Page 26 of Flames and Blood

“Understood,” Meyer says.

“Kent.”

“I heard you.” He shifts. “How long have I been doing this, do you think?”

“Long enough to have been told. Not long enough for me to trust you remember.”

“Fair.”

“And if this runs past first light, all three of us are in the same trouble,” I say. “There’s no shelter on that road. So it doesn’t run past first light.”

He’s quiet for about a mile.

“So,” he finally says. “Since we’ve come this far… What’s in the back of that thing worth all this effort?”

“This the first time you thought to ask?” says Meyer.

“I figured I’d be told if I needed to know. Now, I’m asking.”

“A woman,” I say.

“Any particular woman?” He leans forward again.

I take the next bend and don’t answer him because I don’t have an answer.

“A friend of Lord Val-Serein’s new consort,” says Meyer, who apparently knows more than he’s let on so far. “They were confined together. Formed a friendship.”

“Right.” Kent sits back. “Should’ve known it would be one of the higher-ups. Nobody gets this much attention from Faine without some clout behind it.”

We leave the truck at the tree line and go the rest on foot, in the dark, without a lamp between the three of us. None of us needs one.

The rock underfoot is loose scree. It’s loud if you don’t know how to put your weight down and silent if you do, and all three of us know how. The cold does nothing to any of us, and we cover ground a living man couldn’t. Kent still complains about the gradient the whole way up. I figure it’s out of habit. He can’t have been turned more than a decade ago.

The pass is what I need it to be. Rock walls on both sides. The road narrows to one lane at the tightest part, and there’s a turn in the middle of that narrow stretch with rock standing across the far side of it, so a driver can’t see what’s around it until he’s already in it. Nothing on wheels takes that turn at speed. Everything slows to a crawl to get through.

I walk the whole length of it once, slowly. Kent walks half a step off my shoulder, and where I stop, he stops.

“Here’s how this goes,” I say. “If any part of it doesn’t make sense to either of you, say so now.”

“Go on,” Meyer says.

I put my boot down on the road.

“They come up the grade from below us, in low gear. The transport is a box on wheels with a driver’s cab at the front and a locked compartment at the back. She’s chained inside that back compartment. Two men are riding in there with her.”

“And two more in the cab?”

“Yes, most likely. Nobody drives a load like this alone.”

“So four, like we said before,” Kent says.

“Four that I can account for. Anything past that is a surprise.” I glance from one to the next. “Expect surprises.”

“I love surprises,” says Kent.

“Hate ‘em,” mutters Meyer.

“They can’t see this turn until they’re in it, and by then they’re going at walking pace. That’s where I step into the road. They stop, because there’s nowhere left to go. I take the men in the cab. You two come down off the rock and help me put the rest of them on the ground.”