"Business," she says.

Oh, the Kina Basar have a lot more to add about the stuff Profectus has done. They've burned other villages and attacked other tribes, they seized grazing lands for the train track, they're poisoning the air and the water, they're spoiling crops, they ended all normal trade through the desert, and they've hired the savage Tafnoi as mercenaries to go around butchering people.

... But nobody denies any of what Cam said.

"Okay. So, what does everybody think of my plan where I give the Kina Basar here a bunch of food and water and put back up some of their lost buildings, and then Azlisa and the soldiers and I all go to Profectus, where I will look into whether there is an appropriate receptacle for these grievances to hand?"

"That might suggest that kidnapping attempts on foreign citizens would be considered not a thing to object to," says Azlisa carefully, "and also that the deaths of eight of every ten passengers would be forgotten. I believe there were more hostages, as well, though they may have killed them by now."

"Oh, I object to absolutely every event that has gone down around here that I have heard of so far without exception, I'm just trying to focus on what things look like next week and not who owes who what barbaric punishment for last week. Have you guys got more hostages alive?" Cam asks the locals.

They indignantly deny that they took any hostages other than her! "She is a thief and a liar from an empire of thieves and liars!"

Total population of the surrounding, hm, three miles, less previously observed soldiers and villagers?

Oh yeah definitely, there's some beaten up people who mostly don't look to have the same ethnicity or clothing style as the Kina Basar.

(Also some more villagers who found somewhere to hide good enough that Cam can't see them.)

Alrighty. And now he will make a lil snowglobe model of where each of the beaten up not-Kina-Basar people are at.

They're in a ravine down thataways.

"If someone would oblige me by going and get the..." he does a quick count, names the number, "hostages who are in the ravine over there, none the worse for wear than they are right now, I'd be so much less annoyed," Cam says, gesturing ravinewards.

THEY INDIGNANTLY PROTEST THIS INSULT TO THEIR HONOR!

"I'm at like, a six, on a scale of ten, annoyed right now? But it will be so much worse if I have to figure out how to make everybody behave while I'm all the way over there getting them myself."

They are not going to go back on their story because of threats! The Kina Basar sneer at threats!

The still titanium-bound officer coughs. "I or my men could fetch them without trouble, if you need it done."

"Oh, probably, but I don't actually know if all of them are friendlies relative to you. And I know that I know what condition they're all in right now but do you know that I know that? I guess I could spy on you the whole way. Are any of you going to start aiming shooty things at anyone if I let you go do stuff?"

The soldiers look very dubious about being sent off without any weapons to protect themselves.

"If they were not friends of the Far Traveler, they would not dare the Iron Road," the officer says calmly. "I can manage without a weapon." Because he can sprout steel from his hands at a moment's notice.

"Nah, you I want where I can see you, something's up with you."

"The Traveler gives many gifts to his soldiers," says the officer, in accordance with Priority Six*.

(*: Blame Everything On The Nutjob From Space If Anyone Scary Comes Along.)

"No shit. Azlisa, do you want to go untie people in a ravine since we've got some folks I don't trust and some folks I also don't trust refusing to acknowledge that they exist?"

She looks SPECTACULARLY UNCOMFORTABLE with this, not being arrow-proof. "Do you have any weapons?" Or armor? Or ability to give magic superpowers?

"Do you expect people heisted from the same train as you to benefit from you having weapons in some way?"

That was more of a polite way of saying 'If I do this I will die.' This isn't underwater.

"I would prefer to stay close to you if I don't have a way to defend myself," she says.

"Man, this is proving to be so complicated. All I want is some people moved from point A to point B without being further injured. Maybe I can do it from here."

He's going to drop a little drone by the ravine and watch its progress though his computer.

Before long, the drone will see a bunch of people, mostly but not entirely noncombatants who look like the Kina Basar, hiding there. (There's also a few combatants who look like the Kina Basar, and the beaten-up people previously located.)

"Attention!" says the drone. "These prisoners are no longer yours. You will be unharmed if you do not attempt to impede their departure."

Are they like tied up or anything.

Nah, they're just huddled in the back without any pointy objects and people with pointy objects are pointing the pointy objects at them.

Someone is going to try to shoot the drone with an arrow! Through a glass bit, if there's a glass bit.