The second day caused Elody and Will to feel more comfortable around me, so much so they carried on a conversation the entire walk. I mumbled a few responses to their questions, but nothing too revealing. Once they left for their travels, I didn't want them to ever have the knowledge of where they could come back and find me.

I stopped walking when we reached a tall wooden stake drove into the ground. Lester’s Post was painted on the side.

“What's this place?” Will asked.

“Lester’s Post,” I replied. Couldn't they read? “A wagon comes here from Indeedra.”

“That's handy,” Elody said, still wearing the same stupid fascinated-with-everything grin she had been for the entire trek.

“Yeah, I guess,” I muttered, leaning against the wood post. In truth, they weren't so bad to travel with. They hadn't slowed me down—in fact at times Elody walked faster than I did, like she knew where she was going. And hearing about Will’s pathetic life in Scultera made good entertainment. The boy found himself in more unfortunate situations than the average hapless chap. “You guys have money, right?”

Elody and Will nodded.

“How much is it?” Elody asked, looking in her coin purse.

“Just five Coppers, but they make it a much smoother ride for a Silver,” I replied. “Might even let you drive it for a Gold.”

“Lucky them,” Elody said, pulling out one Gold coin.

“How long until the wagon comes?” Will asked.

I shrugged, looking in the direction it would normally come from. “Maybe an hour? Maybe less. Depends.”

Will sat down and drank from his canteen.

Elody and I did the same.

Lowering my canteen from my lips, I glanced at Elody. “So, you really want to see Indeedra?”

Elody nodded. “Yes. I've never been there before, or much of anywhere. Even the dirtiest of places I want to see. But I think I could do without visiting Scultera again.”

“It's not for newcomers,” I said, but my eyebrow raised. “You don't travel much? Kinda strange for a painter.” Why had I even said that? I didn't want to start anything, nor did I care one bit about their lives. Still, something wasn't adding up with Elody the Painter.

“Local painter,” Elody replied without even batting an eye. “I do most of my work in the same area, so not much travel.”

I chewed on my lip as I considered her story. “So where is it you want to see most?”

“A lot of different places,” Elody replied. “But mostly Amerenth.”

“Can't say I've been there before,” I said.

“I've heard it's beautiful there,” Will said. “Greenery everywhere and from any point in the city you can hear the trickle of water, either from a stream or just water that runs through the shops. And it’s never too hot there.”

Elody nodded. “I'd love to visit there.”

“Then we will,” Will said, standing up. He flashed one of his puppy smiles at her. “After we see Indeedra, we’ll go to Amerenth.”

I snorted. “You two are going to travel all the way to Amerenth? Did you even bring enough?”

“We can buy more,” Elody said, her bottom lip curved into a hard frown, like I'd degraded her down to her core.

I rolled my eyes. If these two thought they could tramp about the earth as unprepared as they were, I wasn't going to stand in their way. I was almost home, and that's all that mattered to me. Well that and the fact that I could possibly get Elody to testify to Chasey about how the new brothel kidnapped girls to use.

I lost track of time leaning against the post waiting, so much so that I almost jumped for joy when Will pointed out the wagon’s covered roof popping up over the hill. While I'd silently brooded over how long the wagon was taking, Elody and Will excitedly chatted about all the cities they planned to visit.

When the wagon reached us, we stood back to let some of the passengers off. The coachman came over to the back of the wagon and we each put our coins in his hand as we boarded the wagon.

The wagon was a lot more crowded than when I’d first come, with eleven people already squeezed inside, leaving the three of us to sit with some children on the floor.

The wagon jerked a little as it circled the post to head back to Indeedra.

I glanced over at Will and noticed some of the color had drained from his face. “Never been on a wagon before, Will?” I asked him.

Will shook his head, and his hands were clenched into fists against the floor.

“It's nothing to be scared of,” Elody assured him.

I resisted a snippy comment. It was just a wagon, what did he think was going to happen? The floorboards would suddenly snap and we’d all fall through to be trampled by the wagon? The closer we got to Indeedra, the more I was considering not bringing Elody to see Chasey. Hopefully my word would be enough to describe Jamel’s scummy hole.

The wagon rocked, bumping only when one wheel rolled over a loose rock, and soon I felt my eyelids drooping. Of course, Elody and Will’s travel plans still prattled in my ear. I dozed off eventually, only to be woken what felt like seconds later by the wagon abruptly coming to a halt, so suddenly I banged the back of my head against one of the other passenger's trunks.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Why are we stopping?” Elody asked me.

Rubbing the back of my head, I replied, “Maybe someone just needs to get out. Not everyone is going to Indeedra.” But looking around, all the other passengers seemed just as confused as to why we'd stopped.

The back curtain of the wagon flapped open, and a burly man with a curled mustache and moppy black hair snarled in at us.

“Alright, everyone out,” he said. “Leave your stuff.”

Elody and Will flashed worried looks at me, but I didn't meet either of their eyes. I didn't know what was happening just as much as everyone else.

We were the last to exit the wagon. Everyone else seemed to make a mad dash to get out, like it was going to explode into a thousand pieces.

Outside of the wagon I could see there were two other men besides Mop Hair. One had a jagged anchor tattoo on his left shoulder and the other had a face that looked like it had been smashed into a hot furnace.

Anchor Tattoo had made everyone form a line, while Mop Hair eyed every single passenger to make sure they personally knew not to try anything.

After that, Mop Hair shuffled past us and got inside the wagon. He began opening trunks and tearing through bags.

Burn Face went down the line checking men’s pockets and women’s handbags.

We stayed near the backside of the wagon, so we had some time before Burn Face reached us.

“What are they searching for?” Elody asked me.

I shook my head. I'd never seen a search on this road. To my right I felt a vibration in the ground and glanced over at Will to see him shaking his left foot.

“Don't look nervous,” I hissed to him.

“But I am nervous,” Will protested quietly.

“It makes you seem like you have something,” I said.

“They're not taking any money,” Elody observed to my left. “Or any of the women’s jewelry.”

I looked back to where Burn Face was going through the line.

Indeed, two women—a mother and daughter—wearing pearl necklaces still had them around their necks.

If they didn't want money or jewelry, what were they looking for?

Mop Hair hopped out the wagon, and from the unsatisfied look on his face I figured he hadn't found what he was searching for. Seeing Burn Face’s progress, he started at our end.

Will’s face turned so white he could have made chalk look stained when Mop Hair stood in front of him.

“Let me see what's in your pockets,” Mop Hair snarled at him.

Will pulled his pockets completely inside out, spilling his coins onto the ground.

I rolled my eyes at his uneasiness. If this trio wasn't looking for money, obviously we didn't have what they were looking for. So why be nervous?

Mop Hair moved to me.

I delivered him an unwavering glare and turned my pockets inside out as well.

Mop Hair looked over at Elody, and she did the same. There was nothing in Elody’s pockets, just as there'd been in mine, but Mop Hair’s face changed. Before I could interpret his new less sour facial expression, he said to the others, “This one.”

“What?” Before she could even protest, Anchor Tattoo grabbed her and tried to hoist her into the other wagon. She thrashed her arms and legs around, making it as difficult for him as possible.

“Elody!” Will exclaimed, running over to her.

I didn't know what to do, but I ran over with him and tugged hard on Elody’s leg.

Anchor Tattoo finally lost his grip on her and Elody tumbled to the ground.

The other passengers watched, but none tried to help.

“Get her!” Mop Hair yelled, pointing at Elody.

She scrambled to get to her feet, but she looked like from there, she didn't know what to do.

“Get the bags, Will!” I clamped my hand around Elody’s arm and pulled her away from the wagons. I heard Will thunder behind us. Hopefully he'd grabbed the right bags.

The men took off after us, yelling for us to stop. We ran for what felt like twenty minutes before we didn't hear the men shouting behind us.

I was the first one to stop running, pausing at a tree so I could lean against it and catch my breath.

Elody and Will stopped too.

Will collapsed to the ground, hugging his knees. Through shallow breathes, he said. “What did they want? What did you have?”

“I don’t know! He just saw my necklace then tried to take me!”

Finally, my breathing returned to normal. “Well, they're not chasing us anymore,” I said. “But clearly you have something they want.”

Elody nodded.

“That road is the main way into Indeedra. They'll probably look for us around there, expecting us to return to our route.”

“So, what should we do?”

“We can head for Rhyl in the meantime. By the time we get there, hopefully those guys will have moved on and we can start again for Indeedra.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Will said. “I don't want to run into those men again.”

I looked up at the sun, positioned directly above us now. “We won't make it before sundown, so we'll have to do another night of camping out here.”

“Like I said, as long as we don't run into those men again,” Will said.

“Are you guys ready to get moving then?” I asked.

Elody and Will nodded.

The land between Indeedra and Rhyl was very barren, mainly clay with dry patches of brown grass. Every few yards there was maybe a rawboned tree or two. The sun would have beat down on us if it weren't for the protection of the many clouds in the sky.

We traveled in silence. I figured the two of them were still shaken up by what had happened. It hadn't rattled me, but more so piqued my curiosity. I'd made the trip to Scultera and back several times, and that had never happened.

I found myself sneaking glances at Elody, trying to figure out what she had that interested those men. Maybe it had something to do with who she actually was, because I really didn't believe her story about being a painter. When I’d first met her, she seemed a little banged up. But now her skin was cleaner, and her hair fixed better, and she seemed to carry an almost regal quality about her.

I also spent most of the trek cursing myself for accepting help from a stranger, because look what it got me. Chasey would be seething that I wasn't back. Not that I particularly cared what Chasey felt, but I did care about keeping my job.

For two traveling newbies, at least they could keep up. We only stopped two other times before we stopped for the night, when the sun was a few feet from dipping below the horizon line. We picked a spot near two trees and laid out our knapsacks along the ground.

I went to work snapping the dry branches off the tree and breaking them into smaller pieces to build a fire.

“Can we help?” Elody asked me.

“If you want to get wood too,” I mumbled. It wasn't a three-person job, but they probably didn't know anything else to do.

Elody took the larger branches from me and began breaking them into the smaller pieces we needed. Will on the other hand tried to break branches off the tree with me, staring on one whose circumference was larger than his arm.

He braced himself against the trunk of the tree, trying to bend the branch to his will.

I rolled my eyes. “Will, that one's too big. Try the smaller ones, or the pieces sticking out of the bigger branches. I can finish this tree, why don't you go on the other?”

Will looked at the branch he'd been trying to break versus the ones I was talking about, and I could see the relief on his face at an easier task. He trotted over to the other tree and began breaking branches off.

When I’d broken off all the possible branches, I began piling them in a way fit for a fire to keep us warm. It shouldn't get too cold out here, but I didn't want Elody and Will to be uncomfortable.

Thankfully, matches were one of the items I'd bought this morning. The first match didn't catch, but the second did and soon we had a medium sized fire.

We didn't have a tent, so we just sat on the ground around the fire.

Will fell asleep quickly, curled into a ball with his head on his knapsack.

Staring at the flame, I sighed, a little louder than I'd meant to. These two weren't that bad. And at least they didn't try to talk my ears off like I thought they would have. I could get us to Rhyl, then we'd head back for Indeedra, then we'd part ways. It wouldn't be too long now.