A Drifting Wasteland (Peregrine x DotCom)

[Peregrine]

Kaya was not the only one who would not be able to fall asleep that night. He spent the remainder of the dark hours crouched near the door to the room, suddenly feeling that the space was no longer secure, but was rather a trap. He expected the people below, the people he could hear rustling down there and talking about who knew what, would get over their fear, and would come after Kaya again. It did not occur to him that, in that moment, they were turning against him far more than they were against her.

It was a relief when the light of morning began to tinge the sky that was just visible over the wall a shade of grey. That meant that the sun was nearly rising, and it was time for him to go. Liana and Trent would be expecting him when the sun was fully risen. He glanced over towards Kaya once more. She had spent the night at her desk, barely lifting her head from whatever it was she was so studiously working on, except to sometimes stand and pace across the room. He had not said anything to her, knowing that there was no way he would understand what she was trying to accomplish.

He stood carefully, glancing over towards her. "Kaya?" he questioned. It was a request for permission to leave, although she would probably miss the fact that he was more concerned with her safety than he was with his own. He got a hand wave in return, but took that as his permission. She'd be fine. He pulled the door open much more carefully this time, although the entire door hung loose on its hinges now from the abuse it had taken yesterday night.

The main room of the inn was completely empty at this time of the day. The only person around was someone back in the kitchen, who was already starting the process of preparing the various drinks and meals that would be served when the inn opened for general business again later today. The man peeked his head around the corner of the door to the kitchen at the sound of him coming down the stairs, only to let out a fearful gasp and immediately duck back into the kitchen when he caught a glimpse of his bandaged form. He felt his shoulders slump slightly, but told himself this was probably a good thing. Maybe the boys would leave him alone today.

He received similar reactions on the remainder of the walk to Trent and Liana's farms. The streets were still mostly empty, but there were a few people who, like him, had places to be at dawn. Those few people would be walking casually and comfortably, right up until they caught sight of him. As soon as that happened their eyes would go wide in fear, they would freeze for a moment, before hurrying as quickly as they could away from the path in front of him. Had he known more about people it would have been remarkably astonishing how quickly the rumors of what had transpired last night had spread across the entire city. All he knew now was that it seemed as though everyone in the city viewed him with nothing but hatred and fear.

Unfortunately, this was to shortly prove a lot more true than even he had realized. As he drew into view of Trent and Liana's house, he suddenly caught sight of a pale face peering out the window in his direction. He lifted an arm, only for the curtain over the window to suddenly be pulled closed, and the face to vanish. He paused for a moment, confused. It seemed remarkably out of character for the normally kind Liana. In the end, thought, there was nothing for him to do but resume his walk back towards the house.

As he drew closer to the house the door was suddenly flung open, and Trent and two other men marched out of the house, before protectively closing the door behind them. Each held a shotgun in hand, and he recognized the one that Trent had used yesterday to chase away the boys who had been threatening him. As they lined up in front of the house and Trent lifted up the shotgun, aiming at him, he suddenly realized that the gun was going to be put to nearly the opposite use this morning. When he didn't immediately come to a halt, the two other shotguns were pulled upright. Trent cocked his gun. He came to a halt, hands curled together in an attempt to offer himself some form of comfort, but didn't otherwise move.

"Are ye dumb!?" Trent shouted across the gap. "Get the fuck out of here!" His two friends nodded their agreement. Still he didn't move. Trent cocked the gun. "Go away or I'll shoot, you fucking monster."

Somehow, he knew this wasn't what was supposed to be happening. He knew Kaya had placed him on this farm for a reason, even if he didn't know what it was. He was supposed to work. Maybe... maybe they had just forgotten. He knew it was naive, but a part of him hoped it was true. He'd done good work yesterday, hadn't he? "I... I'm supposed to work?" he asked, hesitantly.

"We're not getting taken in by that crap anymore," one of Trent's friends responded promptly.

"Go back to the wastes, freak," the other added.

Trent took more careful aim, leveling the gun fully on his chest. "Last chance," he promised, fiercely.

 

[DotCom]

"L-last...last chance for what?"

Kaya had known she would take a hit -- another hit -- showing up red-faced and out of breath, but she was relieved, annoyed, and a little unnerved to see her haste had not been for naught as she slowed her otherwise haphazard sprint down Meeros's main road to reach Liana's farm ahead of any...undesired attention. It had taken her two minutes after he left to realize he might be in danger without her influence. She'd gone with him to the farm for the first time for much the same reason, and with less cause than last night's scene had necessitated. It took her another ninety seconds bartering with Anna, who met her at the door and tried to coax her back to bed. Kaya could infer from the way the inn's few inhabitant had been watching the stairs that Eli's passing had not gone unheeded.

"Kaya, dear, maybe you ought to...rest a bit longer. We've a couple hours yet until the lunch rush, and you look exhausted. Maybe -- "

"I need to speak to my partner," Kaya said brusquely, and Anna's quick glance backward to another barmaid told Kaya everything she needed to know. She had seen those looks before, like when walking out of Sam's shop after three days at a stretch spent in her office, unwashed and half starving with madness in her eyes. She knew she probably looked much the same now. She also knew what it meant if she did not leave this place, and soon.

"He's...just gone off to Trent and Liana's, I'm sure -- "

"I need," Kaya said, forgoing sweetness, "to see my partner. Before he gets to the farm. Please let me pass. I won't ask again, Anna."

"I only -- "

"He will know if you've stopped me, you know. If he were to walk in right now and I were upset, what do you think he would think?"

Anna dropped her arms at once and let Kaya pass. The young merchant had taken off running, all the while her mind running the hundred and one possible scenarios. It was easy to see what the people seemed to think of her from their expressions as she sprinted past. And she could only guess what they were whispering about him. She had been stupid to let him go. At the very least, he was a threat. But to have allowed him to separate from her at all...

Kaya now drew up next to her partner, taking in this scene in an instant. Any good will the pair might have built up the night before was gone. They saw him as nothing but a monster, and a dangerous, unpredictable one.

As for her?

Kaya played a hunch and stepped forward, placing herself in front of Eli, between him and the open, staring eyes of three shotgun muzzles. She put her hands on her hips and waited.

"Last chance at what?" she said again. "It seems I missed a very pivotal point of a very heated conversation, Trent."

She was...almost positive none of the men were going to shoot her. Not intentionally, and probably not unintentionally, which meant as long as she was between them and him, she had a little time to think if anything went suddenly, wildly wrong. She tried to tell herself she wasn't risking her health -- she wasn't -- so much as reestablishing a picture the city of Meeros had already painted for itself.

They thought her a pitiable creature gone half mad from overexposure to the wastes? Fine, then. Better that she use it to her advantage than waste her time trying to sway their opinions.

"I hope you don't mean to end our business deal here?" Kaya added once she'd caught her breath, now speaking to Trent as much as to Liana, who waited in the window, face pale and terrified. Almost immediately, the man to Trent's right dropped his gun, though he kept his finger near the trigger.

She took a breath and played another hunch.

"Trent, pulling that trigger now will only cause more problems for all of us, yourself included," Kaya said patiently. "You will not kill my friend here, but you will have endangered my life, and trust me when I say that is singularly dangerous for all of you. Understand?"

The man on Trent's other side hesitated. Liana waited on the porch, face pale. More people, Kaya could only assume the handful of workers brave enough to return, even in a small group, gathered behind herself and her guide. Kaya didn't move an inch, but she could feel tension coiling in her belly until she felt ready to throw up her insides. She knew ultimately one of two things would happen.

One, the citizens of Meeros would panic. Many would be injured or even die in the scuffle, including Eli himself. And if he didn't die, he would flee, and she would go with him. The people would try to stop her, and he would try to save her again, and he would die. Or maybe, if they were lucky, they would end up back where they had started, near death at the edge of the desert. They would lose weeks, maybe more out there. Kaya had no food or supplies, and this time she didn't have him to force feed her, or a paradisiacal hellscape to offer what he couldn't. If one of them died out there, they both would. And Kaya hated waste.

But the people could also fold, just like they had last night, however unhappily. It had taken careful plying on Proctor's part, and her cooperation as well as Eli's. But those things she could promise now if only the people didn't turn violent. She waited as patiently as she could, ready to run if she had to, though she wasn't exactly sure where she would go. Trent, maybe. She was banking on none of the men shooting her intentionally, but if she wanted to survive, she couldn't let any of them get through to her guide, either.

She waited, and she tried to tell herself her concerns were logical and nothing else.

"You're throwing away good work, Trent," Kaya coaxed gently. "Don't let your fear control you. You're smarter than that."

 

[Peregrine]

It took him by surprise as much as it did everyone else to suddenly have Kaya come running up behind him. He had been prepared to leave, to return to the inn even though he wasn't certain what he was going to be doing there, because he knew that Trent and his friends were serious about shooting him. And while the blast of the shotgun wouldn't kill him, it would certainly turn the whole town even more hostile than it already was, assuming that he could get both himself and Kaya out of the city before they could properly muster against him.

But the sound of Kaya's voice brought all that to a halt, at least for a moment. He hadn't expected to see her, and so didn't even begin to know how to react. That was, of course, before she stepped herself in between him and the guns. Then all he felt was a sudden tension. He longed to push her behind him. She was soft, much softer than him. If the gun went off, there was nothing he'd be able to do to keep her alive. He, at least, would emerge from the blow relatively unscathed. Better that than...

But it seemed Kaya knew what she was doing, at least to an extent. First one than the other of Trent's friends lowered their gun. In the end, it was only Trent who held his gun steady. For a moment he seemed like he might be listening to Kaya's words, but then he glanced back towards the kitchen, and caught a glimpse of Liana's terrified face. He turned back towards them, and made eye contact with the other people around them, who must have had a very similar expression to the one on Liana's face. Something in him seemed to harden. His head shook from side to side. "I have no quarrel with you, but I won't pay to have that thing near my family, no matter what kind of work it might do.

"Get it out of here. I'm serious."

 

[DotCom]

"This is a mistake," Kaya said after a moment's silence. "Eli has done nothing to endanger you or yours. He was good help on the farm. I want you to know you're making a mistake." She stared at him, at his face, at his hands on the gun still aimed at her chest. She offered him a small, sad smile. "I think you do."

She held his gaze evenly for another long moment, then turned on her heel, ushering her guide in front of her without a word. If he wasn't going to be paid or trusted for his time and hard work, she wasn't going to allow him to waste it. She briefly considered sending him back out to wait for her in the wastes. He would be safer, and probably happier, there, where men and their guns couldn't follow. The people of Meeros would relax. She could go back to being sweet and reasonable. But she suddenly knew he would not go without her. Not far enough. It was very inconvenient…and yet she couldn't find it in herself to feel angry.

Especially since she didn't feel much more comfortable leaving him at the inn all day. He would grow restless. The tenants would grow restless. And eventually, someone would break. Still, she wouldn't drag him around with her unless he insisted.

She waited until it was quiet around them then forced herself to face him. There was a long silence as she tried to guess what to say.

"I'm sorry." She tried not to let the surprise of those first two words show on her face. "We're going to be here longer than I thought. Longer than I planned. I…I lost my temper last night, and it cost us. I need you to stay out of sight for a bit."

She looked over her shoulder, back toward the farm, fighting the urge to hit something. "We won't be able to find you fair work anywhere, and it's not safe for you back there. It may not be safe at the inn, either." She paused here and leveled her gaze at him as best she could when he towered a foot taller than her.

"So. You can stay with me while I try and…fix things. Or you can lie low at the inn. I'm almost positive they won't try anything but…if I'm not there, they might…" She sighed, tried to run her fingers through her hair, and let out a short growl of frustration.

"Oh, for fuck's…whatever. You can come with me. Or you can stay at the inn. I'll be back as soon as I can. It's up to you."

 

[Peregrine]

As he walked away from Trent and Liana's little house, with the feel of so many eyes on his back, he found himself missing the simplicity of the desert. There, he had always known how to act, and he had always known how to keep Kaya safe. It might have been tedious, but it had been safe and familiar. But now... it seemed to all be spiraling out of control. Even Kaya no longer seemed to know what to do. All he wanted to do was leave, before things got even worse than they already were. Yet here was Kaya, saying that they were going to be here longer. He didn't want to be here longer.

All the same, he settled in behind her, trying to keep himself calm and relaxed. Kaya was on edge, so he was on edge. And, of course, if he was on edge, the people around him were going to be on edge. On edge, or maybe even over it, if Trent was any indication of what was to come. All he could do now was follow her, and hope it would all work out.

And that was exactly what he did. He followed her, until she came to a halt. He listened to what she had to say, trying to understand what she wanted from him. She wanted... him to make a decision. Stay at the inn, or stay with her. Neither option sounded appealing. If he stayed with her, he would be confronting people. Most likely they would react no better than Trent had when faced with him, and Kaya would end up putting herself in harms way again to try and keep him safe. But he certainly no longer believed the inn was safe. That illusion had been thoroughly shattered last night, and he would never be able to regain that innocent belief in its safety. How was he supposed to make this choice if he didn't even know how to keep people from reacting like this to him? It seemed like such an important decision, no matter how casually Kaya said it.

He couldn't think. He didn't know what to do. All he wanted to do was leave, but that hadn't been one of Kaya's options. He had two options, and he had to pick one of them. Behind his mask of bandages, his face wrinkled into a web of confusion and uncertainty. "Where... where are you going?" he finally asked. Maybe that would make his decision a little bit easier.

 

[DotCom]

Kaya quirked an eyebrow, her expression one of sincere, if muted, amusement for the first time in some weeks. His answer wasn't a helpful one…but it was nothing less than what she'd been expecting. And that was something.

"C'mon," she said, stepping around him with a sigh. "Let's get back to the inn. I'll have a better idea of how to answer that question once we're done there. You should try and get some rest. One of us should be ready when the winds change again."

They made their way back to the inn in silence, reaching the side door just as the first tangerine shafts of light struck the main road. Kaya yawned and scowled, then made herself move on. Pouting was just another name for stalling.

"Go on," she told her guide, nodding up the stairs to their room, already scanning the mostly empty room for anyone awake enough (or asleep enough) to be useful to her. "I'll be fine. I'll…let you know before I go anywhere else."

She waited until he left before tossing a cool smile to Anna and the other women behind the counter. They all three of them went pink when they saw her looking, though Kaya managed to hide her scowl until they looked away. Wherever she and Eli went after this…she hoped Meeros would not be an immediate destination. She was already tired of these little people and their little minds.

She settled on a man she recognized, though had never spoken directly to. She'd seen him…leaving the inn during yesterday's morning service, slinking back in late to sit on his own. He didn't seem much for company, but he'd nodded to her once or twice when she brought him a drink. Of course, that had been before last night…but she was banking on his solo status to mean he didn't care much for idle gossip.

Kaya took a breath and made herself smile, grabbing a mug of coffee off the counter – ignoring Bekah's cry of protest – before bouncing over to the man in the corner.

"Too early for any of the house brew to be on tap, but you seem like a guy who can appreciate more than one stiff drink. Mind if I sit?"

The man glanced up from idly tracing the grooves in the table. "Oh," he said, obviously disappointed. "It's you. That desperate for conversation, are you?" All the same, he grabbed the drink, before taking a sip. "Not enough whiskey," he complained, despite the fact that it was clearly a free drink.

Kaya blinked. Something close to a smile touched her lips then disappeared before making a real appearance.

"Answer a few questions for me, and I think I can solve that problem of yours. Deal?"

He waved a hand vaguely across the table at the seat across from him, before adding, "Too early for free whiskey. Don't even know what I'm doing here right now."

"You should go home, Oliver," Anna threw in. "I'm pretty sure you slept in that corner." Oliver ignored her.

"Maybe I can get you some toast, then?" Kaya offered helpfully. The fact that he hadn't so much as glanced at Anna was a good sign. If he wasn't on their side, she could get him on hers.

"Or...just provide some conversation. I don't think we've met yet. I'm Kaya. You're Oliver. No family at home, Oliver?"

"Pphh, no. Only woman I've ever met who didn't burn the toast was my wife Beth, and she died seven years ago. Maybe that's why all my kids left home. Couldn't stand my cooking."

"What was she like?" Kaya took the opening when she saw it. "Beth? Did she grow up here? Did you?"

"Nah. We both came across the wastes, back when we were still teens. Voider swallowed up half our old city, and we all scattered like bugs."

"Really?" She didn't have to fake the interested in her voice, though she was careful to keep from looking too engaged. She couldn't imagine it would do any harm here, but if anyone was listening -- and she didn't put that past a single body in the inn -- she didn't want them catching on to what she planned to do.

"Came across the wastes? How...what was that like? Even with only a few of you headed the same place, I'd guess you must have...run into some trouble?"

"Just a few? Nah. Meeros was only one of three cities within walking distance considering the supplies we had. Everyone in the city went one of those three directions. Never travel with a group that big. The paths just aren't meant for it, and there are never enough escorts. We lost... so many."

"Did you have many escorts in your town? Did they split up with you all when you went?" She fought the urge to add 'are any of them here?', instead saying, "Or did you all just have to make it on your own?"

"A few. There are always a few. Every city has always got an escort base, and a few always hang around. Sometimes they just like the city. Sometimes they need a break. Sometimes they need to hide for a little while, after a job went bad." He paused, glanced at his empty coffee cup, and then back up at Kaya. "You sure do ask a lot of questions, don't you, missy." He squinted at her. "You always this chatty?"

"Always. Can I get you some more of that? It's on me." She smiled sweetly and stood to grab the mug without waiting for an answer. "I've got it. While I'm gone, you try and remember whether any of those escorts ended up sticking around Meeros. Be right back!"

She dipped away and slipped behind the camera, promising Anna she'd serve as many extra shifts as the older woman needed, pretending not to hear at all when Anna quietly suggested she just take a break. It was better than fretting over Eli.

She was back at Oliver's table with two steaming mugs and a plate of small scones not five minutes later, beaming.

"Back!" she said brightly. "Any luck with those escorts? Or their names? Or...maybe you know where Meeros' escort base is?" That last was far from desireable. But it was best to have all her bases covered. If nothing else, she could scout some more info there.

"What escorts," he asked, taking a bite of the scone, grimacing, and washing it down with another mouthful of coffee. "And, yeah. Escort base is right on the edge, near the northwest gate. Most of the gates will lead you right there, if you follow the wall."

"The ones that came from your old town," Kaya answered patiently. "Did any of them stick around here? Are any still...well. You know, around? And...chatty?"

"Nah. No active escort ever stays in a city for longer than a couple weeks, and only then if something went wrong. Not the type to sit still for very long, them folk."

Kaya nodded thoughtfully, then titled her head to one side, her coffee already forgotten. She didn't need it anymore. "You seem to know a lot about them," she said. "The escorts. Did...were you out in the wastes that long? Or...are you an escort? Were you?"

"Me? Nah. Beth never wanted anything to do with the sand after we barely made it to Meeros. But hang out anywhere near a wall long enough, and you'll run into more than a few. Listen long enough, and you'll hear lots of stories."

"Like what?" Kaya said, only just keeping from knocking her mug over. She made herself calm and try again. "Do you have any good ones? Stories? Have you heard any you hang on to?"

"Pfhh, more than you could count, missy. Them wastes are a crazy place. Glad I'll never have to go out in them again." He eyed her for a moment. "But, from everything I've heard, you've got more than enough stories of your own. Why you wantin' mine?"

"Curious," she answered honestly. Honestly enough."I'll take anything different from what I've already heard. Any chance you know any others chatty as I am?"

"Any other what?"

"People who've been out in the wastes. Escorts especially." She leaned a little closer. "If I were to go chat with them, I mean. Do they chat back? I can't imagine all of them as are generous with their time and charming company as you are, Oliver."

"Don't go trying to charm me, lass," he said, although a faint smile did cross his lips. "It won't work. But what you be wanting to talk to escorts for? Heard you got into quite a row with old Bruce last night. Planning on a repeat?"

"Not if he stays out of my way," Kaya said as lightly as she could. "I just...well. There's more than one way to skin a cat, Oliver. You seem the type to understand that, and you can't be the only one here. Just...wondering what it takes to become an escort in Meeros." Since it apparently has nothing to do with efficiency or ability, she thought, but didn't add that. Bruce's name still made her cringe, but her temper would do her no good here.

"Then why you talking to me? I ain't no escort, and wouldn't even want to know how to become one."

"You've got the stories," Kaya answered. "All in one place, with none of the bias a licensed escort will bring back. And you're smart, Oliver. You've been through it, you know what to look for. You have to know at least one name. Give me an escort I can talk to freely as you, and I'll leave you alone." She grinned at him. "And be back in time to pour you your coffee and whiskey tonight. Minus the coffee."

That earned her a grin, which faltered a moment later. "I don't know what you've got against licensed escorts. They led me and Beth here safe, and we sure as hell never would have made it on our own."

"The only thing I've got against them right now is that none are here," she said. "But if you could point me in the right direction...?" She smiled again, then made a sort of half pout she thought would either amuse or offend him. "C'mon, Oliver, day's wasting. One name. Two drinks. Not including the free coffee. That's just a perk."

"Well," he considered this. "I don't think there are any in town right now. I mean, Bruce, but..." he offered her a bit of a shrug. "I suppose you could go talk to Jerell. Kid left the escorts about a year and a half ago. Hangs out in the housing offered by the Guild, does the occasional odd job, but mostly keeps to himself. Don't know if that's what you want, but it's the best I've got to offer."

"Jerell?" repeated Kaya. "Left? Do you know why? If he was ever in the guild, it's enough, it's perfect, but if he left..." She exhaled slowly, recognizing that moment where her own imagination could start to get away from her. She was supposed to be focused on getting a license, on getting out of the city. But a chance to dethrone Bruce...?

"Do you know where I can find him?" Kaya quickly interrupted her own thoughts. "The kid?"

Oliver grumbled slightly. "Like I said. He lives in escort guild housing. It's supposed to be short term, but Bruce doesn't seem to mind keeping him close. If he's not there, you'll have to wait for evening for him to come back. Could be anywhere in the city."

Kaya nodded slowly, distracted. He hadn't answered her question about why the kid had left the guild, but she was pretty sure she'd be able to pry it out of him. It was dangerous, going into a situation with so many unknowns, but they'd already wasted enough time. And she didn't want to have to explain to anyone else, least of all Bruce, what she wanted to a former escort.

"Thanks," she said abruptly, jumping to her feet so quickly, she nearly knocked over her bench. "I owe you one, Oliver. Hell, I owe you three by now. Tell Anna to put you on my tab. You might have to tell her to start my tab. See you later. Thanks!"

She breezed by him, stopping only to offer a quick peck on the cheek. It was another risk, but Kaya was more than used to those.

 

[Peregrine]

He didn't know what had changed in the past few minutes, but in the time it took him to get settled into the room, positioned halfway between window and door to allow himself to best react to whatever might happen, something had definitely changed. Kaya's moodiness seemed to have completely vanished, and she breezed into the room, lifting him up off the floor before spiriting him out of the inn. Apparently she had made the decision of whether or not he was going to go with her or stay in the inn for him. He certainly didn't object.

The sun was fully risen now, and the streets bustled with people moving from place to place. It was crowded enough that it was no longer possible for everyone around him to simply disappear, making him feel like he was walking in a ghost town, but that didn't mean that many of them didn't try. It was like some bubble of force had surrounded them, pushing everyone who got close out of the way. Those who weren't staring at him were watching Kaya. At the very least, they didn't view her with the same hostility that they did him. He couldn't quite identify what emotion they watched her with. It was rather like pity, except fiercer. He watched the way some of the people gathered together, huddling into small groups where they could pass whispers back and forth. Their eyes darted back and forth, from him to her, over and over again. He watched one woman's hand reach out for Kaya's arm as she passed, only for it to rapidly recoil as soon as she realized that he had seen it.

For her part, Kaya seemed unfazed by all this. She walked as though the bubble of space around them was her natural right, as though it was a sign of respect to her, rather than something that was borne out of fear of him. He didn't know how much of it was an act, but if it was she certainly did it well. She greeted everyone she could by name, and anyone who she didn't know but met her eye got a similar treatment as well. Most of the people she spoke to, at least for a moment, lost some of the blatant hostility that covered their faces. That was, at least, until they caught sight of him again, and then it seemed to return all the stronger. The odd look in their faces only became more obvious.

He could feel something building in the crowd. Something surging and pulsing, which seemed only moments away from rushing in between him and Kaya, desperate to pull them apart. Kaya seemed to sense it as well, because only a few moments later she was turning down an emptier street, and then an emptier one after that. Their progress slowed considerably after that point, as they wound from near empty backstreet to near empty backstreet. All the same, eyes followed them wherever they went, and the whispers were never far behind.

Eventually, however, they came to a halt outside a set of tall, neatly kept buildings near the northwest gate out of the city. Each one was marked with a familiar symbol, a symbol that even he recognized. The symbol for the escort guild. What were they doing here?

 

[DotCom]

Kaya hesitated only a moment at the threshold of the guild housing before deciding to forego looking for a recently updated housing roster or apartment map in favor of going door to door. It'd take longer, but she figured it wouldn't hurt to meet as many escorts as she could, however briefly.

She found Jerell behind the sixth door she tried. The rest were empty, abandoned, or just not interested in speaking to her. It occurred to her her behavior was probably making Eli curious, if not uncomfortable. But she couldn't see an escort run-in going much worse than the one she'd had with Bruce the night prior, and out here, they had a better chance of dodging if the worst came to pass.

Jerrel was younger than she'd thought he'd be. She tried not to look surprised when at last he answered the door.

"Hi," she said brightly. "I'm looking for Jerrel. Are you him?"

There was something rather bleary about the young man who peered through the door at her, although there was nothing physically wrong with him like there had been with Bruce. He peered at her for a moment, looking confused, before glancing down the hallway. It was only then that he noticed the bandaged figure standign a little further down the hallway. He jumped slightly, nearly closing the door on his own fingers.

Swearing slightly, he opened the door again, dropping his hand to shake out the pain in his fingers. Finally, he turned back to Kaya, somewhat suspicious. "And who exactly are you?"

Kaya gave him her signature grin and put out a hand she had always assumed was very difficult to refuse. "I'm Kaya," she said brightly. "Kaya Strong. And this is my friend, Eli. Can we come in?"

His eyes darted back towards Eli, before returning to Kaya. "Why?" he asked, suspiciously.

Kaya shrugged casually, as though she was requesting nothing more than a cup of sugar. "No reason. Just hoping to talk to you for a few minutes. I suppose we could do that out here, the day's nice enough." There were far more prying eyes outside his apartment than there were within, but she didn't think it wise to mention that to him. At least, not for her own benefit.

Her statement didn't seem to ease any of the suspicion coming from him. "Talk about what?"

"I'm...doing research," she said. "On how different people achieve escort status. Licensed escort status." She smiled again. "You're my first subject. I can't imagine it's the same for everyone, especially someone your age." She shrugged. "Wondering if you're able to help out a fellow...traveler. Alright?"

He seemed to relax somewhat. He glanced at Eli again, before glancing down the hallway, checking for other people in the area. There was no one around but the three of them. "Fine, Kaya," he relented. "You and your... friend can come in. But, as I'm sure you know if you know my name, I never actually became an escort."

Kaya nodded as she swept forward, trying not to appear overeager. "Yes, I've heard. That's part of why I wanted to talk to you, actually. I'm as interested in the roadblocks as I am the road, I suppose." She offered a sheepish smile that looked almost natural despite its otherwise rare appearance on her face. "Do you mind if I ask what happened?"

Jerrel stiffened again somewhat, but it was too late to shut Kaya back out into the hallway now. "I left," he said, rather abruptly. "Guess I just didn't have the aptitude."

Kaya was too excited to hear the rest of his story to call him on an answer that was obviously...wanting. She would come back to that later, if she had to. For now, she couldn't afford to alienate him by prying. Instead, she nodded and said, "And what about before? Was this...something you learned during training, or you decided at the end wasn't for you? How did you know?"

"There isn't really much training," Jerrel said. "Just an apparenticeship. You either sink or you swim, and if you don't stop sinking after the first couple years, you leave."

"Do you get to choose your...mentor? Or do they choose you? The kids who go into an apprenticeship, do they have to...qualify in some way? Or do they just find a trusted guide and tag along?" She wanted to know more about the 'sinking' bit, but decided again to wait. "How did you decide? How did you decide you wanted to be a guide? And then...not?"

"There are few enough people in the world who want to be escorts," he said. It was obvious that he was starting to get uncomfortable with this whole conversation, but apparently he thought it was too late to back out now. Instead he wandered further into the little house, grabbing a glass and ladeling a little bit of water into it from a bucket. He suddenly seemed to remember Kaya. "Water?" he offered.

Kaya watched him for a moment before shaking her head. "I'm fine," she said, searching now for a way to diffuse the situation somewhat. It was too soon to earn his trust, but if she could find some way to relax him a bit, the conversation would go much easier for both of them.

"I guess you don't get very many visitors?"

"Nope. Not from here originally." He took a hasty gulp of the water, before sitting down in one of the few sparse pieces of furniture in the room. "No one has any particular interest in me. Except, apparently, you." He eyed Kaya for a moment, before turning to look at Eli, who was leaning awkwardly in the corner of the room near the door.

"So, what, you want to know how to get a license? Why are you asking me?"

"I've heard how to do that part, I guess," Kaya said, sitting down herself, hoping to put him more at ease. It would have been easier if she could get Eli to do the same, but the less attention she drew to him, the better. "But I...like to learn about individual experiences, too. It makes for a more complete picture that way." That, and she wanted to see how an escort who wasn't Bruce responded to her and Eli. She wondered idly if this one had heard about what had happened at the inn. If he had, the lack of utter panic or distrust was a good indicator...but that seemed too good to be true.

"I assume you know enough about becoming an escort to live in the escort housing, even though you're not one." She shrugged. "That must count for something. Right?"

"Yeah, sure. I suppose." He shifted slightly in his chair. "As I said, there aren't many people in this world who want to be escorts. Or whose families will allow them to be escorts. All you have to do is submit your name to the guild head in your city. That would be Bruce Proctor here. He'll put your name on a piece of paper, and send it with the next escorts to Essen, which is the seat of the Escort Guild. Your name will go at the bottom of a very short list.

"It will usually take at least four or five months, because they need to find an escort who is so skilled at their job that they can do the work of two and teach someone else at the same time, and who is in your part of the world. But, eventually they'll find one, and send that person on over to your city. If you still want to go, you go. If you don't, the escort goes to the next name nearby on the list.

"The first trip is just plain old travel, to make sure you can handle the wastes. But, after that, the escort will pick up a job, and you'll start learning to see the things that hint a voider is getting near.

Äfter a couple years, if you still miss even the obvious signs that a voider's near, you don't have the aptitude, and you leave. Anything else would be suicide.

Kaya nodded slowly, her mind whirring. "And who tests the aptitude? Another escort? The guild head? That's all you have to do, know when a voider is near?" She knew she made it sound flippant, which was dangerous on its own, even without the risks of further alienating the would-be escort. But she couldn't help it. She was sure she had most of what she absolutely needed, if not everything she wanted. Maybe they could go to another city, then. Find another guild head, one who didn't already have reason to mistrust her. If she could somehow forge whatever proof was required to show she had been training, if all she had to do was adequately locate and avoid the voiders...she would not be able to do it without Eli, but that had never been the plan. She was almost certain she had that much on the average escort -- she didn't, wouldn't need to look for 'signs', even without him. With him, she could detect them at some distance, and evade them if need be. Of course, Jerell didn't know this, so his reaction to her statement wasn't particularly surprising.

"Know when a voider is near," he agreed, although there was a slight frown on his face. "Know which way it is moving, how quickly, where you need to go to get around it without running into another one, and get everyone safely moving in that direction without starting a panic.

He studied her for a moment, the frown growing. "It's not easy. The signs are subtle at best and damn near invisible at worst. There's no "just" about it."

Kaya let a small, cautious grin cross her face as she looked back to Jerell, trying to appear appropriately contrite. "Of course," she said earnestly. "I didn't mean to make it sound anything less than...impressive. The work you all do, it's wonderful and neccessary, and not for everyone. I know that. I'm...glad you took the time to speak with me. It's given me a lot to think about. I should be going."

She stood without waiting for an answer, fully prepared to show herself to the door, though she turned back again before she'd moved more than a few paces.

"Thank you," she said again, infusing as much warmth as she was able, over and around her excitement. "I know you've said being an escort wasn't right for you, but I think this, what you've just done for me, is just as important. If that matters to you at all. I hope to see you at the inn sometime. I owe you a drink."

 

[Peregrine]

By the time they made it back to the inn the sun was all the way up in the sky. Normally this would have been exactly the time of day where he would have stopped walking, done his best to find some shelter and protection from the heat.

It seemed that most of the people in the city had much the same idea. The farm workers had stopped to break for lunch an water, and the street vendors had retreated inside, drawing their few customers with them.

This made the walk back to the inn much easier on them. Or, at least, on him. With so few people in the street, it was like he was back to the time before the sun had risen, when there was enough space for anyone who saw him to run out of the way. Kaya didn't even seem to find it necessary for them to take the backstreets.

What neither of them thought of, though, until they opened the door to the inn, was where all those people who should have been on the streets were at that moment. It seemed, at least to his eyes, that all of them were waiting in the inn.

A few people glanced at the door when Kaya pushed it open, curious as to the latecomer to this noonday party. The silence spread like ripples across a still pond.

Kaya let the silence rest half a beat before smiling to no one in particular.

"Anne, I'll be right down," she promised. "Let me go grab my apron and wash up a bit, and I can help you tame the lunch masses," she added with a laugh, before tugging him away up the stairs before any could respond, or protest his presence.

She tucked him away in the little room, before doing exactly as promised, grabbing her apron again and running off downstairs. Eli waited tensely but patiently, eager for her return, but equally prepared for the potential arrival of someone more unwelcome on his doorstep.

Unfortunately for him, that second option was exactly what happened, less than ten minutes after Kaya had left the room again. The rush of customers downstairs had thoroughly distracted her, which allowed for a covert figure to slip up the stairs and tap gently at the door.

The woman who knocked on the door was young, perhaps in her early thirties, though her dark hair was already speckled with spots of white. Her face was flushed from the heat of the day, or perhaps just the journey up the stairs, having mustered whatever courage was needed to do so.

She knocked firmly, then again, more gently when the door swayed a little on its hinges.

"Hello?" she started tenuously. "I...is anyone there?"

On the other side of the door, he tensed. A part of him wondered, if he simply ignored her, whether or not she would go away.

She didn't go away.

"Hello?" the woman called again, knocking a bit more firmly once more. "I know someone's in there...and I know it's you, if I'm being very honest, so I guess there isn't any real need to ask. My name is Alessa. I just want to talk."

She knocked again, then swore under her breath as the door swayed dangerously. "Look, if you'll just open the door, I can avoid having to face Anna when I accidentally break it down. Please?"

She received only silence in answer and sighed heavily. "She's going to have me on dawn shifts for the rest of the week for this, you know," she muttered, and then, as gently as she could, butted up a sturdy shoulder against the door. It creaked, swayed again, and held fast. He shuddered slightly in fear, backing up towards the window, before sliding it open. A breath of hot air stirred the curtains. A part of him was fully prepared to flee the room, before she could enter. Something else held him in place. It certainly wasn't courage.

The woman went on talking to herself as she repeated the battering with a bit more force behind it. Every once in a while, a word popper out louder than the rest: "...isn't ladylike at all...some kind of brute...grandmother rolling in her grave...and I can't even -- whoops."

That last was given as either the door or its hinges decided they'd had quite enough gentle battering. The door gave way abruptly, tilting into the room and splaying its contents, a young woman with dark hair and dark eyes, like a beautiful, if strange dish on a very large platter.

Her eyes darted around the room for a moment before landing on him. She paled quickly, started to speak, then thought better of it and stood. She moved no closer to him.

"Hello," she said again. "Sorry about your door. You didn't seem as though you were going to answer." There was a long pause. "You're not going to hurt me, are you?"

He was still crouched near the window, balanced on the edge of leaving. Still he didn't move. "Are you going to hurt me?" he asked, carefully, in return. His words were still harsh, disjointed, and generally lacking in proper articulation, but they were intelligible to people other than Kaya.

The woman stared at him quietly. "Probably not," she answered after a moment's hesitation. "But there are people here who might try. I think you know that already. What I'm not sure you know is that they will let you go if you leave the girl. Do you understand?"

The girl? He had to think about it for a moment, but there was only one person who she could really be talking about. But it didn't really make sense. Leave Kaya? Where? Perhaps he was missing something. "Kaya?" he asked.

The woman smiled, seeming pleasantly surprised. "Yes! Kaya! You needn't worry, of course, we'll take good care of her here. Anna says she's doing good work at the bar, or at least she's brought enough business back in the last two days, she doesn't mind that the girl is chatting near constantly. Then again, I suppose half the allure is your doing, isn't it? But anyway, she'll have work, a place to stay, all that. I've all my sister's old things, they'd be about the same size, and just...well, until she...got back on her feet, after..." The woman cleared her throat, on the verge of saying something before apparently thinking better of it.

"We'd just thought -- the girls, and I, I mean. That is...the rest of us down at the bar, in the inn, and then even beyond -- you know Liana and Trent, and others..." The woman paused, then took a deep breath, appearing to gather herself before saying resolutely, "Kaya really would be better off here. If you left here. Alone. With us. See?"

He didn't get everything she said. Just like Kaya. It eased some of the tension from him, and the feeling that he was only moments away from jumping out the window seemed to fade somewhat. But he didn't need to get everything. After all, he certainly got that last bit. He studied her through the weave of the bandage, head tilting slightly to the side. There was honest curiosity in his voice when he asked "Why?"

The surprise this time was more evident, but less pleased. The woman actually reeled back a bit, as though he'd struck her. She searched for a moment, looking for the words to answer his question.

"I...well. That should be obvious, shouldn't it? The desert is a dangerous place, even for someone who's a bit more...stable, and -- " She looked up suddenly as though she'd said or heard something she hadn't expected, and didn't particularly like.

"Ah. Well. Not to say she isn't an...imposing young lady, certainly. She seems very independent...save for you, of course, and therein lies the problem, doesn't it? She's become...rather attached, and...well. It's just better for her here. It's safer," the woman finished firmly, distinctly proud of her otherwise wayward argument.

Safer. He had to think about that for a moment. For several moments. He wasn't so sure about that. It seemed to him that people in the cities got hostile very quickly. The desert, though, it was predictable. For the most part. His mind darted back to that moment, when they had gotten trapped among voiders that had seemed to practically chase them down. But, no, that was a rare thing. A very rare thing. And cities got swallowed up by voiders occasionally, too.

But he certainly didn't have the words to convey all this to her. Instead, he picked out the most important part. "Is it?" he asked.

"Yes?" It was supposed to be a statement in the affirmative, but the way she spoke made it sound more like a question. "I...maybe you're not understanding. We...several of us, I mean, think it would be best if Kaya stayed in the city. With us. Alone." A moment's hesitation, then firmly, just shy of resolute. "With...without you. Do you understand?"

"I understand," he agreed. She'd certainly make it clear enough what she thought, it would have been surprising even for him not to understand.

The woman blinked in surprise, then smiled. "Wonderful! So, you'll...right, well then. You...um...you're free to go, then. Any time you'd like, perhaps sooner rather than later. We'll...I'll let the men know not to bother you, since you've been so...er...reasonable about this. Very sorry it had to come to threats the other night, but it's just...well, you see, don't you? It really is best for her to stay here. She's not well now. But the city, time here, and healing, she'll be better."

She cleared her throat, wiping her hands on her skirts and casting around for something else to do or say, apparently surprised at the creature's sudden change of heart.

"Well. I'll...I'll be going. Perhaps you ought to do the same? Sorry about your door, though I don't think Anna will charge Kaya for it, so...well. Never mind, I suppose that doesn't much matter to you, does it. You will leave her be, won't you? You won't try and...grab her on your way out?"

He had remained silent as she spoke, as was usual, but he knew that he had once more missed something. This time it seemed terribly important, though. Leave Kaya? And where was he supposed to be going? But it also seemed as though she was leaving, which was exactly what he wanted. That was good enough for him.

She made it to the landing outside the door before something caused her to turn around, a suspicious frown on her face.

"Sorry," she said politely. "Just...double checking. You're...you're leaving us alone now, right? Going back to the desert and leaving Kaya here? That's what we've just agreed to? You'll let her go, and...and we'll let you go?"

"What?" He wasn't normally one for involuntary words of confusion, but in that moment it seemed more than appropriate. Silently gaping at her definitely didn't seem like an adequate enough representation of his confusion. Agreement? When had he agreed to anything, let alone going back to the desert without Kaya?

"What?" responded the woman in turn. "Did we...was there some misunderstanding?" She sighed heavily and turned around. "See, this is why I wanted to confirm. You...you need to leave. What you're doing, what you've done to that poor girl, it isn't alright, and it can't continue. There are people here, lots of people, former guards and escorts -- it could get very messy for you, um...Eli. So you need to leave now. I can't ask any more nicely than that."

"I don't..." No, of course he didn't understand. There was no point in saying it. The confusion was written on every part of his body. He understood people wanting him to leave. What he didn't understand, apparently, was why they wanted him to leave. He had thought it was because he was abnormal. That they sensed the part of him that was inhuman, and were naturally turning against it. That was understandable. People had always done that. Well, everyone except Kaya.

But, what made no sense was the fact that apparently the reason they wanted him to leave had as much to do with Kaya as it did with him. What he'd done? What had he done? "What did I do?"

For the first time since she'd entered the room, something other than polite interest, curiosity, or confusion flashed across the woman's face. Something perilously close to anger. She seemed to catch it almost at once, but her friendly eyes had gone hard.

"What do you mean, 'what did I do'?" she snapped impatiently. "You've...got...it...well, I don't know, do I? But there's some reason the girl follows you round like a lost pup. We know you're not...not normal, are you? Not human? We know what happens out there, in the desert, in the voiders. Whatever you've done, whatever spell you've got her under, release her to us, and do it soon. The people here are turning against you quickly. I shouldn't even be here, really, let alone trying to reason with you."

"I..." Words were definitely starting to fail him now. They were failing him badly. "No spell." He knew that wouldn't satisfy her. "No nothing. It's... Kaya." He was starting to get frustrated, but not with the woman in front of him. He was getting frustrated with his own inability to speak. He wished Kaya was here. She was good at this kind of thing. But, if he was correctly understanding what this woman was saying, no one was going to believe anything Kaya said.

"Just Kaya. I can't... do anything. Nothing to do. It's just Kaya."

She watched him for a long moment, her gaze flinty.

"You expect me -- us -- to believe a woman followed you not only out of the desert, of an active voider, but that she, herself, plans to follow you back in?" She barked an incredulous laugh.

"You didn't see her when she first arrived. When Amos and the boy brought her in, she was half out of her mind. Screaming at people, trying to...to fight them, almost hurt them. And then would beg 'don't go' by turns. Those are not the words or the behaviors of a sane person." She scowled. "We know what you're up to, Eli." She used his name but the way she said it made it sound just as jagged as the word 'freak' the others so liked to throw around.

"You think we haven't seen what the wastes can do to a person on their own? We have recovered less from greater creatures than you. This is your last warning."

It felt like something in him had gone cold. Painfully cold. There was something freezing in his chest, slowly crawling upwards until it formed into a lump in the back of his throat. He hadn't seen her. He'd left, because he had thought it would be best. He hadn't known. "She did?" he asked, wretchedly. It felt like there was sand in his eyes, but he knew that was impossible. He couldn't reach up to check, because there were bandages in the way. But he could feel them clinging to the edge of his cheeks in unfamiliar ways, as dark blotches began to form on the outside.

"She... told me not to go," he muttered. "Don't go, don't go. I didn't... I don't..." He could picture her there, first in the voider when he'd told her to stay, and then in the desert as he had started to flee the guards.

His attention suddenly turned back to the woman, and the sorrow and confusion had left his voice. "She came for me!" he said, fierce, and almost proud. "She got me. I won't let you... She won't let you... We won't let you. We won't. I'll leave. She'll come. She goes. I'll follow. That's it!"

The woman stumbled back at his sudden outburst, having perhaps stepped forward a bit when he turned away. But then he was facing her again, his voice raised just shy of a shout, and she went still, for a moment terrified.

She tightened her jaw and took a shaky breath, though she did not immediately back down, despite his temper. "Alright, then," she said, her voice a bit weaker than it had been before, even if her expression hadn't softened. "I've tried to reason with you. You ought to leave. Tonight. Without the girl. Beyond that, I can't guarantee your safety."

She turned to go again, the tension falling somewhat from her shoulders as she reached the now-empty doorway once more. Then, once more, she was turning, something like pity or sympathy in her eyes.

"I'm...I'm sorry," she said. She paused a moment, as if to say more, and then she was gone.

 

[DotCom]

It seemed half the town had come seeking shelter from the heat…though the crowded inn was hardly the place to do it by the height of the lunch rush. Still, the humidity and noise were tempered by good natured laughs and shared stories over the first half of the day, what the evening would bring…and what part their strange new guests would have in all of it.

Kaya knew she was being watched, and so did her best to appear as though she knew nothing at all, instead focusing on rebuilding the reputation she had so tarnished with her outburst last night. Her 'out of sight, out of mind' plan for Eli seemed to be working fairly well, or at least no one mentioned him to her…though the way several conversations stopped as she drew close with trays of sandwiches and cold beers told her they had not completely forgotten his visitation last night.

That was alright, though. She had met with a (sort of) former escort that morning and now that the afternoon to serve and to plan, rubbing elbows with any number of people who now knew she was not a licensed escort, but were still willing to offer support. She got the names and whereabouts of a few more escorts, as well as the details on a large caravan that was meant to arrive in town early next week. A woman named Alessa tried to catch her eye, but when Kaya went to greet her, she only grew flustered and said, "I need to talk to you. Will you be here this evening?" Kaya had laughed and assured the other woman that she would, then gone back to serving, carefully pocketing tips as she was able. It seemed unlikely that she would be able to pursue her plans to become an escort based in Meeros…but when the caravan left again in a week's time, she would be going with it, one way or another.

She found herself pleasantly exhausted, sticky with sweat, but proud of her progress by the end of the lunch break. She put in her word with Anna, telling the woman she was going to pop upstairs for a quick rest and to bring her partner lunch. Anna had nodded, tight-lipped, telling her to be back down within the half hour. Kaya had promised she would be back sooner, packing a tray with a few sandwiches, some dried fruit, and a pitcher of water.

Her spirited mood last until the second stair from the top, when she realized their door had been broken down. Bashed inward…from the outside.

She felt her heart jump up into her throat, but kept a calm façade as she entered the room. Some of the tension left her shoulders as her eyes fell on her partner, who seemed no worse for wear, if a little agitated.

"What happened?"

Eli shrugged slightly. "Someone wanted in. To... talk."

Kaya blinked, incredous and annoyed at the same time.

"Since when does 'talking' necessitate the breaking down of our door?" she demanded, dropping the tray on an empty table. "And - wait, do you mean someone came up here? To you? To chat with you? Who was it? When? What did they want? What did they say?"

"Told me to leave," he continued, still sounding remarkably blazé about the situation. As per usual, he seemed to ignore most of what she'd said, and only focused on the last piece. "Thought I'd spelled you."

"I -- what?" For once, the young would-be merchant seemed utterly unsure of what to say. "Spelled...me? Like...magic? Enchantments?" She stared at him, not expecting an answer, but unable to speak anymore.

But not really. "These people...unbelievable," she grumbled, turning away from him to pick up the door. She struggled with it for a moment, then gave up with a grunt of frustration. Behind her, Eli stepped up, easily lifting the door back into place, although it was still off it's hinges.

"Spelled me! As if I'm incapable of making my own choices. Just because they are content to sit in their little hole in the desert doesn't mean I have to be. And to come up here -- without my permission -- to you. They deliberately...they waited until I was gone to try and corner you." She was speaking about him, though she'd mostly forgotten he was there, pacing again in increasing agitation.

"I've told them all countless times, they can speak to me. And now they want us to leave? Absurd. These people...they don't even know yet what they're missing, it's almost not worth it, to try and stick around. First that...that man from the guild, then some idiot stranger just traispsing into this private space with the expectation that...what, we'll just up and go? Because they asked us? No. Absolutely not. Listen, I've got a plan, and they may not like it, but they'll need it. Even if they're still not sure about you, by the time I'm done, they'll be begging us to take them into the desert."

She remembered suddenly that she was speaking to him, and not just at him, and turned aside, somewhere between annoyed and amused.

"There's food there, if you want it," she said, sounding deflated now. She glanced back toward the door. "Who was it who came up here? Did...did they try to...attack you? Force you out?"

"Didn't want us to leave," Eli clarified, turning away, and starting to unwind the bandage from his face so he could eat. "Wanted me to leave. And you stay. But only words." The bandage successfully unwound, he quickly gulped down a sandwich, not even bothering to chew.

The words took a long time to filter through to her psyche, and then another moment to suss out what he meant. Kaya turned again, more slowly this time, her expression unreadable, even by her own standards.

"They...no," she said, shaking her head. "No. No, I told them that, too," she went on, though she wasn't sure that was true. "You can't leave without me. Alright? You can just...no, I'll tell them no, that's not how it works. Escorts go in pairs. We stick together. I'll tell them. You just -- you don't have to go," she said as evenly as she could, trying both to understand and ignore the sudden feeling of panic that had bloomed in her chest.

"They can't make you," she said. "I won't let them. We're staying together. If it's not here, it's out there. But you don't go anywhere without me. Okay? You...you just can't."

His head turned towards her, and he rubbed, almost unconsciously, at a spot on the top of his cheek. The bandage unravled a little further, and he grabbed the loose end, pulling it tight again. "Won't," he promised, as he turned back to the sandwiches and ate another.

"Okay." She said it calmly enough, but he wasn't look at her, so she felt okay letting the sudden and unexpected relief food her features and her body language. She hadn't thought he was going to leave...but some surety was nice.

In any case, it wasn't him she was worried about. The people of Meeros, or at least one of them, had surprised her again. They were growing bold, if they were willing to confront Eli, alone, in a closed space. Without her knowledge. That last bit still irked and she felt her temper spike just a little, jutting out from beneath wounded pride.

"Did they say anything else?" she asked, forcing herself to speak more slowly for her sake as much as his. "Did they...threaten?" She was not keen on leaving so soon, but she would do it if they were going to be in greater danger remaining in the city than trying to escape it. They were already jumpy. If they were jumpy and had somehow deluded themselves into thinking she needed rescuing...

"Can you tell me what exactly they said? Not...word for word, but...I dunno, the gist?" The language barrier, or his, rather, was frustrating, and Kaya wished again she could have been there. Whoever had come to talk to him had known speech would be his weakness. They were trying to pry them apart. All at once, Kaya was not so keen on returning to her post at the bar.

"Said... lots," Eli offered, rather hesitantly. He went quiet, but when Kaya didn't start speaking again words started to slowly spill out of him.

"Wanted in. I wouldn't let. Knocked down the door. Asked if I'd hurt her, then... said you should stay and I should go. Many times. Left briefly. Came back. Said I did something to you. Don't know what. Got mad. I told her I wouldn't leave. She said I should leave tonight. Said sorry. Left for real."

Kaya latched onto two words: 'she'. And 'tonight'. She struggled for a moment, pacing again, trying to figure out what to ask, how best to prompt for the information that they needed. But it didn't seem to matter. Every way she looked, it came back to tonight.

"They're going to try and hurt you," she said finally. "Maybe not right away. Maybe not the first thing they'll do, and certainly not in front of me. But they're going to try and separate us, and then they'll try and hurt you." She stopped pacing and looked at him. "Badly. Maybe even...well. They won't leave us a choice. They haven't left us a choice. They're going to make us run."

Kaya went silent so long, even she thought she had nothing left to say. She had pictures, ideas in her head, dozens of them. But she couldn't get away from it. It seemed obvious. Beyond obvious now. She should have seen it coming for days now.

"We have to leave," she said finally. "Tonight."

 

[Peregrine]

They waited, tense and awkward, for night to fall, for the streets to darken to the point where no one would be able to see their silhouettes should they peer out the window at the wrong moment. Kaya didn't go back down again after lunch, choosing to remain with him instead and make sure there would be no other intrusions. No one tried to bring her back down.

When it finally came time to go, Kaya didn't pack anything, but, rather, silently gestured him towards the window. Of course, he wasn't able to leave by the front door. They both knew that people would be watching and waiting. The woman's threat (Kaya had told him it was a threat, no matter how politely she had said it) lingered in his ears. If he went down there, people would follow him. Just before he started moving Kaya grabbed him, running over everything they had discussed one last time, to make sure he hadn't forgotten any of it. He hadn't.

The fall from the window was long and jarring, and he whimpered slightly after landing, rubbling his legs and feet to get the feeling back into them. The pain, though, faded quickly. As soon as he thought he could move again without simply collapsing he pushed himself back to his feet, before taking three long strides to move himself over to a dark shadow. He was to wait there until Kaya found him.

It only took her a few minutes, he knew that, but every moment she didn't emerge from that door he thought of all the things that could be going wrong. Maybe that woman had made what she'd done known. Maybe she was doing something now, something to make sure that Kaya wouldn't be able to leave. He didn't know. Maybe they were attacking her, tying her up, locking her in somewhere. Maybe they were forcing her to tell them where he was, so that they could come and kill him for trying to take her away. Maybe...

But, no, there she was, coming out the door. It was definitely her. He'd know her anywhere. He longed to step forward, but she had told him to stay hidden until she found him. So he waited, tense and impatient, for her to figure out where he was.

Eventually, she did. She moved over to him silently, after another woman had walked out of the inn, glanced down the street at Kaya, before turning to walk the other way. For the first time in a very long time Kaya didn't say anything, but simply slipped into the shadows with him and gestured for them to move into the little alley.

They didn't move quickly. Instead, they wound through the city, taking turns seemingly at random, until he was thoroughly lost, convinced they were going in circles. And maybe they were. The wall certainly didn't seem to be getting any closer.

That was, of course, until it suddenly seemed as though the wall sprung up in front of them. Kaya brought him to a halt, before peering around a corner. He peered out after here. There was the gate. Their freedom.

All that stood between them and escape was three guards, and a heavy gate made of solid metal.

 

[DotCom]

They hadn't eaten before they'd gone, and while Kaya knew she might regret it later, she could only think in that moment how glad she was that her belly was largely empty, or she'd have long since left its contents on the road. She had managed to sneak a dirty table knife into a pocket on her way through the bar and serving room and she held it now pinned against one wrist, the wooden hilt clutched against her sweating palm. She could feel her pulse against the blade's cold edge, ticking along just under her skin, counting her heartbeat in a rapid staccato. She kept having to fight the urge to run, kept reminding herself that it wouldn't do any good to reach the gate any faster, or check over her shoulder for the half dozen figures following in the dark with pitchforks and torches.

It seemed to take an eternity to reach the gate. She could see a pale form in the shadow the wide doors threw and she felt herself straight automatically, felt her shoulders straighten into something like friendly, if overbearing confidence, felt a smile she didn't believe for a second take residence on her face. Her gait evened slightly. She eased her grip on the knife's hilt and let smooth wood drop into her hand. Just in case. Just in case.

Without taking her gaze from the figure in the dark, she whispered, "Stay in shadow as long as you can. Get the gate open. I'll take the guard. You don't need to open the gates all the way, just enough so we can get out. Okay?"

She didn't look at him to confirm whether he understood, and for a moment wasn't certain whether that meant she trusted him, or just that she was anxious to go. Both seemed as impossible as they did expected at this point, and yet both were less surprising than the simple realization that trust had very little to do with it. She expected him to follow along because she knew he would. If they were not yet a well-oiled machine, they had at least learned how to survive together. It somehow felt much more natural than the years spent having learned to survive alone.

Kaya sidestepped abruptly into the light, letting the guard focus on her as fully as she was able. Through the darkness, Kaya could just make out pale skin and hair, a woman maybe twice her age Kaya recognized but couldn't name. Smiling, she said, "Good evening! I think I've gotten turned around, mind pointing me back toward the inn?"

The guard straightened abruptly, perhaps surprised to see someone -- particularly Kaya, if she had to guess -- out by the gates so late.

"Toward...the inn? It's back down the main road, if you just -- wait. You're...who's that with you? What -- ?"

Kaya closed the distance between them at once, using her momentum to pin the woman back against the wall behind her while simultaneously pressing her free hand to the guard's mouth and nose. The woman's boot collided with a metal pitcher by her foot with a clang, and Kaya winced internally, but didn't take her eyes from the woman's face. The woman's own eyes had gone wide with confusion and surprise and she began struggling at once. She and Kaya were roughly of a height with each other, but the woman was wearing leather armor, however worn, and Kaya's time in the desert had somewhat slimmed her otherwise athletic frame.

"Shhh," Kaya coaxed as gently as she could, pressing her arm across the woman's collarbones, just under her throat, allowing her to find the glint of the knife in the moonlight at her periphery. The woman went still a moment, then began to struggle harder.

"Don't," Kaya said, digging her own borrowed boots into the gravel beneath her feet. "I won't hurt you. We're going to leave, and you're going to let us, and no one needs to be hurt." Green eyes flicked downward for a second, and the guard froze in her effort to lose a pistol from her hip.

"Don't," Kaya said again, her tone warning this time. "You may think that's the best option here, but I guarantee that won't end well for you. Look, it's nearly done now, see? You can tell them we threatened you, if you like. I suppose we did, didn't we? Tell them all you like. By the time they've spoken to you, we'll be long gone."

 

[Peregrine]

There were very few shadows to which he could cling, but he tried his best. It proved futile a lot sooner than he would have expected, and as soon as the guard noticed him he broke from his mediocre hiding spot to move towards the gate. The other guard was off to the side, near the wheel that would normally allow a couple of people to open the heavy metal doors. He didn't see the knife Kaya held to the guard's throat, but he did see the other guard, who yelped in surprise before throwing a lock on the wheel to keep it from moving.

It didn't matter. Kaya had led them to one of the minor gates, one rarely used by either caravans or people. Compared to the door he had hauled open at Crolis, this one was light. His hands crashed against the door, and the wheel lurched. The guard moved forwards, but upon catching sight of the knife in Kaya's hand stopped as well. His attention was suddenly distracted again when there was a sudden wrenching, snapping sound behind him as the lock he had put on the wheel shattered. His second yell was much louder, as he raced back towards the wheel, grabbing one of the handles to try and keep it from spinning.

He didn't care. He ignored it all. Every part of his being went into making that door move. People would be coming. He couldn't see them or hear them yet, but they were coming for him and Kaya. They were going to try and kill him, and take Kaya away from him. He couldn't allow that to happen, and the only thing standing in his way right now was one measly metal door.

The frame suddenly buckled under the pressure from his hands as he desperately threw himself forward, and the guard screamed again as he was hauled off the ground momentarily before releasing his grip and dropping heavily back to the ground. The gate opened.

"Kaya!" he bellowed, making it very, very clear, at least in his mind, that it was time to go. Kaya released her threatening posture against the guard, before bolting towards him.

They had both forgotten something. Something that, if they had been paying attention, would have been remarkably obvious. There were always two more guards waiting on the other side of the gate. And, who knew, maybe Kaya had been thinking about it. Maybe she had figured that they would easily be able to break through them, and once they were out in the wastes no one would dare to pursue them.

But, even if Kaya had been planning for what they would do with the guards waiting on the other side of the gate, the one thing she never, ever could have accounted for was the fact that they would know the two guards waiting on the other side.

Thomas and Amos were both waiting with guns drawn for whoever would burst through out of the city. Whoever, or perhaps whatever. As soon as they caught a glimpse of him, they both fired.

The first bullet slammed into the metal just to his left, and his instinct took over. He threw himself forward as the bullet whistled just over his head, slamming into both Thomas and Amos with his full, massive frame. They crashed heavily into the ground, wind knocked from both their lungs, as he flung himself further forward, rolling clear of their bodies. In an instant he was turning around, scooping Kaya up into his arms even as two other women bolted through the gate, which was rapidly closing. The first was the guard that Kaya had threatened. The second was, surprisingly, the woman who had come up to their room at lunch to speak to him. He didn't know what she was doing here, but he reminded himself that it didn't really matter at the moment. The female guard was already pulling her gun, following Amos and Thomas' example, and aiming it at him.

Thomas let out a muffled scream of panic as the gun was leveled at Kaya's form in his arms. He hurled himself to his feet, throwing the woman's arm wildly aside as she pulled the trigger. The gun cracked loudly as the bullet whistled off into the night.

He wdidn't question this unexpected action, only took advantage of it to turn around and bolt off into the night. The cool, dry air of the open desert at night beckoned him on, promising him safety and freedom. Once they were out of sight of the city, he would circle around the city until he found the wagon. They would rest there for a night or two, while Kaya found a way to pack some of the supplies, and then they would be back out into the desert. They had made it. They were free.

It was only at that moment that he suddeny realized that, perhaps, they weren't as free as he would have thought. After all, behind him was the sound of four pairs of footsteps, desperately pounding across the sandy ground. Normally he would have had no problems outrunning them, but with Kaya's weight in his arms he was barely pulling ahead, let alone escaping.

As if the situation wasn't bad enough, it was at that moment that he felt something tugging at his heart, before starting to ripple out across the rest of his body. He knew that feeling. They had passed outside the strange, invisible line that the voiders did not seem to want to cross, and which had allowed the city to be built here. And, right outside that line, waited a voider. He veered to the side, running at an angle to the wall instead of directly away from it, hoping to pass in front of the voider, and use it as protection from the city. Thomas, Amos, and the two women were still hot on his heels, even though he could hear how desperately all of them were breathing, and they didn't seem to realize how far they had come. They certainly didn't realize how far they were going now, as the voider continued its inexorable journey across the sand.

The woman from the inn was the first to grind to a halt, but she was followed not much longer by the three guards. Perhaps they had finally realized the futility of trying to catch up to him. He breathed a sigh of relief, before suddenly realizing that the little group had stopped directly in the path of the oncoming voider.

He stopped so suddenly that Kaya was nearly forced from his arms. He dropped her a second later, giving her just enough time to get her feet underneath her. If anyone had asked him in that moment why he cared so much, he wouldn't have been able to come up with a satisfactory answer. Thomas had physically abused him, and the woman from the inn had told him that if he didn't leave without Kaya, she would make sure he died. There was absolutely no logical reason for him to care if the voider swallowed them. Yet he did.

"Kaya," he said again, although the tone of his voice was very different this time than the last time he had spoke. This time, there were traces of panic in that single word. "It's.." he trailed off as his words failed him. Instead of talking, he pointed to the side, where he had just spotted a tiny little flower, waving in the breeze. An instant after he pointed the flower leered, and giant silver teeth reflected in the light of the moon. He then pointed towards the small group, the various members of whom were still bent nearly double, trying to catch their breath. They had yet to notice that he had stopped. "They are..." He held up four fingers, before grabbing onto them with his other hand as though hoping the limb would be able to swallow the digits.

"What.... what do?"

 

[DotCom]

She knew. Before he showed her the flower, before he'd even turned to her, she knew.

They had not been free from the city long enough -- or at all, really, though they hadn't guessed that right away -- for the shock of the desert to have taken hold fully yet, though even with that, Kaya had had a full evening of knowing she would be going back sooner than anticipated. It hadn't bothered her overmuch. There was no other way around it. They would leave that night, or be forced out, and that only if they were lucky. She had survived it the first time, however dearly it had cost her. And if they didn't have a destination now, they had a goal at least. Or she had one, and every confidence he would follow her.

What she hadn't counted on was the village itself rising up to give chase. It had counted as enough of a distraction in the moment, but then he had stopped, and they had stopped, and she had turned, and long before she could see it, she could feel it. That terrible lurch of nameless fear, that awful weightlessness in her belly that seemed to have risen from nowhere, made her again into something less than she was. She felt her heart begin to thud, felt goosebumps crawl up her neck, race down her arms. She clenched shaking hands by her side.

They could run, she knew that. The voider was not moving toward them, and this far from it, she could stand on her own. By the time it turned toward them, if it did at all, they would be far enough. They could rest from the night, and no one from the city would ever suspected what had happened until it was too late. They would be free. They would be safe.

And Bruce Proctor would shake his head and tell them all she had no business leading civilians into the desert, even accidentally.

Kaya gritted her jaw and for a moment weighed the options. She knew what she wanted to do, what she would have done if the last three days had never happened. She knew what she wanted, and she knew what she needed, and she needed never to be inside of another voider again. It would be easier to leave, to run, to let the voider swallow them. What were the chances anything inside was worse than what she had faced? If not, then the people who had chased her, threatened and insulted and undermined herself and her guide, then they would be lucky by comparison. And if so? Well, then, Kaya was far away from whatever it was.

But Eli wouldn't leave. She could sense that just as keenly as she could the waiting voider, even as it drew further from them and closer to the others. Whatever it was that had compelled him to follow her on that first day in the desert now compelled him to save these creatures who would have seen him dead. She couldn't pretend to understand, but she knew he would not leave while they were in danger.

And then she had an idea.

Kaya felt herself grimace. Somehow, she had circled back around to the very beginning, back to before she had ever met Eli, back even before she had left Crolis, maybe even before she'd arrived there. She could see only two outcomes. This idea, this rapidly forming plan would facilitate the achievement of everything she wanted, or it would fail, horribly. It would end with a license, or her death, even if not literally, inside the voider. This would work, or it would kill her.

"That idiot at the Guild needs to see we -- you -- can keep people safe," she muttered. She felt her heart pounding so hard against her ribcage, it made it hard to speak. "You -- we -- need to get them away from it. They won't listen if we scream 'til we're blue, but if they think -- " She broke off suddenly and looked up at him, then back at the group, to where the sand was turning to roiling glass before them. She felt dizzy, uncertain whether that was the voider, or the fear, or both.

In an instant, she had made up her mind. Bracing herself, she judged the shortest distance back toward the city without getting too close to the voider. She figured she'd underestimate, but she knew too that he wouldn't let any of them inside if he could help it. And if he couldn't...

Kaya swallowed hard and looked up at him again, her expression hard. "If they fall in, we go in after them," she said shortly.

And then she took off running, making as wide a circle as she could around the edge of the voider without losing sight of the city, or their pursuers.

"Help!" she screamed, and was faintly satisfied, and more than a little annoyed, to find she didn't have to fake the tremor of fear in her voice at all. "Thomas! Amos! Someone, please. Help! Help me!"

 

[Peregrine]

He had thought he was following her words, until she suddenly bolted off away from him, screaming like a howler. Her words might have been a little disjointed, but he got the impression that she was thinking of a way to help the people, who were so innocently about to be swallowed by a voider. Until she suddenly bolted, screaming for help.

That wasn't the part that surprised him, though. What really surprised him was that she was begging for their help. Why would she do that, when they were the ones in danger, and when he was right there? Why wouldn't she think to ask him first?

Suddenly desperately concerned, Eli bolted off after her. The surprise of her action had given her a couple extra seconds head start, but without her weight slowing him down, Eli was able to exhibit his full speed. It took him three and a half strides to catch up with her, scooping her back up into his arms.

"Kaya?" he asked, even as first Thomas, then Alessa, the woman from the inn, straightened, confusion quickly morphing into alarm on their faces. "Kaya!"

Kaya, for her part, shut up just as soon as she had their attention, watching intently from the familiar haven of his arms. Thomas, still trembling with fatigue, reached for his gun. Amos and the female guard followed suit, all trying to train their weapons on him. He tensed in turn, waiting for the feel of a bullet colliding with him.

In his arms, Kaya stiffened as well, swearing under her breath. "Don't put me down until you have to," she hissed. "They're going to shoot you. We need to get the guns away from them before the voider catches up."

Thomas yelped, his gun hand trembling. "P-put her…down!" he gasped. "Put her down…or…or I'll shoot."

"Don't stop moving," Kaya murmured. "Back them into it, if you can." He wanted to interrupt, to make her stop and explain. Back them into what? The only thing that was nearby was the voider, and it was getting slowly closer with every passing second. He knew she had to feel it too, even if it wasn't in the same physical, twisting way he did. Edges of voiders had always done funny things to her. However, before he could speak, Kaya was yelling again. "Don't! Don't shoot yet, I…I can talk to him, I can make him let me go."

Thomas didn't lower his gun, though he turned uncertainly to Amos behind him, who was still huffing and red in the face. Something passed between them and they both appeared to stand their ground, pistols raised.

He had always felt out of his depth around Kaya. It had been easy enough to ignore when it was just the two of them in the desert, and it didn't matter what she did, as long as it didn't compromise either of their safety. Other than the voiders there wasn't much danger in the desert, and he could always carry her away from those. Now, though, there were so many people, so many dangers he had never seen before, and couldn't even begin to understand. He knew Kaya understood them, and he knew that she knew a way to keep him safe. The problem was, he didn't understand what she wanted from him. He was worried, if he didn't understand, that he was going to do something that would end up getting someone killed. And, even more than he worried about getting someone killed, he feared that someone would be Kaya.

But he also knew she was relying on him now. She needed him to do something, he just didn't know what. She told him not to put her down, and then told them that she was going to persuade them to put him down. She told him to back them into the voider, but he didn't want that to happen. He couldn't let that happen. Kaya might have said, if anyone was going in, they were going after them, but he couldn't allow that to happen. Anyone who went into that voider wouldn't be coming back out. Behind him he heard the ground stir, as the root of some giant, carnivorous flower wiggled expectantly, in anticipation of a meal it could not yet see.

He didn't know what to do.

A moment later, Kaya turned to look up at him. Something unfamiliar passed over her face. She furrowed her brow, and then exhaled and said, calmly, gently: "They won't be close enough to fall in. Just…close enough to survive. It will be alright. I promise."

Her words were slow and purposeful, as though she knew he was flustered and wouldn't understand anything complex. He still wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but he knew he trusted Kaya, and she expected this from him. He didn't have a choice. If it went wrong, well, then it went wrong. At least he and Kaya would be alive and free.

On the other side of the voider's outer edge, Thomas was growing visibly impatient. His gun hand trembled while his other tried to mop sweat from his brow. Behind him, the dark-haired woman stared intently at something in the sand.

"Put her down!" the boy bellowed again. "I mean it, when...when I -- we shoot, when we shoot, we shoot to kill."

"Don't!" yelped Kaya again, though her voice seemed a bit more strained now, her gaze slightly unfocused. "He...he...it won't work. When...if you shoot him. He only...he only gets mad. L-let me talk to him, he...he'll put me down and...we can...go back...back to the...the..."

He knew what was happening. It was the same thing that happened to Kaya whenever she got too close to the edge of a voider. Every instinct in him told him it was time to turn around, to take her away from this place, but he couldn't leave these people behind, either. Not when they would die because of it.

"We've come too far from the gates," the female guard said suddenly, looking back to Meeros's imposing shadow as if for the first time realizing how far they had come. "It's...it's not safe out here. Amos, we ought to take the girl and run."

"What's that?" said the other woman at the same time Kaya mumbled, "It's...it's close. We're almost...make sure they see it. Then we...all of them see it, and...back...back to the city..."

Indeed, the little group of four was indeed "seeing it". This close to the edge even a chid should have been able to spot the signs. In front of the group a flower was writhing out of the ground, leering toothily.

There was a moment of still silence, when no one moved. And then the woman from the inn screamed. Thomas was only a second behind her as she suddenly whirled around, and began to bolt back to the safety of the gate. Completely unaware that she was about to run into the middle of the voider.

There was no time for him to think, to suppose, to wonder what might result from the action he was about to take. No, he did what he did best when something bad was about to happen. He acted.

He dropped Kaya, knowing she wouldn't be able to catch herself, but also knowing there was no time to set her down proper. Instead he lunged forward over her, covering the distance in between him and the little group faster than even he had dreamed was possible.

It wasn't fast enough, though, to beat Amos' reaction time. As soon as Kaya was out of the way the guard's gun was leveled, and he pulled the trigger. But it didn't have the intended effect. Even as the bullet sped across the intervening distance faster than a blink and collided with the middle of his forehead, he didn't slow. He couldn't, even as pain bloomed, and his left eye suddenly went blind from a slow seepage of thick black blood. He didn't slow one bit, and Amos didn't have the courage to take another shot in the face of that. The female guard, though, did. Her bullet hit his chest, right over his heart. That one fazed him even less than the first shot. In that moment he was numb to the pain, numb to everything but the realization that the woman from the inn was running to her death, with Thomas right behind her.

He made it just in time. He was dancing right on the inner edge, the edge he had learned to flirt with after so long in the desert, the edge he had taken Kaya to, and nearly dragged her over, when he had wanted to make his point about the dangers of the wastes. But Thomas and the woman from the inn, they had crossed that edge, and they suddenly realized their mistake and tried to grind to a halt, tried to turn around from the cruel, leering faces of the giant, carnivorous flowers that were suddenly right in front of them.

They didn't even have a chance to scream before his arms wrapped around them, one hand looping around each chest, and pulling them backwards, away from certain death, back across the inside edge. He flung himself violently backwards as another several shots hit his exposed back. When he landed he let out a muffled noise of pain, as the grit of the sand dug its way viciously into his new wounds.

"Amos," the woman from the inn gasped. "Thank god. You saved u..." It was at that moment that she looked up to see the face of her rescuer. Instead of the rugged face of Amos, a bandaged mask greeted her.

She screamed, cringed away on instinct, and beside her, Thomas reached for the gun he had dropped in the sand when he'd bolted. Finding nothing, he gaped, looking first at him, then searching frantically until his eyes fell on a pale Amos.

"G-g-g-get – " he started weakly, but the woman from the inn interrupted, appearing to have come to her sense somewhat, though she still trembled.

"You…saved us," she said slowly, equal parts stunned shock and gratitude. She looked over his shoulder, saw Amos and the female guard staring, wide-eyed, and well beyond them, Kaya lying vacant in the sand, before looking back to him. He nodded slightly.

"You saved us," she said again. "How did you know -- ?"

Eli, however, didn't give her time to finish that statement. He hoisted both people in his arms to their feet as he stood up himself, desperately trying to ignore the flashes of pain that flickered like lightning across his back, and the desperate pounding of his skull. Even as he stood, though, someone else began to speak.

"We…we have to go," said the female guard again. "We need to get back to the gates. Now."

Thomas still looked shaken, but as soon as he had his own two feet under him he pushed away aggressively from the arm that held him. "But he – it – Kaya – ," he stumbled slightly back towards the voider, before he reached out and grabbed onto the young guard again, tugging him back away from the edge.

"Shut up, boy," growled the guard, before turning back to him. Briefly her eyes flicked to the dark spots on his bandages, which had been torn and dirtied by the gunshot wounds. Wounds which should have, in all right, killed him. She seemed to physically shake the thought out of her head. "The thing. The voider. You know where it's going? Where it's…safe to walk?" She glanced between Amos and Thomas and Kaya and back again. "If we get the girl, if we promise no more harm will come to either of you, will you guide us back to the gate?"

In that moment it wouldn't have mattered if the guard had said she'd kill him just as soon as they got back to the gate. All he wanted was to get these people away from the rapidly approaching edge, and the leering faces of the flowers that seemed to be popping up all around them. He desperately beckoned them away from the gate, even as he took a few paces backwards himself. If they didn't follow, he was fully prepared to grab them and physically throw them away from the voider.

Luckily, that proved pretty much completely unnecessary. When he took a few more paces backwards, only Thomas stayed put, and when he made a move to reach forward and grab the boy, the guard twisted away from his fingers, and put the rest of the group in between them.

Satisfied that everyone was following him, he quickly moved back over to Kaya, ignoring the lightning shots of pain that arced through him with every step. He bent down next to her, prepared to pick her up again, when a rather accusatory voice spoke behind him. "What happened to her?" He flinched away, and Alessa in turn jumped back at his sudden motion. She cleared her throat awkwardly, before pointing to Kaya, tone slightly more polite. "Why is she like that?"

He pointed in the direction of the city, although it was obvious he wasn't trying to indicate the gate. "Voider," he said, shortly.

"Yes, I know there's a voider there. But why is she like that?"

"Because of voider," he said, his voice raising slightly in pitch out of frustration. "She'll be fine. Follow!"

When Thomas and Amos came forward to pick up Kaya, he quickly scooped her into his arms, growling them away. The female guard might have said that no harm would come to Kaya, but after what they had all said and done previously, he wasn't going to let her into their arms. Amos hand dropped to his gun in response to his snarl, but the sight of the sticky black blood on his bandages seemed to stop him. Perhaps it had just occurred to him that there probably weren't enough bullets in his gun to bring down the behemoth in front of him.

A flower snapped suddenly at Thomas, catching the edge of his leg. He yelped in surprise as a hole was torn in his pants, and a small dribble of blood ran down his leg. The flower spat out the fabric, before going after Thomas' leg again. He quickly moved after the rest of the group, who had already started walking.

Normally, he would have run away from the voider, using that to quickly escape from its outskirts, which would in turn allow the voider to return to its normal paths. But between his injuries, the weight of Kaya in his arms, and the tiny group behind him that was far too winded to keep running, it was almost impossible to escape the voider.

With it heading right towards them, it was equally impossible to move in any direction that would get them back to the voider-free zone around the city. While voiders never normally ventured into that territory, which was why a city could be built there in the first place, there was also no telling that this group wouldn't end up leading the voider right into the city if they didn't find a way to escape it first. That meant he was leading the group pretty much straight away from the city, out into the desert.

"Why are we going this way?" Alessa asked, panting heavily. He didn't answer.

They walked in silence at a relatively quick pace for a few more moments before Thomas broke in. "Where are you taking us? The city is back that way." He still didn't answer.

The next time, the silence didn't last for longer than a couple of seconds. "What are you trying to do with us, freak? I won't let you just walk us into your lair."

"Shut up, boy," the female guard snapped again.

"I won't. We have no idea what he's going to do with us. Why are we suddenly assuming he's going to lead us back to safety? Maybe he just didn't want to let his prey get eaten by the flowers, and we are now walking willingly to our death."

"So, what are you going to do? Risk walking right back to those flowers?"

"We'd probably have a better cha...."

It was at that moment that he finally whirled around, and the motion cut Thomas off mid sentence. "Follow, or don't," he snapped. "Your choice. But shut up."

They followed. And the next time Thomas tried to interrupt, half a minute later, the woman from the inn cuffed him into moody and he dropped behind to sulk on his own...though no more than a few paces behind everyone else.

For several minutes, there was only the sound of their labored breathing as they wandered further and further into the desert. Between their silence, Kaya's despondence, and his still flowing blood, the tension was growing thick.

It was Alessa who finally spoke, her voice quiet, cautious, almost courteous.

"I...thank you," she said awkwardly. "For what...before. Even after they..." She trailed off, gesturing to the slow-growing black mass on his back. "Are you...alright?"

"There're bandages," put in the female guard. "Er...more bandages. Back at the guard post. Back at the city gates. If...if we head back that way, someone can..."

"I'll watch her," Alessa offered, nodding at Kaya. "While you..." she gestured at his back again. "Liana and I grew up together," she added, as if proving the verity of her offer.

He shook his head poignantly, pulling Kaya in closer to his chest, despite the dark ring of blood on his chest. He had no intention of letting her go until she was awake again, and he had even less intention of allowing anyone to so much as look at his wounds, let alone try and tend them. Not only would that have involved taking off his bandages, which would certainly undo any goodwill his latest actions may have earned, but he still didn't trust the good intentions of these people. Not after everything else. Behind him, Alessa started to speak again, only to be silenced by the female guard, who shook her head once. Alessa glared for a moment, the shrugged and continued on through the sand.

If there was one good thing, though, it was that the city suddenly came into view in front of them. Anyone else might have lost their sense of direction in the dark of the night, surrounded by nothing but sand and rolling hills, but not him. He had slowly circled out into the desert, guiding the voider farther and farther away from its normal path, until he had felt it give up the chase. From that point, he had started curving back towards the city.

"What?" Alessa asked, when the walls of the city were suddenly visible over a ridge in the dune. "Is that..." she gestured back behind them, and slightly off to the left. "Shouldn't Meeros be... over there?"

"Maybe it's not Meeros," Thomas muttered sullenly, thought it was obvious to all the city somewhere rose from the dark ahead of them. "We still don't know he hasn't -- "

"Best not to look a gift horse in the mouth," said the female guard, picking up her pace slightly. Amos and Alessa quickly followed suit.

Though the city now seemed closer than it had been, the journey back felt as though it took half an eternity. Alessa and the guards from the city dragged their feet behind their silent leader, and Kaya still had yet to so much as stir by the time they reached the city gates. A small crowd had gathered with expressions of mingled horror and curiosity.

He shrunk slightly away from the hostility in their eyes, and didn't follow after the eager little group that darted ahead of him, waving and smiling at the people who had gahtered. Said people immediately broke out into conversation themselves, some of them even beginning a bout of spontaneous applause at their safe return.

He had no particularly desire to stick around any longer than was absolutely necessary. He and Kaya had been escaping, and now that these people were safely tucked away back in the city where there were no voiders, he had every intention of resuming that interrupted effort. His wounds were starting to heal, and there was food, water, and shelter waiting for him in the buried wagon, which was everything he needed. Kaya would wake back up, and she would decide what they were going to do. That would be just fine.

But as he turned to go there was a sudden shout from behind him.

"Wait!"

He hesitated momentarily as Alessa broke from the stunned, yet congratulatory group and followed, however cautiously, after him. She stopped a good four feet away, but she seemed earnest as she spoke.

"They've said they sent a search party...well, a guide after us. Bruce did. Where we left from, the northernmost gate. They said she found a voider, and..." Alessa trailed off sorrowfully, then broke into a relieved smile. "I'm going to go let him know we're alright." She cleared her throat. "You should come. You should...he should know what you did for us."

"I'll vouch," added the female guard, and Amos nodded beside her. Thomas, who looked somewhere between irritated and relieved, said nothing.

"If nothing else, just stay the night," Alessa continued. "You already know that...thing is out there, and if it's going to do whatever it's done to her again, maybe it would be best to wait til morning," she wheedled, nodding at Kaya. "Anna still ought to have her room there. And they would leave you alone after this. They'd have to."

He didn't want to stay. He wanted to turn away and race out into the desert. He knew no one would follow him and Kaya this time. Not after what had happened the last time. Every piece of him craved to get away from these people, and return to the freedom and peace of the wastes.

Instead of turning and fleeing, however, he glanced down at the small figure cradled in his arms. He knew Kaya hadn't been ready to leave this city. She'd had dreams and ambitions she'd been planning to fill here, and while she'd promised him that they would be leaving soon she hadn't wanted to leave yet.

He knew, if she woke up in the desert and he told her that the people were alive and he'd left, she'd forgive him. But he knew with equal certainty that she'd be disappointed. Maybe she wouldn't see his action as cowardice, but she probably would have wished that he could have been a little braver and stuck around, even though she had left him alone to face all these people by himself.

No, he did not want to return to the city. But, more than that, he wanted Kaya to be satisfied, and Kaya's satisfaction waited in a city. It might not be this city, but it was a city. If it had to be a city, it might as well be one where they had earned even a fragment of goodwill.

So, instead of fleeing, he nodded.

 

[DotCom]

It'd happened enough times now that she could guess what it was, even before she was fully awake, even without knowing where she was or who was around her. Because she knew, even without knowing what it was she knew, that he would be there. She could already feel a headache throbbing behind her eyes, the mild nausea clawing at her insides. The disorientation was strangely familiar, at once natural and unsettling. She grimaced and stirred and opened her eyes and there he was.

For once, she didn't struggle to be set down immediately, instead staring up at him while she tried to put memories and hallucinations in order.

She blinked slowly. "D'it work?" she mumbled. Then, a slow frown of confusion and something else crossing her face: "Is…is that blood?"

"They're okay? What... how? Where are they?"

That voice. She knew that voice, even here and now when she barely knew her own name. That voice set fire in her veins, and then she was struggling, because hell if he found her anywhere but her own two feet.

She glared as he made his way through the crowd, not bothering to hide the hatred rolling off of her in waves. That she had taken up a vaguely protective stance in front of Eli had not even crossed her mind.

The crowd parted respectfully to allow Bruce Proctor to limp his way forward. The first person his eyes landed on was, unsurprisingly, Eli, who had placed a hand on Kaya's shoulder to try and steady her a little bit. He ignored them, instead turning to face Alessa.

"Alessa. You are alright. Tanya said that you'd gone straight into a voider. Where are Amos, Thomas, and Maya? Are they alright?"

The dark-haired woman nodded eagerly, her expression somewhere between relieved and awed. If she'd been thinking clearly, Kaya could have gotten all the answers she needed from that moment alone, but she'd yet to take her eyes off Bruce Proctor. She was so rigid her chest ached.

"Yes, they're alright," Alessa started. "They're back by the -- "

"They're fine," Kaya spat. "No thanks to your city guards. Are they all so trigger happy, or just the ones who leave their post in the middle of the night?"

Once again, Proctor ignored Kaya, waiting for Alessa to finish.

"They...they're fine," Alessa said after a moment, when it became clear the retired escort wasn't going to answer. Kaya huffed. "They're back by the gate. The smallest one, on the northwestern wall, they -- we circled back around. He circled back around," she corrected, pointing, almost cautiously at Eli. "He...rescued us."

"I'm glad you are all alright," Brurce said, patting Alessa on the shoulder with his good hand. "When Tanya found the voider, well, we had to assume the worst." He glanced towards Eli. "But, you say he rescued you? How so?"

Kaya was almost shaking, keenly aware that both she and Eli needed to rest, and yet so much more aware of a near mindless raging writhing like a snake in her belly. Her nails were dug so fimrly into the soft flesh of her palms it was a wonder she didn't draw blood.

"How do you think?" she growled. Granted, she had missed most of the rescue, but it seemed Alessa, at least, was willing to vouch for them. For Eli. Still. She couldn't seem to find it in her to remain silent, and she wasn't sure if that was the roaring in her ears or Bruce's presence, or some combination of the two.

"I've already told you - "

"Kaya, are you truly incapable of telling whether or not someone is speaking to you?" Bruce cut in. "I asked Alessa a question, not you. If you are unable to stay quiet and let someone else speak, I recommend you go back to leaving the city." He turned back to face the other woman. "Please, continue."

Had Kaya been paying a bit more attention, that sentence would have revealed exactly how solid of a grasp Bruce already had on the situation that had just taken place.

"...of course," Alessa said, though it was becoming clear she was not comfortable with the rising tension between Kaya and Proctor, the latter of whom seeming maddeningly unaware.

"We...well, once they'd made to leave, we followed, Amos and Tom and Maya and me. I dunno how far we went, too far, I guess, and then suddenly, there was...like a..." She swallowed hard and paled slightly.

"I don't know how to describe it, quite, but we saw one. A...a voider, and we turned to run back to the city, back where it was safe -- "

Kaya snorted as derisively as she could manage, but said nothing, for once.

"Only...we ran the wrong way, I guess, right toward it, Tom and me. We would have gone in, we were nearly there by the time we realized it, and then he...Eli, he stopped us. I don't know how, I swear he was nowhere near us at the time, but he stopped us, grabbed us right there at the edge, and then...well, somehow he knew where it was, I guess. Where it would go. He led us in a great circle back round to the other gate, and...here we are."

She seemed stunned by the story she'd just told, staring at Eli with mingled awe and curiosity.

"Thank you," she said, sounding almost reverent.

"Some thanks," Kaya growled, though she was feeling slightly mollified now. She was still watching Bruce, trying to read his every reaction, furious that she was completely unable to do so. She tried to tell herself it was the lingering diziness, a fatigue that pressed down on her like a physical weight. It wasn't particularly working.

"Seems your..."

"Second chance, Kaya," Bruce said to cut her off again, still calm. He turned back to Alessa once more, and there was undeniable relief in his eyes, even if his voice was stern. "I'm not going to ask why you went that far away from the city in the first place, because I know you know it's not safe, and I guess it doesn't really matter anymore." He rubbed the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger, looking momentarily exhausted. When he spoke again, his voice had softened again. "Why don't you head to the guild quarters and let Tanya and Ryan know everyone is okay? I think it could do her some good to actually see you. Ryan had to drag her back to town after they found the voider."

Alessa glanced at Kaya and Eli again, but eventually nodded her aquiescence to Bruce's request. She nodded to them awkwardly, before hurrying away.

Finally, Bruce turned to face Kaya. She felt Proctor's gaze pass over her again and stiffened in response even before his eyes settled on Eli behind her. His eyes locked onto the dark patches on his bandages, which had spread to covereasily hand-sized patches. It might not have looked like anything familiar to most people, but Kaya knew exactly what it was. Eli's blood. She couldn't explain the spike of protective rage, told herself again she was just tired, though the excuse was beginning to wear thin.

"You want to talk, you talk to me," she growled.

Bruce cast her a dismissive glance. "I know your time here has been anything but good, Eli," he said, surprisingly gently. His gaze was intense, mixed somewhere between distrust and respect from the memory of his ferocity in protecting Kaya, but also equally curious and intrigued. It was a complicated look, and Eli shifted slightly under its weight. "But I'd like to hear what you have to say about what happened out there."

"I said leave him alone, Proctor," Kaya warned. "Whatever questions you have, I can answer them." She ignored the fact that this was probably not true. It didn't seem to matter at the moment.

"No, you can't," Proctor replied, his tone not shifting one bit. "If you could, I would have asked you."

Kaya's face flushed so abruptly, she thought she was going to pass out. There was a rushing in her ears that all but muted the sound of Proctor's voice. She wondered idly what would happen if she just turned and led Eli away, except she was also concerned that would be almost precisely what the other man wanted her to do. That, and if she left now, the whole thing would have been for naught.

Still. She had no intention of letting him roast Eli, however gentle the introduction may have been.

"Don't tell me what I can't do," she snapped, keenly aware how petulant she sounded. She'd have hated this person he turned her into if she had any room to hate around what she felt for him. "I was there just as well as the others. He's my partner, and I speak for him. What. Do. You. Want."

"Is that so, Kaya? You speak for him?" He cast a hard look at Kaya, before glancing over at Eli, who still seemed rather uncomfortable behind his mask of bandages. "I can't say I've ever heard Eli say anything, so I guess that must be the case. After all, you surely wouldn't just make such a decision on your own, would you?" His voice was practically dripping with sarcasm.

Kaya opened her mouth to respond, to all but scream something back, less aware of what he had said than she was that she had to have the last word. It wasn't until his words trickled through to her still-rousing consciousness that she appeared to understand what he'd said and reeled back as if struck. She stared for a moment, caught somewhere between seething and shock, as if he'd pointed out the very nose on her face - something so obvious she'd never even thought to look at it.

She considered a moment, her attention off Proctor for the first time since he'd arrived, then, very deliberately put her back to him to look up at Eli.

Logically, she knew the bloodstains probably hadn't gotten any worse, but she was still vaguely surprised to see them there, and for the first time since their second return from the desert looked him up and down, her expression neutral.

"You don't have to talk to him," she said finally. "You don't owe him anything. But he's...well. You can speak for yourself." She hesitated, then added, almost reassuringly, "You can speak for yourself."

It was impossible to tell what Eli was thinking in a very different way than it was impossible to tell what Proctor was thinking. With Bruce, it was like he kept his thoughts carefully hidden, concealed behind a wall. With Eli, though, it was more like wondering if he was really thinking at all. Perhaps his thoughts were simply too foreign for her to understand. His head moved slightly, subtle markers as his eyes drifted from Kaya to Bruce and back again. Finally, he nodded slightly.

Bruce nodded in turn. "Tell me what happened out there," he said.

Eli's mouth worked under the bandage, struggling for words. "We had to go. I got... threats. They wanted me to leave Kaya. I wouldn't. It was time to go." He paused, and the silence dragged on. Bruce waited patiently, blinking rhythmically at the bandaged behemoth. "There were people on the other side of the gate. Thomas. Amos. They hate me. Wasn't expecting them. I picked up Kaya and ran. They... chased.

"Thought they'd stop. Thought they'd... stop when the wall got far away. But they stopped too late. There was a voider with angry, hungry plants. Thomas and Alessa got scared, started running back to the city. But the voider was in the way. They were going to run right into it. I dropped Kaya and grabbed them. Scared Amos and... other guard." His hand flicked up, almost touching his forehead. He caught it in the last instant and moved on. "Pulled them back out. Got everyone moving away from the city until the voider stopped following." Something unexpected, almost confused, passed across Bruce's face. It looked as though he wanted to speak, but he stilled his tongue in fear of his words stopping Eli from speaking. Eli, though, didn't really seem to have much more to say.

"Went back to a gate," he finished, anticlimactically. "Came here." And then he was done.

"Eli," Bruce said, almost delicately. "Can you tell where the edges of voiders are?"

He looked back at Kaya, standing in front of him, between him and Bruce, and waited a moment. Waited to see if she didn't want him to say anything, perhaps. But then his shoulders straightened slightly. It added a solid two inches to his height. "Yes."

Bruce's eyes closed for a moment, and he pinched the bridge of his nose again. When his eyes opened and his hands dropped down to his side, there was nothing on his face that could give away what he was thinking.

"Very well," he said, calmly. Finally, his eyes turned to Kaya. "Your turn, Kaya. What would you like to add?"

She hadn't taken her eyes off him the whole time Eli had been speaking, trusting the latter to stay behind her, stay predictable. There'd been no change in the old guide's face when Eli had given his final answer, as calculated a risk as Kaya was willing to make. That seemed to satisfy Proctor, or at least to be the end of his line of questioning. She smiled thinly at him when he gave her 'her turn' to speak.

"Quite a lot," she said drily. "Nothing you'd be interested in hearing." She waited a beat then said as evenly as she could, "You must know why we bothered coming back at all. What other proof do you need? He brought your people back alive, Proctor. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"I would have rathered no one leave the city at all, but as endings go this one was as desirous as possible."

Kaya shut her eyes and took as calming a breath as she was able. The majority of her hatred had come and gone (or at least it did not feel quite so wrathful for the moment) and her head was aching again. If she and Proctor ever agreed on anything, it would only be on his ability to push every single one of her buttons -- and her utter inability to just ignore it.

"Don't be stupid," she snapped, more weary than angry. "You know what I mean. He's a better guide than any you have here, or in any other city. We both know that. Do we get the license, or not?"

"Kaya," Bruce said, slowly, surprise evident in his voice. "That has never been up to me. I don't give out licenses. I just manage the Guild in Meeros. Only the guild head in Essen can give people a license."

"And he just hands them out, does he?" she returned irritably. "We'll just pop over and get licensed over a cold brew?" She could feel her patience wearing thin again, none of it helped by the pounding in her head or the realization that she was still so achingly far from this last boundary between herself the life she had reforged for herself -- for them -- after an eternity in the desert.

"The guild head," she said after a moment, scrubbing at one temple with the heel of her hand. "I take it he listens to you more than you listen to me?"

"I've always been listening to you, Kaya." Bruce pointed out. "It's not my fault you get mad whenever I speak, and forget to actually say anything. What exactly is it you expect of me?"

Kaya took another moment to respond, exhaling slowly...and surprising herself by feeling vaguely amused. She wondered idly what Eli would do if she told him to eat Bruce. There was little solace in the fact she didn't think Bruce would be all that surprised.

"To continue wheedling until I've gone gray," she muttered. "You know what I want, Proctor. You're clearly an intelligent man, despite how well you choose to hide it. We need a license. We can't get one ourselves, and certainly not through traditional channels. What else do you need to see to convince you we're capable? And what does this...person in Essen need to see from you to convince them of the same?"

"It's not my job to figure out how to make you an escort, Kaya, no matter how capable your partner may be." Bruce said, flatly. "Come find me when you've figured out what you actually expect me to do." With that he turned away, starting to walk towards the northwest gate where, in theory, Thomas, Amos, and Maya were still waiting.

She almost let him go. Because she was tired and frustrated -- angry -- and because she needed to talk to Eli, and probably get him something to eat, and they both needed to sleep. And because she knew if she stayed there much longer, she was going to erupt again while Bruce remained infuriatingly calm and condescending, and she wasn't sure she could control her temper much longer.

But the sooner they got their license, or whatever middle step Bruce had to offer, the sooner they were gone from this place.

"You need," she ground out to his retreating form, "to tell. The head. In Essen. What we can do. Write us a letter, or send a messenger, or put it to the fucking clouds, I don't care. Tell him or her or whoever the hell holds the damn things that we can be escorts, and we'll leave your bloody blighted city in the dust, alright?"

Bruce, though, simply ignored Kaya. He waved one hand over his shoulder at her, without even bothering to turn around, before moving around a corner and vanishing from sight.

 

[Peregrine]

Kaya stood rigid enough to snap in two for a moment, almost trembling with rage, before appearing to make up her mind, taking long, slightly unsteady strides after Bruce's retreating form.

He watched her go for a moment, uncertain, until Kaya started to speed up. She seemed so wrapped up in her own head that he wondered if she even remembered he was still there. "Kaya?"

She continued on for a second, appearing either not to have heard him, or to have outright ignored him, before slowing to an abrupt stop. She stood, staring after Bruce, arms stiff at her side, still shaking slightly. Then she hung her head, swayed on her feet, and sighed in resignation. The tension -- most of it -- dropped from her shoulders and she turned to face him on heavy feet. She stared at him in silence, looked him up and down once, then took a deep breath.

"Yes. Alright. Fine. Let's go. We'll...I'll find him again tomorrow."

A part of him wanted to tell Kaya it would be better to just drop of it, and a part of him had no inclination to let her go anywhere near the man without him, but he certainly didn't actually say any of that. Instead he just nodded slightly, rolling his jaw in discomfort at the way his dried blood had stiffened the bandage. It had been the norm out in the desert, but he had grown used to the suppleness of new fabric. "Go where?"

"I don't know," Kaya admitted wearily, scrubbing at her face with the heels of her palms. "Back to the inn, I suppose, if they'll have us, or...elsewhere if they won't. I don't know. Let me think."

They continued in silence for several minutes, making their way back toward the inn. They'd made it nearly to the door before the waiting crowd caught up to them. Kaya stopped first, her expression neutral, shoulders tense. The crowd consisted of as many strangers as it did familiar faces, thought there was no telling how either would react.

Kaya set her jaw. "We're trying to get through to the inn," she said calmly. "Are you going to let us pass? Or will there be a problem."

Anna was the first to speak.

"I...we heard what you did," she said, looking at Kaya but clearly speaking to Eli. "For Tom and Amos and the others."

"Some of it," clarified another voice, a woman with curly blonde hair a few years younger than Kaya.

"You saw a voider?" said another voice, an elderly man. "Just outside the gates? And you weren't pulled in?"

If Eli hadn't been so uncomfortable in that moment, he might have found that last statement humorous. He had walked a tightrope along the edges of so many voiders in the past, both safe and dangerous, that he couldn't even remember them all. It hardly seemed extraordinary to him.

Yet several other people nodded their agreement to the man's question. Apparently they thought it was quite spectacular as well.

Kaya huffed impatiently. "Alessa and the others will be more than thrilled to share their version, I'm sure. Spread your rumors far and wide for all I care. We are going to bed."

A cautious, excited murmur followed her announcement, questions repeating and overlapping each other as Kaya pushed through the throng of thrill seekers.

Anna waited just inside, watching their entrance with wide eyes. Kaya paused a moment, but the woman only nodded with a weak smile.

"We haven't touched anything upstairs," she said. "Are you -- "

"Go," Kaya said flatly, gesturing for Eli to head up the stairs. "I'll be up in a moment."

He went. Willingly.

 

[DotCom]

"…sure you're alright? Kaya?"

"What?" Kaya snapped, somehow sounding just slightly more patient than she actually felt. She had been kneading one temple for a solid two minutes now, if she had to guess, and felt no better for it. That, and she couldn't seem to focus for more than a few moments at a time. She was grateful – and pleasantly surprised – Eli had been able to get them back to the city and through the waiting crowds without her help, but she didn't like that Proctor had nearly come upon them unawares, and there were almost certainly worse things waiting out in the desert. Silently, she resolved to find some way to combat the lingering fatigue and listlessness that persisted after the voiders. She trusted Eli, she realized rather abruptly. But the same could hardly be said for the rest of the world.

In front of her, Anna cringed a bit, her eyes flicking to the top of staircase behind Kaya, before saying quietly, "You…look a little pale, and Tom was saying you'd had some sort of fainting spell when – "

"I'm fine," Kaya said impatiently, then reconsidered and made herself smile. "Thank you, Anna. I'm alright. Really. Now. Those bandages…?"

Anna nodded, apparently relieved that Kaya had gone back to being the sweetly predictable version of herself, though Kaya wasn't sure how much longer that façade was going to last.

"Yes, I've sent Rachel home to get a new roll, and you're of course welcome to whatever meals you need, though…"

Kaya nodded. "I can take a shift this evening, if you like." She wasn't actually sure how much longer she'd be on her feet, nor could she quite recall when she'd managed to ask Anna about food. But she also knew they would be stuck until Eli was rested, and she herself wouldn't be going anywhere without Bruce's approval. And the whole while, she knew it was likely the town would be buzzing. If they were going to be trapped here, she may as well do her best to sway that buzz in the right direction. Already, the inn was filling with more and more people pretending not to stare at Kaya. Some part of her felt unutterably relieved for more reasons than one. Whatever else Meeros was, its people were predictable. Or most of them were.

Yawning, she made herself a scalding mug of coffee, hoping to clear her head before Rachael returned with clean bandages, idly piling an empty tray with a few loaves of bread, some fruit and cheese, and a pitcher of water. In her head, she made a list of things she had to do before morning and repeated it to herself until she had it memorized, trying not to be frustrated by how much less time it should have taken. She was more or less steady on her feet by the time she returned to their room, where they'd departed in secret not two hours earlier.

Kaya grit her teeth and set the tray, bandages and all, on the small bedside table.

"I hate this city," she muttered. Eli had no answer to her statement, but instead silently reached out for the clean bandages she had brought, and set about exchanging them for the ruined ones. He seemed utterly unconcenred about the messy wounds that were revealed as he removed the bandages, only pausing in his task long enough to use the ruined pieces to wipe away the congealed blood that darkened his already ruddy skin. Whoever had shot the gun had been accurate. One wound reseted in the middle of his forehead, just left of dead center. The other was right over his heart.

Kaya watched in silence from the corner, half her mind already drifting again, but keenly focused on watching the bandage unravel, inch by inch. She remained impassive, just shy of neutral, for a long moment before saying, "It was good, what you did out there. Saving those people." She scoffed impatiently. "Not that they deserved it. But I think you may have convinced that idiot from the guild, so we can get out of here sooner."

There was a long pause and Kaya looked down to examine her nails. "Just as soon as you're ready. When...do you think that will be?"

Eli paused in unwinding his bandage just long enough to look at her. After so long being masked behind a layer of bandages, it was almost disconserting to actually see his eyes again. That hadn't happened since...well.

"Soon," was all he said. "After food. And rest." It wasn't particularly helpful, but Kaya let him go back to winding the bandages. As soon as that was done, he turned to the food.

She watched him for another minute, unconsciously chafing at the raised bumps on her arms. "Alright," she said eventually. "Well. Good. I've got to go...talk with people for a bit. I'll be back after...later." Eli nodded silently.

It took longer than usual for the inn to clear, even after Anna began to dismiss people to their rooms or their homes. Kaya made certain to speak with every person she could, quietly hinting at what had happened that night, ushering half stories into bold rumors like someone restoking dying embers into full flame. By the time the dining area was empty again, her head ached and her eyes felt full of sand, but she was almost positive at least a quarter of the town knew - or thought they knew - what Eli had done. Enough of them had been travelers that she felt alright letting things lie as they were.

Mostly.

"Get on to bed, child," Anna said, laying a hand on her shoulder. Kaya fought not to flinch. "We can clean up the rest in the morning, and you've had a long night from what I hear."

A smile flickered briefly across her face. "And what have you heard?"

"Enough to be glad my work keeps me on this side of the gates," Anna said wearily. She studied the girl a moment, then added, "I suppose it isn't worth the time asking you to stay?"

"No," Kaya agreed simply, yawning again. "But thank you, anyway. Good night, Anna."

"Sleep well."

Kaya stood at the bottom of the stairs for a long moment, weighing her options. Every instinct in her cried for sleep. And yet the idea that Bruce had once more left her with nothing still gnawed at her gut.

She found Eli asleep in the room, or at least it looked like he was. The plate of food she had brought him had been meticulously scraped, or perhaps even licked, clean. He now lay in a pile of blankets near the window, curled in on himself like an over-large dog. It appeared that he still hadn't taken to beds.

She laid awake thinking for as long as she could, stubbornly determined to force her brain into action, even if nothing useful came of it. Dawn was just peeking over the horizon when she finally succumbed to the pull of sleep.

--

The sun was close to setting again when she woke the next day, stiff and hungry with a mouth that felt like sandpaper. Her head still ached behind her eyes, but her mind was clearer and the respite of sleep had given her a new handle on her temper. She sat up, yawned, squinted through dust-filled shaft of late afternoon light at Eli, then disappeared briefly to wash up. She left a tray of sandwiches - on top of the bed - and then left again, ignoring countless pairs of eyes on her as she told Anna she'd be back in time for the supper rush and to leave their room undisturbed.

It felt natural, almost too easy, to find Bruce again, almost like she'd been drawn toward him by an invisible magnet. It was getting close to dinner time, and anyone else might have decided to wait until a more reasonable hour, but Kaya had no interest in politeness at the moment.

Indeed, Bruce was doing exactly that, and she found him wearing an apron that was slightly splattered with sauce when he finally came to answer the door. He didn't seem particularly surprised to see her. "Good evening, Kaya. If you are hoping to join me for dinner, grab an apron. There are unpeeled potatoes near a bucket of water." He left the door open as he walked back into the house, heading towards a wood burning stove, with a pot of cream sauce bubbling on the top.

Bruce's house was not spacious, considering the level of respect he recieved from the occupants of the city. In fact, it was small and practical, organized to minimize movement and make things as easy to reach as possible. This was especially true for the kitchen, with various utensils fitted together on hooks on the wall, almost like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Everything was carefully cleaned and maintained, and there was no clutter. All the same, Kaya might have called it comfortable, with it's well-worn furniture, if it wasn't for the fact that it was Bruce's house. Instead, she called it ascetic.

"I hope you aren't planning on cooking these to doneness before I leave," Kaya said, grabbing the smallest potato she could find. "This won't take that long."

"I'm going to fry them. In cream sauce." He gestured towrads the pot. "If they are diced appropriately, it doesn't take long." He turned back from the pot and glanced at her. "But you are not obliged to stay for dinner. It was simply an offer."

"'Appropriately,'" Kaya repeated, grabbing for a knife against her better judgment. "With the proper paperwork, then? Signed and notarized?"

"What paperwork?" Bruce had bent down, and the words came out slightly muffled as they echoed around inside a cabinet before escaping into the room.

Kaya huffed and glared at the cabinet for a moment. "Forget it," she said. "Never mind. Of course a good joke would be lost on you." She scooped half a handful of diced potatoes into an empty bowl and reached for the next without thinking. Bruce returned from inside the cabinet with a frying pan, moved the cream sauce out of the way, and set about heating a couple tablespoons of oil.

They worked in silence for a few minutes, which felt surprisingly bearable, if mildly irritating, to Kaya. She knew full well Bruce wouldn't make the first move here, and he would tell himself he was only just doing his job, or minding his business, or something equally practical and banal. Idly, she found herself wondering whether he would choke if she chopped his potatoes 'inappropriately'.

Finally, after silently debating the finer points of her argument, she spoke.

"I want a letter of recommendation," she said flatly. "I want it from you. I want it signed, stamped, sealed, et cetera. I want it to say you trust...Eli to take people through the desert. I want it now."

The smell of frying potatoes was starting to mingle with the rich smell of cream sauce. Kaya found herself wishing that it didn't smell so good. Of course, the smell immediately soured in her nose as soon as Bruce responded. "But I don't."

Kaya took a deep breath and held it. She'd be lying if she said she hadn't anticipated some pushback, if only to drive her absolutely up the wall.

Still. She very careful set down the knife before speaking again.

"Why. Not?" she said calmly. Mostly calmly.

"Because he is not human."

Kaya looked up sharply, for once more concerned than angry. "Why do you say that?"

"You forget, Kaya, I've been out there. I've been in there." Somehow, Bruce's tone had managed to not change one bit. He casually stirred the potatoes with his one remaining hand, before adding another ladle full of broth to the thickening concoction. "Are you going to look me in the eyes and tell me I'm wrong? Are you going to tell me that whatever hides beind those bandages is perfectly normal?"

Kaya watched Bruce in silence for a long time, fully ready to bolt if she had to, though she wasn't quite sure why. She only knew that her heart was suddenly thudding and she was wishing she'd left someone more trustworthy than Anna watching the door of her room at the inn. She hadn't, she realized, seen Thomas since they'd discovered the voider last night...

"They tried to kill him last night," she said finally. "You must know that. They tried to kill him, they shot at him and he still brought them back, all of them, and me, alive. He didn't owe them anything, certainly not their lives, and he still...That's got to count for something."

"It does. It grants me just enough trust of him to give him the chance to speak in his own defense." Finally, Bruce pinned Kaya with a hard gaze. "Alone."

"No."

She spoke before thinking, something she found was becoming increasingly more common in her time spent with Bruce. But she found she meant it, and deeply. Whatever else she wanted from him, and vice versa, she knew on an instinctive level, that to let Bruce at Eli alone would mean disaster. In more ways than one.

"No," she said again when she realized she'd meant it. "Anything you need to say to him, you can say in front of me. Or better yet, tell me, and I'll make sure he gets the message. If you aren't going to give us the letter, just say so, and we'll be on our way. But I won't leave him alone with you."

"Very well," Bryce replied, equally calm. "His actions have bought him the right to leave, this once. But do not expect it to happen again, or for him to find welcome in any city tied to the Escort guild." He took the knife from Kaya, and turned back to his potatoes. "I do not take the threat he poses lightly, and I will respond accordingly."

Kaya shook her head, half frustrated, half desperate. "He's not. He's not a threat. He can help people, you have to see that. Why should his ability to sit with you make any difference? He won't be traveling alone, I'm going with him. This meeting you want, it's moot."

"It is not. Right now he is afraid of people, and he is infatuated with you. But should both of those aspects wane there is no telling what he would do. You say so confidently that he is no threat, but what makes you so sure of that? If he wanted to leave you, you could not stop him. If he became confident in his own skill and strength, we could not control him either. A piece of the voiders would be able to enter into our city and do whatever it pleased."

Kaya opened her mouth to speak and for the first time in a long time said nothing. She had not, admittedly, considered the possibility that Eli might grow tired of her, might abandon their - her - plans and leave her to the wastes and her memories of them. Of the creatures in the voider, the same one he had rescued her from, with fury and a strength unmatched. Those things he had saved her from with bare hands and a ferocity she'd seen only once prior - on the night they had 'met'. Suddenly, it seemed all too easy to recall the metallic tang of fear at the back of her mouth, of that first night she'd come upon him, tearing into the corpse of a man she had killed like a hungry dog might a bit of meat. She felt bile rise, sudden, unexpected, in her throat and all at once Bruce's tidy kitchen felt too hot, too constrictive. She thought she might have been ill if there'd been anything left in her stomach.

"What did you just think about? That, right there." Bruce's eyes were hard. "I saw you thinking about it. What was it? Was it, perhaps, that night at the inn, when he came to your rescue? Perhaps the way he got you out of the voider? Or maybe something that happened before you gained that unreasonable confidence in him that you now possess. I suppose it is irrelevant. All that matters is whether or not you can still call my meeting with him moot."

Kaya said nothing, wishing she had something to occupy her hands or otherwise take her attention from Bruce. She could feel his eyes on her and was none too keen to meet his gaze, though she wasn't quite sure why. Guilt, maybe? Or fear. Loathing felt more familiar, more tolerable. She wondered if he knew what he had taken from her. She thought maybe he did, and she wanted to hate him for it, but she couldn't find the energy to turn her wariness into rage.

"If I let you speak to him," she said finally, "what would you do? What would you say? I suppose you're going to...what? Threaten him? Threaten me? Try to provoke him to attack you?" She exhaled then finally lifted her eyes to meet his, careful, defiant, and yet more open than she had been with the retired escort since she'd met him. "He won't," she said evenly. "He wouldn't. He's not...you don't know him. You only see something from the wastes because that's all you choose to see. But he isn't. He's more than that. There's...something that keeps him here, something more than me, or he wouldn't have made it this far. You know that."

"Then let him prove that."

She was quiet for a long time, considering all their options. Weighing the risk, the outcomes, and everything in between. Was it worth it, this possibility that Eli could surprise her? Betray her? Leave her? The idea of leaving him alone with Proctor made her skin crawl. But the idea of him leaving her alone at all was far, far worse.

"Okay," she said finally, reluctantly. "I'll…you can speak to him. But I won't let you hurt him. I won't."

She left before the potatoes were done. She found she didn't have much of an appetite anymore.

 

[Peregrine]

The sound of footsteps woke him first. It was followed only moments later by the smell of food and the sound of the door opening. He was instantly wide awake. Even though he knew it was improbable that anyone was coming in the room with food other than Kaya, instinct still told him he had to be wary. He was wounded, even though it had healed somewhat, and this was not the wastes, where he knew exactly what dangers awaited. No, this was the city, and he had to be careful.

The tenseness vanished as soon as he identified Kaya. He couldn't see her, but he didn't need to. The sound of her footsteps, the way she moved, it was more than enough to let him know exactly who had come in. He didn't need to see her.

Kaya would not have noticed he had woken up. After all he hadn't moved when he'd woken, hadn't even so much as twitched. If it had been anyone but Kaya he would have allowed them to get close before grabbing them. Now, though, he didn't want to startle her while she was carrying a tray of food, so he stirred slightly as she got closer, before rolling over.

There were sandwiches on the tray again. The fact that it was the same food he'd had pretty much every day since he'd gotten to the city didn't really matter. In fact, he loved it. The food here was so different than out in the wastes, and he would treasure every bit of it until he had to go back to insects, raw animal carcasses, and parts of plants that scraped his throat on the way down. He reached out to take one, unwinding his bandage just slightly so that he could eat.

Kaya stopped abruptly a few feet from where he lay, then appeared to reconsider, her expression neutral.

"Hi," she said shortly, setting the tray down, then backing up a few steps to study him.

He nodded in return, picking up the next sandwich on the plate, having already finished the first. That one quickly followed suit, and he grabbed a third. It was only after the third sandwich that he realized Kaya would have normally started talking by now. He paused halfway through the fourth sandwich to look up at her.

She started slightly when he looked up at her, and something very close to anger flashed across her face before she composed herself again.

"Hi," she repeated, and then all at once, "It's Bruce. Proctor. The man who...from the other night. And last night. And before. He wants to talk to you. Just you. Without me. He says...well, I suppose it doesn't matter what he says, not yet, but he's going to try and...In order for us to leave, to get out of here, to get our license so we can...what you did before, all that, just...to move forward with everything, and leave this place, he says he needs to talk to you. I'm not allowed to be there. I'll take you to him, I can go with you, but I can't...I can't be there when he talks to you, and..." She trailed off and took a deep breath and then looked at him with something alarmingly similar to worry in her eyes.

"Do you understand what I'm saying?"

He had no clue. He'd never really understood Kaya, but this flood of words seemed even more disjointed an nonsensical than most of what she said. But, instead of saying that, he simply nodded. He was pretty sure he got the gist. Someone wanted to talk to him, and Kaya couldn't be there. And she was obviously very bothered by that fact.

A ghost of a smile passed over her face, though it didn't come close to reaching her eyes. "Good," she said shortly, then immediately began pacing. "We should go soon. Now, if you can, once you've finished eating. I can't...I don't think it will take very long, and it's not far. He says he just wants to talk, and I mostly believe him, but that man exists purely to get under my skin, I'm sure. He said...or he implied he wouldn't...That is, I don't think he'll do anything dangerous. He wouldn't. He wants to seem reasonable. Like the good guy. But he's not. Alright? You have to remember that, he will do or say whatever it takes to get you to..." She trailed off, a sound of frustration or disgust caught in her throat.

"These people. This town. If he can protect this place by getting you to...to betray yourself, expose yourself to him, he will. I don't know exactly what he wants from you, but I don't think it will be good." She paused to study him a moment, then began pacing again.

"This is dangerous. I don't like it, and I like even less that he won't let me be there, but you can...what you did before, the others, outside the gate. You could have...you could have left them. Or worse. And you didn't. You didn't, remember? And you could have left me, but - "

She broke off suddenly, seeming almost startled by what she'd just said. Her face flushed and she turned away to busy her doing something at the window. It was several moments before she could speak again.

"I don't know what he's going to say to you. I don't know what he wants from you. I just know you can't give it to him. I'll...I'll do what I can, once we're there, but I don't...I don't know if I can protect you. I -- " She turned to face him, struggling to speak, before sighing. Her shoulders slumped and she scrubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands.

"We should go," she said finally. "Are you ready?"

He chewed and swallowed the last of the sandwich with the kind of speed that was borne from spending most of his life fighting to retain his meals. As soon as that was done he stood, moving over towards Kaya. "Okay," he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. He knew she was upset about something, although he had no idea what. He wished he could do something more to reassure her than that. Hopefully whatever it was would be resolved once he finished this conversation.

She looked at him for a moment like she was going to say something. Instead, she shivered and turned away without a word.

She didn't speak again until they were standing outside Bruce's residence, both hands fisted stiffly at her sides. She lifted a trembling hand and knocked jerkily and then looked back at him again.

"You don't have to do this," she blurted. "If you don't...if he tries to...if...if things go wrong, you do what you have to, and we'll run. Again. Tonight. We can...I can figure this out. He doesn't have to win. Okay?"

"Okay."

-----

He emerged from the house again shortly after dawn, an unsealed envelope in one hand, a wax seal in the other. For a moment he simply stood on the porch, before glancing back at the door. Finally, he shrugged to himself and made his way over towards the steps.

It was lucky that the sky was already bright, for otherwise he would not have noticed the small figure curled up on one of the steps and would have been likely to step on it. Her. Kaya.

"Kaya?"

She stirred, then woke with a start, green eyes settling on him almost immediately.

"What?" she demanded. Then, after a moment's consideration, "Oh. Were...you were in there with him all night?" She studied him, impassive, before finding the envelope in his hands. She blinked, looked up at him, back down at the envelope, then up again.

"...is...did he..." She got to her feet slowly, almost cautiously, as though she full expected the thing in his hands to burst into flames if she got too close. She started to reach for it, then stopped, her eyes on him.

"Can I see?"

He nodded agreeably, and passed over the letter. Bruce had left it purposefully unsealed so that Kaya would be able to read the recommendation, and only seal it if she was satisfied.

She took it from him like someone accepting fine crystal or perhaps a newborn. She took the paper gingerly from its envelope and unfolded it almost breathlessly. Her eyes skimmed the paper quickly once. Twice. Then more deliberately a third time. She spent several minutes like that, frozen there on Bruce's front steps, utterly bewitched by the letter she held in her hands.

When at last she looked back up at him, her face was flushed and her pupils dilated. She might have been in shock. She said, "You did it."

He merely shrugged, uncertain how to respond.

She stared at him, then laughed, a short, sharp sound that was as much disbelief as it was joy.

"You did it," she said again. "You - " And then, instead of finishing her sentence, though without dropping the letter, she lurched forward to throw her arms around his neck with such enthusiasm that it would have knocked anyone else off their feet.

He stood rigidly for a moment, even more bewildered now than he had been a moment before. Eventually, however, he reached one hand up and gently patted her on the back. He still didn't understand why she had been so upset, or what had changed now other than the fact that they had the letter, but he was glad to see her happy again. Then he waited for her to let him go.

When she finally did, he turned back to glance at the house. "He said he'd like to see me one more time. Before we... go."

Kaya was nodding almost before he finished speaking. Now that she held the letter in her hand, she seemed almost unable to stand still, and she kept dropping her eyes to look at it, as though to reassure herself it was still there.

"Okay. That's...fine. If you don't mind, I suppose he can't..." she trailed off, shaking her head.

"We'll need to go soon. We should get back to the inn, there're some things I need to take care of, and you ought to finish with your rest so we can...How long do you think you'll need? Did you tell him when you'd be back? Does he expect you soon? We can go just as soon as your ready, I can be done by this afternoon, if you like, or maybe tomorrow, if that's better. He didn't..."

She paused as though she'd suddenly remembered something. "Was it...okay?" She glanced back to the door, then away. "C'mon, I'd rather spend as little time here as we can." She grabbed his wrist and tugged him after her a few feet, still staring at the letter in her other hand.

"I don't need to know what you said to him. Whatever it was, it worked. But...he didn't...that is...are you...alright?"

"...I'm fine," he finally replied, hesitation due more to the fact that he was trying to decipher what she meant by 'alright' than because he wasn't certain how he should answer the question.

She studied him for a moment before nodding, a slow, ecstatic smile breaking across her face.

"Okay," she said. "Good. Then...thank you. Let's go."

 

[DotCom]

Kaya spent the rest of the day preparing to depart the city again, though with none of the secret, anxious fervor of the night before, and only half the near-reckless desperation of her setting out from Crolis. She felt almost like she had back then, though perhaps slightly tempered in the face of caution. The first time she had set out for the desert, it was with a stranger as a guide, a creature she had seen eat a man. She'd had ten years of careful planning under her belt, and her entire livelihood on her back, and together, the force of it had nearly killed her. It was odd to think now that the 'stranger' in question was the only thing to remain unchanged -- save for their relationship, as he had become far more than that. A partner, a confidante, a guide and protector, and perhaps even a friend -- and yet she did not fear for her life like she had before.

Undoubtedly a tremor of uncertainty, and then frustration accompanied her thoughts of the desert. The issue of what happened when they got too near a voider would have to be settled sooner or later. And there was, she supposed, the chance that they would be trapped again. From what she could understand, what had happened had been unusual, but it had happened nonetheless, just like losing her cart and all her supplies in the storm. Just like everything that had happened inside the voider. That worse could happen she did not doubt. But Eli had completed the impossible task of bringing her to the city alive once, and now he had restored her life in a way that even she had not anticipated. She did not know what he had said to Proctor, or vice versa, but for the moment, she didn't care. She had the letter. All that remained was the license. The rest of their lives would build themselves from there.

She let the familiar, boundless energy of a new plan ready to be enacted carry her through the rest of the day. Through bartering odd jobs, time, and compliments for food and clothing; through weighing the pros and cons of bringing another horse and cart before remembering how often being able to travel quickly had saved them. It was easier to carry this time. She brought only the bare essentials, and while dried meat and bread were far from gourmet, they were small and light and countless times better than cactus and raw insects.

By the end of the day, she was pleasantly exhausted and no less ready to set out on their newest adventure, though she had not forgotten that Proctor wanted to speak again to Eli before they left. She sent him off with the vaguest of warnings, still not quite trusting the old escort, but more than trusting her new partner to return. Part of her wanted to go with him to have her own words with Bruce, but she figured it would be best for both of them to let sleeping dogs lie, and any questions she had about him and Eli would be better put to Eli, anyway.

Her last stop as at the small apothecary half a mile from the inn, where she spent the better part of an hour in whispers and flirtatious giggles with the young man behind the counter. She left with two small glass jars and a dense pouch she size of her first, all of which went into the new pack already riding high on her shoulders. Then she returned to the inn to wait and eat and answer the questions she already knew were coming.

She hadn't anticipated Thomas, but she wasn't particularly surprised to see him.

"Hullo, Tom," she said sagely. Anna's goodbye had been a metal canister of coffee grounds and a large canteen full of some sweet, nameless liqueur Kaya had come to favor, though she thought it would be a better bargaining trip later on. Just now, she enjoyed a cold brew, a parting gift of a different sort from Alessa, who had also knitted a lumpy scarf for Eli. "How're you?"

"You shouldn't go with him," the boy blurted all at once, his pale complexion going red so quickly, Kaya wondered if he hadn't had a little liquor himself. "He left you in the desert, Miss, he -- "

"Tom," she said patiently. "I'm going. Don't worry, I'm sure we'll be back. Maybe one day you can travel with us, and you'll see he's not so bad as you think."

Tom blanched again. "I'm not going anywhere with that thing, Miss. He won't -- "

"Tom," Kaya said again, the same sage tone, though now her eyes were hard. "Don't speak ill of my friends, please. Now come. Sit with me. Have a drink before I go, hm?"