The gathering party was collecting blossoms in the first blush of dawn’s light when they heard the child’s cry-sharp, brief, and loud. Krailash frowned, and the three humans under his protection looked up from their work, eyes wide over the white cloth masks that covered their noses and mouths, heavily gloved hands pausing in their work. The dark blue flowers they picked, growing on lush green vines that thoroughly entwined the broken pillars and all the nearby trees, filled the air with their sweet, subtle scent as the women and their guards listened to the silence, and then the cry came again.

“That’s a baby,” one of the women said. “And hungry, by the sound.”

“Keep working,” Krailash said. The immense rust-colored dragonborn cocked his head and hefted his two-headed war axe. “I’ll investigate.”

“Could be a trap,” said Rainer, one of the guards under Krailash’s command. He sounded like he relished the prospect. Rainer was a capable fighter, and more importantly for his job, he looked menacing-he was unusually big for a human, with a scarred face and broad shoulders, and though he wasn’t a half-orc, Krailash thought he might be a quarter-orc, or at the very least had some orcish influence in his bloodline. Though Krailash made sure the guards under his command drilled and kept in shape, there was precious little actual fighting in the job, which could be difficult for men like Rainer, who thrilled to the impact of metal on metal-or, better yet, metal on flesh.

“And who would set this trap?” Krailash said. “The family’s business rivals? Hardly seems likely. If they were this close to the source of the flowers, they wouldn’t need a ruse. They’d already know everything they’d hoped to find out.”