[ For most, she presumes, the threshold of danger has long since been crossed. To wake up hostage to a nightmare - this is already an unforgiveable transgression. To have then been bodily transported like a fugitive (and an ordinary fugitive, at that) suggests an even more callous threat. What more is he waiting for? A blade at his throat? Chains in a cell? The bodies of his loved ones laid before him?

It is a simple question and yet he seems to consider it carefully, as if there is mercy to be shown, tolerance to be enacted. The stance he chooses is moderate enough, garnished with honor, and so it grates. He will not act until prompted by irreversible violence to do so? A scoff perches at her lips, but she smooths her scorn before it can take full flight. A threat to anyone's life - this is a valuable tidbit to keep. Her fingers flit over her wrist, recalling the lick of the whip that answered her earlier objections. The threats already feel lethal. ]

It's an uncommonly virtuous sellsword who refrains from violence on a cultural basis. [ Undisguised mockery. How can he be anything other than a swellsword? What other breed of man would spend copious time in various cells and live to tell about it? This does nothing to account for his gallantry, incongruous against their surroundings and their company, and she tilts her head as she tries again to delineate anything of this man. All she comes to is the certainty that only a sellsword would gamble this way - that is to say, hardly at all, without knowing how the odds have fallen. ]

You will wait to act until you are imprisoned, then? A man of negotiation. [ A gambler after all. ] As in war, it seems that it is most beneficial to have someone trusted beside you when the time comes for negotiating.