The headache was the first thing to remind him he lived. Ewan felt it crashing up against his skull as his awareness returned. It had been a unwieldy dream with fits and starts in broken chasms all turning around into unfinished moments. It was the headache that told him he had risen from the dreams.

After that, it was the warmth along his body that told him he was alive. Isaac must have kept his word. Ewan had lived to the sixth day. The woman and her unborn child had lived, too. That he recalled as well, urging him to open his eyes to prepare for the next round of Isaac's games.

The lighting was dim, and the walls were a dusty yellow wattle not stone. His arms were wrapped and the tie was a style he knew well. A sigh of relief that Jordith was tending to him, and that, if she was, then he was in one of the safe houses.

It all filed into place. Where he was, what had been done for his care, and that the pounding headache was his body's repudiation for his severe loss of blood. He did not even try to rise up or lift his head. An attempt to roll to his side was met with an itching ache along his body as if a thousand sharp legged spiders were set across his skin.

The creak of his attempt was followed by the sound of soft walking boots, the hard of a heel and soft of the leather. Compass came around the corner of the open door and stopped just inside. He looked grim and pale with the dark circles of a man afraid of his guilt and nursing it with sleepless nights.

"Sit," Ewan forced his mouth and voice to work, though he was thirsty and it felt a strain to do so.

Compass took up a chair and did as asked. A furtive smile. "Remind me not to get on your wife's bad side."

Ewan struggled out of his thought path to leap into a new one. "First, you should never get on my wife's bad side, for more reasons than I have energy to illustrate now, but what makes you say that at this moment?"

With a brushing of his hands on his knees, Compass sat back. "It was she who managed to get Ferret to tell us anything of what happened. She found you, took down that place like a banshee -- without the wailing I might say."

Using humor, Compass tried to slide past his faults, but Ewan was not going to let the man divest himself of the great wrong. "My wife is not one with which to meddle. I see you understand that now. That is not what I wish to know." It was no longer, but he would ask Storm her part in events later. What he wanted to know was Ferret.

The anger was a writhing thing inside him, burning to get out. His body would not allow it, but that did not mean it would not be purged. "I thought I could trust you to research your own people. I was to be as a resource to assist you in training, not to investigate each of your people. Yes, perhaps I should have, but this is your community. Your responsibility. I do not blame you for my harm, but for the potential harm you could have caused others."

Compass said nothing, but looked to his hands.

Ewan sighed. "It may be that our alliance has come to an end." He closed his eyes. What he wanted was something to drink and to stand up when he confronted Compass, not lay there like a wounded animal flinging accusations. It was his fault as well. "Compass, my apologies. We will talk more later. For now, I could use some water and more rest."

With a brief stop by Ewan's bed, Compass gave a nod and left. Ewan felt a great shift of his world with the wound to his heart and the absence of the Tunnelers, just what had he become?