I stashed the reports in my pocket once we arrived at Three Barrels, parting ways after a final, sincere thank you from Elise. When Bella disappeared around the corner with the carriage, Lia and I were left alone at the entrance to the headquarters. We stood quietly for a moment, both staring off into the distance down the southern road. “We made it,” I said eventually, taking Lia’s hand.
“We made it,” she echoed.
“It’s time for me to keep my promise,” I proclaimed, taking a step forward. “It’s time to go on an adventure.”
***
12. FRIENDS
Our trip south began quite differently than I had expected. All of my time spent traveling in Kaldan had been on nearly empty roads through relatively undeveloped countryside, and I had started to forget that those experiences were abnormal. The southern road out of Mayaan was packed with foot traffic, passenger carriages, and produce carts, all bustling in both directions. The closeness of the crowd set me on edge, and I had to consistently remind myself that I wasn’t a wanted man in Lybesa.
While our promise of investigating Elise’s missing caravans waited somewhere ahead of us, Lia and I were both perfectly content to travel at a far more leisurely pace than our previous journeys. Lia found the crowd much more enjoyable than I did, and she did her best to make casual conversation with some of the passersby. Most people replied to her amicably, and although it all sounded the same to me, I could tell by Lia’s reaction that the responses were in Lybesian rather than Kaldanic, which put an end to any further dialogue.
It was late afternoon on our first day of traveling when she found a response she understood. We had finally caught up with a group of four people moving approximately the same speed as us after a few hours of walking behind them; their pace seemed slightly slowed by the lead man, who pushed a wheelchair that held an elderly woman in a heavy cloak. Lia greeted them warmly, and her face lit up when she understood their reply in kind. “You speak Kaldanic!” she exclaimed as we walked up beside them.
“Sounds like you do, too,” laughed the stranger pushing the wheelchair. He was a tall man, most likely my height when not hunched over the chair grips, with a shining bald head, deep brown skin, and a close-cropped black beard. “What brings a Kaldanic speaker out this way?” he asked with a friendly smile.
“Vacation!” Lia answered excitedly. “We’re on our way to visit the capital for a few days.”
The man chuckled and looked at the woman on his right, who bobbed her head forward to catch our eyes. “We’re on our way to Ellawyn ourselves, Primes willing,” she said cheerfully, circling around the group to walk next to Lia. She looked to be about our age, with copper skin, bouncy chestnut hair, and kind blue eyes. “You’re free to join us on the road, if you’d like the company; we’ve got a chartered wagon waiting for us in Leinna to take us through the Midlands, but we’re on foot until then.”
The cloaked figure in the wheelchair turned her head towards us. “We don’t need a couple of foreign strangers traveling with us! Especially not some road vagabonds like them!” the woman complained in a shrill, deliberate voice. I was able to see a face beneath the hood for a brief moment; she had pale, translucent skin that seemed to hang from her small frame, with sunken eyes and a long, crooked nose. She looked over Lia and me for a brief moment, then turned away with a huff of disgust.
“Gran, please!” cried the last member of their group. He looked to be the youngest of their party and walked with a slight limp as he hurried up to the side of the wheelchair. His dirty blonde hair hung down into his nervous, shifty eyes, and he constantly pushed it out of his face, to no avail. “You can’t talk to people like that, even if they can’t understand you!”
The youth looked up to us with an apologetic smile. “Sorry, she doesn’t speak Kaldanic. She was just asking if we knew each other,” he lied. “Which, as far as I can remember, we don’t. I’m Miles,” he said, moving to the back of the group and holding out a hand, “and this is my grandmother, Josephine.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Miles!” Lia chirped, shaking his hand. “And you as well, Josephine,” she added, giving the woman a respectful bow of her head. “My name is Marlia, but you can just call me Lia.” She gave my arm a hard tug and pulled me closer to the group insistently as I heard her voice inside my head. Introduce yourself. And be nice.
“Pardon my rudeness; speaking in groups has never been my forte,” I said with a small, forced smile. “My name is Lux. It’s nice to meet you all.”
“Lux, Lia,” repeated the young woman, briefly looking us over as she committed the names to memory. “I’m Evelyn, but you can call me Lyn, if you’d like. This is my husband Layne,” she said, placing her hand on the crook of her husband’s arm.
“Miles, Josephine, Lyn, Layne,” Lia said, nodding to each person in turn. “Got it! So, what brings the four of you out this way? Are you vacationing, too?”
Josephine snorted derisively, but Lyn ignored her. “Not quite. Miles is a good friend of ours and needs a place to stay while
