Cymrian was on top of him before he’d taken his second step, seizing him by his shoulders and shoving him back down into his chair. “Your business isn’t quite finished,” the Elven Hunter said, reaching down and extracting the hunting knife from Sora’s wide leather belt and flinging it across the room.
“Don’t move,” Aphen said to the men seated at the table, her hand stretched out in warning. Her eyes lifted to take in the bunch clustered at the back of the table. “Don’t any of you move.”
She tried to keep Arling behind her, out of harm’s way, but Arling had other ideas and pushed forward. “Where is the seed you stole from me?” she snapped at Sora. “While I was injured and unconscious, you took it. Where is it?”
The big man squirmed. “I was owed something for saving your life,” he snapped. “You would have died without Aquinel and me!”
“You were owed much for saving me, but you had no right to steal what wasn’t yours,” Arling persisted. “Give me the seed!”
Sora’s mouth tightened. “I can’t. I sold it to this gentleman right here. He’s the lawful owner now. You’ll have to take it up with him.”
He tried once again to get to his feet, and again Cymrian shoved him back down. “He is not the lawful owner if he bought stolen property,” the Elven Hunter pointed out, eyes fixing on the man in question.
Arling’s gaze, white-hot with anger, shifted to the man with the pouch. “Give it back to me.”
The man was not intimidated. He was long and lean and had the look of someone who had not willingly given up much in his life. “What about my money? I paid for that silver orb. I’m owed.”
Cymrian reached down and pulled the coins from Sora’s pocket, casting them across the table. “There. We are even. Give back the seed.”
The man looked down at the coins and shook his head. “I don’t want the money. I want the seed. I bought it. It’s mine.”
“You have no right to it!” Arling shouted, her voice shrill enough to make Aphen flinch. “It was sold to you by someone who didn’t own it! You have to give it back. You don’t understand what’s at stake!”
“Arling,” Aphen said quietly, making a calming motion. “They don’t need to know everything.”
One of the men standing behind the pair seated at the table started to reach beneath his cloak. Aphen gestured, snapping her fingers as she did, and the man dropped to the floor, writhing in excruciating pain. The knife he had been reaching for clattered on the wooden floorboards.
The men at the table backed up, muttering and looking left and right at their fellows. They clearly anticipated doing something, but were undecided as to what that should be. Their leader kept watching Aphen, making no move to interfere. She didn’t like the look on his face. He was enjoying this.
“Let’s be fair about this,” he said, not sounding as if he intended to be fair at all. “You.” He pointed to Sora. “You sold me the orb for a fixed amount and I paid that amount. Isn’t that so?”
Sora nodded reluctantly. “That’s so.”
“Did you steal it from them?”
“I … It sort of just dropped out of the girl’s pocket while we was helping her. I actually saved it from being lost.”
“So it’s yours, after all. You see?” He smiled at Aphen. “Your claim is suspect. But if you want it back—orb, stone, seed, whatever—I’m willing to negotiate. Pay me four times what I gave up. Wait, five times. Then you can have it.”
Aphen stepped forward, eyes fixed on the man. “Take out the pouch and set it on the table. Do it right now.”
The man shook his head. “I don’t take orders from anyone. Especially Elves. I don’t care who you are or what sort of tricks you can do. A word from me, and you and your friends will be cut to—”
He never finished. Aphen’s fingers made a curious twisting motion, and the man’s words choked in his throat as he was lifted out of his chair by invisible hands and hauled across the tabletop. He thrashed momentarily, but could gain no purchase, and his efforts at calling for help failed. The men with him backed against the wall, then broke and fled toward the doors. Cymrian moved quickly to the second man seated across from Sora and put him down with a single blow to the temple. Sora tried to run yet again, but he was hemmed in on all sides by the Elves.
Shouts rose from the other patrons, but Arling wheeled on them and screamed at them to be silent. The force of her words was enough. The room went absolutely still.
Aphen flipped the man she had ensnared with her magic onto his back without touching him, her wrist twisting slightly to complete the task. Then she reached inside his robes as he flopped and thrashed like a fish out of water and took back the pouch with the Ellcrys seed.
She leaned close. “I ought to kill you and be done with it. You deserve no better. But men like you should to live out their lives until the misery they cause to others comes back to find them—as it surely will in your case.”