A really, very long time ago, there had been three cities built across the desert that came to be known as the wastes. The central one was called Haven, and we already know about Haven.

On the western edge of the desert had been a city called Journey. Like Haven, it had been an ambitious construction of thick walls and towering buildings and the guarantee of freedom.

None of that was left.

In its place was a town that some still called Journey, but most called ‘on the way’. Journey had no tall towers, and guarantee of freedom. Slavers were free to come and go, and sell the people they had chained in their caravans if anyone wanted to buy them.

Journey was on the way to the Lord’s House, or it was on the way to Ovek, or it was on the way to Gleth. Or, if you had nothing better to do, and a lot of swords to do it with, it was on the way to Haven and, more importantly, the town that had once been called Security, and was now called Yarkot, where three tall towers still stood and there was an understanding of freedom.

Journey was not on the way to Oszrath. It had not been on the way to Oszrath for nearly eight years, since the Lord’s House had finally managed to expand all the way to the edge of the wastes.

A tall, skinny woman with bloody clothes and the cheapest sword that money could buy was not remarkable in Journey. People forgot her when she wasn’t there, even the merchants in town who she sold her shoddy gear to, from time to time.

Even when she wandered the town wearing a mask that looked very like a bird’s face, people didn’t pay her any mind. Journey was a busy place, after all, and no one could be bothered keeping track of every eccentric wanderer.

‘Ah, Tengu, you’re still alive,’ observed a tavernkeep, who had no reason to think the woman’s name was Tengu.

Tengu cocked her head, very like a bird. ‘So far,’ she agreed.

‘This dried meat of yours sells quite well,’ observed the tavernkeep, casually.

Tengu took the hint and sold him ten kilograms of dried meat for slightly more than she had sold him the previous ten kilograms.

She raised her mask to eat and drink, much to the disappointment of an inebriated man who had bed a colleague that she wouldn’t.

‘Who did you kill this time, Tengu?’ asked the tailor, who had heard the tavernkeep call her that and figured it must be her name.

‘Trade secret, I’m afraid,’ Tengu told him. ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you. And your clothes are far too nice for my taste.’

The tailor couldn’t tell if she was smiling under her mask, but decided that she must be. It didn’t make him feel any better. ‘Well, whoever it is, you just keep killing them. Slavers buy this shitty stuff in bulk, you know?’

The bird-faced mask nodded. The tailor had the strong feeling he’d just made a mistake.

‘Ah good, more scrap,’ said the smith, accepting the bundle of shoddy weapons that Tengu always brought him. The smith, for one, had not decided that Tengu’s name was Tengu. He would be hard pressed to decide it was anything else, though.

‘There’s always so much around, isn’t there?’ Tengu said.

‘Easier than digging it out of the ground, I say,’ the smith did, indeed, say. ‘Cheaper than paying someone to dig it out of the ground.’

‘That’s what I’m here for,’ Tengu said. ‘To make your life easier.’

‘And don’t think I don’t appreciate it.’

The tailor and the smith still saw Tengu in Journey, from time to time, but she didn’t sell them anything from her bulging pack. She just sold dried meat at that same tavern and left again.

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It was the smith who noticed Tengu’s new sword. He had failed to notice the previous upgrade, but he could not fail to notice the hand-crafted texture of the curved sword on the bird-faced woman’s back. Somehow, that seemed unfair.

Caravans without slaves were not unheard of in Journey, but they weren’t so common. Journey was really only on the way to places where slaves could be bought and sold.

The tailor spotted Tengu talking to several of the caravan workers and pulling a shirt out of her pack to show them. They chuckled. The tailor felt left out. So, when Tengu had gone on about her business, he meandered over to the caravan.

‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what was Tengu talking to you about earlier?’ asked the tailor.

‘Tengu? Oh, the bird-faced woman? Nothing important,’ said one of the caravan workers.

The tailor’s disappointment must have shown on his face.

‘Just that soon she’ll run out of free clothes,’ said another one of the caravan workers. ‘If she keeps killing all the raiders in the wastes.’

‘We’ll be out of a job if she keeps killing the raiders in the wastes,’ said a third caravan worker. ‘Idiots won’t need so many swords to cross to Yarkot.’

The tailor thanked the caravan workers for their time and wandered back to his shop. So it wasn’t that she didn’t have anything to sell to him. What mistake had he made? Was it telling her who he sold the clothes to? Was she selling them direct to the caravans and cutting him out?

Somehow, that seemed unfair.

‘Still selling well?’ Tengu asked, putting a rawhide sack on the tavern’s counter.

‘Certainly is,’ said the tavernkeep. ‘You must tell me your recipe.’

‘I would have to have a recipe to tell it to you,’ Tengu said, almost certainly smiling under her mask.

‘Ah yes, the classic “whatever I happen to find in the desert”,’ the tavernkeep smiled back. ‘Very much a favourite.’

Tengu wasn’t a fixture of Journey. She was a regular sight at the tavern called Journey Tavern. She was spotted from time to time around the caravanserai, talking to those caravans that weren’t carrying slaves. Every time lamenting that she would run out of free clothes if she killed all the raiders in the wastes.

For slavers and slave traders, there was little point in taking the road across the wastes. They weren’t allowed to enter Haven, they couldn’t sell their goods in Yarkot or Oszrath, not since the war with the Lord’s House.

For caravans selling other goods, the promise of a less dangerous route through the wastes was greatly appealing. It meant they didn’t have to go through Ovek or the Lord’s House to get to Oszrath and Narmen, they could just go through Haven and Yarkot, which were on the way.

Sometimes Tengu would even travel into the wastes with caravans, if her schedule happened to line up. She never seemed to go all the way from Journey to Haven without wandering off into the wastes first.

Tengu had been visiting Journey for just a little more than a year, when a caravan arrived from Altok. To the caravan master’s relief, Tengu wasn’t in Journey at the time. She felt a little embarrassed by the metal and wood, bird-faced masks that hung on the flanks of her camels.

When the tailor asked why she had those masks, the caravan master said they were good luck charms. The tailor had chuckled. No one in the caravan had talked to the tailor for the rest of their two-day stay in Journey.

The caravan master had been a little disappointed that Tengu was not in Haven, either. But at least the shopkeep there didn’t laugh at her masks. He just asked if they had worked.

As far as the caravan master was concerned, they had worked. She hadn’t been attacked by raiders, bandits, or any other ne’er-do-wells in the whole month since the caravan had left Altok.

Eventually, Tengu was in Journey when a caravan covered in images of her mask stopped for supplies before they went into the desert. It had not become common practice, but this was a different caravan coming from Altok.

Tengu said they were giving her too much credit, but it was very nice.

The tavernkeep was highly entertained when he encountered a caravan that had passed through Altok on the way to Journey, and accepted that these bird-faced masks would somehow help in the wastes, but had never met or heard of Tengu.

When told of the encounter, Tengu was insistent that people were giving her far too much credit. She couldn’t come up with anyone else to give credit to, when pressed.

A caravan carrying slaves passed through Journey with bird-faced masks on their camels’ flanks. The survivors of the caravan limped back into Journey four days later with stories of the biggest group of raiders they’d ever heard of.

They were so shocked. They hadn’t been going through the wastes, after all. They’d been bound for Satek, one of the hubs of slave trading in Ovek. They’d never had trouble on this route before.

Somehow, it seemed unfair.

The tavernkeep was not very sympathetic, but he didn’t need to tell them that.

The next slave caravan to leave Wasolan with bird-faced masks hanging from their animals didn’t even make it all the way to Journey. The tavernkeep at the Journey Tavern only heard about them a month later when another caravan, not carrying bird-faced masks, lamented their fate.

The tavernkeep was still not very sympathetic, and he let that be known.

Slave caravans kept on buying Tengu’s dried meat from him. It was the best in town, after all.