“What the hell are you doing in my room in the dead of night?” Vin began, having yet to release his hand clasped around Golrim’s throat. “Doesn’t Spur have men guarding you or something?”

  “He does. But giving them the slip wasn’t exactly what I would call a challenging endeavor,” Golrim shrugged, still looking entirely unbothered by the current situation he found himself in. “Now, would you be so kind as to drop the act? I’m pretty good at reading people, and you don’t strike me as the type to murder in cold blood. The fact that you bothered to detain me without injury in the first place further reduces the odds that you’d actually harm me at this point.”

  Vin frowned as he had explained to him what he was and wasn’t likely to do. He’d probably find it even more annoying, if Golrim hadn’t been one hundred percent correct.

  It would be one thing if he’d caught Golrim clutching a poisoned dagger behind his back or in the middle of casting an unknown spell, but as far as he could tell, the man had just been standing there, watching him for who knows how long. Creepy for sure, but not exactly worth killing him over. And with his divine boon in his back pocket, Vin didn’t really feel threatened by the unarmed man.

  Sighing, Vin let his hand drop, taking a few steps back and watching Golrim as the man nodded his thanks.

  “You only answered one of my two questions,” Vin pointed out. “Why the hell are you here?”

  “I told you already, we need to talk.” Golrim looked around the small room, raising an eyebrow. “I would have imagined the savior of the camp would have earned better accommodations than a tiny stone box.”

  “I don’t spend a ton of time in camp anyway,” Vin said, narrowing his eyes. “Talk about what? What’s so important you had to sneak away from your guards in the dead of night and break into my room? If it was that urgent, you could have just told Spur.”

  “I did try telling him,” Golrim said, frowning slightly. “I’ve spent the last few days trying to make myself useful and convince him to lend a hand, but he isn’t interested in helping. Which is why I’ve come to you instead. The people from my world… Well, they’re all going to get themselves killed.”

  Sighing, Vin waved his hand and two small, thick stone walls jutted out of the ground. Taking one of the improvised seats for himself, Vin motioned for Golrim to do the same.

  “Go ahead. I have a feeling we’ll be here for a while.”

  “Silent casting,” Golrim remarked, looking impressed as he took a seat on the offered pillar. “And here I thought the whispers I heard around camp about The Roamer were mainly exaggerations.”

  “They’re not all true,” Vin said, his lips pursing as he remembered hearing someone claim that his very blood was acidic and he could kill an epic monster with a single bite. Having some sort of moniker as if he were the Boogeyman was bad enough, but they could at least get their facts right. “Do you do this a lot? Drop tiny bits and pieces of things meant to intrigue others and wait for them to ask you to go on?”

  “I have to admit, it tended to get the nobility of my kingdom going,” Golrim grinned. “Half of my duties as one of the king’s advisors were keeping the nobles entertained. Had to keep them chomping at the bit as it were.”

  That only made Vin want to start asking him questions about being an advisor to a nation’s king, and Vin glared at the man as he realized what he was doing. He decided the smart thing to do was to simply keep his mouth shut until Golrim started explaining.

  “Apologies,” Golrim chuckled, realizing he’d been made. “Allow me to start from the beginning. Forgive me if I skim over any details, but I’ve already told this to your leader, and I’ll admit I’m not a fan of repeating myself. As I told you before, the only portion of my world to be brought to Edregon was a high-security prison located on the outskirts of our kingdom. Home to nearly a thousand of our nation’s most vile criminals. Execution was deemed too merciful for most of these people, and instead they were sentenced to rot for the remainder of their days. There were a few exceptions such as Kym and myself of course, who were locked up when the old king was overthrown, but we are vastly in the minority. Some of the others had been locked away in there for decades by the time we arrived.

  “When The Escape happened, it was quick, and it was messy. One second everything was normal. Guards were taking advantage of our divine shackles that kept us bound and our abilities in check to pass the time with a few rounds of beatings. The next… Well, I doubt I have to tell you what would happen when a few hundred hardened killers suddenly found themselves free for the first time in years, and their abusers utterly defenseless.

  “Whatever material the divine shackles were made from is as resilient as ever,” Golrim said, raising his hand and showing off one of the black metal bands around his wrists. “…though as far as we can tell, they are now completely devoid of magic. Once we were through with the guards, that’s when the bloodbath truly began. As I said, a handful of prisoners hadn’t seen so much as a single ray of sunlight in thirty years. Some even longer. Those whose minds were broken didn’t stop once we’d run out of guards, choosing instead to turn on our own. We lost a lot of men and women stopping those who were too far gone, and by the time it was all over, our initial thousand had been culled to a mere six hundred.”

  “Dear God,” Vin muttered, trying to imagine how horrifying that must have been. Even Golrim himself admitted that the vast majority of the prisoners had been horrific criminals, but Vin didn’t think anyone deserved thirty-plus years of constant torture.

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  “Leaving the prison behind us, we set foot onto the surface for the first time in years. It was the first and only time I’d seen many of my fellow prisoners weep, and not a single person mocked them for it. Those first few weeks were rough, as we dealt with both discovering the true nature of Edregon while also trying to form some semblance of order among our ranks. As the king’s former advisor, I took it upon myself to take charge, becoming the governor of our new town.”

  “Wait, how did you manage to corral all these deadly criminals?” Vin asked, looking the man up and down. While Golrim certainly had a cautious air about him, he definitely didn’t give off that much of a dangerous aura.

  “It was largely due to the fact that nobody else wanted the job,” Golrim shrugged. “Most were content starting their new lives, and few wanted to deal with the logistics and hassle of actually running a town. That happens to be my area of expertise, so I happily stepped up to the plate. I wasn’t so much in charge of anyone, as I kept the town operating. Told people what we needed and where, and gathered the necessary muscle to stop anyone who got too out of hand.”

  “I suppose I could see that…” Vin admitted, realizing there was a glaring hole in Golrim’s story so far. “So where does Kym fall into all this?”

  “Kym is… Not exactly the scariest person,” Golrim said, choosing his words carefully. “Having worked beside him for years, I know that better than anyone. The only reason he survived in that prison at all is because the new king had him placed in a special cell, otherwise, even with the divine shackles, the other prisoners would have eaten him alive. Some quite literally. When The Escape happened and we all broke free, I protected him the only way I knew how. By taking him under my wing and keeping him isolated from the other prisoners.”

  “It sounds like he was just moved from one cell to another,” Vin pointed out.

  “Please, you seem more intelligent than that,” Golrim frowned, looking actually hurt by Vin’s accusation. “He became the resident of the first building our crafters put up, and I got him everything he wished for that was within my power. I talk as though our town was like any other, but surely you understand that people don’t change quite so easily. Despite my attempts at constructing some form of order, our town is still one founded by criminals. If I’d have let him leave that building, he would have had his throat slit the moment I turned my back. I doubt he would have lasted an hour.”

  “I guess that makes sense.” Vin thought back to the quiet Advisor that seemed capable of practically hiding within his own shadow. To say the man didn’t have any presence was an understatement, so he somewhat understood where Golrim was coming from. “Even so, locking him away still isn’t right.”

  “As the king’s former advisor, I’m used to making the hard decisions,” Golrim countered, his lips drawn thin. “Regardless of if you agree with my methods or not, I did what I did. You probably know most of the rest. For some reason I still haven’t pieced together just yet, Kym decided to run away one day, fleeing the fragment entirely and somehow managing to make it all the way to your camp in one piece. Naturally, worried for my former coworker, I grabbed some men and tracked him down. I was afraid your colonel would place Kym in shackles again, locking him away and using him for his knowledge. I demanded Kym be returned to us, but of course, while we waited for a response, one of the criminals I’d grabbed to help with any threats saw a ripe opportunity to return to his old ways.”

  “You really expect me to believe the assassin that attacked our camp, who specifically targeted the building Spur had Kym secured within, wasn’t going for the man under your orders?” Vin asked, looking at Golrim like he was an idiot. “Come on, that’s ridiculous.”

  “Alright, fine,” Golrim sighed, clicking his tongue. “I’ll admit I ordered the man to go in and retrieve Kym. But I told him to do it silently, without hurting anyone. I knew there was a chance he’d get too excited and hurt someone, but I decided recovering Kym was worth the risk of a few strangers dying. I know it doesn’t mean much, but for that I apologize.”

  “I don’t exactly believe that either, but I’ll shelve that for now. Keep going.”

  “After realizing what had happened, I took our men and retreated back to our fragment. I was able to maintain order for a couple of days, but without Kym’s knowledge, my position was severely weakened. You see, in exchange for Kym helping people achieve the classes and abilities people wanted, they had to respect my authority as governor, at least to a certain degree. With Kym gone, I’d lost my backing.”

  “It sounds to me like you kept Kym prisoner in order to use him and get people to listen to you, and that after he escaped, you ordered an attack on our camp in an attempt to kidnap him all over again,” Vin summed up, crossing his arms. “I have to admit, I’m rather confused about what you were hoping to accomplish coming here to tell me all this. If anything, my opinion of you has only worsened since you started talking.”

  “I don’t care what your opinion of me is,” Golrim frowned. “What I do care about is the town I spent the last few months trying to run, and the wellbeing of the people living within. Without Kym, I lost my authority. And with that gone, everything started falling apart. It wasn’t total anarchy, but I’m rather skilled at reading the writing on the wall, and I could tell it wouldn’t be long before the tell fell apart. I came to your camp for two reasons. One, was to check and make sure Kym wasn’t being treated horribly. Two, was to plead with your leader to help bring order and structure to our town.”

  “You came here to ask Spur to what, invade your fragment?” Vin asked, confused. “Not just place you back in charge?”

  “To be entirely honest, I don’t even particularly like being in charge,” Golrim said with a grimace. “I spent years happily working as the king’s advisor. I certainly enjoyed all the perks that came with it, but I prefer being more of a right hand man to the leader than being the leader myself. However, Spur told me he had enough on his plate at the moment and couldn’t afford devoting so much time and effort toward a foreign fragment. Which is why I’ve come to you.”

  “What the hell do you expect me to do?” Vin laughed, shaking his head at Golrim’s serious gaze. “I’m certainly not about to take charge of your town. And I can’t very well take on a couple hundred hardened prisoners on my own, even if they have turned over a new leaf like you claim.”

  “You don’t have to take over, I just need someone to help me convince Spur to go with my plan B,” Golrim admitted. “There’s another way I can save my people, or most of them anyway. But it’s something of a tall ask.” Taking a deep breath, Golrim fixed Vin with a determined look, his one eye staring hard into Vin’s own.

  “I need you to help me convince Spur to allow my people to move into your camp.”

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