Chapter Four - The Thief

“Where are we going?” Sari asked. She was walking on the rail, perfectly balancing herself. I had to give her credit, that was a pretty difficult thing to do. I was simply polishing my knife, which was something I did whenever I woke up. I was honestly surprised that she was still with me, and hadn’t just robbed me in my sleep.

“At the moment, we’re just walking the tracks. I don’t know where to go, exactly.” I pulled a canteen out of my pack, took a drink and then handed it to her. “Just because we started this quest doesn’t mean I know how we’re gonna do it.”

She gulped down a little more of my water than I expected her to. “Really?” she asked, sarcastically. “And here I thought you knew everythingwe’re gonna do.”

I glared at her. “It’s not just that I don’t know where to go, I don’t even know where we’re headed. It’s not like I grabbed a map or anything.”

She passed my canteen back to me. “We’re headed for Endawa,” she said, “a nowhere little town..”

“Do you live there?”

She shook her head. “Nope. But I’ve been there, though. I hid out there for a couple days after my ex and I pulled this job in Kepton.”

“You had a boyfriend?”

“I had an ex boyfriend. We were together for about three days, then we were partners in crime.”

“What did you steal from him?”

She glared at me. “Nothing. He got caught, I didn’t. It was that simple. What’s it matter to you?”

I slipped my hand to my sword hilt. “I like to know who it is I work with. It’s kinda the reason I’m alone.”

She smirked. “Sucks to be you, then. Everybody should have friends.”

I had friends, once upon a time. Hell, I used to have a family.

I put those memories out of my mind. It wasn’t good to dwell on the past. Especially my past. I moved my hand away from my sword and relaxed myself. Sari was walking ahead of me, and didn’t notice.

I felt something in the tracks. I knelt down and placed a hand on the track, and then I stood back up. “Move.”

“What?” Sari asked.

“Something bigger than a train is on its way.”

I spotted and small ditch just ten feet away, and bolted for it. Sari was there before I even had a chance to slide to a stop. We waited, a good twelve minutes later, something big rolled past us on the tracks. It wasn’t going fast, likely due to its size. It wasn’t like a normal train, and looked more like a castle on rails. Every third car, there were soldiers standing guard, very familiar looking soldiers. They were wearing the same gear as the six men that attacked me the day before.

We watched it pass, and once it was finally gone, I climbed out of the ditch, followed by Sari, but I wasn’t paying much attention to her. Those soldiers came after me, and they were guarding that train. I needed to find it.

---

“You seemed pretty fixated on that train,” Sari said. She was filing her nails with a small knife.

“I’ve seen the guards before.”

“Know any of ‘em?”

“No, but I’ve killed some of their friends.”

“Those are Royal Escorts, which means that train had a member of the Imperial Family on board.” There was something in her voice, some sort of recognition, and something else that I just couldn’t figure out. “Who’d you piss off up high to get Royal Escorts after you?”

“Who said they were coming after me?”

She smirked. “You were the one who said you killed some. Royal Escorts don’t leave the sight of a member of the Imperial Family unless they’ve been ordered to kill somebody. Everybody on the continent knows that.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what I did, unless you count sneaking on board a train to avoid the fighting.”

“You mean, you’re not a soldier?”

I shook my head. “Not a legit soldier, no. I’ve seen my share of fighting, against both.”

The look on her face told me she was much the same way. Granted, she was a thief, so that made quite a bit sense. Just going from one town to another would probably put her up against different soldiers. But there was something different about her. She had some sort of recognition when it came to the Royal Escorts she mentioned.

We came to a small lake, a little less than ten miles away from the town. I knelt down by the lake and splashed some water on my face. It had been about six weeks since the last time I had a real shower, but light bathing in lakes kept me from smelling like rotting wood on a hot day.

Sari pulled off her top, wiggled her skirt off, took off her boots and jumped into the water. She swam around for a good five minutes, almost like she was part fish or something. “C’mon, jump in!” she shouted, once she finally surfaced.

I shook my head. “Nah, I don’t think so.”

She blew me a raspberry. “Why not?”

I shook my head again, then looked toward the town. “So, whaddya know about that place? You said it’s called Endawa?”

She did the backstroke over to the edge of the lake where I was standing. “It’s a nowhere town, nothing really interesting to do, nobody special to steal from. I hid out here once, and the Imperial Guard never thought to look for me.” She pulled herself out of the lake and pulled a small towel from a pouch on her quiver. “There’s this neat pharmacy, though the lady who works there is kinda… Creepy, to say the least.” She turned toward me. “Her kid’s pretty hot, though.”

I sighed. “That it?”

“Kinda. I doubt we’ll run into him, but have you heard of the dragon slayer Irvine?”

The name sounded familiar, but I didn’t know it. “I don’t know.”

She pulled her panties back on and gave me a weird look. “You’d know if you heard about him. Most of the dead dragons on this planet are courtesy of him. Both the Selen Empire and the Tameran Republic treat him with more respect than they do their own royalty.”

“What does he have to do with this town?”

“He lives here.”

I raised an eyebrow. “A tiny place like this produced an amazing dragon slayer?”

“And your hometown produced a guy who can actually beat me in a straight fight. Don’t assume.” She put most of her bikini top back on, then turned her back to me. “Wanna tie me down?”

Part of me wanted to know why she couldn’t do it herself, another part of me really didn’t care, and the third (typical red-blooded male) part of me rationalized, Cres, it’s a hot girl asking you to put her bikini on her, just do it. Although I didn’t see Sari as potential dating material, she wasa damned attractive girl.

“Whatever,” I said, as if it didn’t matter to me. I spotted a dark red circle under her left arm. “What’s this?”

“Huh? Oh, that’s my birthmark.”

“It’s not very big.”

“Birthmarks don’t need to be big, Cres.” I finished tying off her top and then handed her quiver over to her. She reached into it and pulled a rubber band out of a pouch, then tied her hair into a ponytail. “Okay, ready to go?”

“I have been,” I said. “You’re the one who derailed us by going for a swim.”

She blew me a raspberry again. “Whatever,” she said, mocking my tone of voice from just a minute ago. I shook my head.

---

The nowhere little town that Sari described was actually pretty busy. People were milling about, children playing in the streets. That pharmacy that Sari had mentioned before had kids running in and out of it, with the owner chasing a few of them out for playing in the aisles. On the rooftops, there were men sitting in ballistas, aiming at the sky. This town was both enjoying a lazy Saturday and preparing for war at the same time.

I walked into the pharmacy. There were only three people inside aside from me, the woman who owned the place, a boy my age and a cute girl my age, who was sticking close to either the boy or the woman.

“Looking for anything in particular?” the woman asked.

“Just came in to buy a drink. Um… Quick question: Do you take Republic currency?”

She sighed. “We’ll take it, yes, but I’ll have to give you Imperial change. We don’t often get Republic money here.”

I grabbed a bottle of soda and brought it up to the counter. The girl was eyeing me, like she recognized me or something. I didn’t recognize her, but I’ve met a lot of girls in the past two months. Maybe I saw her at some point.

“This it? Nothing for your girlfriend out there?” the woman asked. She nodded toward Sari, who was standing outside, looking annoyed.

“She’s just a friend, and no.”

She walked over to the cooler I’d gotten my soda from and set another one down beside mine. “It’s on the house.” She also tossed on a couple of granola bars. “It’s a little rude to bring a girl like that along and not buy her something.”

“Thanks,” I said, with a slight bit of sarcasm.

I paid for the drinks and granola bars (even though she told me that Sari’s were free) and left the building. Sari gladly took her drink and snack and munched away at it loudly. I sighed. Some girls.

---

“Hey! Sarika!” I heard from somewhere. Sari and I both turned and I spotted this boy running toward us, a big smile on his face. My hand drifted to the hilt of my blade, because something about him didn’t feel right.

Sari didn’t look pleased to see him, either. She grabbed him by the collar and pulled him into an alley a few feet away. I followed her, after making a quick look around. Something told me he was being followed. “What are you doing here, Jaide?” she asked. “You got caught.”

“They let me out, for some reason.” He glanced over at me. “Who’s this guy?”

I was about to answer, but Sari cut me off. “He’s Cres. And he’s none of your business.”

Jaide raised his hands in a back off gesture. “Okay, okay. Good luck with this one,” he said, directing the line to me and pointing at Sari, “she can be pretty feisty.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever, you still didn’t answer my question.”

“Yeah, I did. They let me out.”

“No, they didn’t. The Imperial Guard never just lets somebody go.” She drew her knife and put it to his neck. “Who’s got your leash?”

He pushed her away. “I got loose, okay? Nobody’s got their claws on me.” He readjusted his collar. “I really snuck away from them, okay?”

“And you just happened to come here?”

“We were gonna meet up here, remember? I took my chance that you’d still be here.”

I grabbed him by the collar this time and shoved him against the wall. “Why’d you shout to her in the middle of a crowded street if you weren’t trying to clue somebody in that she’s here? If you were alone, you would have come up on her quietly.”

“Dude, nobody can sneak up on this girl. She woulda gutted me if I’d tried.”

Sari let out a small groan. “Please. Your aftershave would have told me who you were right away.” She folded her arms under her breasts and stared him down. “But Cres is right. You’re not here because you wanted to catch up with me after escaping. How many of them, and where are they?”

“I’m telling you, nobody is following me. What do I gotta do to prove it to you?”

I watched him closely. There were things about him, things that I couldn’t tell if Sari was noticing. His eyes were darting back and forth, between me and her. There was sweat on his forehead, and his hand had moved to an empty sheath. He wasn’t carrying a sword, but I couldn’t tell if he had a knife.

I grabbed his arm and pulled his hand away from his sheath and slammed him against the wall. “What are you doing?” I demanded, never raising my voice but keeping it authoritative. Something hit the ground when he hit the wall. I knelt down and picked it up, a pocket knife. “Why were you getting this out?”

“I always have that out. It sits in a holder in my sleeve, you knocked it out when you slammed my hand against the wall!”

Sari kneed him in the crotch. His eyes bulged, his hands went to groin, and then he fell over, unconscious. “Pick him up.”

“What the hell did you do that for?!” I nearly shouted.

“This way, we can rent a room at the inn and question him there. The idea that people could be watching us out here is giving me the heebies.”

I sighed. Something told me today was gonna be a longer day than it already had been.

---

“Was that the kid from the pharmacy?” I asked, setting Jaide down on the bed. He’d been squirming a little in the bag, but that wasn’t anything another well-placed kick from Sari hadn’t cured. I considered asking her where she’d gotten the large burlap sack we’d stuffed him into, but decided against it. That quiver of her’s seemed to have more than just arrows in it.

“Looked like him. Maybe his mom’s pharmacy is just a part-time gig.” Sari shut the door and locked it. “Now, let him out of the bag.”

I untied the knot and pulled the bag off of Jaide, who was still mostly unconscious. He stirred a little, but didn’t wake up. “You’re not taking this too personally, are you?”

She glared at me. “You’d be taking this personally if your ex-partner ratted you out.”

“What’d ya steal that he’d actually turn you in for?”

She sat down on the other bed in the room. “We didn’t actually get anything. The job went bad.”

“Then what were you going after?”

“Fruit.”

“Seriously?”

“Look, I’m a thief, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a heart, okay? Kepton’s a poverty trap, and the Imperial Guard were transporting crates of fruit through the town like it was some sort of show. Jaide and I were gonna steal the fruit and give it to the people.”

“Robin Hood would love you.”

She glared at me again. “Shut up, okay?”

I pulled some zip ties from my belt and tied Jaide’s wrists. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way. So why’s this Kepton place so bad?”

She relaxed, then cleared her throat. “Early in the war, the Empire was drafting people to fight. Anybody who wouldn’t go found their way to Kepton, which was outside Imperial territory. When the war got bad, and the Empire started annexing the rest of the continent, that meant Kepton fell under Imperial rule.” She looked toward the window. “Everybody who wouldn’t go to war was there. And once the Imperial Guard found out about it, they didn’t just drag the draft dodgers off to war, they torched the place.”

“How many died?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. Too many, as far as I’m concerned. Ever since then, Kepton’s been a shanty town, and treated like it’s one of the Empire’s greatest conquests.” She looked over at Jaide, then stood up, walked over to him, and grabbed him by the collar roughly, waking him up. “What did you tell them, Jaide? Did they let you go to get to me?”

He pushed her off using his shoulders. “They didn’t ‘let me go’, okay?!” He snapped the zip ties off. “I got away from them, and they weren’t Imperial Guard. I don’t know who they were, but they knew about you, about your… Abilities.”

I drew my blade and put it against his neck. “Did you tell them about her?”

“No! They already knew! ‘Lead us to Sarika’, they told me. I don’t even know how they knew your name.”

“I saw Imperial Guard snatch you, so how did these other guys get you?” Sari asked, moving my sword away from his throat.

“The Guard threw me on a train, and then these guys in swanky suits came into the car and started asking me questions. I swear, they looked like they crawled right out of a fancy party.”

“How’d you get loose?”

He sighed, then rubbed at the back of his neck. “One of the Guard came into the car with a meal for me, and I knocked his helmet off of him. After that, I just barely got away from some Royal Escorts. I don’t know when, but they moved me to a different train, coming from the Republic. I musta been out cold when they did it. When the train came to a stop - “

I cut him off. “The white dragon was attacking the train yard,” I finished.

“How’d you know?”

Sari answered, “Because Cres killed the Escorts that were chasing you.” She turned to me. “Looks like you didn’t do anything to piss them off.”

I ignored that. “You came straight to Endawa right after the depot was assaulted, didn’t you?” I asked Jaide.

He stood up from the bed. “Yeah. I took my chances that I might actually see Sarika here, and I waited. I haven’t even gotten any sleep, save for those times you knocked me out.”

Sari coughed out a laugh. “If you’d walked the tracks a couple hours later, I’dda tried to rob you instead of Cres.” She pulled some more zip ties off of my belt. “I’m gonna tie you up again, and we’re gonna leave you here.” I saw something out the window. I moved over to the window and saw several of those Royal Escorts. Who had they followed? Me or Jaide? “We’ll send somebody in to find you, and you tell ‘em we left for the Republic, got that?”

“Too late,” I said, “we’ve got company.”

“What?”

“Escorts. Seven of them. At least.”

“Were they following you?” Sari asked Jaide.

“I don’t see how!” he shouted.

I picked up Sari’s quiver and bow and handed them to her, then pulled my knife and cut the ties off of Jaide’s wrists. I handed him the knife. “If I find that in either me or Sari, your head will be in a very small box.”

---

They gave us no trouble until we reached the front door. I looked around for the kid from the pharmacy, but there wasn’t anybody here. There were only six rooms in the place, it wasn’t really big enough to hide in. Jaide was right behind me, and Sari behind him, ready to loose as many arrows as she needed to.

The idea that these Royal Escort guys were here for Sari had crossed my mind more than once in the three minutes it took to get from the room to the front door. Somebody had wanted Jaide to tell them where she was, whether that was because of what they’d done in Kepton or maybe even because of what she could do, I didn’t know or care. I hadn’t known her long, but I was still going to protect her from being captured by the Empire.

The streets were empty now, almost as if everyone had been ordered back into their homes. The very idea of this made me uneasy. I motioned for Jaide and Sari not to move, then slipped my blade back into the sheath. I stepped out into the street slowly, carefully. I looked up and down the street and watched as the Escorts moved into position on the rooftops ahead of me. 

I looked back at the inn and saw that Sari had moved into position, just like I told her. She had come up behind the Escort on the roof of the inn and impaled him with an arrow from behind. Clearly these guys didn’t know the concept of body armor. The Escort she killed made no sound, so the others didn’t know what had happened, because they all trained their bows on me.

I motioned for Jaide to join me, then grabbed him by his shaggy yellow hair. “Lookin’ for him?” I shouted. “He’s with me. You want him, you gotta go through me.”

One of the Escorts jumped from his vantage point and drew a sword. “We’re here for Sarika.”

“What do you want with her?”

“That’s not of your concern.”

“Shame. Damn shame.” I tilted my head to the right, and an arrow flew right into the Escort’s covered face. I pushed Jaide back toward the inn just as several arrows from their side were loosed on us. I made my way to the Escort’s body and relieved him of his bow and quiver of arrows. I wasn’t as good a shot as Sari, but I was manageable.

I didn’t stop moving. I sprinted for a storefront about six doors down from the inn. I didn’t even realize it was the pharmacy until I broke through the window at the front. That girl was there, but otherwise the place was completely devoid of people. I motioned for her to keep quiet, then I drew my procured bow back and loosed an arrow at one of the Escorts at about the same time one of Sari’s arrows hit him.

I had no view of Jaide or Sari, though every now and again, I could see an arrow hit near an Escort. I couldn’t tell if she was missing on purpose or because she was constantly moving. The Escorts were moving, too, which suggested to me that neither side was really capable of hitting the other right now. I drew another arrow and took aim at an Escort that landed on the ground in front of the pharmacy. He drew his bow and fired an arrow at me, but I dodged it. I was about to shoot him, but Jaide jumped on him and blood flew from the man’s chest.

I turned back to the pharmacy girl and asked, “You got a ladder to the roof?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. Today’s my first day.”

Shit… I hopped over the broken windowsill and ran out to Jaide, who was still tearing the Escort to shreds. None of the remaining Escorts were focused on us, which told me they must have cornered Sari. I grabbed his shoulder. “Hey!” I whispered, “C’mon!” He turned from the body he was mutilating and I almost didn’t think I was looking at Jaide for a moment. His face was less human and more wolf-like, and his hands had grown razor-sharp claws. “What the hell?!”

He pushed my hand away from him and stood up. “You never asked,” he said. “Where’s Sarika?”

“What the hell are you?”

“Ask when we’re not fighting Royal Escorts, and I’ll tell ya.”

I sighed. “Fine. Now, let’s go find Sari and get the hell outta town.”

Almost as if on cue, Sari screamed. We both looked in the direction of the scream, and I saw someone dressed in Escort clothing falling from the building across the street from the pharmacy. I didn’t think, I simply ran, and dove to catch her before she hit the ground. There was an arrow sticking through her leg, blood flowing freely. I looked up at the roof of the building and saw a single Escort looking down at us, and then several more joined him.

I’d seen seven before. I’d severely underestimated the number.

I ripped the arrow from Sari’s leg, causing her to cry out in pain, then I turned to Jaide. “Think you can distract ‘em?”

He rubbed at his cheek. “Gladly. Get her outta here.” I nodded.

I moved, sprinting off in the direction opposite from where the Escort’s were. I heard the sounds of fighting, and knew almost instantly that they were going to make it as slow and painful for Jaide as they could. I’d treated him like shit, and now I was indebted to him. Dammit, the irony.

I came to the edge of town, literally. It was a cliff, and down below was nothing but water. Sari was unconscious, so I couldn’t ask her if she was ready for a swim. I took a deep breath, and then an arrow clipped me across my left cheek. I felt blood seeping from the wound, and my decision was made. I jumped, and braced myself for the inevitable landing.

The water was cold, and painful when I landed. I kept hold of Sari, but it was difficult. This fall would have woken me from the dead, but she was still out cold. I envied her. The current was strong, and nearly split us apart more than once, but I held her tightly. I tried to swim against the current, into neutral territory, but in the end I couldn’t.

I lost consciousness as I watched the Escorts reach the cliff, one of them carrying Jaide over his shoulders.