Ahnasha was already starting to move closer to the door to wait for the others to start following. She wanted to find the boys as quickly as possible. "Everything on this side of the canal is just housing for wealthy nobles, right? i can't imagine it would be that interesting for anything except the fact that you grew up there."

Kaleeth quickly started to share Janius' look of concern. "Julan had a lot of questions about your parents before. He really wanted to meet them. You don't think...he'd do anything rash, do you?"

---

Julan gave a sigh. "Okay." He conceded, standing up with Rhazii and proceeded to follow Harald back to the front door. His mind was thoroughly occupied with any and every excuse he could possibly conceive of as for why they had left the castle. If they were lucky, their parents would not yet know they had left, but it had been long enough that he was not hopeful. 

As he did have some practice coming up with small lies and excuses, his thought process started in a logical place with the dinner they were supposed to have been eating. His note had claimed that they had gone to the kitchen, so that would have to be a part of their story. But, how could going to the kitchen lead to leaving the entire castle? That was not something that would normally happen, so their story would have to contain something that did not normally happen to motivate them to leave. As he and Rhazii stepped out of the house, it was a faint, constant sound in the air that gave him inspiration. The canal was close by. 

"Okay, so...we need to make it make sense that we left. They're going to be upset no matter what, unless someone forced us to leave. But...I don't think we could make them believe that. But maybe we can make it seem...less bad? Maybe we could get in the canal, for a bath? There isn't any water we could use in the castle, so that's the only place we could do it. We could say we got dirty somehow, maybe when we were eating? Maybe something got in your fur? I know the canal smelled pretty bad before, but I still think I saw some people in it when we were walking over the bridge. I think they were up at the part near the wall where it comes into the city. Maybe it's cleaner there? I don't think they'd get nearly as mad about a bath. Should we try it?" Julan asked.