With a hshh, the blue light walls went down. The Wasp had her arm around the Ocelot, who was at least on her feet as she was helped out of the room. Please let them have some kind of med bay.

Orfeus wrapped her hands together for some kind of comfort and closed her eyes. Did the Order of the Vengeful Wild throw their rejects out into the sky for the vultures when they failed?

A hand heavy on her shoulder. Orfeus opened her eyes and frowned at the Wolf. Faol lifted her hand back. “Do you need healing?” she said, stiff and stilted.

Orfeus stared at her, and then waved down at her side. Her shirt was in tatters, and she’d find time to be embarrassed about that later. “Obviously!” Not that she’d get it anytime soon.

The Wolf sighed. “Can you stand, and walk?” she said. “Before those are seen to.”

This seemed an unfair level of torture, even for them. Orfeus turned it slowly over in her mind, trying to make sense of it. “What for?” Orfeus said, and squinted up at the ceiling. “Do you have a gallows? A gangplank. I feel like you’d have a gangplank.”

A shifting, a tug at all her wounds as Faol fitted a burly arm under her shoulders, helping her up. Once she realised what the Wolf was about, Orfeus put some effort into standing as well. She wasn’t going to be hauled around by this creature.

“You need to see Luga,” Faolan said almost patiently. Orfeus could feel her voice as a rumble. “And you must choose a name.”

“Oh,” Orfeus said. After a moment, she tossed back her head and laughed, and kept laughing. “You people. Are. A mess.”

Faol shifted her head, acknowledging without agreeing. She took a step forward. Orfeus took the step forward with her, vaguely.

She told her, “If I’d known it just took stabbing one of you, I would’ve done that the first night with my pruning knife.” Orfeus made stabbing motions in the air. “You would’ve been pruned, Faolan.”

Someone laughed: Boarhound, walking ahead of them. Faol’s nostrils flared. “Come on,” was all she said. Boarhound jogged ahead.

Orfeus leaned heavily on Faolan, the same way she’d lean on a sword that was stabbing her if it was the only thing that kept her upright. Dormarch came back with a jug of something. Orfeus drained half of it before realising with slight surprise it was just water. “Thank you,” she said. Dormarch nodded.

With the water, some sense came back. She’d been talking most unwisely to Faolan just now. Orfeus had just been admitted into the mercenary cult that as far as she could tell comprised Faol’s whole identity, and then threatened to stab her.