Iliana bit back a cry of pain in a reflex that had saved her life more than once. As a result, the small drop of blood that slipped out of the wound and onto the polished wood of her desk was the only evidence that escaped before she closed her hand over it. She calmly set the knife down on the desk and reached for a hankerchief, outwardly showing no sign of the injury while she mentally berated herself for her carelessness. Under the cover of her desk, she pressed the cloth against the blood welling in her hand as she surveyed the archive with the same measured look she always used. Milantha was the only one present, engrossed in the journal she'd been reading over the past few days. The older woman's eyes warmed slightly as the girl sat back for a moment, frowning at nothing. It was the mark of an independant mind, that she never accepted anything that she heard or read until she had considered it. Hot-headed she often was, but rarely foolish.

Although she did have her moments.

Iliana stood silently, the hankerchief pressed to her hand, and started to slip out.

"Iliana? Are you all right?"

The older woman stopped, mildly surprised that her departure had been noted. Milantha was showing progress indeed, no longer so oblivious to her surroundings as she had previously been.

"A scratch. I'll be back shortly."

"Are you sure?" Milantha frowned and shoved her chair back with a graceless clatter. Iliana gave her a reproachful look, and she could see from the girl's slightly guilty expression that her disapproval had been noted--and disreguarded, for the moment. Milantha marched up to her mentor, and Iliana's will silenced a second cry of pain as her injured hand was grabbed and examined. The Loremaster made a mental note to add 'proper handling of injured parties' to their training agenda as she patiently suffered her apprentice's attention. She softened slightly at the concern evident in Milantha's face as the younger woman dabbed blood away from the wound. "You should have Tarrin look at that."

"That was precisely what I had intended."

"Well, you're not going like that." Milantha announced, folding the stained hankerchief and pressing it against the cut. She pulled a cloth of her own out of her pocket and tied it around her mentor's hand, knotting it tightly over the first hankerchief. Iliana smiled faintly and put her uninjured hand on Milantha's head gently.

"Go back to your work, now," she said quietly. "And thank you. I'll be fine." Milantha grinned a little uncertainly.

"I'm gonna remember this the next time you lecture me about being careless."

Iliana quirked an eyebrow at her, but there was no real sting in the look. Milantha smiled and went back to her book.

***

Iliana waited quietly while a harried Tarrin did his usual job of being everywhere at once. It appears to have been 'one of those days,' she thought mildly. I suppose I'd best be of what help I can.

"Young man," she snapped, "Are you dying?"

"Uh--" he looked at her, confused for a moment, but her arched eyebrow forestalled any protests he might have made. "No, ma'am."

"Then I would suggest that you shut your beak, sit down, and make yourself comfortable."

"But this'll only take a minute--"

"A minute in which someone with a much greater hurt will have to continue to suffer because Tarrin took time away from *their* injuries to tend to *you.*" She held up her injured hand. "We *all* must wait our turn, now I suggest you look on this as an opportunity to develop some much-needed patience."

He looked sulky but did as he was told. Iliana sighed inwardly and drifted about, her sharp words bringing a measure of peace anywhere that her stern look could not. She was mildly surprised to feel a momentary pang of sadness as she looked around the room and realized that she recognized very few of those present. Oh, the faces were familiar, even a name here and there, but...

But she knew nothing about them, as she had her children from before. These young ones, when they fled, would flee alone, to a dark place in their own minds and souls where they could hide their hurts away and bleed in silence...

Stop it, she told herself firmly. You cannot save them from the lives they have chosen.

Just as you can't save Milantha from the fate you offer her.

The thought flew out of no where and stuck in her throat, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. Innocence has no place here. For her least of all.

"For you even less, Silversong."

She felt the weight of a heavy black hand on her head as she looked up at the gruff face of the man she called teacher. He was a big man, broadshouldered and heavyset, dwarfing the figure of the young girl before him. "We must all bear our pains here. You and I more than the rest, because we bear not only our own pain, but the pain of everyone around us. You cannot afford to lose touch with these people, girl. Without them the Law is nothing, and you must understand them before you can understand it. This," he swept his arms outward, indicating the whole of the Brotherhood Lore and Law. "This is nothing. This is a pile of ink and paper." Iliana's chest siezed up at slanderous words. This was the Law, this was what made the Brotherhood more than the common gang of street thugs. This was their honor. This was their life. "It all means nothing," he told her solemnly. "It is worthless. It is the heart and the character of the people around you--the ones you laugh with in the mess hall, and the ones you pass everyday and never see--that gives these dusty volumes the weight of Law. Know them. Because they are the ones who decide the truth behind the Law."

She hadn't understood, then, what he'd been talking about. Now, she knew what he'd been trying to say. The character of the people determined just how much someone would be allowed to get away with. Duke should have died for leaving the Brotherhood, but for those that had survived to pass judgement on him, the defeat of the Saurians had excused his actions. Iliana knew Duke, she knew his character and his honor, and so she hadn't spoken against him. The letter of the law had demanded that he be punished, and that she see to it that everyone knew the penalty. The heart of the people had overruled the letter of the law. And that was the true power of the Brotherhood, a power that was lost in the 'justice' system of the outside world. The power to hold a man's life in one's hand, and weigh not just the fact of his crime, but the truth of it as well.

Iliana responded on automatic as her hand was examined and tended, lost in thought. I would say, she thought wryly, That one knows one is getting old when one is philosophysing over things one put to rest years before. If I start regaling Milantha with 'when I was your age' stories, I'm going to retire, I swear it. I don't know why seeing so many unfamiliar faces should put me in such a mood, there are always new people coming in...She shuddered involuntarily.

Chaos. Everywhere, people were fighting, desperate only to get out, guided by an instinct that they had centered their lives around--the instinct to survive. The desire to be free. Iliana fled downwards, through the levels and halls, the fighting close behind her. They were coming, they were coming to destroy and to steal everything she had made her existance. They had the fear of ages on their side, and deep in her soul, Iliana admitted it. Iliana carried the past close to her heart always, and they struck out from it like the demons that had haunted her bed as a child. Behind her, she could hear the cries of her brothers, her sisters, her children. She counted them all family, and their blood ran before the invaders as the terrible vengeance of the Saurians raged through the Lair.

Iliana closed her ears and her heart to their cries, fixing her duty foremost in her mind even as tears that she would never have revealed blurred her vision. She had a job to do.

She didn't look back as the fire blazed up behind her, she just fled, out of her archive and through pitched battle where so many of those she knew were falling in the defense of their home. A part of her longed to join them, though she knew their fight was without hope. She had spent too much of her life with these people to imagine living it without them.

It was her duty to protect the Law and the Lore, and while she lived, it lived in her. It would continue to live, she swore, as she won through to the open sky, whether the Brotherhood survived or not.

No. She had to believe that it would survive. That Puckworld would survive. Because if it did not, she would have been better off watching her life mix with that of her fellows and drain into oblivion.

That was it, she knew, as a thick, bitter taste filled the back of her throat. Always there had been new arrivals, but always there had been familiar friends. Iliana was now, to her knowledge, the oldest living member of the Brotherhood. Gaudeamus and Marshall were the only ones that even approached her age.

"Old people need friends too!"

Iliana nearly laughed at the rather absurd thought, spoken in her apprentices voice. It actually sounded very like something the girl would be likely to say in hot defense of her instructor's morose mood. Revere the past, do not live in it, she quoted to herself. Yes, they are dead. Yes, they are missed.

There are others to take care of now. And those who survived have their own hurts too. You've been locked in your grief long enough, and not even known it until now. The past is worthless unless we use it to build a better future.