"If it's better I can just send another note to them. I just don't want them out looking for me, knowing that she might go after them since she can't yet get me." Ayrie said, sitting herself in a chair near the bed. "They may be from the Church, and they may be strict in the way they do things, but these two men are my mentors and in a way the only friends I had back there besides the cook. If something were to happen to them because of me..." She stopped, unable to finish the thought.

Gerrick and Darrin were her superiors, and things like making her sit on the floor to eat were their way of letting her know she was being punished. There were other priests who's ideas of punishment were far worse than merely sitting on the floor for dinner, and they wouldn't have allowed her to explain away her actions so easily, nor allowed her to get a job in the city without their express approval of the job she took. The Church as a greater whole might have grandiose plans when it came to Cornopa, but Gerrick and Darrin were likely only pawns in that scheme.

"I just need to protect them if I can, and keep them from discovering things they shouldn't." she said.