Back at the Order’s camp, Lyssa was waiting for them. She still had an arm in a cast, but Brin was glad to see she’d kept it at all. He wasn’t sure if the healers would be able to keep it. That wasn’t the only sign she wasn’t at her best. She still wore her heavy makeup but even with it Brin thought she looked exhausted, like she hadn’t slept at all since Galan was nearly assassinated.“Come. I’ll escort you,” she said.Cid looked like he wanted to follow the pages who’d come for their horses. He looked down and gestured, “Like this?”“Like that is better,” said Lyssa. “Did you think the officers and [Strategists] guiding this war would shrink at the sight of a little blood? Because you’d be right. And that’s the point. Come.”She turned and walked, and the Lance had no choice but to follow. Brin realized they really were a mess. They’d only seen one or two short moments of combat, but he didn’t realize how dirty fighting made you until he’d been asked to go meet some bigwigs right after. They were all splashed with mud from the galloping horses, and most of them had healthy amounts of blood splatter on their arms and legs. Aeron hadn’t noticed it yet, but Brin was pretty sure there was a human tooth wedged on the back of his vambrace. How that had ended up there was anyone’s guess.Marksi found them along the way. He looked pristine as always. Which was an interesting question; the little dragon didn’t groom himself like a cat and Brin never washed him. Did mud and blood just not stick to him? That sounded right. Appropriately dragon-like.He actually didn’t know what Marksi had been up to in all the fighting. He might have been fighting alongside his beast friends, or he might’ve been hunting the horde of stray cats that fed on the rats that inevitably followed an army. Or he might’ve been napping.He ran straight up to Brin for a head scratch, but then fell back to Cowl and Anwir so he could point at their new weapons. (...)