AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The next time Mat accused me of failing to grasp the subtlety of his accentwhile I was mocking the odd way he pronounced his Rs and Us, I was going to remind him of this moment.
“But it seems to me,” the man offered, “that these two ain’t gonna get very far if that truly is their destination. Assuming they’re planning to take Cašran Pass like a coupla idiots.”
“What’s wrong with the Pass?” I asked. As far as I knew, that was the only way across the mountain range that divided Temar from Mazekhstam, other than travelling the hundreds of miles to the northern reaches of the continent where the Tungsten mountains devolved into glaciers and ice floes.
“What’s wrong with the Pass,” they both parroted, incredulity infecting their voices as they laughed again like I’d made an excellent joke. I wished I could raise my head to see if their expressions were truly as scornful as they sounded.
“Nothing’swrongwith it if you’re an honest man-”
“-or woman.”
“Or woman, thank you Milady, who’s making an honest living in an honest world.”
“Which none of us are, Milord.”
“‘Specially not these two, what with them taking such a circuitous route north through Paluk and that one hiding his face. Anyone mighta think they have something to hide, Milady.”
“Enough with the bullshit,” Mathias snapped. “You’re saying the Pass is watched?”
“Oh aye,” the man said. “Cašran Pass is locked down tighter than a whore’s pussy. If you haven’t paid for it, of course,” he added, “cos once you have, it’s not tight at all-”
“We get it,” Mat interrupted hastily.
“I don’t,” I said, grinning under my hood. “Explain it to me some more. Be as graphic as possible so that I can properly understand.”
“Well see, it’s like when you getta on her back-”
“There’s checkpoints, see?” the woman said. “Two or three on either side, so you ain’t getting through with a mere bribe. Everything you ‘ave is searched, and if they dunna like the look of ya…”
“Fuck,” Mat said, stamping his feet to keep warm. I felt the vibrations through my own boots.
Someone clicked their tongue. “Hey now, it ain’t all that bad. It just so happens that me and Milady here know another way into Mazekhstam yonder…”
“Of course you do,” I muttered. “How convenient.”
“It’s our job, remember? Lord and Lady of safe transportation through these parts.” Milady dipped into a deep, flourishing bow, her eyes flickering up under my hood with sly intent, and I turned my head away before she could catch sight of my face. “Whether that’s the horizontal kind of transportation like this bridge-” She straightened and tapped her own boots on the boards.
“Or the vertical kind like the ravine,” the man remarked snidely.
“-or the higgly piggly kind like getting over them mountains, we’re your people. People who get their goods across to the west in a more efficient manner than going up all the way to the Pass, see?”
We did see.
“Three gold,” my lover said unexpectedly. “Get us there safely and don’t ask questions, and you can have the same again.”
“Mathias!” I hissed, shocked. “No. We’re just going to take their word for it about the Pass being checkpointed?”
“It makes sense,” he said.
It did. Less than fifty years ago the northern countries had still been at war with each other, and a gap in the mountains that would lead an army directly from Temar’s capital to Mazekhstam’s – or vice versa – was hardly going to go unmonitored. But this…not only would six gold drain the last of what we had, but we’d be fucking stupid to put our lives in the hands of two strangers who had already proven they weren’t above robbing innocent travellers.
They didn’t need the promise of half payment on arrival to incentivise them when they could just take it from our corpses, did they?
“No.”
“Yes,” he retorted. Stubborn,stupid,fucking brat. “Deal, Milady, Milord?”
“Deal, friend.”
