A Simple Escort

Thirteen Years Later

I had chosen the table in the corner for a reason.

Marek ruined it by carrying over some cards. Tessa followed with two cups and the expression of someone who had already decided that my opinion was irrelevant.

“I said I was sitting alone.”

Marek pulled out the chair opposite me. His sleeves were rolled past his forearms, and dark-brown hair had fallen far enough across his forehead that he kept pushing it back between his fingers.

“You are. We’re just sitting with you.”

“That is a disturbing interpretation of the word alone.”

He dealt anyway.

Tessa dropped into the remaining chair, the ends of her crimson bob shifting against her jaw as she pushed one cup towards Marek. She was built more like someone who should have been carrying a shield than cards, which had never stopped her from treating both with the same sort of confidence.

Strangers were easier.

Empty canvases.

By the third hand, I knew Marek was bluffing before he touched his cards. His thumb brushed the table whenever he lied, blue eyes dropping towards the wood, while Tessa’s brown gaze wandered towards the bar whenever she had something worth hiding.

I knew both.

Annoyingly.

“Carnage is cheating again,” Tessa teased.

“Observing isn’t cheating.”

“That sounds exactly like something a cheat would say.”

“Then stop making it so easy.”

Gideon crossed the room and dropped a folded request on top of the card I was about to play.

“Western Gate. Merchant with one carriage. Escort him across the city to an inn near the Eastern Gate.”

I unfolded it.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Why me?”

Gideon glanced around the table.

“Because everyone else I trust is drunk.”

Several cups rose in acknowledgement.

“And,” he added, looking back at me. “You could use a job where nobody is expected to bleed.”

“How thoughtful.”

“One day you’ll realise that wasn’t an insult.”

I stood and reached for the sword resting against the wall.

“Try not to become sentimental while I’m gone.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just make sure you come back before Marek loses all of his money,” Tessa replied.

By the time I reached the Western Gate, the sun was already setting behind the nearby buildings. The merchant was easy to find: one carriage, several crates and a man in his forties with a short brown beard checking the same strap for the second time.

Not all the straps.

Just that one.

Either that crate mattered, or he had developed a personal dislike for the knot. His eyes moved towards me, then dropped to the sword resting against my hip.

“So you’re the mercenary they sent?”

“It would seem that way.”

He gave me a strange look.

“I was expecting someone a bit older.”

“You’re not the first to say that.”

“Boss trusts ya?”

“Enough to make this your problem.”

The merchant considered that before shrugging.

“Good enough for me.”

He tightened the strap once more and dusted his hands against his coat.

“So, kid, ya got a name?”

“Leon.”

“Leon, huh?”

He held out a hand.

“My name’s Gareth. Nice ta meet ya.”

I looked at his hand before taking it.

“Likewise.”

Gareth treated the silence afterwards as though it had personally offended him.

I let it.

By tomorrow, he would become somebody I had met once and only once.

“Right then. Inn’s near the Eastern Gate. Shouldn’t take too long if the market hasn’t decided ta swallow the whole road again.”

“What are you carrying?”

“Cloth, dried spices, two boxes of glassware and one crate I was specifically told not ta drop.”

I glanced at the strap he had checked three times.

“What’s in that one?”

“No idea.”

“Convenient.”

“I find life’s easier when I don’t ask questions.”

I believed him.

Men who lied usually worked harder at it.

The route stayed inside the capital, cutting east through the streets that grew busier the further we moved away from the gate. Evening vendors opened lamps beneath their awnings while children ran between adults with the confidence of people who had never been hit by a carriage.

Imperial patrols moved through the same crowds in pairs, and people stepped aside for them without being told to do so.

I noticed the movement before the armour now.

A fresh notice with the Imperial crest had been pasted on a wall beside a cooper’s shop. It warned that those sheltering members of Liberty, a local group accused of treason, would be punished accordingly, with House Valemont named as a reminder of what happened to those who turned against the Crown.

The ink was new. The lie was not.

Gareth was telling me about a horse that refused to cross bridges and had once turned an entire cart around rather than setting a hoof on the crossing. I kept walking before he could notice where I was looking.

“Ya always this cheerful?”

“Usually I charge extra.”

He laughed.

“Guildmaster said ya were quiet.”

“He talks too much.”

“Funny. He said you’d say that.”

Gareth grinned and flicked the reins lightly.

The escort passed without trouble. A pair of boys followed the carriage for several streets until I looked at them, at which point they remembered they needed to be somewhere else.

Gareth watched them leave.

“That stare part of the service?”

“No extra charge this time.”

“Well, aren’t ya generous.”

Clouds had been gathering above the older eastern district by the time we reached the inn. Gareth guided the carriage into the yard while two workers came out to unload it.

“That was easier than usual,” he said.

“Were you expecting trouble?”

“I’m a merchant. I’m always expecting trouble. Makes the peaceful days feel profitable.”

The job was technically finished once the innkeeper signed the request, but Gareth refused to let me leave before eating.

“Ya walked across half the capital next ta my cart. Least I can do is buy ya something.”

“The guild pays me.”

“The guild isn’t buyin’ ya dinner.”

“I’m not hungry.”

The words had barely left my mouth when my stomach growled.

“Thought so.”

Betrayed by my own body.

Excellent.

I had heard this argument often enough to know resisting would only make dinner take longer.

We sat near the front window while the street outside darkened beneath the clouds. I took the chair facing the door without thinking about it. Gareth noticed, but to his credit, said nothing.

He spent most of the meal explaining which inns watered their ale and how somebody west of the capital had somehow trained a goat to steal hats.

The goat story was becoming interesting, which felt like a personal failure.

Then Gareth asked the first question I had been hoping he wouldn’t.

“So what d’you do when you’re not workin’?”

“Find more work.”

“That’s depressing.”

“You’re the one who asked.”

Gareth tore a piece of bread in half.

“Friends?”

“At the guild.”

“Family?”

My spoon stopped against the bowl, and Gareth noticed immediately.

“Forget I asked.”

He didn’t apologise.

I started eating again, appreciating that Gareth had left the question on the table and not picked it back up.

After a while, he looked out of the window.

“Ya spend an awful lot of time somewhere else for a man sittin’ right here.”

I stayed quiet.

Gareth waited a moment, then returned to the goat.

When the meal was finished, I stood and fastened my sword belt properly.

“Thanks for the meal.”

The words came out before I had decided to say them.

Gareth smiled.

“Any time, kid.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I had thanked someone for feeding me.

Outside, the air had turned cold and heavy with the promise of rain. The market near the Eastern Gate was still busy enough that returning to the guild immediately meant forcing my way through several streets of people and carts, so I decided to wait.

I walked without much purpose until someone passed between two stalls ahead of me.

Black cloak.

My feet stopped.

The man turned slightly while moving through the crowd, and something near his collar caught the light from a nearby lantern.

A piece of silver.