“What if you were wrong?”

Pressing her lips together, Ferene looked at Linara. The woman had remained silent the whole time, letting Ferene talk. The question came only at the end.

“At the start. A man approached a group, and made an accusation. You believed this man, and started a fight, killing some of the group. What if you had been wrong? What if that man had just been speaking out of anger, and the soldiers had done nothing wrong, yet you still killed them?”

Ferene looked down, into the fire, then at her hands. “I wasn't wrong.” She said, quietly, but she knew. Linara knew.

“What if an evil man were to accuse a good man of a crime, and you attacked and killed him? What if one evil man turned you against his rival, so that he could gain power afterward? What if someone gave you instructions that lead you into a trap, because you'll believe anything you hear?”

Shame. She remembered Tollund, and how she had followed his attack plan without knowing his past. She had been lucky so many times. “I would...” Obviously, she would just fight her way out of any bad situation, but the words died before she could say them. For the last two days, Ferene had been a prisoner, bound and dragged across the countryside. Against trained soldiers she had not been able to fight her way out.

One of them had called her an animal. Maybe she was acting like one.

Linara sighed, getting to her feet. “Let's rest for the night, and figure out what to do with all of this tomorrow. You look exhausted.”

Before Linara's arrival, Ferene had been on the edge of falling asleep despite being held upright. The fight had given her a burst of energy, but it was wearing off now. She nodded.

Curiosity kept Ferene from running.

She woke up first, having fallen asleep in a pile of blankets they had found in the supply wagon. Linara must have taken care of the bodies, because Ferene didn't see them around the campsite. It took her a moment to find Linara, even – the woman set up a hammock between two posts. Ferene considered leaving for a moment, then walked towards her.

Two steps later, the hammock flipped over, dropping Linara to the ground. She rolled, coming to her feet, knife in hand. She saw Ferene and relaxed, turning around and checking on the animals – the two donkeys and the horse had stopped their grazing to turn to their heads and watch.

Linara didn't look any less imposing without her armor. She stretched for a moment, then got dressed as Ferene watched. Linara had succeeded where Ferene had failed. One against five, she stood and fought. There was no doubt in Ferene's mind that even without her intervention, Linara would have won. In the same situation, Ferene's only option had been trying to run away. Looking at her, she didn't see much of a difference between the two of them. Linara was taller, yes, but the length of her arms, the size of her muscles – nothing there would give Linara any advantage. She was just a better fighter.

Linara stopped before putting on her armor, having noticed Ferene staring. The two watched each other for a wordless moment. Ferene remembered the conversation from last night, before Linara had freed her. Whatever training the soldiers had, Linara also had, if she was from the same place. Ferene was sure she could have beaten any one or even two of them at the same time, like she had the first day, but Linara had been even better.

“Um.”

Those green eyes were still staring at her. Linara had not moved, standing next to her hammock, watching Ferene watch her.

“Teach me to fight.”

“No.”

Breathing out, Ferene turned away, walking back over to the wagon. She retrieved her armor and her weapons, then paused to look at all the other supplies. Neatly folded shirts of chainmail, a stack of spears, a pile of boots next to two jackets. Linara must have taken what wasn't ruined off the bodies.

“Not even going to ask why?” A voice asked from behind her.

Ferene stayed silent. She could still feel the shame from last night, when Linara had pointed out how easily what she did could be used against her, or to make things worse.

“Do you know what the most valuable thing they had is?”

The question made Ferene stop, staring at the things in the bed of the wagon. Each individual piece probably wasn't worth much. Her eyes lingered on the pile of armor – food and money stolen from the farmers wasn't going to be as valuable to sell as worked metal. Then she stopped again, considering. Wasn't the most useful item the most valuable?

“Cart.” She said, turning around, but Linara had already walked off. Ferene spotted the other woman standing next to the horse, rubbing the animal's face and...whispering to it. Immediately she felt stupid – of course the horse was the most valuable thing. Something was different about the beast, compared to the ones she'd see on farms they passed. Like the armor, the soldiers had brought it with them when they left, rather than taking it from the people in the independent lands.

Ferene watched as Linara pulled something out of one of her pockets and fed it to the animal. Cautiously, she approached, watching the horse as it brushed its nose against Linara's jacket, possibly searching for more food.

“Olentor takes good care of its soldiers. Or at least it used to. Good soldiers take good care of their horses, and each other.”

“You said you were from Aesuthal.”

Linara sighed, rubbing the horse's neck, then stepping away. “I was born and raised in Aesuthal, the southeastern stronghold. I did my part, and then left. I got a job in Olentor. I was the former prince's instructor, but I knew a lot of the common soldiers as well. I met Niffrem a few times. I didn't ever think I would have to kill him.”

“I killed him.”

Linara looked at her, a strange expression on her face.

“I killed Niffrem. You killed the others.”

She smiled. She laughed. The act seemed so alien to Ferene. What was there to smile about, to laugh about? Linara did it anyway.

“I'm lucky, then. I can say that I didn't kill him myself. I'd hate to have to kill one of the people I trained, even if I didn't know him very well.”

Out of all the people Fenere had met, Linara was the strangest. Something about her was different, and it showed in how she reacted to everything. Ferene watched her as she moved around the camp, collecting the last few things that were out and placing them in the back of the wagon. Her eyes drifted upwards towards the woman's ears. Just like her own, they stood stuck outwards from her head, ending in pointed tips above her shoulders. She looked mostly human, the same way Ferene did, but she acted differently.

“Tell me about Aesuthal.”

Linara stopped, turning to look at Ferene. “It's the Hatharen stronghold on the southeastern border.” She pressed her lips together, her smile gone. The laughter of before seemed so alien to how she spoke of the place. The change happened suddenly, but Ferene almost didn't notice it. This was how people should talk about things.

It seemed wrong for Linara.

The other woman's lack of words seemed to infect Ferene. The amount of things left unsaid annoyed her, pushed at her in unfamiliar ways. “You grew up with Hatharen. What is-”

“I can't tell you.”

The words stopped her like a wall. The questions, the curiosity forming instantly vanished. There was something in Linara's response that made Ferene tense, as if she was readying herself to defend against an attack. Her hands itched, wanting to reach for her sword.

“We may both be half human but you know nothing of the Hatharen and it's best that you keep it that way. Stay away from the border, stay away from the strongholds. Both of us should keep ourselves in human lands and only pay attention to human affairs.”

Ferene nodded. Temporary curiosity was just that. She had other things to do.

What she had to do, it turned out, was drive the wagon.

Luckily, that just meant pulling the brake lever whenever Linara stopped. The two donkeys were content to follow Linara on the horse, pulling the cart down the dirt road as Ferene sat on top of it, leaning back and staring at Linara absently. Doing so little felt wrong to her – she wasn't walking, she wasn't planning her escape from captivity, she was just sitting and waiting. Was this the peaceful life that people yearned for? Trying to think of what to do next left her at a dead end – part of her wanted to stay with Linara, and see what the former soldier did next, possibly try to learn how to fight like she did. The other part of her wanted to run very, very far away from the woman. The way she smiled and laughed and then suddenly became deadly serious was unnerving.

So in short, she didn't have anything to do, and she hated it.

After several hours of this, they arrived at one of the farmhouses on the road. Ferene wasn't sure if this one had been visited by the soldiers, but it was safe to assume so. She pulled the brake lever when Linara raised her hand, and then waited as she got off the horse and approached the house. Two men came out, one brandishing a broom and the other a frying pan. Ferene stayed silent, watching as her companion made a few gestures, spoke a few words, and calmed the situation down. She led the two men to the cart, and they looked over the things in the bed, one of them eyeing Ferene suspiciously.

“My friend up there thinks we should give you all of this and let you give it back to the rightful owners, so that we can be on our way.”

Both of the men looked to Linara, then to Ferene, then at each other.

“You'd just leave it all here, with us, and we'd give it to whoever we feel like?”

Linara smiled at them. “I'd like your word that you will do your best to make sure it's all returned properly. Take it all to market, invite everyone over and have them take what is theirs. I can trust you to do that, can't I? My friend and I have some important business to attend to, but we can't take all of this with us while we do that.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The two of them looked at each other again, both nodding. “You can trust us to do that.”

“Excellent! I'll come back this way after to check up on you.” She stepped away from them and gestured towards Ferene. Hopping down from the wagon, she followed Linara over to the horse.

“You made this suggestion. Tell me, would you have come back to make sure they held up their end of the bargain?”

“No.” Ferene said.

“Then what would stop the person you gave it all to from taking it all for themselves?”

Ferene shrugged, but again she felt the shame.

“You give people opportunities to take advantage of others. You look only for the most obvious wrongs, and solve them by killing the person responsible.”

“If they don't do what you want, will you kill them?”

Her question made Linara pause, again pressing her lips together. “No. If I come back here, and the items haven't been returned properly, I'm going to tell the others what has happened, and let them determine the kind of punishment they want for the people that wronged them.”

Ferene nodded. “What is our other business?”

“Niffrem was taking you somewhere, wasn't he?”

Ferene nodded. He had mentioned something like that, but she hadn't paid much attention to it. Her focus was entirely on escaping and killing him.

“I suspect that there was a person he was bringing you to, and that person will be the kind of very obvious evil that you specialize in removing. You have a reputation for dealing with this kind of situation, and I'd like to help you out with that.”

“Reputation?” Ferene asked, frowning.

“There are some stories, going around, of an orange-haired Hatharen that will kill a certain kind of person. Not a lot of stories, but a few. People seemed to assume I would be interested in hearing about it.” She waved a hand at her ear.

It took a moment for Ferene to understand. First, Tollund had found her, and now Linara. She didn't know if having a reputation was good or a bad thing. She didn't like thinking about what other people thought.

“We find the person and we kill them.” She said,

“That's the goal.” Linara turned, looking back up the road, the way they had come. “Of course, we need to figure out who it is first, and where. I could hope that they planned to follow this road, and take you to the nearest city, and the person will be there, and while that's a lot of assumptions it is the best starting point I can think of.”

Nodding, Ferene looked at the horse again. Linara had put several bags from the wagon onto the beast at the start of the day. “Are we going to take this with us?”

“To the city, at least. He isn't built to carry someone like me around all the time. When we get there, I'll have him taken care of. He isn't made for people like us.”

With a shrug, Ferene started walking along the road, Linara following. Once again, she was stuck with someone that talked too much.

Together, they traveled back along the road, past the camp site where they met, and further beyond. In the independent lands, there were several cities. Annsgrad, where she met Tollund, was far behind her, to the west. As they moved north, towards Cefgras, the farmlands that once lined the sides of the roads became sparser and sparser, soft soil becoming rock-ridden, trees becoming shorter and skeletal. The land looked starved as they traveled further north.

The two of them stopped to rest, finding a few large stones off the side of the road. Linara dismounted and set the animal to graze as Ferene watched. On the road, both of them had stayed silent, content to just keep moving, Ferene walking as Linara rode. Turning to her, Linara smiled. “Do you want first watch?”

“What?”

“Watch. We take turns, keeping watch. Make sure nobody kills us in our sleep. I've decided to trust you to do that. No need to set up traps if one of us can stay awake and look out.”

Ferene shrugged. Sleep always meant the possibility of not waking up. Growing up taught her that – if someone wanted you dead enough, they'd kill you, and you wouldn't be able to stay awake long enough to avoid it. Best ways to avoid that were to not be the person anyone wanted to kill, or to kill anyone who wanted to kill you. Maybe it was different for soldiers. A lot harder to avoid being noticed.

“If you don't have any preference, I'll take first watch, since you've been on your feet all day. Keep an eye on the road, and if you see anyone move towards us, wake me up. Also make sure the horse doesn't wander too far off.” Linara started taking off her armor, laying it on the ground.

Once again, the process mesmerized Ferene. She wore so much more, but it didn't slow down any of her movements while fighting. Between the breastplate, the skirt, the different pieces of leg and shoulder armor, Linara spent the day with more than half of her body encased in metal, but she moved with no more limitations than Ferene, wearing only a few metal pieces strapped on to leather and cloth.

Stripped down to only her underclothes, Linara noticed Ferene staring and raised an eyebrow. “This again? I'm not interested.”

“You won't train me. I know.”

“Train?” Linara looked confused for a moment, then her expression softened. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, and broke into laughter. Ferene frowned in response. Something was funny here, but she didn't know what. The more she tried to understand Linara, the more curious the woman seemed.

“What's so funny?” Ferene finally asked.

Linara stopped laughing, turning to look at Ferene, smiling widely. “I thought you were staring at me so intently because you wanted something...well, something else from me. I didn't realize you were only thinking about how I fight.”

“What else is there?”

“Don't worry about it.”

Ferene shrugged, and turned to look back towards the road. It bothered her, that she had spent her entire life fighting, spent so long thinking only of how to find and kill people, and she was nowhere near as good at fighting as this woman who laughed randomly and said all sorts of things that made no sense. In a lot of ways, it didn't seem fair.

Ferene was very, very used to things not being fair, so that part of it didn't bother her.

The two of them returned to silence the next day, until they arrived at Cefgras. The city sprawled across the rocky ground, without walls or well-defined entrances, the road they were following branching as it curved into the city, dozens of split paths leading into different parts. Linara led the way, dismounting and leading her horse, following one tendril as it expanded into a broad street, single story buildings – every building seemed to be single story, in Cefgras – lining the sides. Ferene followed her, frowning. This part of the city wasn't exactly clean, but it had too much care put into it. The fronts of the wooden structures were coated with a thin layer of reddish dust, but the signs of the shops were brightly painted, the doors in good repair, the large windows showing cleaned rooms inside.

It bothered Ferene. This place felt different. Every construction took up as much space as possible, the city stretching across the barren flat as if to claim it, to bury the landscape underneath the presence of humanity, a presence which overwhelmed everything else. It stood in contrast to the other cities Ferene visited, where buildings cowered, huddling together for safety.

Linara stopped in front of yet another wide, single story building. The center of the structure sat back from the street, but the sides stretched forward like arms, wrapping around a courtyard in the center. As the two of them walked through the arched gateway, a man came jogging forward, offering to take the horse. Ferene frowned as Linara handed the animal off, and followed her inside.

For how massive the place was on the outside, the first room was shockingly small. An older woman sat behind a desk, reading a book by the light from a window in the ceiling. To the sides of the entrance were several cushioned chairs. Ferene stared at them as Linara talked to the woman.

“Lady Linara. Will you be staying here for long?”

“I'm not sure how long my companion and I will be staying.”

“Of course. I can have a set of rooms for you for as long as you need. Fees will be standard at first, but if it gets to be longer than a month you will be charged an increased rate. Shall I send the expense to Olentor?”

“I'm no longer a representative of Olentor, but you can send them the expense anyway. When you do, also send them the horse I came here with. It should more than make up for the cost of the stay.”

Ferene could, just barely, hear the woman's tone shift slightly. She was still staring at the chairs. “I'm not sure a single horse will cover your expenses.”

“It's one of the king's scout animals. It was either stolen or misplaced, depending on how they want to look at it. They will be very happy to have it back.”

The silence that followed was long enough that Ferene turned to look, seeing the woman flipping through several pages in a stack of paper she had, her mouth partially agape. “A, a scout horse, yes, I'm sure that will earn you a lot of good will. The monetary value, though...”

“Charge the crown, and tell them if they have a problem with it, they can hunt me down themselves and I'll pay them back. In the meantime, my rooms.”

“Ah, yes, of course.”

The woman handed over a key, giving Linara directions. Ferene followed her out of the small entrance room, into a long hallway, the slight curve of which prevented her from seeing an end to it in either direction. Linara led her down it, then a branching hallway, likewise curving endlessly into the beyond, and finally to a set of wide double doors. Inserting the key into the lock, she threw them open.

Ferene rarely had a room to herself. She shared one with other children growing up, and after setting out on her own, when she wasn't sleeping on the ground, she stayed in farm lofts, sometimes begged for, sometimes paid for, sometimes stolen because she didn't want to bother waking up the owners. Occasionally she would stay in the cheapest inn a city had.

Never had she even seen a place like this. The cushioned chairs at the building's entrance were nothing like this place. Numerous thick rugs covered the wooden floors, upon which sat plush couches and chairs, low tables with embroidered tablecloths. The walls were covered in stacked bookcases and paintings. The ceiling, once again, had windows set into it, flooding the room with light.

“You can have that bedroom.” Linara said, pointing to a door off to the side, while she stepped towards an identical one in the other direction. “In fact, please use it, and don't follow me. I'm looking forward to getting changed without you staring at me awkwardly the entire time.”

Ferene stared at her as Linara opened the door, stepped through, and closed it behind her. Taking a deep breath, she did the same with her door. The room beyond was smaller than the main room, but no less grand. A massive bed dominated the center, adorned with multiple blankets and pillows. Ferene stared at it for several heartbeats, before hesitantly stepping forward to touch it. Her hand sunk into the softness of it, and she immediately pulled back.

This was wrong.

Linara acted so...unaffected by it all, but Ferene felt her hands twitching. She wanted to grab her sword, to turn and attack whoever was going to jump out of the shadows at her. She didn't belong here, in a place like this, and every extravagant detail of it seemed hostile towards her. Any minute someone was going to show up and cut off her hand for touching the bed. She spun towards the door, eyes locked on it, waiting for it to happen.

It didn't.

Stepping backward, Ferene sat down on the bed, feeling herself sink into it. Had she ever touched something this soft before? She leaned backwards, stretching her arms out to her sides as she lay on her back, the blankets and mattress giving way under her, surrounding her. Ferene's eyes shot open, she twisted, pulling herself to her feet, desperately fleeing from the inanimate object that was trying to swallow her whole. Standing with her back to the door, she stared at the bed.

Staying here was going to be difficult.

Things would be so much simpler if she was in a run-down room, cold seeping through the walls, floorboards creaking under her feet, wrapped in scratchy blankets frayed by use. Alone. This was her fault, for following Linara. Curiosity, that had been her reason. That had gotten her here. She had broken from her routine. Linara wasn't someone she needed to kill, so the woman could have been left alone. If Ferene had just done that, she wouldn't be in this ridiculous situation.

“So, how do we go about doing this?”

Ferene looked at Linara and frowned. She found herself doing that a lot, but this time she was confused not just with her overall approach to life, but the question presented.

“Find person, kill person.”

Linara raised her eyebrows, looked around the common area of their rooms, and held her hands out, palm-up. “Find person?”

Ferene nodded. “Then kill person.”

“So how do we find this person? Just go through the city and ask if any of them are in the business of buying people from army deserters?”

Ferene's frown deepened, and she found herself clenching her jaw. Taking a deep breath, she let it out with a sigh. Focus and thought. She looked at Linara. The woman was out of her armor, wearing a loose-fitting shirt and trousers, sitting on one of the overly stuffed chairs in the room. The clothes made her look odd. She relaxed in the chair, looking nothing like the soldier Ferene had been traveling with.

A soldier.

An idea started forming in Ferene's mind.

“You're a soldier.”

“What?”

“You said you were from the same place those men were. You can be one of them. You're looking for their friend.”

Linara's mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, then closed. She seemed to be thinking instead of talking, for once. Then she smiled.

“I've never been a spy before. That sounds like fun. What will you do?”

“I'm...going to talk to people.”

“You've never been in this city before. Who are you going to talk to?”

Ferene looked around the room once. Linara seemed to fit, somehow. Ferene herself, didn't. “Poor people.”

“Poor people?”

“Victims. Friends and families of victims.” Tollund's face flashed through her memory. “Someone who knows who in this city needs to die.”

“You're just going to kill whoever the poor people tell you to?”

Ferene nodded, picked up her sword, and stepped towards the door. “Wait.” Linara said, standing up. Ferene turned to look at her as she crossed the room, pulling a cloak out of a closet. Rich rooms apparently came stocked with all sorts of things.

“Put this on, and keep the hood up. Don't let anyone see your ears.”

Ferene took it as it was offered, but stared at Linara questioningly.

“People notice your ears. I tracked you down from talking to people that remembered you. This time, don't let them remember you. Find out what you need and then come back here, and wait for me. I have an idea. We can do this together.”