As Crow laid in the tent for a while longer, he began to slowly grow more alert and noticed more about his surroundings. The first thing he realized was that it wasn’t just his wrist that had been chained. Someone had taken the extra measure to bind his right ankle to the bottom bed post too. He shuddered as the chains reminded him of the ones he’d worn in prison years ago. Normally, cuffs like these wouldn’t have bothered him much, since he could get out of them easily enough, but whoever had set him up in this place—whether intentionally or not—had made quite sure that he couldn’t get away. Both his tunic and boots were missing, both of which were where he kept all of his thievery tools, including his pick lock key. 

He sighed and stared dully up at the fabric canopy over his head. By now, he was also certain that he was in the tent of a physician. The temporary shelves of books and medicines were enough to give that away. The real question was [i]why[/i] he was in the tent of a physician. He was a wanted criminal. What reason would a noble have for keeping him alive, especially when they could have collected his bounty if they had let him die? Even other thieves would have done that, as was proven by Jaxon’s readiness to kill him during the fight. He couldn’t think of anything someone could gain by letting him live.

As his mind wandered back to the battle, he suddenly remembered that Penelope had kept saying to him that she was going to get him help. At the time, he hadn’t been convinced, but now he was beginning to think all of this was her doing somehow. He looked over the tent one more time. [i]Am I at the battalion’s camp?[/i] he thought hazily. It seemed logical, but he’d been wounded in the woods to the west of Wheldrake, nowhere near the knights’ camp. Even if Penelope had been trying to save him, he couldn’t understand how he could have made it all the way there from the thieves’ camp.

Fortunately, it seemed like he was finally going to get an explanation.

Crow glanced down at the entrance to the tent as it curled open and a figure stepped inside. It was a woman he didn’t recognize with long, dark hair and a disgruntled expression. By her lack of armor, he guessed she was the physician who had treated him. He was just about to start questioning her to find out what was going on, when the front flap of the tent shifted again, and a second person entered. His heartbeat quickened as he recognized Penelope right away. She really had been the one to save him after all.

“Of course,” he grinned when she commented on him being awake. “I couldn’t stay asleep forever. That’s far too boring.” His gaze shifted to the physician, who had approached to look over the bandages around his wound. He noticed that she seemed hesitant, as if she was wrestling between her duty to tend to him and her own personal feelings about treating a thief. Luckily for him, duty seemed to win out.

“Can you sit up?” she asked curtly in a manner that almost made her words sound like a command rather than a question as she retrieved a roll of fresh bandages to redress his injury.

“Well, I could,” Crow rolled his eyes. “But that was before I got this hole in my gut.”

Jane pursed her lips, clearly unamused by the thief’s difficult attitude, and then glanced back towards Penelope with a pleading expression, as if silently begging her lieutenant to be released from having to treat a criminal.

Crow ignored her. “By the way,” he turned his head to look at Penelope as well. “Is anyone going to tell me where I am?”