She spit angrily away from the chariot. “No, never. Filthy wordwitches. They are tiny, frail. But they have found their way into the ears of the centaur. You will see. Their banquets are pathetic. Tiny and pathetic.”
Tiny? Aile thought hard about everything she’d come to know about the hippocamps, but there was no talk of tiny among the memories. She pushed the gold piece back into her pocket. This could become very interesting.
Ilkea had lapsed back into her talk about satyr banquets. “The most cunning must always sit at the place of honor. In the olden times, this was always a male until the coming of High Priestess—”
“How far?”
“Far?”
“To our destination.”
“Ah.” She surveyed the sky and the mountains for only a brief second. “Before dark we will arrive.”
There was not so much as a pause after the answer and the story of High Priestess Someone had outwitted Village Elder Someone Else. The day continued along and their progress was slow but steady, as it had ever been. Hour long silences were a welcome respite, but they were too few for Aile’s liking. The chariots themselves were not quite large enough to lay in, even as small as Aile was. Even had they been, the base was not padded and stopping to remove some padding from the pack meant having the full force of Ilkea’s voice in her ears for more time than was absolutely necessary.
Aile had considered that there was some value in the information that the satyr had been offering so insistently. To a historian, perhaps, or a noble. She had almost managed to excite herself with the idea until she considered it more carefully. No elf was like to believe the stories of a Drow. Even if they might, she could not imagine that elven nobles thought very well of her after her fun in Spéirbaile. Thus, the noise that may have had value returned to noise that had none and Aile’s thoughts of pushing a blade into Ilkea’s skull returned as vivid as ever. Gold was gold, she reminded herself, and the satyr would lead her to gold.
The sky had begun to dim when Ilkea stopped a sentence short and looked ahead of them.
“There.”
It was at the edge of her vision, but Aile saw what the girl saw. A small camp, tightly packed and with fires already lit. Aile felt a tingle run across her body. There were secrets here. Secrets that tended to be uncovered by having a centaur cock rammed into your stomach and an uncomfortable, slow death in the dirt covered with semen. Perhaps that was why they had carted her all this way. Aile ran her fingers across the hilts of a pair of blades sheathed at her side. Such a waste of her precious time would carry a very high price indeed.
Part Two
L
Z
Socair
Light was starting to creep through the windows as Socair finished dressing. She had been able to insist upon a brigandine for her trip, at least. There was a familiar comfort in the stiff metal inside a well-fitted piece of fine linen. The garment itself was deep brown with a blood red stripe down the right breast. It marked her clearly enough as one of Deifir’s loyal and would likely be enough to avoid any more minor trouble she was apt to encounter. Somehow Socair felt bothered by that idea. One must earn something, not be given it for fear of reprisal. There was no good to be claimed in acting as one should only when the person in front of them had the power to require it.
There was a knock at the door and no wait for a response before it opened. Práta entered, looking as though she had barely gotten out of bed in spite of having been awake for nearly two hours arranging supplies. She yawned and flopped into a chair by the door.
“Deifir’s told the stable master not to let us leave on horseback. It is to be a carriage or we walk, he said.”
Socair scoffed. “Nobles and decorum. Is it so unthinkable that we should ride horses?”
Práta half smiled. “A member of the Binse complaining about nobles. There is something the slightest bit odd about that.”
Socair moved to Práta and grabbed her hand.
“I am far from noble. But I will do what is needed and sit in their ridiculous box. And you will sit with me and keep me company. And we will be miserable together.”
Práta stood, hand in Socair’s and yawned again. “I am not so convinced that I will find the experience miserable. A plush seat and a shelter from the cold. It sounds nice.”
“Nobles,” Socair said playfully. “You’re all as soft as sheep’s wool.”
The walk from her quarters to the exit near the stables was one Socair had made more than a few times, but it felt unreasonably long today. She knew in the back of her mind this excursion was not likely to have anything resembling adventure, but it was hard to quell the anticipation. She would be free of the castle and the judging eyes and ears of the rest of the Binse. She would have a purpose other than the writing and reading of reports. Práta had never seemed bothered by the lifestyle, but it was one she was born into so Socair could hardly be surprised at that.
In fact, Práta seemed suited to life in such a political setting. She spoke well and had a clarity to her delivery that made it hard for even the most obstinate to argue against her when she had the right of something. It was pure selfishness that kept them together. A selfishness they’d both discussed and agreed upon. A friend of her father’s had begged her to return to Glassruth, but it was not the time for that, she’d said. One day, surely, just not now.
The door was open and waiting and the early morning’s cold wind
