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The woman raised an eyebrow. “How much?”
“Uh, hold on.” Raven strode back toward me. “Jeddak, you need to pay this womannow,” she demanded in a harsh whisper.
“Absolutely not,” I said. Anger sizzled in my chest. I refused to accept help from a Terran. There must be someone else going to Ibenswick or to a town nearby. Except, without any year-round markets to the west, only Terrans would be traveling that way to reach their city of Jetan—the city they stole from the Kovaks.
“I’m not going to risk being caught by the Rathalans because you have some irrational hatred of the Terran tribe,” Raven said, poking my chest. “So, I’m going—with or without you.”
My jaw twitched, but I didn’t respond.
“Fine. Then I’ll meet you in Ibenswick,” she said.
Skies, this was not how I envisioned my plan working.
Above us, the moon was already waning, quickly counting down the days until Lila’s death. It was taking immense controlnot to ditch the niceties and threaten one of the other travelers to give us a ride if they didn’t want to become Kah’s next meal. But the handful of End Guards pacing the plaza forced me to play nice.
I glanced over to Kah, waiting at the edge of the plaza. He shrugged as if to say,Do you want to save Lila or not?
“Raven, wait,” I said, stepping toward her. I looked at the Terran woman, setting my jaw. “I’ll pay you one silver now and one jader when we arrive in Ibenswick. It’ll just be the two of us in the wagon. My bear will walk alongside.”
The woman inspected us in the lantern light, her gaze lingering on the fading bruises on Raven’s neck. “Two silver pieces, three jaders. All up front.”
“That’s robbery,” I said.
The woman didn’t blink. She obviously wasn’t fond of Kovaks either.
“Deal,” Raven said.
With a frustrated sigh, I placed the money in the woman’s palm. She pocketed it without a word and turned away to prepare her wagon. “Thief,” I mumbled under my breath.
Raven shot me a look.
The woman called back to us. “I’ll take you to Ibenswick but no farther. We leave at sunrise. Be ready.”
The strong windsat dawn whispered warnings of danger on the horizon. Two different Annundu Wolves nodded farewell to us as we rolled out of the northern gate. I barely noticed. My attention was on the dense conifer forest surrounding us, and what might be hiding in it.
We learned the Terran woman’s name was Merrin, and she was traveling with her wife, Tama, and their seven-year-old nephew. Too many people for one small wagon, if you asked me. Raven and I sat up front with Merrin, and Kah walked alongside. We moved swiftly as the sky brightened from gray to blush. The smell of evergreen permeated the cold morning air.
There was no sign of the Rathalans. Maybe the commander had given up the hunt. Though the tight feeling in my gut told me we weren’t that lucky. Merrin patted the knife she had strapped to the side of her seat. She must have felt the tension in the air too, though she didn’t appear to be a stranger to the long, trying roads that stretched between the many marketplaces of Eastlandra. There were no walls, Wolves, or End Guards to protect us out here.
For a while, we traveled in sight of several other wagons that had left the marketplace at the same time until one by one, they turned east toward other destinations. Soon, our wagon was the only one left rattling along the northern road.
“Is that your bear?” the little boy asked me, breaking the blissful silence that had fallen upon our group.
“He’s notmybear.”
The boy seemed to ponder this. “Can he talk?”
“If he wants to,” I said, not taking my eyes from the road ahead.
“Are you a Kovak?”
“Yes.”
“My aunts say not to talk to Kovaks.”
Merrin’s mouth curved into a smug smile, not bothering to correct her nephew one bit.
“She’s right,” I said, my tone stony. “You shouldn’t.” For a moment, I considered lecturing him on the real reason the Kovaks and Terrans loathed each other. Because I’m sure he’d been told a bucket of lies.
