"She didn't trouble me at all. We were having a nice chat and she was patronizing my shop," says Artorian. "No need to help me."

Fere smirks and makes a rude gesture, or at least begins the unpleasantly slow process of making a rude gesture.

"I'm glad to hear that," says the man, "but I'm afraid I can't let it keep skipping out on work."

"She belong to you?" inquires Artorian.

"Not personally."

"Then why can't you?"

"I work for its owner, off and on."

"How about you go get them. For all I know you could be a random thief," Artorian says.

He leaves.

Artorian turns off the music, turns to Fere. "I can't actually keep doing this forever," he says. "If we start whisking slaves off we lose all the - good faith negotiating position. You can't even just camp out in the store. But - I want you to know it won't last forever. Even if Sesat blocks us at every turn and you never manage to make it out of the country? We've got resurrection. If you grow old and die here you will wake up free.

You can run if you want to give them a hard time. I'm not going to kick you out, but I can't keep your owner off you when they show up."

"I'm not going to grow old, you idiot." Or maybe Fere's the idiot. Should've never imagined anyone else was going to help, and now her death is just going to be slower because she trusted a stupid garbled rumor about them wanting to help, when instead they want to "negotiate" in "good faith" with this shithole of a country, because no one actually cares.

She would kind of like, on some level, to be able to punch him for luring her here, which is stupid considering that first of all she should've known better and second of all it's not like she's punched all of Sesat yet.

She swallows hard and decides Artorian can go at the end of the list of people she needs revenge on.

"I'm really sorry," says Artorian, not quite meeting her eyes. "If you die here of anything, you will wake up free."

"I would appreciate the thing where you think that's a lie worth telling but the 'if' is really over the fucking top. If you really mean to do that, wait at least a month, they probably won't be done any faster if they can help it. - Sell me a weapon."

"I don't have any in st- I have a pair of scissors, actually, are they for you or them?"

"Which answer gets me scissors," Fere deadpans.

"First one. If you can answer it with the truth magic running."

"I would rather die fast than slow even if you're lying about coming back."

"You going to stab anyone but you with these? I can get away with it if you're not, pretty sure."

"Probably not," since she's hopelessly outmatched and unlikely to succeed at any particular thing she might try in a fight.

He hands her the scissors.

She considers running. It'd be one more thing to try, and she could try to get to someone she wants to get back at more than the garden variety asshole who's after her now, or she could make for Azan. Unless Azan wouldn't help either, or unless Vanda Nossëo has made them stop helping.

But for all that she's bad at being polite to the fair folk she does know she's dealing with them. He did say "if you die here" specifically. It'd be just like them to declare that they totally meant it, that if she'd just trusted them instead of trying to protect herself they really would have made good on their promise...

She would like to challenge them on that but they're still at the end of her list.

"You planning on doing the music thing again?"

"Which one?"

"The one that got in the way of the fight earlier."

"If a fight breaks out."

These people are just so stupidly against revenge. It's terrible. She'll have to either step outside and leave open the possibility of sanctimonious exact-wordsing, which is much worse than just going back on their word, or go ahead and kill herself before anyone gets here. Maybe if she does... she's already passed their truth magic about not wanting revenge that badly. She has options.

"Save my stuff for me, if I'm really coming back," she says casually, and...

...and...

...wow, this does not take the same kind of courage as she has. Why is this difficult.

Artorian nods, eyes a little teary, and collects her stuff into a bag like he really expects to see her later that day.