As Terry stuffed things into his pack, he did his best to ignore Jaban. It wasn’t easy given the amount of complaining, but Terry persevered. He was committed to the task. A fact that Jaban seemed to pick up on because he increased the volume of his complaints.
“Come on! I want to go!”
Terry looked around the nearly bare room that he’d claimed as his own and decided that there wasn’t anything left worth taking along. He straightened up and walked directly past Jaban, who had been lurking in the doorway. Ekori and Haresh were out there as well, but they hadn’t been participating in the low-yield harassment campaign that Jaban had been carrying out. If anything, Ekori looked apologetic, while Haresh had a hand over his eyes and was muttering something under his breath that sounded vaguely like a prayer. Terry went into the kitchen and packed some dried goods into the pack. He made a mental note to stop in town to pick up some dried meat to take with him. It wasn’t so much that he couldn’t live on a vegetarian diet for a while, he just didn’t want to. Jaban, it seemed, couldn’t take the hint. He followed Terry into the kitchen with a reluctant Ekori and Haresh in tow.
“Why can’t I go?” he asked.
“Because I don’t want to be responsible for you, and you can’t be trusted alone.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Terry sighed and started over again.
“Maybe I should say, you can’t be trusted alone.”
Terry pointed a finger at Ekori.
“She can’t go alone.”
Terry shifted the finger to Haresh.
“And he can’t let either of you go alone. That means that if I take one of you, I have to take all of you. If I do that, who will go out and kill things for Drumstick to eat? She might not need to eat every day, but she still needs to eat. Plus, if we all go, she’s going to follow us. How do you see that working out?”
Jaban gave Terry a hard look and said, “I still want to know what you meant when you said I can’t be trusted alone.”
“Exactly what it sounded like I meant. You offend women everywhere you go. I don’t need or want that trouble. I can’t find trouble all by myself, thank you very much.”
“I don’t offend women everywhere I go!” shouted Jaban.
“Yes, you do,” said Haresh and Ekori in unison.
“No, I don’t,” insisted Jaban, giving the other two a hurt look.
“Jaban, do you think I hustled us out of all those towns because it was fun? I did it to avoid angry fathers and brothers from tracking you down and beating you senseless,” said Haresh.
“But—” said the young man.
“It’s true. You think you’re charming, but you’re really not,” said Ekori.
Terry wasn’t sure that little jab between siblings was going to prove helpful. Then again, he wasn’t entirely sure that Ekori was trying to be helpful. Whatever the case, Jaban scowled at everyone before he stormed out of the house. Haresh gave Terry a long-suffering look.
“You could have been more diplomatic about that,” suggested the older man.
“Probably,” admitted Terry. “I just wasn’t convinced that he’d understand it if I tried to be diplomatic about it. He’s very—” Terry hesitated with those words about diplomacy fresh in his ears. “He has yet to grow out of some of his worst adolescent tendencies.”
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Haresh offered a grudging nod of agreement. Terry was turning to leave when Ekori gave him a strange look.
“Come to think of it, why can’t I go?” she asked.
“Aside from the whole part about taking one meaning taking all three?”
“Yes. Aside from that.”
Terry glanced at Haresh, sighed, and said, “Because you have hostage written all over you, and I don’t feel like dealing with the hostage situation trope. It’s always super complicated and never ends without some bodies on the floor. I just want to go and buy a sword, not murder a bunch of people.”
“What’s a trope?” asked Ekori.
Terry was pretty sure she’d asked him that at least once before, so he tried to remember what he’d said then. He couldn’t dredge it up from his memory. I probably said something snarky to her, thought Terry.
“It’s something that’s hugely aggravating to me, but probably not something you need to spend mental energy worrying about. If you’re going to worry about something, worry about ranking up. I suspect both Haresh and I would feel a lot more comfortable if you were a rank three adventurer.”
Haresh nodded firmly to back up that particular sentiment. Ekori got a real serious frown before she asked the next and, Terry belated realized, inevitable question.
“What about me says hostage?”
Terry considered answering, rejected that idiotic idea, and said, “Well, would you look at the time. I should get going, but I’m sure Haresh will be happy to explain it to you.”
Then, without a trace of guilt or remorse, Terry dashed out of the house. He glanced around but didn’t see any sign of Jaban. Probably for the best, decided Terry. He’d probably just want to fight about it if he was still around. He spotted a reptilian tail sticking out from the side of the house and walked over to look around the corner. Drumstick was sound asleep in a patch of shade with Dusk curled up on top of the chicken-lizard’s head. The little, four-eared kitten perked her head up, yawned spectacularly, and then lightly bounded down to the ground. She came over and rubbed against Terry’s leg while he stroked her back. Satisfied with her tribute of affection, the kitten let Terry scoop her up and deposit her in the partially open sack. He felt her move around briefly before settling down to follow up her nap with, apparently, another nap.
Shaking his head at the mysterious ways of felines, Terry headed toward the town. He passed through the gates with little more than a nod from the guards and made his way over to the market square. There was no guarantee that someone would have dried meat, but he figured it was the logical place to start. He did pause to adjust his rice hat to a slightly more comfortable position before he ventured into the market. As luck would have it, he did find someone selling dried pork and even some beef jerky. He bought up enough to last him for a week if he was a little sparing with it and topped it off with a few more root vegetables. He was making his way out of the market when a woman’s voice cut through the din of buying and selling.
“You!”
Terry hesitated. The voice was familiar. That was all the excuse he needed. Terry bolted like a scared bunny rabbit fleeing a coyote in the desert twilight. He’d eluded this particular trope once before, and he was determined to evade the annoying companion/romcom adventure trope if at all possible.
“Stop!” shouted the aggrieved voice of Kelima Silventar.
Terry did not stop. He’d been hoping against hope that the noble brat had cut her losses after they’d had a fistfight in her parents’ reception hall, or whatever the hell that room had been back at their estate. Getting mixed up with that girl and her nonsense was way, way, way down at the bottom of Terry’s to-do list. It was only slightly above willingly casting himself into a portal to hell and at about the same level as swimming in gasoline and then lighting a match. Plus, he had a trump card. She had to worry about her dignity and the pride of her family. Terry wasn’t dignity-free, but he was more than willing to sacrifice it on the altar of practicality. As for pride, he’d let other people worry about that.
That made running away a perfectly acceptable choice in his books. He doubted that chasing him through the streets of some small town was going to be nearly as acceptable to her noble sensibilities. He put on an extra burst of effort as he shot toward the gates. The guards gaped as they watched Terry pound toward them at speeds that probably rivaled a gazelle’s back on Earth. He flew past them, the air roaring in his ears. He hazarded one quick look back and cursed to himself. It seemed that Kelima Silventar was more willing to discard appearing suitably noble than he’d credited. She was sprinting after him fast enough that, while she wasn’t gaining ground, she wasn’t losing it either. He couldn’t help but wonder what the hell her adventurer rank was. Not that it made him slow at all. He kept right on sprinting south down the road, an angry noble brat hot on his heels and cursing his name.