Chương 72: 30-1.Parlay

Thanks to Olivia and everyone else's collective stubbornness, we had somehow managed to cross the halfway point of our thousand-kilometer journey. It hadn't been without incident. Axles had cracked. Horses had thrown fits. The water supply had come within a hair's breadth of running dry. And Jessi's mouth had spent every single day stress-testing the outer limits of what human civilization was prepared to tolerate. But if I had to summarize it all in one phrase: more scares than scars.

On the long roads of the Northern Reaches, that already counted as the gods personally setting aside their dignity to bow in your honor. The wagons kept rolling south. After leaving Moba Town, the terrain had been getting steadily drier. Snow was still present, but it no longer buried the landscape in that suffocating corpse-white mask the way it did further north. Out here, it clung in scattered patches to rock faces and shadowed hollows, like old wounds that hadn't quite finished scabbing over.

The wind had lost that wet, cutting cold that could shave your ears clean off. What replaced it was something drier and harder—a chill that didn't bite so much as press. The Harvi Desert lay ahead. Not that anyone called it a desert anymore. The golden expanse of dead sea that appeared on old maps had long since become compacted earth, broken rock, and vast stretches of wind-polished glass ground.

But the name had stayed, the way names tend to stay long after the thing they described has ceased to exist—stubborn little ghosts that refuse to lie down properly. I sat up front with the reins, staring at the pale ancient road ahead. The mountain walls on either side were narrowing, closing in like a mouth slowly closing. Matthews sat beside me, watching the road, and spoke quietly.

"Young mas—Cedric." He caught himself mid-word, finally remembering that I'd been objecting to that particular form of address for the entire journey. I glanced sideways at him.

"You almost said it again, didn't you."

"Force of habit." The old soldier was entirely unapologetic.

"Harder to change than correcting your shield grip."

"That is genuinely not the reassurance you think it is." Matthews appeared not to hear this, his gaze staying on the road ahead.

"Winter's the right season for this stretch," he said.

"At least you won't cook alive. Two more gorges after this and we hit the biggest city before the capital—Angel's Gate."

"Angel's Gate." I turned the name over, frowning.

"What are those two gorges called again?" Before Matthews could answer, Jessi leaned in from the side with the enthusiasm of someone who had been waiting for exactly this opening.

"Terror Gorge and Death Gorge." Two seconds of silence.

"... Remarkably creative."

"Right?" Jessi looked genuinely pleased.

"Whoever named them must have been an honest person."

"No. That's what naming looks like when someone's given up trying." I stared out at the pale, desiccated landscape ahead and felt my confidence in the regional naming conventions quietly erode. The Harvi Desert, then Terror Gorge, then Death Gorge, and now Angel's Gate. That sequence read like a drunk bard had been handed three completely incompatible stories and told to copy them all onto the same piece of parchment. Matthews, for his part, remained unmoved.

"The names are ugly. The road itself isn't bad. The gorges aren't the problem."

"Then what is?" I asked. Jessi jumped in immediately, grinning in a way that suggested she'd been holding this one in reserve.

"I'm more worried about the young master getting distracted in Angel's Gate." I looked at her.

"Why?" That habitual loose, mischievous energy around her mouth faded, just slightly.

"Because it's... essentially lawless," she said. I raised an eyebrow.

"Lawless?"

"The polite term is 'free border city.'" Jessi shrugged.

"The honest term is a place everyone knows about, nobody bothers to actually govern, and the constables show up just often enough to remind people that technically, yes, there are laws here."

"Technically," I repeated.

"Technically." She looked ahead, and for once didn't immediately follow it with something designed to embarrass me.

"That place has caravans, mercenaries, refugees, wanted men, people doing dirty work for nobles, idiots from the capital looking for a thrill, and various other things you'd be strongly tempted to pretend you hadn't seen. Bring enough coin and enough steel, and most rules become negotiable." Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Matthews flicked the reins once—his version of endorsing everything she'd just said.

"We're too conspicuous." That was the real point. I looked back over my shoulder. Two wagons. One covered wagon. One double-decker feed wagon. Inside: an elf, a princess, a young noblewoman, and a mage who was technically still alive through a combination of chocolate and sheer stubbornness. Add in our equipment, the condition of the horses, and that general quality of we've had a rough journey but we're still worth considerably more than your average caravan— In an ordinary town, that was merely eye-catching.

In a place where everyone made their living by smelling money, it wasn't eye-catching. It was a sign hung around our necks that read: welcome, please rob us. I exhaled.

"So what you're telling me is that after surviving half this journey by the skin of our teeth, we now have to figure out how to make ourselves look like we own nothing worth stealing."

"More or less," Jessi said.

"Why do you think I said you might get distracted? That place is very good at finding men who—" She looked at me and paused deliberately.

"—have a decent face and a coin purse that's clearly never been tied tightly enough."

"I feel insulted."

"I'm saving your life."

"I'd rather you saved it less enthusiastically." The covered wagon window slid open a crack at exactly that moment. Olivia's voice came through from inside.

"If the goal is a low-profile entry, we need to start changing things now." I turned around. She'd clearly been listening for a while. She still had that wooden ledger board in her hands—the one she'd been using to track provisions and water since Moba Town. Only half her face was visible through the gap, but the moment those grey eyes looked out, it became very difficult to file her under happened to overhear, casually chiming in.

"What needs to change?" I asked. Olivia didn't answer immediately. She looked at the double-decker feed wagon behind us first, then at the metal trim running along the outside of the covered wagon—pressed under oilcloth, yes, but still faintly, unmistakably aristocratic.

"First," she said, "the decorative banding on the outside of the covered wagon comes off before we enter Angel's Gate. The gold trim is too visible. Replace the window curtains with plain cloth—not the original heavy weave." Jessi made a sound of theatrical dismay.

"We're demoting a luxury carriage to a refugee cart?"

"Would you prefer people take one look and correctly identify who's sitting inside as worth abducting?" Olivia said, with perfect evenness. Jessi closed her mouth. Good. The ability to silence Jessi in a single sentence confirmed that this woman's practical capabilities extended considerably beyond ledgers and water buckets. Olivia continued.

"Second. The people need to change too." I blinked.

"The people?"

"Erina and I cannot continue riding in the same wagon visibly. Not when entering the city." She said it as naturally as discussing a seating arrangement.

"Once we're parked inside, we can adjust. But on entry, it's too much of a signal."

"Wait." I frowned.

"You mean separate?"

"Not separate. Layered." She spoke without hesitation.

"To outside eyes, the covered wagon carries only a sick passenger and one attending servant. Everyone else disperses on the surface. If the princess doesn't look like a princess, and the young lady doesn't look like a young lady, no one bothers to write a story about us."... That description carried a faint sadness to it, but it was also completely correct. Matthews nodded beside me.

"Workable." Alvira's voice came from inside the wagon at that point, characteristically frost-edged.

"I can be the attendant." I looked back at her.

"You?"

"Problem?" One eyebrow rose.

"No, I just think you look less like an attendant and more like the kind of attendant who knocks their employer unconscious and drags them out when they say something wrong." Alvira considered this.

"That's also accurate."... Infuriatingly, I couldn't argue with it. Olivia picked the thread back up.

"Third. The water and fodder need to be repackaged before we reach the city." This was her true domain. When she got to this part, her voice settled into the unhurried steadiness of someone drawing up a winter inventory for an entire estate.

"Don't keep all the concentrated feed in one wagon. Split it three ways—one portion visible, one at the bottom of the load, one concealed in the miscellaneous layer. For drinking water, only keep today's supply accessible on the outside. The rest goes in the rear section, out of sight. We don't want anyone to see how well-provisioned we actually are." I listened, and eventually couldn't stop myself from asking:"Is this to prevent theft, or to prevent people from realizing we can sustain a long journey?"

"Both," Olivia said calmly.

"The real danger isn't being seen as poor. It's being seen as someone who is pretending to be poor but clearly isn't." Jessi let out a low whistle.

"Ruthless."

"Practical," Olivia corrected. I held the reins and said nothing for a moment. Because she was right. In a place like Angel's Gate—the kind where every type of person existed simultaneously—surface appearances weren't enough. The real tell wasn't whether your clothes were worn. It was whether you carried the scent of someone who, even in worn clothes, clearly had people watching their back. That quality was more magnetic to the wrong kind of attention than gold.

And what Olivia was doing, piece by piece, was suppressing that scent. Not hiding our identities. Reducing our risk profile. I breathed out a cloud of white vapor.

"Fine. We start at the next stopping point."

"Not the next stopping point," she said. I paused.

"Then when?"

"We make the list now." Olivia glanced down at her ledger board, wrote something, then looked up at me.

"You, me, and Alvira—tonight we draw up the complete plan. When we reach the outskirts of Angel's Gate, we execute it in order. That way nothing gets missed." I looked at the ledger board in her hands, and found myself thinking that some things were genuinely strange.

Like the fact that a young noblewoman who had boarded this convoy as a passenger had, somewhere along the way, become the person who naturally produced the disguise strategy, the supply distribution plan, and the risk management framework for the entire group. And stranger still: everyone had accepted this as completely normal. Not just normal. Obviously correct. Jessi had apparently arrived at the same thought. She rode alongside us with an expression of pure, undisguised delight.

"Young master."

"What now."

"I'm starting to feel a little sorry for you."

"Why."

"Because at the rate things are going, by the time we reach the capital, everyone's going to look at her first and you second." I stared ahead without expression.

"You're saying my presence is being gradually consumed by a woman who is very good at managing accounts, rationing water, and disassembling carriages." Jessi nodded with great sincerity.

"Yes." Two seconds of silence.

"... At least it means we're probably going to survive." Jessi's shoulders shook with laughter. From inside the covered wagon came a sound—very quiet, very brief, the kind that happens when someone is trying not to make it. It was Olivia. I don't know why, but hearing that sound made the faint, vaguely unsettled feeling of having my authority quietly absorbed—dissipate, just a little. Maybe because I understood, in that moment, that she wasn't taking anything from me.

She was just looking at wherever the convoy was about to break, and filling the gap before it opened. That kind of person, placed in a household, would probably be terrifying. Placed in a convoy like ours, she was indispensable. And the thought that followed that one, arriving quietly and without permission, was this: I was already in the habit of waiting to hear what she said before deciding what to do next. The wagons kept rolling. Wind came from the drier south, carrying sand and cold stone.

In the distance, the mountain ridges were narrowing. The entrance to the gorges sat on the horizon like two doors that hadn't quite decided to open yet.