I glanced up to see the city gates growing before us. It struck me with finality that we were leaving a place I’d hoped to settle in for some time, heading to a destination I knew nothing about. Growing up a bastard son in a small inn, I thought I’d live and die as my mother had, never dreaming I’d travel anywhere. Even after attending university, my ambitions were still modest, constrained. Secure a decent patron, live a life of letters, obtain some level of steady comfort.
Rivermost wasn’t the largest city in the world, but bigger than anything I’d ever experienced or expected, and already farther than I envisioned traveling. So even if the limited range of patrons there wasn’t inspiring, I’d already gone farther than I’d ever imagined. I was content. Or at least thought so. Until Captain Killcoin approached me, presenting an enterprise so unlike anything I’d ever conceived of.
And there I was, suddenly on the move again, the scope of my life again growing in completely unfathomable ways. I tried telling myself that this was a good thing, even if I didn’t have much in the way of detail. It was growth. And growth was good. But the company I’d chosen, or that had chosen me, was enough to dampen that enthusiasm.
There was some congestion, one wagon entering, another leaving, neither allowing the other to move, but the guards cursed and threatened and one gave way and then suddenly we rumbled beneath the portcullis and over the open bridge, and I found myself looking back through the wagon, the opening behind us like a window, wondering if I’d ever see this city again.
Journeying with a destination in mind and small distances between was fine. That was all that I’d known since receiving my schooling, moving from one small city to the next, hoping to find a patron who wouldn’t dismiss me. Travel was necessary, and I accepted that, or at least tolerated it with minor grumbling. I knew where I was going, how to get there, and roughly how long it might take.
But this journey was secretive, and even the necessity for that was opaque. If I at least knew why I was kept in the dark, I wouldn’t have minded. As much. But the captain didn’t seem inclined to reveal much of anything. And that left me feeling more than unsettled.
My nerves, already tight, were being ratcheted even tighter. At the outskirts of Rivermost, I felt it across my chest, up my back, through my neck, taut with tension.
“Don’t look so melancholy, Arki. Travel is good for the constitution.”
We crossed over the dry moat, made our way through the shanties around the outskirts of the city. This was my second summer in Rivermost, and each spring the shanties had appeared almost overnight, like persistent weeds. The hovels and patchwork tents were populated by dirty, thin musicians and street performers, religious zealots, those peasants and low-enders who couldn’t afford the wares or entertainments of the city, and a menagerie of diseased prostitutes who serviced them all. My mother might have been a loose barmaid, and heartless besides, but at least she wasn’t a full-fledged prostitute. Though some might contend that was only a matter of semantics and economics. Why the guildmasters didn’t burn the shanties to the ground or drive off their occupants, I’ll never know, but I was happy there was an armed and somewhat nefarious man in the wagon with me. Those places tended to attract only the worst sort of clientele.
Braylar remained silent as the countryside rolled past, and he was motionless for the most part, only occasionally flexing his right hand or twitching a bit. Farms began to spread out in all directions, and the road became rougher.
We sat in silence for a time when Lloi fell back alongside us. She kept pace next to the wagon bench and Braylar looked down at her, finally asking, “I assume if you spotted any following us, you wouldn’t be waiting for me to ask, no?”
Lloi arched her back and replied, “Go back far enough, plenty of folks following. Don’t call them roads for nothing. Can’t vouch for intent, but if any had harm in them, didn’t seem to be aimed your way none.”
Braylar stopped the wagon and Lloi halted her horse, neither looking at the other. Finally, Braylar said, “You could tether up and ride awhile, if it suits you. Or not. They don’t call it a wagon for nothing.”
Lloi shrugged her shoulders and then did as he suggested; after securing her shaggy horse to the side of the wagon, she climbed in the rear and settled inside.
Braylar flicked the reins and we started forward again. He took a swig of what must have been very warm wine. We had the road largely to ourselves, and so he untied the scarf and used the end to wipe the sweat from his brow.
“There’s no reason for us both to bake. Take a respite beneath the canvas, if you wish, as Lloi has done already. You’ll lose the breeze, but at least you’ll be out of the sun.”
As the sun was high and scouring, I decided to follow his advice and move inside the wagon. Lloi was sitting cross-legged near the back, leaning back against a box, lazily swatting at flies.
The indecision must have been inscribed on my face, but she waved me in with her half-hand, which was surely the most disconcerting invitation I’d ever received.
I found a space against a barrel and, after folding my blanket over and placing it behind me as a cushion, sat down as well, though I shifted and tried again, as nothing I did seemed to make any position remotely comfortable.
Lloi smiled, but had the good grace not to laugh outright. After letting me settle in, she held out a pouch balanced in her palm filled with some sort of seeds.
I’d never eaten seeds before, and assuredly not when offered in a fingerless hand, but uncertain how she’d take a refusal, I reached into the pouch and grabbed a few. She pulled out some with her other hand, popped them in her mouth, and began working them around. A few seconds later, she spit some shells out the back of the wagon.
I did my best to mimic her, but breaking the seeds open in my mouth without swallowing the shells proved more difficult than I imagined. I managed to work a few open with my teeth and then promptly swallowed the shells, choking and sputtering as I did, and this time Lloi did laugh. However, hers seemed less prone to mockery than Braylar’s, and it wasn’t harsh on the ear, so I smiled in return.
I broke a few more open and managed to dislodge the contents without swallowing the shells this time. The meat of the seeds, tiny though they might be, was surprisingly tart, but not unpleasant. Still, not being near the rear of the wagon and not wanting to spit them onto Braylar’s back on the front, I had no idea what to do with the shells. Having no alternative but trying to swallow the tiny husks again, I spit them into my hand and dropped them on my lap.
Lloi spit a few more shells out the back, still smiling. “Bought them in the city. Good?”
I nodded, but when she offered me the pouch again, I said, “Many thanks, but I’m fine.”
Lloi withdrew the pouch, pulled a few more out. “As you like.” She popped them in her mouth and turned to look out the back of the wagon.
Worrying that this would be the full extent of our conversation, and reluctant to return to Braylar’s side until requested, I said, “Forgive me if this is too brusque, but it strikes me as, well, a little odd that you’re with a Syldoon commander. What exactly do you do for him?”
She turned back to me. “I do what needs doing. That’s what I do. Got nothing to do with the Syldoon, except by incident. Captain the only one that got my loyalty, and him only just barely.” She smiled broadly, discovered a shell in her teeth, worked the tip of her tongue around to dislodge it, then spit it out. “Syldoon the same as all men-greedy, crafty devils that use you when they got appetite, spit your husk out when they’re done. A lot like these.” Out came another shell. “No, I’m not tethered to them nor theirs. Just Captain Noose. Him and me, we got some sort of…” she searched for the word and stumbled across the wrong one, “affiliatory thing betwixt us.” The words “Captain Noose” conflated, with the rugged “t” dropping out entirely.