By the time they reached the summit, Alfric was slightly out of breath, though to his surprise, Isra didn’t seem to be affected all that much by the climb. She was sweating slightly but doing much better than he was. Granted, she had less weighing her down, but he was still impressed. He stood for a moment, letting the cool air from the top of the hill wash over him. Looking back, Pucklechurch was just barely visible, mostly in the form of a swatch of farmland and the temple as the only building that stood out from the mess of white rectangles and gray slate roofs.
When Alfric turned back toward the path, he realized that the white pillars that marked the hex boundary were right there, on top of the hill. He groaned in disappointment.
“Problem?” asked Isra, furrowing her brow and trying to see what he’d seen.
“We’re at the hex boundary,” he said, gesturing at the pillars. “That means that when we come back, we’re going to have to make that long hike again from the opposite direction. If the boundary were further away, then we could warp before we came near the big hill.”
“Ah,” she said. “That’s a problem for tomorrow though.” She went ahead, walking quickly, and passed through the pillars. She was just about to start on the spell when Alfric called to her.
“Wait!” he said. She stopped, giving him a raised eyebrow. “You need to go further.”
“Further?” she asked, looking at the white pillars. She was past them, but only by about five feet.
“Thirty feet,” he said. “That’s protocol. The pillars aren’t always perfect, and I doubt you want to walk those six miles over again. I’ve had it happen to me once, and once was enough.”
Isra nodded and then moved, and Alfric walked toward her, reaching her just as she vanished. He shook his head and performed the spell himself, using familiar motions that he’d used dozens of times through the past few weeks on his way to Pucklechurch.
The transition was instant, and the design of the warp point was quite similar to that of Pucklechurch, with pillars supporting a roof above an open area. He stepped to the side right away, over to where Isra was standing.
“I was worried that you would leave me,” she said.
“Leave you?” asked Alfric.
“You could have gone back to Pucklechurch,” she said. “All you needed to do was to go back to the other side of the boundary.”
“Oh, that’s devious,” said Alfric. “The thought didn’t even cross my mind.” He paused. “Was that a test?”
“No,” said Isra. “I didn’t think about it until I was through.”
“Well, we’re here,” said Alfric, looking around.
The town was much smaller than Pucklechurch, barely more than a collection of houses. From the records Alfric had looked at, it had barely more than a hundred people. There were only three stores, though a few of the houses had workshops attached that might serve as a place of business. There was farmland, but largely just for self-sufficiency. It was somewhat safe to say that without hexilization and the warp, there might not have been a town at all, and in the days before waterstones, they’d have built much closer to the local water source. It was the kind of thing that had fascinated him as a child, wondering how it was that people lived in rural places like this, so far from all the goods and services he was used to.
“Let’s keep going,” said Isra after she’d taken her own look around.
“Of course,” Alfric said, nodding.
They got a few looks as they went through the small town, but no one spoke to them. It was obvious they were just passing through, and Alfric supposed that this was at least a daily occurrence, especially because this was the easiest path between Tarchwood and Pucklechurch.
“I’ve only left the hex twice before,” said Isra. She was looking around more, now that they were somewhere new. The roads were in much worse condition, more trails than proper roads, the kind that a wagon could get through with some difficulty, risking getting stuck in the mud if it rained. From the town, Alfric hadn’t even been sure that there were roads in all six directions.
“I rarely left Dondrian,” said Alfric. “Why twice?”
“Both times by accident,” said Isra. “I crossed the border without knowing it.”
“And the warp sent you to the center of some other hex,” said Alfric. “That’s always a painful experience, especially if you don’t know quite where you’ve ended up. Adding an extra six miles, at least, when you’ve had a long day or thought you were getting an early start on things, can be awful.”
Isra nodded. “I used to go into Pucklechurch with my father. The first time, I hadn’t known that the spell could send you anywhere else.”
“Ouch,” said Alfric. “But you made your way back?”
Isra nodded. “Obviously.”
“But I mean,” said Alfric, “being in a strange place, not knowing what had happened, that must have been scary.”
“It was,” said Isra.
They said nothing more for the next two miles. At various points, Alfric thought of something to say, and then he would look at Isra, and the thought would die on his lips. He had, in his time in the Junior League, met a number of people who were tightly wound and cold as ice, but Isra seemed to be in a league of her own so far as that was concerned. He needed to talk to her, to convince her that being in the party was in her best interests, but he had no idea how to do that. She was an orphan. Shouldn’t she want friends? Wasn’t that, in part, what a party was? Alfric had heard of parties where everyone was only cordial with each other, and of course he’d had many stories about interpersonal drama within a party, but it seemed to him that your party would, inevitably, become your friends. Or at least, he’d thought that before he’d been abandoned and never really reflected on it afterward.
“Tarchwood is larger,” said Alfric. “I’ve never been, but it has a number of shops that we’ll want to bring what we have to. We’ll see if we can sell the books as they are, but if not, then they can be bleached or have the ink removed, and we can sell them blank. Aside from that, we’ll also need to find an entad shop, which there are two of. I don’t think we’ll get much from what we have, but it’s part of due diligence.”
“Okay,” said Isra.
They went another five minutes. The silence was agonizing. He was starting to think that perhaps Isra just didn’t know how conversations were supposed to go, or at least not the kind of frippery that you were meant to fill the air with when you were walking with someone.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Know what?” asked Alfric.
“What’s in Tarchwood,” replied Isra.
“Oh,” replied Alfric. “Um, more civics stuff. A hex under the command of a hexmaster can pledge information to a province, which is a collection of hexes, and provinces have their own people and rules and stuff.” He hesitated, feeling foolish for what he felt compelled to say next. “There are also collections of provinces, which is a nation. We’re in the nation of Interim.”
“That, I knew,” replied Isra.
“All right,” said Alfric. “Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, hexmasters can pledge information to a province, and the province pledges to the nation. The nation, through the mechanism of the prime minister, can appoint someone to administer, usually sent from the seat of power, in this case Dondrian, and then they send information back along the national backbone to be cataloged.”