Within the first couple days of the council’s arrival, a small boat, detached from the largest one, bore Vylkar, Munraz, and two messengers back downstream to the Collegium to make initial preparations for the return of the larger party. They carried preliminary summary reports and some of the papers, including one of the transcriptions of the walls of the two buildings. Penrys missed them, but Vylkar had volunteered and she assumed he had his reasons.
At the end of the intensive questioning on site, all the rest, prisoners included, crowded into the two remaining boats, and a tense journey with guards and false alarms in the nightly riverbank encampments strained tempers all the way back.
Once docked at the south-side piers on the Virtaengi, there was no help for it but to march them al
