Maalech shook the wineskin, sniffing the contents cautiously. He dipped a finger in the fluid, tasting it first. He wished to see if he could taste anything that should not be there before drinking, because while the theory was sound, he did not wish to drink a numbing agent or the like. He was well aware that there were drugs he would not be able to taste, but it was at least something.

"I have no wish to be revealed, but it is of no pressing concern of mine. It would simply inconvenience me. However, I have nothing against talking. All that is missing are questions."

"Why did you start to wonder about the girl's killer?" he asked. That had been the uneasy feeling that had been eluding him, the reason this man stuck out in his memory at all: he had no reason to care, but he did.

That had actually been a question that Maalech had not been prepared for. Consequently, if he did not taste anything odd in the skin, he took a few moments to drink, finding somewhere where he could sit down.

"It is not something that is easy to explain." He had ceased looking at the other man, because he had to formulate these words to himself first and foremost. He had avoided this question himself for some time now.

"I grew up in an area like this. I hated it, I hated the people that surrounded me, and I hated the lack of initiative that kept them there. As you might have gathered I managed to rise above my station and leave, but lately my path brought me back here again. My feelings had not changed much, there is little here that one can easily find worth in, but when I saw that girl..." It sounded inane and foolish, but he forced himself to continue. "It felt like such a waste. She would die here, still young, her future just ripped away and not by her own accord. From the look of things she had sought her own way out, perhaps not one I would have approved off, but... she had not given up yet. And someone had taken her options of becoming more than that, a corpse nobody truly cared about. It irked me." But it wasn't the whole truth, it wasn't what had made him throw up.

"The way she died... she reminded me of other deaths. Ones I am to blame for. She reminded me of what I no longer wished to be." He chuckled listlessly, he was aware of the insanity in this. "It did not feel right that she should be forgotten as well as dead."

"Sympathy for one of the populace?" Silvio replied, fainly ironic. "I can understand that. From most people. Coming from a self-claimed metaphysician, however, I find it unlikely at best, unusual at most. Most of your sort would claim that her death is part of an unalterable pattern and move on from it."

"I am aware of this. And believe me, a month back I could have cared less. However, things have changed since then." Maalech gestured down at his clothes and frowned.

"I believe the thing that made me see her as an individual this time around was that she reminded me of people that I had killed. Not her looks to be certain, but the way she died." He glanced briefly at his hands, the frown growing deeper. "I saw it as unavoidable at the time, and perhaps I do still. But it does not sit well with me. There is something terribly personal in a death like that." He was struggling to keep himself aloof, but he knew he was not doing as well as he wished to.

"I find myself remembering, and I do not like it."

"If it was truly one of my kind, then I assure you, it was hardly personal." He studied Maalech more closely. "I hardly expect that to be reassuring. It was however unnecessarily violent, badly executed, and poorly concealed, and I do not think I should have to suffer under someone else's reputation. Moreover, two of us in such a small territory could empty this population in five years' time, particularly if this other one turns out to be a fledgling."

"No, it is simpler for your kind" Maalech agreed. He was quite obviously relieved when the discussion turned from himself to the murders. "You have a more voracious appetite then in the younger years? I know that is the case for some kinds of hemaparasites, while it is the other way around in others." He touched his arm again, noting that the marks were all but gone.

"We are in agreement then that it needs to be eliminated then?"

He nodded. "Also fledglings tend to get caught within their first year, unless they have a mentor. This one does not appear to have one. Which to me also begs the question of where it came from."

"I see two ways that seems likelier than the others." Maalech pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose for a moment, then took another drink from the waterskin. "Either there is another of your kind hidden on this island, in a more affluent area perhaps. And for some reason they have created a fledgling, and abandoned it. Perhaps been killed by it. Or, and this seems more likely since this is a busy port, it arrived on a ship. It would most likely be helpful to see what ships had arrived briefly before the first murder, and whether any of them had crew that had died. The first murder seems to be done in more of a hurry than the others, so it was probably in a fit of hunger. Perhaps from a long voyage."

"I was down to one of the two, myself. Both have their issues, but at present, my real concern is if the sire is still an issue, and if it might be protective of its progeny." He frowned. "I have only one small problem. The only time the fledgling goes to ground, I must too. I think you may understand why I brough you here."