Zeb yawned faintly in the dark.
“So how much did she pay you?” Tilda asked quietly.
“Sorry?”
“Nesha-tari. At the Shugak palisade. The four of you went aside into that separate area.”
“And?” Zeb asked.
“I may have peeked around the corner,” Tilda admitted. “Thought I saw a couple big hobgoblins lug out a chest, and open it up. Then it looked like Nesha-tari and the Westerners were running some negotiations, through you.”
Zeb was quiet for several seconds, and when he spoke his voice was thoughtful.
“You know, I don’t think Shikashe and Amatesu even cared about the money. They came to a price to continue on with Nesha-tari, but it was all a formality. The Shugak scratched them out a receipt but Amatesu just stuffed it in a pocket. I think the two of them wanted to come in here, it is the kind of thing they do. Battling monsters and demons and Fire Priests and what-all.”
“And you?” Tilda asked. Zeb sighed.
“I am purely parrot on this gig. If Nesha-tari could speak to Amatesu or Shikashe without a translator they would have forgotten me somewhere along the way weeks ago.”
“But you were paid as well, right?”
Zeb patted something that made his ring mail jingle.
“Got the receipt right here, close to my heart. I would have been a wealthy young man.”
“Would have been?”
“Well, obviously I am going to get killed in here.”
Zeb’s tone was light, bantering, but it had a bit of an edge. Tilda would have liked to have been able to see his face just then.
“You think?” she asked.
“Oh, I always think I’m about to get killed,” Zeb said. “That way at the end of a day, no matter how bad it was, I am never disappointed. Just pleasantly surprised.”
Tilda smiled in the dark, though she knew Zeb couldn’t see it.
“I hope you are wrong,” she said. “But if you’re not…and you want someone to hold your receipt, know that I am here for you.”
Zeb was quiet, and probably staring for a moment, then he threw back his head and laughed. It was too loud a sound to make for a man ostensibly standing guard duty, but Tilda found that she liked the sound of it.
Zeb returned to his bedroll shortly thereafter, and Amatesu announced her arrival in the dark by speaking Tilda’s name at her shoulder, giving the Miilarkian a start for which the shukenja apologized. Tilda spent the next half hour or so wondering if she knew half as much about Far Western priests as she thought she did, for while she was aware of Amatesu moving about on the roof the woman hardly made a solitary sound on the loose gravel. Tilda crept about a bit herself, but her own steps sounded loud in her ears.
She was considering asking Amatesu a question, when a tremendous roar split the night sky. Every living thing in Vod’Adia shuddered to its core.
Chapter Thirty
The legionnaires set a punishing pace for the rest of the day. The men had apparently decided that if they blundered into anything on Vod’Adia’s streets they would do it at a jog, and while the veterans of an Imperial Road Legion’s long strides seemed effortless, Phin and the Duchess spent the day struggling to keep up. The Sarge permitted no lagging behind.
At one point the street they were on was blocked by a fallen tower forming a jumble of jagged stone. The legionnaires huddled to decide what to do, giving Phin and the Duchess a moment to settle heavily onto a curb to get their breath. Phin had a slug of water and passed the skin into the Duchess’s bound hands. She drank greedily though her face twisted when she was through, as the water did have a sort of leathery taste from the rough skin.
“Sorry about the quality of the fare, your Grace,” Phin said.
The Duchess sighed when he used her title. “Just call me Claudja,” she said. “Anything else seems ridiculous in the situation.”
The three legionnaires were still arguing.
“Where do they think to take me?” Claudja asked quietly, keeping her mouth behind her bound hands as she wiped her face. “Why are we in Vod’Adia?”
Phin scratched his moustache and spoke behind his own hand. “They think there is a gate or portal in the middle of town. They think I can use it to get us to Ayzantium.”
“Ayzantium?” Claudja hissed.
“No talking!” the Sarge barked at them.
They made it over the rubble without anyone damaging themselves worse than a bruise or a scrape, and kept moving southwards until their only option became an east-west cross street without another southerly turn visible in either direction. The Sarge made as though to flip a coin before realizing he did not even have a single copper. His mood was even worse as the group headed east.
They eventually hit another southern street but by then it was almost evening. The buildings lining the block were a style of narrow, two and three-story row houses, but the legionnaires passed them by until finding something even smaller. The structure they settled on was built low to the ground and only had two rooms, a larger one in front that seemed to have been a shop floor and a smaller storage area in the back. It looked as though someone else had used the place before as a camp at the last Opening, as the wide gaps for windows facing the street were sealed with old shelving and bric-a-brac crammed into them. A huge old desk was beside the hanging front door, suitable to wedge it shut.
The legionnaires did so once inside. They only lit a single candle as there was not wood for a fire without pulling the barricades loose from the windows. The four men and one woman sat around the candle, shivering as the dark night outside brought a numbing chill to the barren city. They choked down cold rations of middling quality with the brackish water.
There was no dinner conversation. Afterwards the Sarge lit a second candle and looked around the back room. He returned and hauled the Duchess roughly to her feet by the bindings around her wrist. Claudja gave a startled cry and Phin leaped to his feet beside her. The Sarge smirked and shoved the Duchess into Phin’s arms.
“No point in posting guards, as we wouldn’t see anything coming until it was bashing in the front door.”
The Sarge cut a strap off a now empty ration pack and tossed it to Phin.
“There is an old drain pipe in the back wall. Tie her Grace to it so that she can’t get her hands at the knot. Don’t want her creeping about in the dark, looking to slit our throats.”
Claudja’s steely eyes flashed at the man. “You would be first, Sergeant.”
He grinned at her and winked. Phin started to move Claudja with a hand on her arm but she jerked away, spun, and spit in his face.
“You will be second,” she sneered. She turned regally on her heel and strode into the back room with her chin held high.
The legionnaires cackled and Phin felt himself blush as he wiped off his face with his sleeve. He followed the Duchess into the back and found her already seated against the back wall, next to the candle sitting on the floor under a ceramic pipe that at one time must have drained a basin or sink. She put her bound hands next to the pipe, about head high as she was sitting, and whispered as Phin knelt beside her.
“That was for their benefit. I am trusting you, Phinneas Phoarty.”
Phin blinked. He had not spoken his last name to her, but of course the legionnaires had called him by it. The Duchess was paying close attention to everything around her.
He laced the strap around the bindings on Claudja’s wrists. There was a hole in the top of the pipe through which he could have threaded the end to bind it securely, but he only looped the strap over the top. She noticed.
“Don’t try anything,” Phin said, loud enough for the others to hear and looking Claudja in the eye so that she knew he did mean it. For now. She nodded.
“Where is the knight who was with me?” she whispered before Phin rose. He had no idea who she meant.
“I don’t know,” he said as he turned to leave the room. The Duchess made no further sound.