Sileas moved closer. "Just don't try to pull it off. It nearly fried my cousin when she tried to remove it."

Bai climbed up on a stool to get a good look at the pendant. He put a hand under the pendant, muttered an incantation, and held it to his ear.

Sileas's eyebrow arched and she glanced at Wulfsen. She was wondering if the stranger was quite right in the mind.

A small sound came out of the pendant, which seemed to satisfy Bai. He nodded and let go of the pendant, which remained in the air for a moment, before slowly dropping back down on its chain. Bai hopped down from the stool.

"Well, the pendant is convinced you have Lowell blood." Bai said. "But don't get too confident, those pendants can be very... moody"

She wasn't at all certain how a piece of jewelry could be convinced of anything, but then it wasn't like she knew anything about magic. "If it eases your mind, I have no intentions of causing harm with it. I really only want to stop the mermen." Then she thought of the threat of Galina that Yehudit had so conveniently placed in her mind. "And protect my family and those I love."

"If you don't know what you're doing you can be as bad as an evil person wanting to do harm." Bai said, firmly shaking his head. "You can keep the pendant but I'm taking the rest."

"You would leave us defenseless against the mermen's evil? No offer to teach or train? And just how do I know you are related to Kegan Lowell? For all I know you are someone evil trying to steal these items to bring a reign of terror down on the world. In fact, the very idea that you would leave us defenseless lends credence to just that."

"Magic isn't the answer to everything." Bai bristled. "I saw quite a few men with a lot of pointy things guarding the walls." He left out how easily he got in without even being challenged.

"Ordinarily, I would agree with you. But our weapons are not very effective on the mermen. They have magic and extraordinary strength. I can attest to that, I had to fight one to get my cousin free of his grasp."

"You're more apt to hurt someone innocent than any merman." Bai said. "You don;t know what the hell you're doing."

Sileas's anger grew. "Of course, I don't. I haven't even had a moment to crack open a book yet. I would much rather prefer to have a mentor, but I do know how to read and learn."

"You can't learn this from a book!" Bai scoffed and began rummaging through the boxes.

"I still haven't heard you offer to help. Mama always told me Kegan was kind and protective. Apparently that missed your branch of the family." She turned to Wulfsen. "Make him leave. Empty handed."

Bai stepped onto a crate.

"You don't even know the magic word."

"Perhaps if I knew you could carry a rational conversation rather than coming rampaging in to my rooms uninvited, and pawing through my father's things, I could ask you if you would please mentor me."

"This all belongs to my family." Bai said, shrugging. "I thought you were those people who destroyed the village."

"You could have approached in a civilized manner. Wulfsen is the lord of the keep. It would have been the appropriate way to begin," Sileas pointed out.

"Would you try to approach someone in a civilized manner if you thought they did what happened in the village?" Bai asked.

Sileas stared at him. "I don't go around blindly holding people responsible for things without any evidence. I would have spoken with people to find out what happened in the village, not just jump to a conclusion."

"Evil people raided the village and Kegan's things went missing." Bai said. "I tracked Kegan's things to here."

"And it never occurred to you that survivors would have gone out of their way to gather the things and bring them to safety because they knew they would be dangerous in the wrong hands? Honestly. I think I would be better off learning from the books. Seems much safer than learning from someone who reacts rashly."

"They practically made a human sacrifice. You know what kind of dark magic those people could have been using?" Bai asked. "If they knew about all of this they would have taken it."

Sileas felt like the conversation was going in circles. "Which is why I asked someone I trusted to pack it up and bring it here. For safekeeping. No one knew it existed or that it was down here until you came and broke my door. I didn't want this falling in to raiders hands or the mermen's hands. Now it's vulnerable because you destroyed My. Locked. Door." Sileas advanced on him. "YOU are the one who put things at risk. Rash thinking only ever leads to danger."

"That flimsy door?" Bai scoffed. "It took me less than a second to open it. You didn't even put any wards on it."

"I didn't need wards since no one knew anything was down here. Once I learned about wards, I would placed one. You are irrational and rash. You will bring danger here with your actions. Go!" she pointed to her open door. "Leave. Take only what you brought with you."