Having freed the biyou from the cage, the strongest member of the friends slung the poor creature over his shoulder, while the next took the much smaller and lighter pybyr, who remained thankfully unconscious. As they fled into the night, the only sound that followed them was the moans and complaints of the biyou, bouncing away upon a hard and pointy shoulder. But it was unlikely the Living Suns would treat them kindly if the friends’ role in the escape was ever made known.
Having reached a place of safety, namely an inn recommended by the biyou as “friendly” (whatever that meant), they were able to offload their cargo, although by this point the biyou was on his own two feet and walking. He also looked quite different, his robes ripped away to the waist to leave him in only a long kilt, and his back much straighter than it had been in the square at the beginning of the day.
But the friends could see that it was clearly an act, and that each step the creature took was pained, more an act of will than any natural motion. The truth of that became obvious to even the most casual of observers, for once the biyou reached a private room, away from the eyes of those in the public area, he collapsed, all but crumbling into a chair.
It was an entirely undignified sprawl, one that became worse as he slipped into slumber, and shortly thereafter off the chair and to the floor. Whatever knowledge he might possess, nothing would be forthcoming until the morning.
Upon arising, the biyou was chipper, the ill-effects of whatever had happened to him in the cage having been washed away by a night’s sleep… and possibly by whatever magic he had used on the pybyr the evening before. While said pybyr seemed not to be recovering quite so quickly, for he had so far failed to emerge from the small upper room that was fitted for the large portion of the population that was his small size.
Waving at the friends from over a plate of couscous, the biyou gestured them to the bench opposite him, in the same private room as the night before. “Come, join me. We shall eat before business, for business shall take some time.”