Isla had spent her search achieving fuck all and nothing else. Lachlan wasn’t good at conversation, so people weren’t eager to lend him any help, and when they weren’t eager to lend him any help, he wasn't eager to keep himself from burying his fist in their face.
She wondered for a moment how he ever maintained a sales business, and then remembered he didn’t.Siobhan hadn’t caused them any trouble, but the giant woman’s presence seemed altogether worse than even Lachlan's nastiest behaviour. It was like being forced to choose between the taming of a wild dog, and being bowled over and mauled to death by a giant, angry fucking bear.Neither invited conversation from strangers.They were on their way back to their inn now, the inn they’d only managed to get rooms in by promising to help the keeper shovel the shit from his barn. All but Siobhan had agreed to it, and yet the woman had insisted on sharing their quarters with them.
“These fucking mainlanders,” Lachlan began. “No manners I tell you.”“Shut the fuck up,” Isla interrupted, sidestepping a carriage and finding her shoe buried in a pile of horse manure. It was warm, Isla wanted to kill it, but last time she’d checked one couldn’t murders pile of manure.
Not unless they wore a Taikan uniform.“Rude.” Lachlan replied, barely even noticing her plight. “What the fuck did I do to get a stick shoved so far up your arse.”What the fuck did you do? What the fuck did you do? How about nothing short of curse, spit and yell at everyone who approached us, how about- “Nothing, you did nothing,” Isla breathed, catching herself.Lachlan was fun to have around, on occasion. But he was still a man, and you could teach an ape as many tricks and flips as you wanted, but its natural instinct would always be to roll around and spit on everything.
My fault for being in the splash zone.Isla could only pray the pair of kids had made more progress.
They could hardly have made less.
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Isla didn’t find the pair in their room, and she briefly entertained the idea that maybe they had fled after all. Ethi had her decided against it. Perhaps Cut might have, but the girl’s cat was still there, chewing on a piece of bone and eying Isla the way cats tended to eye anything but their food.
The answer came soon enough as the innkeeper informed her that her sharp faced friend was in the barn.
Isla had decided not to visit the place until she absolutely needed to in fear of it smelling like shit. A single inhalation within its vicinity vindicated the choice. It was a small structure, once painted scarlet from the looks, of it but now reflected only in shades of pink.
A chicken ran past them and Lachlan kicked it, looked at Isla as if for recognition then let his face fall as she gave him none.
Isla opened the barn’s door to much protest from the structure. It creaked, groaned and cried in a cacophony of pitches before ultimately revealing the contents within its walls. Ethi, Cut and a red man.
The man was on the floor, gift wrapped in a tangle of ropes, whoever had done it certainly knew exactly how to restrain a male of his size. Just behind his glaring eyes hid fear and intellect, like cornered prey getting the measure of its predator. If that was the case, then from where his eyes settled it seemed Isla would be playing the predator in question’s role.
“So,” She began. “What is it we have here?”
“He knows about our mark,” Cut revealed. The girl looked like the Eclipse had eaten her, and a brief glance to the pile of muscle and testosterone lying bound by her feet told Isla why.
“I found him by the bar.” Ethi added, perhaps a step too eagerly. Curious. She’s trying to impress me, cute.
“Good job you two.” Isla praised. Ethi near beamed at her words while her friend seemed completely immune to them. The smarter one.
Isla’s eyes fell on the man. “Now, what does he know?”
“Hasn’t spoken a lick since we tied him up.” Cut answered.
“Then we make him speak.” Lachlan grunted, blade already dancing in between his fingers.
“For once the idiot utters sense.” The giant woman didn’t speak much, but when she did it usually preceded action, this time was no different. Siobhan marched towards the man, axe in hand.
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The bearded man’s eyes were wide with fright and Isla was fast in placing herself between them and the approaching giant. “No!” She yelled.
Lachlan stopped instantly, Siobhan didn’t. Isla levelled a pistol at her face and the woman froze, mass halted by danger where it could never have been by force. Her eyes still dared Isla to pull the trigger.
“I said… No.” It was a fight to have her voice remain strong. Would the pistol even work on this one? Fuck, surely it would. Loaded with iron shot, it would.
“Get out of my way.” Siobhan hissed.
Isla almost did, almost, but she had less sense than that. “Ethi, Cut,” She began, not daring to pull her eyes away from the Jhonan. “Run me through everything you know about this man.”There was a brief pause and then the girls began. He was most likely a lumberjack, he had just come back from work when they met him, he began fleeing at the mention of the man’s description.
“One last question,” Isla started. “Did anyone else but him seem to recognize our mark?”
“No.” Ethi replied.
Isla nearly grinned, she loved being right. “That’s because you’re the only one who knows he’s in the city, right?”
The lumberjack kept his lips tight and Siobhan shoved Isla to the ground with one powerful motion. Isla scrambled to her feet before either she or Lachlan could do something stupid.
She moved in front of the man again, glaring at Siobhan. The woman stopped, eyes as dark as the depths themselves. “Next time I won’t stop at pushing you.”
Do you hear that? I’m your only hope of coming out of this with all your limbs attached, you moron. “He tried to sneak in through the woods,” It was the lumberjack who spoke. The room froze at the man’s words, all eyes settled on him for more.
The man’s eyes met the ground, clearly not one for attention. “I found him, bleeding, injured, said they were coming for him, needed a place to rest for a couple of days, he said. I took him to my cabin, that’s all I did.”
“You’re gonna take us to him-” Siobhan growled.
Isla watched the man tense at her words, concern for himself turning to worry for the stranger, then guilt for turning against him. They were dealing with a good man, oh how she hated good men. “The man you helped is Peter Grim, he’s an enemy of the Alliance.” A lie, and one of many she was about to tell, but Isla made sure to deliver it smoothly, showing empathy but strictness enough to let him know of his errors.
The man met her eyes at that, and Isla could feel him quest for lies in her words. She didn’t let him finish before giving him more ground to be searched.
“He arrived with a folder, yes, a document.” Isla said. “Those are Alliance secrets, the fool tried selling it to the Taikan piths in Udrebam. I am afraid, sir, that you were harbouring a traitor to your own people.”
His eyes were wide, like a puppy waiting to be struck by its master. “I… I didn’t know.”
“You couldn’t have.” She said,taking care to be soothing, men were frail creatures, and it was best not to push one too far. “And I don’t blame you, but we need to focus on what we can do now. We need to get to him before he can cause any more harm. Will you help us?”
“I will, I’m sorry, I will.” He whispered, voice filled with regret, deference, and, most powerfully of all, fear.
“Good.” Isla sighed, showing just a glimpse of the relief she truly felt.
Her relief seemed shared with the two girls who relaxed at his words. Lachlan looked indifferent, and Siobhan wore rage on her face like overly thickened paint.
Isla might have predicted the punch, but she could never have dodged it. It had come too fast, slamming into her face and sending her reeling onto the floor. She saw the world burst into an explosion of colours, felt her teeth rattle and tasted blood as iron. It might have been a hammer, not a fist, that caught her cheek.
When the world melted back into view Lachlan stood in between her and Siobhan, The woman loomed high enough above him that Isla could still see her eyes, cold as the winter lands she hailed from.
“Point a weapon at me again and I put you in mud.”Isla spat blood into the dirt and watched her leave. She took solace in the fact that a man would not be tortured under her watch. She wondered, If there was no other option, whether she would have let it happen. Worse: if there was no one else to do it, would she have taken to the dirty work herself? She didn’t know.
And I’ll never need to know.
They were making good progress now, and that was all that mattered.