Big Sid eyed me sharply as I enjoyed the sights. “Don’t humans faint if there’s too much sun?” she asked.

“Sunblock, baby,” I said.

“Or rain?” she said. “Or shade or noise or any stimulation that is too much for their delicate constitutions? What’re you even doing outside?”

“I’m enjoying your sweet company, Bellsyd,” I told her.

She clawed me. Not seriously; she just whacked at my elbow with her claws like siblings might fight. Still, I grabbed her and held her away from myself--also wrestling in a sibling-like way.

“Damn,” she said. “You’re strong for a human.”

“I could arm-wrestle an ollie,” I said, releasing her.

“If you didn’t mind losing an arm!” Erdinand said. “I lost an arm once.”

I blinked at him. “Really?”

“This one.” He tapped his left arm, the one without the pincer. “See how it’s a little smaller? Took almost two years to grow back. I was only a kid, it’s not easy to regenerate once you’re fully grown, but I was young and soft back and, well, I climbed over a fence into a bullbear pasture. I only wanted to say hello!”

“That’s what happens when you try to make friends,” Big Sid told him.

“I did make friends! We became good friends, only ... first he ate my arm.”

“You’re not right,” Big Sid told him.

“You love me anyway,” he said, without any doubt.

She grunted and scowled.

“How long have you two known each other?” I asked.

“Since we were kids,” Erdinand told me. “I used to have to stick up for her, because she was so little with such a big mouth.”

“So things have really changed,” I said.

He giggled and she threw a spoon at me. It bounced off my forehead, and one of the other infenti servants scrambled to keep it from falling from the wagon. Then the other servant started talking about his kids--his naughty kids, so young and infantile that they might throw spoons at people. Big Sid said something horrible about children but everyone ignored her and the conversation turned to family--and then to this trip.

I listened without saying much until the wagons slowed, preparing to stop for lunch. Apparently Miss Kathina didn’t want to subject Lord Usim to the swaying motion of his wagon while he ate. When the servants separated on the roof, reading to return to their duties, I checked nobody was closer enough to overhead.

“So we’re escorting Lord Usim to his family?” I asked Erdinand under my breath.

“To his mother,” he told me. “She’s the commander of Ryetown now. Her name is Wren, which is a sweet and harmless name for a horrible Sixer commander. She sent for him. So we’re the escort, bringing him to Ryetown.”

“Why does she want him there?”

“Well!” One of his eyes bulged at me. “I have an idea about that! I think it’s to show that she’s moved there for good. Well, not for good but forever. That all of Six Coves is here forever. That they’re settling in, and this isn’t just temporary.”

“Ah.”

“And also, probably, to give him experience. He’s still young and soft and ... not horrible. The word is that he’s a bookbug.”

“What’s that?”

“Like, he loves books. He reads and reads, but he doesn’t do anything much. Reading and daydreaming won’t get you far in the Sixer military. So his mother wants him more involved in the day to day running of things. She’s part of some kind of Krelv family or faction, I guess.”

“Krelv is the continent,” I said, remembering what Oksar had told me. “They’re the ones behind Six Coves.”

“Right! And also ... “ He trailed off, then tilted his flat head. “Uh, I forgot what I was going to say. But yeah, they’re the ones behind Six Coves. They’re one of the biggest continents, I guess. There’s like a bunch of warring states there or something?”

Which didn’t make any sense, as far as I could tell. But I was starting to get the impression that Erdinand, while a great guy, might not have a consummate command of geopolitics. I just said “Huh,” and the wagons came to a complete stop.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The servants started bustling around, but I hung back and asked Erdinand, “So, uh, you live in the Port, right?”

“All my life!” he said, proudly. “Except for the times that I left, but I never left for more than a few weeks.”

“Are you going back? After this? Or are you going to stay in Ryetown?”

He scratched his head with his pincer. “I don’t know yet. I think Big Sid is going to stay, so I’ll probably stay, too.” He lowered his voice. “To keep her out of trouble, you know? She has a teensy bit of a temper. She’s trying to be good to impress the Sixers but I’m not sure how long she can keep that up.”

“You’re a good friend,” I told him.

“The best!” he happily agreed.

* * *

After lunch, Big Sid remained in the big, fancy wagon. Apparently Miss Kathina liked to have a maidservant around to talk to, or to buff her horns or something. I spent half the afternoon explaining to people that no, I wasn’t the cook. He was the only other male human. He was two inches shorter than me, thirty pounds lighter, with burgundy eyes--the legacy of distant infenti ancestry--and blond hair, but we were both bearded and wearing servants’ uniforms, so people got confused.

I helped Erdinand with the horses, though I also spent a good deal of time loitering around while looking busy. That was my real talent, honed in two dimensions. Though actually, I enjoyed grooming the soldiers’ mounts more than I’d expected. The ‘horses’ weren’t exactly like Earth horses, either. They had shorter, heavier tails, stubby horns, and faces with faintly canine features.

Which kind of made sense, considering Erdinand had trained them like sheepdogs, to respond to his whistled commands. He really had a gift for them, which made working with him fun.

When we reached a fork in the river, we followed one branch upstream into rolling meadows at the foot of what turned out to be the Wald Hills, a series of flat-topped mountains. Well, hills, but big ones. Apparently it would only take one day to ride a horse across the entire island, if you drew a straight line down the middle and there weren’t obstructions, but with the forest and the mountains, everything took much longer. Plus, the wagons were in no hurry.

I didn’t realize why until that evening after dinner. It turned out that the elite guards, Jikon and Jikap, were taking advantage of the slow route to train the young lord.

I was picking chicken from my teeth when one of the human servants touched my shoulder and said, “Come, join us.”

“What’s that now?” I asked, blinking at her.

“The lady asked for songs. Miss Kathina enjoys a little music after dinner.”

“I don’t, uh, know any songs?”

“You’ll learn,” she told me.

So I joined them at the other wagon. A bunch of bored-looking soldiers played cards and dice near the fire, while Miss Kathina and Lord Usim perched on upholstered chairs taken from the large wagon. To my surprise, the blue kid I’d seen in the wagon--the one I’d made faces at--wasn’t Lord Usim.

Lord Usim looked a little older, maybe fifteen, with orange skin that almost glowed in the firelight. He was a skinny kid, kind of gawky and ... well, he looked like a bookbug. I had no idea who that smaller kid had been.

Big Sid sat demurely behind Usim and Kathina, and gave me a look of evil amusement as I shuffled into place with the other humans. They sang a folk-y song, though not very well. They were okay. They sounded like a quartet that had plenty of practice but not much talent. I mouthed along until I learned the chorus, then I belted that part out.

Well, it was better than singing Bohemian Rhapsody alone in the woods.

After a few songs, one of them pulled out a harp. At least, a sort of fantasy-looking harp. Maybe a lap-harp, if that was a thing? He strummed for a while, then Miss Kathina headed back inside with Big Sid, leaving Lord Usim in the middle of the pack of soldiers, which surprised me a little. So I dawdled as I pretended to clean, wondering what was going on.

The high-level infenti twins took the kid aside, and one of them gave him a blunt sword. The kid swung clumsily at the infenti, who stepped lazily aside, not even drawing his own weapon to parry. The kid swung again, and the infenti leaned aside again. That happened for a five or ten minutes, until the kid was huffing and puffing in exhausting.

“C’mon, little lord,” the infenti said. “You fight like a traguld.”

“I ... I’m trying,” Usim said.

The infenti lunged and his scimitar blurred forward, then stopped with the blunt side pressing against Usim’s neck.

The kid yelped in fear and dropped his blunt sword to thump at his feet.

“That’s what trying gets you,” the infenti said. “Dead.”

“I’m not good at this kind of thing.”

“And I’m not delivering you to Commander Wren until you learn how to hold a sword.”

The kid looked at the sword. “I’m not doing this anymore.”

“I don’t even care if you can swing it, my lord.” The infenti narrowed his eyes. “Just learn to hold it. This is an embarrassment. To Commander Wren, to Six Coves, to Krelv. To yourself, if you’re capable of shame.”

The kid didn’t move.

The other twin said, “Pick up your sword, my lord.”

“I won’t,” the boy said. “I’m not doing this anymore.”

“Fine,” the first infenti said, and nodded to his twin brother.

I stopped pretending to tidy and watched openly as the brother strode away from the fire, into the shadows near the fancy wagon. A moment later, he dragged another kid forward: the younger blue one with the single horn, the boy I’d spotted in the wagon. He shoved that kid hard enough that he sprawled on the ground in front of Lord Usim.

A few of the other soldiers looked up from rolling dice or drinking mugs of what I’d first assumed was ale but was actually tea: they were on duty.

“Don’t hurt Lemmy!” Usim pled to the twins.

“If you don’t pick that sword up, my lord,” the first twin said, “Jikap will.”

Usim didn’t move fast enough.

The second twin flipped the blunt sword into the air with the toe of his boot. In a single motion, he caught the grip, and slammed the tip into the blue kid’s stomach.

The kid made a retching sound and rolled into a ball.

“I’m going to use this sword until you do,” Jikap told the young lord, and smacked the kid twice more.

Not hard enough to break anything, but hard enough that I heard the thumps.

I took a step forward.