Chương 123: 50-2. Day of Departure

Once the convoy cleared the city gates, the capital's carefully maintained performance of dignity fell away piece by piece behind us. First the cobblestones narrowed. Then the walls of the residential districts retreated on either side. Finally, even the flags on the gatehouse towers—the ones that loved to perform authority in the slightest wind—disappeared from view.

The moment the carriages hit the outer road, the sound of wheels on ground changed: no longer the measured, self-important clatter of city streets, but something more honest—an irregular jolt that seemed to be making a point. From here on, it said, no one is paving this for you. I sat in the carriage interior, back against the wall. Alvira across from me. Jessi to my right. Matthews to my left front. By standard protocol, most of the escort should have been outside on horseback managing the flanks.

Matthews, however, had insisted on riding in the carriage for the first leg. His exact reasoning:"First day out, your head is still full of the capital. If something happens, I'm not confident your first instinct will be to draw a weapon rather than worry about etiquette." Unpleasant to hear. More unpleasant: I couldn't argue with it. The carriage was quiet at first.

Not the comfortable kind of quiet—the kind where everyone present understood this journey could kill them, and opening their mouths felt like wasting oxygen. Alvira was bent over a simplified southern route map, the stack of thin booklets from last night pressed under her knee. Matthews had his eyes closed against the door, like an old stone that had learned to breathe on its own. The exception, as always, was Jessi. She was constitutionally incompatible with silence.

She spent a while hanging out the window watching the road, then turned back and stared at me for two beats, and finally gave in.

"Young master—oh, I mean, Lord Cedric." I answered with my eyes closed.

"If you have something to say, say it. Stop announcing my name like it's an obituary."

"I was just thinking," she said, propping her chin on her hand with every appearance of genuine philosophical reflection, "that right now you look very much like a bride being sent to a distant political marriage." I opened my eyes and looked at her.

"Would you like to be the first one I throw off this carriage?"

"Depends whether you're throwing me or the dowry." Alvira didn't look up from her map.

"Throw her first. It'll be quieter."

"Miss Alvira," Jessi said, visibly wounded.

"That's not very team-spirited."

"Team spirit requires you to qualify as a person first." I nearly laughed. Good enough. We'd been out of the city for an hour and nobody had stabbed anyone over a difference of values. For a diplomatic delegation, that probably qualified as a favorable omen. Matthews opened his eyes.

"You can bicker," he said, in the unhurried tone of a man who had seen worse.

"Finish listening first." The carriage settled down noticeably. Even Jessi drew her feet in. Matthews knocked twice on the carriage floor, as if setting a tempo for the whole vehicle.

"From this point on, remember the following. First: this delegation appears to travel as a unit. It does not. From the second horse exchange point onward, the carriages, cargo, and personnel will be split. The things that actually matter will not remain in the same vehicle." He looked at me.

"That includes you." I frowned.

"I count as cargo?" Matthews was entirely untroubled.

"What would you prefer to be classified as?" I had no answer for that. Jessi laughed without mercy. Matthews continued.

"Second: anyone who approaches with unsolicited friendliness along the route should be treated as a problem by default. This includes local officials, relay station managers, southern traveling merchants, nobles who claim to be lost, and anyone who is too attractive." Alvira finally looked up.

"That last one—you added that yourself?"

"No," Matthews said.

"Experience." I glanced at Alvira involuntarily. She happened to be looking at me at the same moment. Then, very coolly: "If that rule makes you think of someone specific, it means it applies to you in particular." I moved my gaze to the middle distance with considerable haste. Duly noted. Deeply appreciated. Matthews ignored us both and continued.

"Third: before tonight, you don't meet with anyone alone. If a meeting is unavoidable, bring two people minimum. Jessi watches mouths. Alvira watches hands. I watch whoever looks like they're calculating where to dig."

"Very thorough division of labor," I said.

"You die easily," he replied. There was a particular virtue to the way this man spoke—he never took the scenic route. Unpleasant to hear, certainly. But extremely efficient in terms of comprehension. I leaned back and pressed my fingers against my temple. Everything from before we cleared the gates was still circling—the King's raised glass, Victoria's warnings, the chain and silver seal Olivia had tucked inside my coat. I had assumed that once I actually got in the carriage, I'd finally be able to breathe.

Instead, it was becoming clear that not only would that breath not come—I was going to have to learn how to keep moving while pretending I didn't need it. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Jessi watched me for a moment, her tone adopting a rare note of seriousness.

"Are you finally starting to realize this isn't a pleasure excursion?"

"I stopped thinking of it that way last night," I said quietly.

"Last night doesn't count." She shook her head.

"Last night you were still inside the capital. Within those walls, even the most absurd orders get dressed up by lamplight and architecture until they seem almost reasonable. Out here it's different. Out here, every road, every relay station, every fresh horse, even every bowl of soup someone sets in front of you—any of it could be the thing that kills you." I looked at her, tempted to point out that she sounded exactly like someone who had grown up surviving precisely that way. Then I remembered she probably had.

If someone like Jessi had been born somewhere peaceful, she'd have ended up as nothing more than a maid with a particularly vicious tongue. The fact that she'd survived to become whatever she was now proved she'd stepped in more traps than I'd seen dinner tables. Alvira closed the thin booklet in her hands and spoke without inflection.

"Matthews covered the outside threats. Now we discuss the inside ones."

"Inside?"

"The delegation itself," she said, meeting my eyes.

"Your most immediate danger right now isn't necessarily external. It could be internal." I paused.

"You mean the deputy envoy? The quartermaster? The escorts?"

"All of them," she said without hesitation.

"The deputy is too rigid. The quartermaster is too sharp. The escorts are too numerous. The scribes are too mixed. A formation like this breeds exactly one type of person—" Jessi finished the thought with a knife-thin smile.

"The type who realizes that selling off small pieces of you makes their own job considerably easier." The carriage went completely silent. Outside, hooves still clattered, wheels still rattled. But something much colder had just settled in my chest. It wasn't that I hadn't considered the possibility. It was that considering it and hearing it spoken aloud were entirely different experiences. I looked down at my bandaged hand.

The wound in my palm still throbbed faintly through the wrapping—not severe, but persistent enough to serve as a reminder: this life of mine wasn't just something others wanted to use. It was something they might want to borrow pieces of and sell for a better price. I was about to respond when something pulsed faintly against my chest. Like a heartbeat. But not mine. I froze. Alvira noticed first, her gaze dropping to my coat.

"The amulet?" I nodded and reached inside my collar to draw out the deep blue crystal. Its surface glowed with faint light, as if someone had tapped it gently from a great distance. Jessi's eyes lit up immediately. She leaned in at once.

"Oh-ho—here we go, the lo—" I pushed her forehead back with my free hand.

"Not a word." Matthews had already, with practiced discretion, redirected his attention entirely elsewhere, apparently having zero interest in young people's long-distance entanglements. Alvira remained silent, though the tips of her ears had gone conspicuously taut. I cleared my throat and, following Olivia's morning instructions, channeled a thread of mana into the crystal while thinking her name. A moment later, her voice actually came through.

"... Cedric. Can you hear me?" The voice was unreasonably close—not like someone speaking from across the capital, but like she was sitting beside me, pressing words directly into the bone behind my ear. It took me a moment to adjust.

"I hear you," I said quietly.

"What's wrong?" A brief pause on her end, as if confirming the connection held. Then her voice returned—softer than usual, and faster.

"Less than a quarter hour after you cleared the gates, two groups pulled the departure records," she said.

"One from Imperial Household—legitimate cover. The other gave no identification, but their inquiry was far more thorough." My fingers tightened around the crystal.

"Thorough how?"

"Carriage count, horse count, official escort configuration, and which specific carriage you're occupying." She paused.

"In other words, you haven't even completed your first leg, and someone is already mapping exactly how to disassemble your formation." No one in the carriage made a sound. Even Jessi had dropped her spectator's grin. I let out a slow breath.

"Understood." Silence on Olivia's end for a moment. Then she added:"And don't trust the first person who offers you a drink today." I managed a dry smile.

"Why is everyone in my life obsessed with alcohol metaphors?"

"Because alcohol is cheap," she said, "and people are expensive. Especially you, right now."... That was devastatingly like her. Even transmitting through a glowing crystal, she could still land a perfect strike against the ribs and then maintain complete plausible deniability as a messenger.

"Noted," I said quietly. The crystal went quiet for a beat. Then her voice dropped even lower—an attempt at privacy, though she knew perfectly well there were very few deaf people in this carriage.

"Stay safe on the road." My throat moved once.

"You too," I managed. The light in the crystal slowly faded. The carriage held its silence for several long beats. Finally, Jessi released the breath she'd been holding.

"Honestly," she sighed with theatrical appreciation.

"Wealth truly is wonderful. Even romance can be conducted across dozens of miles."

"She was conveying intelligence," I said.

"I know," Jessi agreed cheerfully.

"But that last line wasn't exactly official correspondence, was it?" I decided to ignore her entirely. Alvira was faster, her voice cold as freshly ground steel.

"That last line isn't the point." Jessi blinked.

"Then what is?"

"The point," Alvira said, staring at the darkened crystal in my hand, "is that we barely cleared the gates before someone started cross-referencing our formation. That means one of two things: either someone in the capital wants more than a progress report, or someone in the South already has people waiting for our route." Matthews opened his eyes.

"Either way, it's trouble." He lifted the curtain a fraction, glanced outside, and rapped his knuckles against the carriage wall. Someone responded immediately from outside.

"Rotation," Matthews said curtly.

"Second formation." Sharp acknowledgments echoed back, followed by the sound of hooves and wheels reshuffling. The convoy didn't stop, but reshaped itself fluidly in motion. The vanguard and rearguard riders exchanged positions. The distance between the rear carriages widened. Listening to those changes through the curtain, I felt something cold that had nothing to do with the wind. Because for the first time, I saw clearly what a delegation actually was. Not a grand diplomatic procession.

It was something closer to a living organism in transit—perpetually ready to disassemble and reassemble itself in response to watching eyes, hidden blades, or winds that shifted without warning. And I was the heart of that organism. Not necessarily the strongest part. But certainly the most valuable. Matthews lowered the curtain and looked at me.

"From now on, treat every rotation, every stop, and every person who approaches you as having a reason," he said.

"An envoy doesn't travel. An envoy passes through a sieve. At every station, something falls through. Make sure it isn't your head."

"Do you have to be quite so graphic?"

"Otherwise you won't remember." I fell silent. Honestly, I had assumed the hardest part of this mission would come after we entered the South—the negotiations, ceasefires, port routes, the Yanxia Empire. I was wrong. The real difficulty had started the moment the wheels left the capital. Just reaching the South's front door meant crossing an entire road paved with watching eyes, calculated interests, and people whose allegiances were entirely unknown.

Jessi must have read something in my expression, because she reined in her usual sharpness and leaned closer, lowering her voice.

"Now do you understand why I said traveling alone would get you killed in spectacular fashion?" I looked at her.

"Right now, I'm more interested in how you manage to console and insult someone in the exact same breath."

"Natural talent," she said modestly. I couldn't help laughing—short and dry, but enough to loosen something that had been wound tight in my chest since morning. Alvira watched me for a moment, then suddenly tossed the southern booklet into my lap. I caught it with both hands.

"What's this for?"

"Start memorizing," she said flatly.

"Better to give your brain something productive than let it feed on anxiety."

"Someone just confirmed from fifty miles away that people are tracking my convoy, and your solution is homework?"

"Yes."

"You're an elf, not an academy instructor."

"If I were an academy instructor, you'd already have a ruler across your knuckles." Jessi contributed cheerfully from the sideline: "What Miss Alvira means is, instead of being afraid, you might as well make yourself useful first." I looked down at the booklet, then touched the now-quiet crystal through my coat, and realized this was exactly what the journey ahead would be. The Southern Dragon Kingdom waiting ahead. The capital's hands reaching from behind.

And beside me, a team that would laugh at me, berate me, assign me reading, and—when necessary—drag me out of whatever pit I fell into. Plus an amulet that would glow at critical moments, reminding me: someone far away was watching, people nearby were watching, and I really needed to not die too quickly. I opened the booklet to the first page and quietly read through a string of place names so convoluted they seemed designed to humiliate the reader. The carriage swayed. The wind outside grew louder.

The capital had disappeared entirely. And only now did I finally understand— Everything from the study last night, the breakfast table, even the city gates—all of it had only been preparation. The real danger wasn't in the South. It was on the road.