"A festival? Perhaps," Kanros conceded, and then carried on, "Drink, merriment, music and all that to take minds off matters..." he shrugged a bit before adding, "...that we as Guardians cannot afford to ignore. Our predecessors were slain here." 

He stood up and paced over to a spot on the marble where the blood still stained, scrubbed a little, but not entirely removed, as if that mute testimony helped make his point. And then, after a moment's pause, the shaggy-haired barbarian continued, "A festival is useful, aye, as a means to see what the merriment brings -- travelers on the road will lure in bandits. We can find out who is encouraging those bandits, and if there is a pattern, we'll know from whence they were sent." Mercenaries, after all, often turned to such in desperation when the money wasn't forthcoming, when there wasn't a campaign to sign on for. Kanros knew this end of the business, and knew how to subvert such men once caught. He didn't advise, yet, that they start recruiting forces to mount security on the roads -- that, of course, would probably enrich him considerably, but it made a certain sense. But he could take one look at Resa and know that she came in with her armor on, in the figurative sense, and the timing would be bad. It wasn't as if he wasn't known for profiting off killing, which was why they called him the Raven as much as because of his hair. Proposing something profitable like authorizing funds to raise mercenaries to guard Dara's roads, while worthwhile in his mind, had to be brought up delicately and argued carefully, lest it look like baldfaced opportunism. 

Not that he wouldn't mind profit eventually, but there were other issues at hand.

"And of course, a festival will invite sabotage. If we manage to catch conspirators in that time, certainly, it allows us the chance to interrogate them, if we are lucky enough to find some alive. And perhaps in learning who is prepared to attack Dara when she is weak, when the leadership is new and inexperienced, we will have a sense of who was behind this, or at least catch a scent of the trail. But a festival alone?" The barbarian scoffed, even as he showed that he had spent the last twenty years learning something at the knee of Jalal, son of Jalal, the Prince of Killers, the man that groomed Kanros to be his successor in mercenary work. Hells, the man married Jalal's daughter. He was a headstrong hell raiser in his youth, but now? Well, it seems Kanros had changed -- no one would have ever accused him of laying out such a trap in the past, of thinking more than a swordpoint ahead of anything. He didn't have the patience for it back then. Cunning, aye, that was what a man gained as he aged and lost the advantages of youth.

"So perhaps a festival, it's not an idea without merit. But mind you the stain on the floor there, because our predecessors were murdered. Whoever had them killed had help and they have not been caught. We are the new Guardians, and we cannot rest easy or be sure they won't come for us. And if they did this with the idea of putting some or all of us in the position of Guardianship, what do they gain and what do they expect from us?"