10
UNWELCOME: EIGHT MONTHS BEFORE THE TRIAL
My hope that the worst lay behind us was absurd. I knew it when we docked in Valez’Mui, knew it long before, yet I clung to the idea like a drowning man clinging to a sinking raft. It was finally dashed by the reception we received when we tried to disembark.
It had been more years than I wished to count since I’d last set foot in the city-state. It was obvious that the relationship the Church of N’narad had maintained with Valez’Mui had disintegrated with neglect and time. The Artisan who met us greeted me with a shallow apology that only I and two others would be allowed to leave the ships, and two hundred Valezian footmen stood behind him to make sure of it.
I chose Captain Rohm to accompany me. I had grown to depend on him in the weeks fo
