The door to the cabin opened and the young female prisoner nearly fell over her own feet as she stumbled in. Only a quick jerk of the rope kept her from slamming into the nearby table. “I thought you elfy folk were light on your feet.” Petriv laughed and pulled her over near the stove. He looped the rope around the iron posts that held the pots above the fire pit and cinched it tight.
“At least you’ll stay warm there,” he laughed. “Just don’t go falling asleep in the coals. The smell of burnt elf hair is right down there with firing a latrine pit.”
Lowil handed her a clay mug and gave her a smile, “Here’s some tea my dear. It’s not as strong as your people prefer, but it’ll wash the road dust away just the same.”
“Hey,” the younger Ranger snarled, slapping the mug out of her hands, “she eats and drinks after we do, if there’s anything left. That’s the way of things.” Thankfully, he said nothing to Kre as the boy picked up the broken pieces from the floor.
“When you arrested her,” Lowil explained calmly in his teacher’s voice, “you agreed to care for and protect her until she could be tried fairly by a criminal court. Letting her eat and drink like a person is simply the bare minimum of that agreement.”
“Elves ain’t got the same rights as Tehynshins,” Petriv countered, with a hint of pouting in his voice.
Lowil made a show of ignoring him and turned the girl’s hands over a couple of times in his own. “Quite a nasty rope burn you have here. Let’s see if we can get that cleaned up.” He turned to face the older Ranger, “Ranger Marce, would you be so kind as to remove her bindings? There is but a single door to the cabin and the walls are too strong to break. Escape is… unlikely.”
Marce considered it for a moment and then nodded once. When Petriv turned to make a comment, Marce silenced him with a sharp gesture. “You make a reasonable argument. Just be aware that any attempts at violence or escape on her part will result in her death.”
Still surly at being nonverbally chastised, the younger Ranger turned to the girl and spoke in a louder than normal voice. “You hear that? No run away. You run, you die. No hurt anyone. You hurt, you die. You hear?”
The girl gave him a puzzled look, her head tilting to one side. Petriv shook his head and muttered, “Stupid savages can barely speak their own language, let alone ours.” He untied the ropes from her wrists and retied it around her legs, so she could take short, halting steps at best. “If she does attack us, maybe we’ll let her kill you first for being a naïve know-it-all before we stop her.”
Lowil motioned Kre over and had the younger man handle the stew while he tended to the wounds on the girl’s wrists and forearms. The two Rangers sat at the nearby table, sipping their tea and cleaning their nails with their knives. “Don’t be scared,” he whispered as he did so, “not all Tehynshins are like those two.” He cinched a clean cloth around her wrists and smiled, “There, that should be better in the morning. Now, here’s another mug of tea.”
The girl took it gratefully, bowing her head slightly as she did so. She sat on the floor, cross-legged and sipped it carefully, both hands holding the mug in a very practiced fashion. Kre tried not to stare, but it was hard not to be curious about Ylveryans, especially after everything the Rangers told him about them.