Their destination was only a few streets away, but by the time they reached the first intersection Genevieve was truly floundering. The street before her, the gunshots in the distance, her guide’s shouts for her to keep up, all fell away one by one until nothing was left but her shoes on the dirt. Her heart threatening to burst, her arms and legs burning, her lungs gasping desperately. Was she really this out of shape? She thought she was reasonably fit, even if she wasn’t quite an athlete. But every day she hadn’t spent running was catching up to her, bowling her over, sucking away the air until she was certain she would collapse.

The world crashed back into existence when she heard the man call out, “there's the bastard!” Shocked out of her exhausted spiral, Genevieve had to look past the road directly ahead of her, and sure enough, waiting up ahead beneath the wide awning of a storehouse was a covered cart, with two fussy horses hitched to its front.

Even with the end in sight, the distance left to cross seemed far too much for Genevieve's failing, flailing body. But she kept moving one stride at a time, putting whatever she had left into this dash to the end.

As they approached the cart, the driver–a skinny woman with dark brown skin, wearing long cotton pants and a loose white blouse–hopped into her seat and hung a red paper devil mask around her neck. A tall, broad, heavyset redhead with a blue paper mask hanging off her leather coat leaned out and waved manically for them to join her. "Hurry up, asshole!" she shouted.

"Don't I look like I'm fucking running?" the purple-masked man barked back at her. He sprinted ahead and jumped into the back of the cart, holding onto the side and swinging himself around to watch Genevieve chasing after him and lagging well behind. "C'mon, girl, you gotta beat it!"

Staggering to the finish line, Genevieve stumbled and all but fell into the cart, dragging herself into the back as a pile of limbs. The cart had open floor space by the back entrance, but most of it was taken up by stacks of cargo crates lashed in place. With everything aching and her vision going dark, Genevieve ripped the white paper devil mask off her face and tossed it aside, then slumped face-down on the floor. It was all she could do not to pass out, let alone move another inch.

“All right, catch your breath, the hard part’s over,” the large woman said, her voice husky and indelicate. “Unless the next part ends up bein’ hard, that is.” She banged on a crate and yelled toward the front, “Sammy, let’s get goin’!”

“First off, it’s Samara. You don’t know me like that.” The driver, Samara, leaned backwards to shoot the other woman an unamused look. “And give the boys a second. They’re a couple of stubborn mules.”

“Thought they were horses,” the large woman muttered. She took a few steps and stood above Genevieve’s prone form. "Damn, were you tryin' to kill her or something?" She gently tapped Genevieve's limp body with the cold, heavy steel toe of her boot. "You're alive, right?"

Genevieve groaned in consternation, alive enough to make a sound but not nearly enough to form words. Closing her eyes and falling asleep on the floor of the cart was far more tempting than it should have been.

“That’s good, then. Seem like a real pointless waste of all that effort if you went and croaked on the floor.”

“It ain’t that bad,” the man protested. "She's young 'n' healthy, it's good for her t'push herself. Means she'll have more stamina next time."

“Aren’t you a generous son of a bitch,” the woman said with a mean-spirited snicker. “Here I was thinking you just liked gettin’ the chance to yell at a royal.”

“Eh, well, I thought I would. She doesn’t look so royal right now, though, so I kinda feel bad about it.”

Another set of gunshots rang out in the distance, and Samara finally managed to persuade the horses. They whinnied irately, and the cart began to creep forward at a slow trot.

A cavalcade of footsteps quickly approached, followed by a lot of shouting.

“Ah, shit,” the large woman swore, and she banged on the cargo again. “I told you to get it movin’, didn’t I?”

“Start runnin’, you lazy assholes!” Samara screamed, and the horses responded by kicking up into an easy, lackadaisical stride, petulantly unhurried.

More gunshots rang out, close this time, and Genevieve reflexively jumped, curling herself into a ball and trying to shrink so that stray rounds wouldn’t hit her. The man and woman in the back with her cursed and shrunk themselves down too, and though the bullets only managed to hit a few of the crates, the gunfire was plenty of motivation for the horses to break into a full gallop.

The cart jerked forward suddenly, sliding the passengers about the back and earning another round of swears, but once the momentum caught up and they were on the move, the horses’ breakneck speed was a relief.

“Don’t you worry back there,” Samara called from the front. “We’ll outrun ‘em, no troubles.”

“Better hang onto something, ladies,” the masked man said dryly. “Ride’s gonna get bumpy.”

“Fuck off, dickhead,” the large woman growled.

But Genevieve just grabbed onto a length of rope being used to lash the cargo together, and gripped it until her knuckles turned white. "This is a stupid plan," she said to herself in a daze. “Why did I think this was a good plan?" The cart took a wide turn, tipping to the side but still remaining upright, and as the wheels smacked back against the ground the shouts of the guards started fading into the distance.

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"Don't be so down on yourself,” the large woman said, leaning back against the side of the cart nonchalantly. “Every plan is stupid. And some of 'em work anyway."

“So you finally admit your plans are stupid?” the man said, taking off his mask and tossing it aside to reveal scruffy black facial hair and a shit-eating grin.

“Not as stupid as yours,” the woman fires back. “At least I’m not throwin’ out schemes that’re even dumber than everyone else’s and convincin’ myself they’re brilliant.”

“‘Every plan is stupid’ is a sentence that could only come out of the mouth of someone with stupid plans.”

“An’ the only person who’d say different is a dumbass who likes t’ think he’s smart.”

Even though she was finally, finally starting to catch her breath, just the tiniest bit, Genevieve was also getting a headache.

The cart sped forward through uncomfortably narrow streets, making sharp turns Genevieve was sure would get their cart smashed into a building. She braced for impact each time, but the worst that came was a tiny bump when they hit a table someone had set out in front of their house. And after just a few harrowing turns, they broke out from the small side streets onto a wide open road. The main road through the city. Any other time it would have been bustling with traffic. With the city closed up and the walls so near, it was dead empty.

Two automaton guards, who must have been sent to the gates just moments ago, were ahead of them, acting mindlessly on orders to move up and join the rest of the force. And at the end of the road, not so far now and rapidly getting closer, was the southernmost gate out of the city. There were only a handful of regular human guardsmen posted there, acting as a deterrent to anyone trying to escape while the city was still locked down. Genevieve had gambled on Marcie drawing the guards away, hoping that by the time anyone realized she was racing out of the city it would be too late for them to regroup by the gate. And with the pair of automatons racing ahead, she’d been proven right. The skeleton crew left behind weren’t anything near enough to stop a determined group of people willing to force their way through.

Samara shouted and cracked the reins, driving the horses faster, past the automatons, urging them to keep charging. Even if that meant barrelling right on through the three unprepared soldiers panicking up ahead. The man with the purple mask and his wide-set friend each grabbed the makeshift muskets that Marcie had prepared for them and climbed over the stacks of cargo. They leaned over the crates and poked their heads out the front of the cart, hollering as loud as they could. They took aim, though not particularly carefully, and fired at the guards.

Neither of them came close to hitting anything, but the threat of it was more than enough to send the guards fleeing, quite reasonably convinced there was no point holding their ground. The cart barreled wildly through the gate, the horses whinnying in protest as they smashed through the flimsy wooden barrier set up in front of it, and they sped down the path into badlands surrounding the city. The driver tossed the mask she was wearing off the cart behind her, letting it drift and fall onto the dirt road, conspicuous evidence of their escape.

After a minute’s run, the driver pulled the horses off the side of the road, and made a long circle back around to the city. She had them come to a stop alongside the wall, at the agreed-upon meeting point, and Genevieve let out the breath she had been holding. It was oddly still, once the horses settled, but the regular popping sounds echoing out over the city walls were a constant reminder that things weren’t finished quite yet.

The purple-masked man and the woman both busied themselves loading their muskets, a difficult task that neither of them had particularly mastered. While they were at it, Genevieve slowly picked herself up off the floor and made sure she could still walk. Once she was certain she had recovered enough to be approximately functional, she dragged herself out of the cart and circled around to the front. She acknowledged Samara with an exhausted wave of her hand and went straight to check on the horses. They were a little stompy and agitated after all the commotion, so Genevieve reached out to gently pet their heads. “All right, now,” she muttered in a soft, reassuring voice. “You’ll be all right.”

“They should be fine, miss,” Samara called down to her. “They’re a coupla brats, but they’re sturdy boys. Just get a kick out of complaining is all.”

“I still want to make sure they aren’t hurt,” Genevieve said, and she kneeled down to get a better look at their front sides.

Samara decided to play along and snapped the reins. “Hey, calm yer fetlocks,” she said sharply. “Let the lady have a look.”

Once the horses reluctantly complied, Genevieve was able to see that both of them had a few cuts on their forearms and shoulders from smashing through the barrier. They didn’t seem to be serious, but she still felt bad about them. It was wrong to leave a good turn unanswered, so after giving her still-racing heart another moment to calm down she took in a deep breath, welled up her concentration, and dragged a little shred of magic out of the charm Lenn had offered her before she left. It was a small, thin metal symbol on a leather strap around her neck, depicting a set of interlocking circles with fine crystal inlays that shimmered faintly in the light. If you looked very, very closely, you could see the little flecks of magic flitting about within. It was a valuable trinket, with how rare it was to find the hum of life running free in Gryst, but Lenn insisted it was less valuable than one would think. That very scarcity meant few people in Gryst would even attempt to learn to harness it, so Lenn thought it was best for Genevieve to have it, so long as she promised to do some good with it.

Healing the horses probably did more good for Genevieve’s conscience than for the world at large, she knew that. But she only needed to skim a little magic off the top for it, and there was no sense risking the injuries getting worse later on when she could simply heal them instead. So she passed her hand over each horse in turn, and they whinnied and stomped in place for a few moments before finally settling down. It was hard to tell if they knew they had been healed or not, but Genevieve hoped they appreciated it.

She looked up to Samara and nodded. “They were a little scratched up, I’m afraid. Nothing major, but I closed up the wounds just to be safe.”

“Huh,” Samara said. “Well, all right then.” She shrugged. “I’m not gonna complain about that. Thank y’kindly, Princess.”

“I might just go with Jen for now,” Genevieve said. “Don’t need to attract undue attention, right?”

Samara nodded. “Sure. Whatever you say.” She glanced over her shoulder at the tall city wall. “Hey, just so you know, I don’t intend to stick around here and be a sitting duck for too long. Devil girl better make it quick, if she plans to be on board.”

A long series of pops sounded off in quick succession.

“It… sounds like she’s working on it,” Genevieve said. “And quick is a specialty of hers. I’m sure it won’t be long.”

“Better not be, for her sake. I’m not ashamed to say I spook easily, so if I feel like I gotta go, I am gonna go.”

“I understand.” Genevieve made her way around the cart to climb up into the back, her lips curled into a small frown.