the sunlight. It seemed to bring the rest of her into relief. Gods, it was Crusader Jindel. The other soldier came out of the shadows just a step behind her.

“Minkus?” the distant woman called across the field. “Is that you? What in the name of the Six are you doing here?”

“Yes, it’s me,” Minkus yelled, pointed back over his shoulder. “Penny is here, too! My ears, how are you?”

Suddenly alive again, Minkus bounded ahead, chattering at the Crusader like the fortnight since their last meeting had never happened. He’d nearly spanned the distance before Penny and the other two asura started after him.

Penny moved with particular hesitance. She wasn’t really a fan of the overzealous upstart of a crusader, but more than that, the sight of the other woman— well, it brought with it a series of related memories that Penny would rather not think about. Once again she was stuffing away images of Archen Foreland, Skixx, Ventyr, and all the days surrounding them. Gods, even that hell of a hangover came back.

“Who is this?” Jinkke asked, drawing Penny back to reality. The asura woman kept her voice low and eyes ahead.

“Another Vigil person,” Penny muttered. 

Jinkke’s glare said she needed more.

“We traveled with her before we picked you up,” Penny said with a groan. “Your brother made friends with her.”

“You didn’t?”

Jinkke smirked snidely, and Wepp snickered—those two little pains in her ass.

The three caught up with Minkus, who stood beside the crusaders, their conversation well underway. Jindel leaned over him, clearly paying no attention to anyone else. “Minkus, how would I know where the Sergeant is? He was with you, and I still don’t know how you got here.”

“On foot,” Penny said, tightening her arms across her chest. She remained a few yards away from the interaction, with Jinkke and Wepp between her and the crusaders. “We got here on foot, Soldier Girl. And the last Ventyr told anyone, this is where he was headed.”

Jindel met her eyes. There was no particular animosity in her expression, but neither was there any of the warmth Minkus had received in their greetings across the field. Penny would have been more unnerved if there had been. 

“So how the hell did you get here?” Penny asked. “I thought they were keeping you at the Vigil castle.”

“Keep,” the other woman corrected. “Vigil Keep.”

“Whatever.”

Jindel sneered at the remark but answered the question. “They didn’t keep me there; they reassigned me— to here, along with five others. I assume the Sergeant had something to do with it.”

“And that’s who we need to find.” Minkus sounded like he’d forgotten the very thing he’d been asking about. “He must be here somewhere— he just has to be.”

“Minkus, I haven’t seen him,” the crusader repeated. “If he’s not with you, then maybe he’s still en route?”

Penny opened her mouth to respond, but Jinkke interrupted, planting hands on her hips. “I was the last person to interact with the Sergeant and the Scholar, and they left my company approximately nine days ago, asserting that they were headed here as quickly as possible, presumably along the same course the four of us just traveled. We never encountered them on the road. Considering the space between our departures, our generally faster mode of travel, and the scarcity of settlements between the starting and ending points, if we didn’t encounter them, they should have arrived here.” Her mouth twisted. “Unless they ran into an unforeseen complication.”

Jindel straightened, resting each hand on a knife pommel at her belt. Her eyes flicked past the party and settled on Jinkke. Her interjection appeared to put both soldiers on edge.

“Who was this scholar?” Jindel asked.

“Scholar Yissa,” Minkus replied. “She joined us at the Durmand Priory.”

Honestly, Penny had forgotten the two had never met, but Jindel’s face soured at the mention of the bookworms. “Right. The Priory.”

Penny suddenly recalled parting ways with this woman. She hadn’t given it a thought since the day they’d hiked up in the Shiverpeaks, but she could remember it now. The soldier had been so bent out of shape by Braxus’ death, she’d all but thrown a tantrum when some commanding officer had reassigned her away from Ventyr. The rest of them had carried on with their mission while Valliford was sent off, apparently to here.

“Yeah,” Penny groaned, breaking the lingering silence. “The Priory. You missed a real party on that leg of the trip.”

“Penny’s right,” Minkus said, completely missing Penny’s sarcasm. “The Priory was a very impressive place: artifacts and tomes from all kinds of places. I would love to go back one day and—”

Stepping up beside him, Jinkke stood on toes to reach her brother’s ear, though she whispered loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Big Brother, this isn’t the time for a detailed review of the Priory’s facilities.”

He blushed. “Oh. Right.” His previous train of thought came back to him quickly, and he perked up, ears rising as he focused up at Jindel again. “Ventyr— Sergeant Ventyr, I mean—please, if he’s here— if there’s even a chance he’s here, we need to find him.”

Minkus halted again, seeming to lose his place as he glanced back at the rest of the group behind him. Penny had no idea what he was after, but his eyes seemed to search until they reached Wepp. Minkus snapped back around to the woman standing over him. “Oh, yes. We also need to talk to your commander— sergeant— leader— whoever’s in charge. We learned what the monster was!”

“In all probability,” Wepp corrected, raising a finger. “It may be a nearly certain probability, but it is still onlya probability.”

Jindel’s eyes widened, and her partner on watch stepped up beside her. “Monster?” the thick man asked, sliding his helmet off. He gawked at them through eyes as narrow as the eye-slit they’d just been freed from. “Do you mean the thing that decimated Vulmos’ scouting party? Gods, you know what it was?”

Minkus nodded awkwardly, beginning to say more, but Jindel raised a hand. “Not here,” she said. “I want to know—Dwayna knows I do—but that’s information for the Captain.” She bit her lip, seeming to force back her own words, then turned back to the other guard. “Can you keep the watch awhile, Newlan?”

“Of course.” He nodded. “Get this to the Captain.”

Clearly she would; she was already stepping back and away in what must have been the direction of their camp. “All of you, come with me,” she instructed, without so much as a glance back to see if any were following her.

One by one they exchanged looks and decided to follow her, none faster than Minkus, which Penny wasn’t the least bit surprised by. Hell, even she knew it was the right thing to do at the moment. That didn’t make obedience to the other woman any less sour, but it was the right thing to do.

Following Jindel, the group hiked some half-mile farther into a narrow gulch between two forested mesas, where somehow the air got even thicker. As they went, the four of them conveyed the rest of their story to Jindel, though Minkus did the bulk of it. He recounted Jinkke’s addition to the group in Lornar’s Pass and Yissa’s contributions at the Durmand Priory.

As they told the tale, Penny found herself drawing back from the rest of the party, particularly at points like Bloodtide Coast and Divinity’s Reach. She’d only done what anyone in her position would have—hadn’t she?—but that didn’t mean she wanted every gods-damned person in Tyria to know about it. Certainly not some Vigil zealot.

To her surprise, though, no one mentioned anything about her deal with Skixx. In truth, it really wasn’t a surprise that Minkus didn’t say anything; he wouldn’t do that to her—an odd thought, but true. Even Wepp’s silence on the matter made some sense. But Jinkke? Sure, they’d started getting a little chummy over the last few days, but Penny wouldn’t have expected that to completely erase Jinkke’s previous distaste for anything and everything having to do with her. It was only a matter of time before she was even more at odds with both Jinkke and Jindel, so, her stomach as tight as ever, Penny waited. 

The asura carried on with the tale into Lion’s Arch, where the only motivation given for Penny’s departure was a concern for her apprentice and her shop. No one noticed, but Penny winced at the mention. Gods, until Minkus had arrived back in the Reach, she hadn’t even considered Eddie. That part of their story wasn’t just an omission; it was an outright lie.

Minkus continued the recounting, overlooking everything about the deal Penny had made with Skixx and moving along so quickly to discovering Wepp as Skixx’s partner that Jindel didn’t even have time to ask how they’d found the connection between the two. He moved on to their arrival at Rata Sum, the discovery of Skixx, and the work they’d all done with Vaff. And Jinkke corroborated the entire story, leaving out every detail that could have set the crusader at odds with Penny. To anyone who hadn’t been there, Penny would have seemed as committed to Minkus’ cause as anyone.

The story reached its end, and they all walked a ways in silence, the vigilwoman absorbing it all as she led them on a short way farther. Penny felt sick, but as they rounded a bend and came right up against the broad, wooden pikes of the palisade encircling the Vigil encampment, her mind was blessedly taken off the roiling knot in her stomach.

The camp wasn’t much to speak of, even in contrast to the makeshift Priory fort they’d called home the night before. Less than a dozen tents of a few different sizes suggested there probably weren’t more than twenty vigilmen stationed here, and the handful of those visibly working within the camp right then supported that theory. Another palisade, identical to the first, stood on the other side of the camp, but its pikes pointed into the camp, not away from it. These soldiers had taken up residence between two layers of defense meant to keep intruders out of something beyond their camp.

At the northern edge of the space, pressed up against one of those tall, craggy cliffsides, was a tent larger than the rest: no more decorated than any other, but broader and circular, coming to a single point at the center. A single, towering norn stood guard beside the half opened flap, beyond which Penny could just see the edge of a gray-clad figure inside—human by the looks of him—and some smaller person that kept skirting past. The voices of at least those two were audible, if only as mumbled sounds that rose and fell as their discussion flowed in and out of what were clearly disagreements. Whatever they were walking into now, Penny was just glad they’d moved on from that horrific storytime.

The tree of a man at the tent flap followed Jindel’s approach with a suspicious eye and dropped an enormous greatsword across the entrance. “What do you want, Valliford?”

She pointed inside. “I need to see the Captain, Yult. It’s...” She paused, calculating something as she looked up at the hulking man. “Important— it’s just important.”

He glared down at her with an expression made somehow harder by the glossy shine off his shaved head. “Doesn’t make Raven’s feather of a difference right now, does it? He’s busy with Tekki. Unless the camp’s under attack, he’s not having anyone.”

Jindel groaned, combing dust out of her hair with her hands. “Are they almost done? This really can’t—”

“Nothing’s on fire, and no one’s dying,” Yult grunted, setting himself squarely in front of the entry-flap. They weren’t passing. “So you’re not getting in. And just who in the Mists are all these people with you, anyway? We don’t just let anyone into the Captain’s tent whenever they feel like it.”

Jindel glanced back at the group behind her, and Penny could see her silently considering something. And just as quickly, she made a decision, turning back to the norn at the door. “Sergeant Ventyr learned what your creature in the moors was. These people say he should be here, but I haven’t seen him. Have you?”

The norn’s eyes, deep-set though they were, went wide, and gritting his teeth in a feral snarl, he gripped the edge of the tent flap and pulled it wider, threatening to rip the fabric off its frame. “Captain,” he bellowed, hunching forward to lean his head in under the open flap, “Valliford has information you’re going to want to hear.”

The man inside and the asura who’d been dancing around the table both snapped their attention to the entryway, looking first at the big, norn head looking in at them from the top of the slit and then at the group gathered behind him. On the other side of the round table, a sylvari stood at attention taking notes on a pad of paper. She too looked on in cold sort of surprise. The asura blinked, somehow indignantly.

“Crusader Fjornsson,” the Captain demanded, “what is the meaning of this? You knew I was meeting with…” His words failed as he scanned the odd assortment of asura and humans who stood awkwardly outside his tent. “Who are these people?”

“Sir,” Yult said more evenly, though with no less force, “They say they were with Sergeant Ventyr.”