“Ach!” I hissed, causing Abioye to suddenly leap back from me, a look of intense alarm on his face. A flush of embarrassment rushed to my cheeks as I winced and looked over Abioye’s shoulder at the camp below us on the Plains. It was still small and far away, but the possibility of being spotted here was making me nervous.
“Oh! I am so sorry—how badly are you hurt? Where does it hurt?” he said, his words coming at a fast rush.
“I’m fine. Seriously, I’m fine,” I said a little more sternly than I had intended to, as I watched his face fall in a look of hurt. His concern just annoyed me for some reason—as if we didn’t have enough on our plate already!
And I don’t need anyone looking after me! I thought defiantly.
“I was just worried,” Abioye murmured, looking suddenly embarrassed, as his hands turned to fiddle with the bindings of his tunic, pulling them straighter as he cleared his throat. “I was actually about to come and find you…”
“That would have been a stupid idea,” I responded quickly, casting another look at the camp. There were beetle-like figures moving about down there—they were sure to see the mechanical dragon! Ymmen must have told Montfre, who must have told Abioye, that Ymmen was going to rescue me from the Red Hounds. Which was a convoluted way of saying that Abioye was about to fly the mechanical dragon to the oasis—directly forcing Ymmen to confront the hide and scales of his dead kinfolk!
“I couldn’t leave you out there—” Abioye started to say.
“Like I said, I was fine.” I pointed out. “And anyway—you need to hear this,” I cleared my throat and told him about Nol Baggar and the Red Hounds, and how they were the group of raiders that had attacked us.
To be honest, I would have changed the topic to anything at all if it meant that I could stop him looking at me with those large, wounded eyes.
“The Red Hounds, you say? Those are the ones who held you?” Abioye was now frowning deeply, before he shook his head. “Are you sure?”
By the stars! I could have slapped him—were he still not apparently recovering from a serious injury. “That is what the man said when he demanded that I explain the map to him.” I pointed out. “Oh, and by the way—he has both parts of the map now, so we really can’t spend any longer talking about all this…”
“Nol Baggar has the map,” Abioye repeated slowly.
Why is everyone repeating what I am saying!? I could have screamed in annoyance. Did no one see the urgency of getting the expedition back under way? We’d been attacked! We need to get moving!
“But Inyene couldn’t have hired Captain Baggar and his Red Hounds…” Abioye said seriously. “I seem to remember my sister telling me that they’d had a falling out years ago. Quite a serious one, at that.”
When Montfre said all the alchemists had disappeared? Once again that shiver of revulsion ran down my spine. “Was it perhaps five years ago?” I asked. “When Montfre disobeyed your sister?”
Abioye looked at me suddenly, and gave a silent nod, before forcing himself to speak. “I don’t remember what happened precisely, as my sister had sent me away to a tutor—but I recall her telling me that she had to fire the Red Hounds because there was some disagreement over payment.” He grimaced. “They used to terrify me—they weren’t the sorts of men and women who you’d ever want to shortchange…”
Okay, so that explains the captain’s complete hatred for Inyene then, I thought. “But who has hired them then?” I asked, earning a look of musing apprehension from Abioye in return.
“My sister has made an awful lot of enemies over the years—but very few with the amount of money that the Red Hounds like to demand. It has to be at the very least a powerful noble—either one of the senior families of Torvald, or one of the Chiefs of the Northern Kingdom, or the prince-lord to the Southern…”
Which was pretty much what I had thought. Having it confirmed by Abioye only made our predicament seem that much worse.
“The Sea of Mists,” I said, earning a surprised look from the man across from me.
“The what?” the would-be prince said.
“It’s the next landmark on the map,” I tapped my temples. “Luckily, I got a good look at it before I managed to get free…” I explained the landmarks in order, and how I thought all of the different signs now worked together.
“The Broken Thumb—or Crow—points directly to a place we call the Sea of Mists. It’s actually a large traverse of wetland running through the middle of the Plains, with numerous small rivers and streams that run through it. During the summer, the rivers dry up, but there’s enough water to keep the land waterlogged and marshy. During rainy season, it almost becomes a lake…”
Abioye looked up at the high blue skies a little suspiciously before slowly grinning. “Then we’re in luck?”
Ah. I think Abioye saw my look of caution and understood full well that what I was about to tell him probably wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
“It’s called the Sea of Mists because there are always palls and fogs that cling to the land—there’s lots of moisture under the earth, and there are always mists in this hot weather. Sometimes they are so impenetrable that we dare not cross it—other times it is only knee-high.” It was my turn to shrug now. “Unfortunately, there is no way of predicting it. Or at least—no way that the Souda have found.”
“But all we have to do is to keep walking in a straight line and we’ll reach the other side, right?” Abioye asked earnestly.
Oh, Poison Berry, I thought, as I realized just how little he knew of the Plains—or of the natural, living world beyond his halls and libraries at all. As if anyone could ever walk in a straight line, even with the best intentions. The landscape and the slopes and the hills and the trees always gradually change your course. But you can correct if you can see the stars, the moon, or the sun.
None of which you could see if you were surrounded by a dense fog, I would have said, but it was too much information for the young man.
“There are fording places,” I offered as a consolation. “Otherwise you could end up wading into the mud pits that can swallow a man up whole, never to be seen again!” That was why we never allowed any of our Souda to cross the Sea of Mists when the fogs were thick…
“Right. Well. I’m sure we’ll be okay…” Abioye said, gesturing to the mechanical dragon. “Hop on, I’ll say that I found you and brought you back.”
I looked at the mechanical dragon, and at the couple of leagues or fewer it would take to walk to the encampment. I would much rather walk, even with the soles of my slave’s sandals beginning to wear thin.
But no, I had to agree to climb up onto that mechanical monstrosity, if we were to maintain the illusion to Homsgud and the others that I didn’t have a living, fire-breathing dragon who was prepared to swoop down out of the skies and rescue me at any moment.
Remembering how powerful and strong Ymmen had been last night made me smile—until I remembered that the Red Hounds still had most of our ponies, and at least a handful of Daza, including Elid, as their captives…
There was simply no time left to lose.