They walked up the winding stairs, and when they reached the top, the man made sure that no one saw them coming down from there. Then, he barred the entrance and locked it.
"People are talking, Wyndrahill," the woman said. "And forget about what happened down there. You should be a different man here."
Wyndrahill rubbed his cheek and his brows, and then his expression was stone-like. "Let them talk, Boa," he swiped his hair back. "I am going there for one purpose – to remind myself of the true cause."
They walked through the hallway that started from the stairs. "And what is it?" Boamina asked though she knew the answer.
"That it only takes one swipe from those monsters to turn us," his voice was grim.
"You say that, but what I saw downstairs says otherwise."
Wyndrahill stopped in his tracks. "She is my sister, Boa. My only sister. Do you think it's that easy for me to give up on her?"
"It's not a matter of being easy or hard," Boamina said. "Everyone has lost something after Plague came. You should know that better."
"Yes," Wyndrahill started to walk. "But what point is there to fight, if there is nothing to hold onto?"
The long hall led to a battlement, and from it, they could see the other four towers. "A single dungeon for one person," Boamina looked the way they came from. "Don't you think that it's rather too much?"
"Our prisons are empty," Wyndrahill said. "What did you expect?"
Ten years ago, before Plague shattered the shards, this was a castle owned by one of the seven Red-lords. Down to her right, the moat was filled with brackish water, and she saw a couple of corpses flowing in it. "What's the cleanup crew doing?" she wondered.
To her left, down in the ward, she saw people work. Some of them carried potatoes in from the outer courtyard, and she saw soldiers moving about. There was a clamor of swords in one corner, and she saw two men duking it out. But the castle was a far memory of its older days, when a thousand servants worked, and a hundred men manned the walls.
They need to pass through one more tower to reach the keep where the Convergence is waiting for them. The Convergence, or simply The Council was the governing body of the fortress. Most of the ones living there have started to believe that Wyndrahill had taken Boamina for his mistress, but it wasn't the case.
Boamina simply followed the man when he was going to the dungeon, and from then on, she knew about his secret. That was all – nothing more, nothing less.
From the next tower, they caught a glimpse of Smordon. "One day, we are going to take it back," Wyndrahill said like a prayer. A prayer that he repeated every time he crossed that place.
The roof of the keep was wide and it had a coop for the arrival of ravens and hawks, though none flew in through them any longer. The man and the woman hid from the sun in the keep's roof, and from there they went down the winding staircase.
After climbing down one flight of stairs, Boamina saw two servants scrubbing the floor. There were no carpets in place, and Boamina wondered why they were doing it when there was other important work in place. She nodded to them, and they went down another flight of stairs.
When they came out to the aisle, Wyndrahill saw a woman running, as if she was searching someone. She saw the woman coming down and stopped in her tracks. She was a thin little thing, with round wide eyes that squinted whenever she talked to someone. "I've been looking everywhere for you," she said. "The Convergence is waiting."
Her short cropped hair and sharp jaw made her look like a boy. If it wasn't for the way she was dressed, she would've passed off as one. "You are in way too much of a hurry, Nagia," Wyndrahill calmed her. "They are not going anywhere."
"But still," she walked with them. "It's my duty as the records keeper."
Boamina rolled her eyes. "You make it sound like an awful lot of work. This is how this meeting is going to go. The Convergence will ask us to send our men to someplace, while those idiots sit inside their rooms. And most of the time, many of them won't come back."
"Don't always be pessimistic, Boa," Wyndrahill waved his hand.
"Oh come on. We need to cull the group. Some of them are as worse as Danderion."
Wyndrahill stopped, with his eyes flushed and his eyes glaring. "Don't speak of that man," he jabbed his finger to her face.
Boamina knew that Wyndrahill had killed Danderion, but she didn't know anything more – and he wouldn't speak of it.
For the way, Wyndrahill didn't speak. They reached the door to the council room, and Nagia opened the door for them. They all entered, and as Nagia said, they were waiting.
In the center of the hall, there was a long table with the map of Rubrea carved in stone. The members sat on the left and right, with the seat by the head and one seat on its left empty.
Wyndrahill went and sat in the chair by the head of the table, and Boamina sat in the remaining chair. Wyndrahill nodded to everyone that was in the room: Twain Willthrow, the man who oversaw the overall affairs of the fortress; Checweck Carrion, he dealt with the merchants, and checked for provisions; Eathrone Sombers, he dealt with the troops and sent out rescue mission; Vimber Bastine, he gathers information, although by what ways Wyndrahill didn't know.
"So, what is this meeting for?" Wyndrahill asked.
Vimber and Eathrone looked at each other and stood up. "We believe, we've located the main camp of the group that calls themselves 'The Soulless'," Eathrone said.
"And my sources also confirm its accuracy," Vimber added.
Wyndrahill tapped the table. "What can you say about Smordon?" he asked.
Vimber's cheek twitched. He was a bald man, with thin brows. "The Pestilence is still there, so we can't still attack the place," he was an old man, and he looked older then.
Wyndrahill sternly looked at Eathrone. "You can deal with a group of cannibals on your own, can't you? Call for a new meeting when there is something that you can't handle alone. This meeting is now over."